After this quick news break
Before getting into old news about my summer vacation from a month ago (ha!--got ya!), I wanted to quickly update the blog with some more recent events.
Christina is currently back in Calgary, beginning the long process of sorting and packing. The big move is on August 18th, just short of one year from the last big move in the opposite direction. I will be driving to Calgary to help pack the trailer on the 17th, and then driving back to Regina to help unpack the trailer on the 18th. Prior to this, I need to remove all of the furniture from what will soon be Christina's bedroom, as she will be bringing her own bed and dresser with her. (Does anyone want a good quality, ultra plush, 10-year-old double bed mattress and box spring? For free?)
Household pet population has now been reset to the 2009 standard of two dogs and four cats because Duke and Squeak have already moved in permanently. Christina wasn't originally planning to leave Duke behind, as she really does love that stupid fucking dog, but I offered to keep him to make it easier for her to deal with her coming month of near constant stress. If you are wondering where the fourth cat came from, I'm impressed by your attention to detail. Hang in there