New Year's Eve 2004 circa 1993

New Year's Eve 2004 circa 1993

Thankfully, New Year’s Eve held little to no drama, and yet I've still got enough to ramble on about for several more pages. I wish I could manage this posting thing a little differently, but it is what it is!

I’d managed my time beautifully that day, though. Because I planned on staying the night at Phil and Shelley’s, I had to prepare dinner for the guys to eat after I’d left, as well as lunches for the next day, not to mention cleaning up the kitchen (twice) and trying to help Jr. get the homework done that was still left over from when he was down with pneumonia… and then there was an unexpected errand in town that I had to run. Plus, it was Gary’s birthday, so I had to bake and ice a birthday cake for the poor hardworking bastard - he was able to go home for Christmas on the 23rd and made it back four days later; but then, it was straight back to work with John, gone by 5am and home by 10pm.

For several days their eyes were as pissholes in the snow. Often they barely even had time to eat through the whole shift. There’ve been a few problems with some of the other employees – John had to fire one, which he wasn’t even sure he was allowed to do; but he did anyway, and it wasn’t vetoed. Said employee had designs on being a night supervisor with absolutely no experience and with a fresh hit and run under his belt, in a late attempt to get to work - he put some poor vehicle and occupants unknown in the ditch and left them there! One of his first shifts he spent sleeping in the shack. Star material, that one. I don’t know if anyone reported him to the police, but I damn sure would have if I had known his name and/or license plate number.

The guys’ night shift replacement has also been routinely late, meaning John and Gary are working part of that shift while the slackers are getting paid for it. Another guy is pretty fresh off getting stabbed in the face for stealing some other guy’s handgun, and since he’s arrived plenty has gone AWOL already, including equipment from John’s shack. Yet another newly hired, notorious thief is also under surveillance at the moment. The big money jobs always seem to attract social rejects… probably because they need the big money or the stolen big money equipment to support their meth habits. They just jump from job to job until they find an employer who will put up with their shit or turn a blind eye. Since the ‘patch is forever in need of skilled workers, apparently this isn’t too difficult to accomplish.

However, John is persevering and he’s already received a second raise – this time on his mileage reimbursement, some crazy amount like another 40 or 50 cents a kilometre, I think. On a couple hundred kilometres a day, it really adds up. Basically, his boss isn’t making any money off of him anymore – John’s getting what the boss is getting paid for putting him to work. John’s worth it, though. He’s the most reliable, hard-working, trustworthy employee they have going. Good help really is a bitch to find. Boss does find little ways to let John know how relieved he is to have him back at work, so I think John is more aware how appreciated he really is. He has a tough time seeing that, usually, the pessimist that he is.

So, on the relationship front, not much is new and exciting. No intimate encounters to report, either. John has barely been here, and when he is he’s only been awake for just long enough to eat and possibly make it to bed. What time he has spent coherent has generally been heavily coloured by the stress of work politics and lack of sleep. Fun, fun.

He was ever so crabby this morning when I objected to the comment he made in regards to ‘turning wee boy into a girl’, what with all of the kitchen related toys that he received for Christmas – play microwave, fake food, and so on - the kid loves to ‘cook’, but he also loves his trucks and cars, and I pointed that out, too. John didn’t seem to see how his comment might be construed as offensive to me, or women in general. I wasn’t trying to make a big issue out of it - I just asked him not to say such things in front of wee boy. I’m no feminazi, obviously, but he certainly doesn’t need to be reinforcing gender stereotypes with our son and insulting me in the process.

In defending his choice of words, he pointed out that if any of my friends, say Lucas or Phil, were to say such a thing, I would be laughing and accepting of it, and I wouldn’t be pulling this bullshit with Phil. That’s hardly correct, but it didn’t stop him from entering into a mini-fucking-tirade on how I need to learn how to not take stuff so seriously, and that if it were anyone else but him I would just brush it off. Well, I’m not exactly married to ‘anyone else’, nor am I trying to raise a respectful child with ‘anyone else’, and I expect him to respect me just a tad, most especially in front of children I’ve borne. That was pretty much the end of that discussion. I know he’s tired, but meow.

Methinks John was more jealous of my fun than I initially predicted, no? God forbid I ever have any. And, no, John’s not threatened by Phil. He’s threatened because I had fun, and it happened to be with Phil and co. and not him. Strange, how he has had ample opportunity to show me some fun in the recent past and yet he’s chosen not to. I don’t think he has any right to be a bitch about it. I hate it when he tosses in comments like that; he says something isn’t a big deal, and then as soon as we have the next argument, he whips out the guilt trip. I thought that was female territory.

Today they had a shop day, so they didn’t head in until 11am or so, and they stopped to help my uncle put a cow down on the way out – no one on the farm can bear to put any of their pet cows out of their misery if need be, so they call the big Super Hunter Man with his powerful rifle to come and dispatch the suffering as necessary (or, alternately, to borrow his chainsaw, or services with such, on occasion, as he was also the Chainsaw Avenger in a previous incarnation).

Later he phoned me to whine about the finances, even though I tried to explain them in a non-threatening fashion earlier when I’d told him that we only had 30 bucks to our name until mid-month, once I’d paid all the bills that absolutely had to be paid. I was still required to put off about 600 bucks worth that wasn’t as dire, but could have used some money thrown at it. He didn’t get very far on that tack before I set him straight about the importance of electricity and the avoidance of loan-payment default.

His self-righteous moneybags attitude withered pretty quickly when he realized I was making sense, and that I wasn’t hiding any money or spending it unnecessarily (which I never do, by the way, and yet it comes up in a roundabout way again and again) – there actually wasn’t enough to cover everything. Imagine that, coming off all those months of insufficient paychecks, that we should have a backlog of bills! The nerve! I should have been able to stretch that money to cover everything all at once and with money left over, by gum.

I understand that he is working so very hard and making an excellent living and that it’s frustrating when he still doesn’t have any money to show for it at the end of the pay period, but I’m doing the best I can with what I’m given, as I have always done over the years. If the budget was up to him, we would have declared bankruptcy ages ago.

Whee.

So, back to New Year’s Eve, which was a lot more fun than dealing with my lately cranky husband.

By the time I arrived at close to 10pm, thanks to a wired wee boy who wasn’t terribly happy about going to bed (“No nap!! No nap!!”), the party was already well under way. Snacks were out and the music mix was nostalgically apropos. It was a fairly small gathering compared to the initial invite list, only about 15 people or so, but I felt it was just right and everyone who really mattered showed up. Apparently, they were waiting for little ol’ me to break out the alcoholic checkers, so in short order we had the board set up with shots of Arbor Mist. I can’t imagine playing it with anything stronger, or at least, playing more than one round.

The first match pitted Shelley’s dad and I against Shelley and Shane, Phil’s friend from work. Shane and his wife Jeri had been drinking since 6 or 7, and they were both plenty corked. Shane was exponentially more talkative with a little booze in him. Jeri, who never drinks, was one of the sloppiest drunks I’ve ever come across. Shelley spent much of the night following them both around with the mop.

Shelley’s dad and I wiped the board with the other two. We were the only ones who could see past the one move, so it was a cinch – Shelley wasn’t even buzzed yet, she just isn’t that good at checkers, apparently. Since she was sober, she gracefully took most of the shots to save Shane’s ass, and then dumped all of our leftover ones into her glass to finish them off.

I played Lucas’s wife next, since she claimed a need to catch up to everyone else, having just gotten off work and sober as a judge (or most judges, anyway). I kicked her ass, too. Shane, who was watching me do so in between fetching snacks, drunkenly working the room, and helping Lucas’s wife with her penalty shooters, immediately demanded a rematch, confident in his ability to shame me by beating me at what appeared to be my own game. I hadn’t played checkers in years, but it’s not chess, for crying out loud.

So, naturally, I kicked Shane’s ass again. He was in sorry shape to start out with – still functioning but obviously far more intoxicated than anyone had any right to be. He was absolutely astounded that I beat him so soundly, and he came up to me over and over throughout the night to repeatedly profess his respect for me, and my checkers skills, and claiming that he doesn’t usually get beaten at anything, so good on me for doing so. I think I wowed him. With checkers. I thought he was going to put the moves on me, or something, the way he was nattering on about it.

He vowed revenge but there was no way I was making him drink any more shooters, especially since we didn’t have anything besides Crown Royal to put in them. Plus, despite winning and not being required to actually drink anything, I was still downing cocktails and port on the side and was on my own merry way to becoming sufficiently inebriated. Thank goodness we never got around to playing Black/Red.

I made a run down to the bar for more Kahlua with a sober driver, another acquaintance from so many years back. There was nothing noteworthy about that, except that I got to see my friend Matt, who had been successfully coerced into bouncing that night since they were short-staffed, and he was none too pleased about it. It was a zoo there; it reminded me of how happy I am that I don’t bartend anymore. They never did give me any Kahlua, though, because they needed to keep what they had to serve drinks with. And, no Tia Maria either, so we had to settle for some Bailey’s instead. I can see that I definitely don’t have any pull there anymore, darn it.

Back at the house at near midnight, Lucas, who had been enamoured with the thought of fireworks the week prior, pulled four pieces out of the box of booze he’d brought and lamented the fact that we didn’t have more. What seemed to me like a bad idea last week was suddenly fabulous, and I headed to the backyard with glee just like everyone else to send them off.

Well, of course fireworks are a bad idea, right? Especially in the hands of drunks. But I’m not sure whose fault it was that the screamer lived up to its name and screamed directly at the heads of those standing near the shed, nearly taking Jeri out in the process - who, with amazing reflexes for someone so hammered, dropped to the snow like a stone - before screaming its way over the roof of the house and out of sight. The whole fireworks procedure took all of maybe three minutes, so we dragged the fun out by lighting some stubborn sparklers and congratulating Jeri for narrowly avoiding a dance with death, before retreating from the bone-chilling cold (-35C, I think it was) to cook cheeseburgers in the kitchen.

The do was split between the upstairs and the basement, better known as the newly transformed Olde Tyme Party Roome – the ambience eerily reminiscent of Phil’s old duplex, where we spent many a soused eve. The rest of the night was spent drinking and chatting into the wee hours, until a spate of slower songs rightly signalled bedtime at about 4:30am. In that time, Phil made his rounds and got cozy with all the ladies, but aside from Shelley, mostly with me, and possibly Jeri, who was really more in need of someone to hold her up and keep her awake. I espied her caressing his back at one point in the evening and was inappropriately jealous, even though I’d had a couple of opportunities to do the same. In both, he let me and reciprocated. It sounds naughty but it was all very innocent and about as platonic as caressing people can get, really; and it was enough excitement for me anyway, although the drunker I got the dirtier my thoughts became. Terrible, huh? Good thing I know how to behave.

But oh, the next morning I was a hurtin’ unit. I got up around 11am with everyone else who had spent the night. Shelley’s brother was a doll and cleaned up the kitchen and did the dishes. The rest of us sat around and groaned until Lucas moved his truck so I could pick up the baby and get home. Jr. had spent the night at home with John and Gary, but they’d been gone since 5am to work, so I didn’t want to leave him alone all day or anything. He declined to come to my mom’s to pick wee boy up, instead choosing to stay at home and ‘work on his homework’ (read: play PS2).

Mom chastised me for drinking too much, of course, since I didn’t exactly listen to her well-meaning advice to take it easy, but then she promptly ordered me to bed to get some more sleep. After a couple of hours I took wee boy home and spent most of the rest of the day on the couch, in between tending to the baby and Jr. and venturing to the bathroom to puke up whatever water I tried to drink. It wasn’t until the guys got home at 10pm and I had to cook supper for them that I felt any better, and I even managed to get some rice into me. I would have asked John to cook the steaks but I don’t remember ever seeing him so exhausted.

By the time I got lunches made and the kitchen tidy and smokes rolled it was after 1am. I collapsed into bed with a hearty sigh, and with a full night’s sleep in me, I felt much, much better the next day… which was great because I had to spend most of it in the car driving Jr. home, and the roads were shitty. Some woman lost her daughter in an accident on the same highway the day before, because the roads were so icy. Thank heavens for my new tires.

To sum up: New Year’s Eve was a hoot and a holler this year. I think Phil and Shelley are turning the evening into an annual event, so quite obviously I am very much looking forward to the next bash.

I hope all my friends had as much fun!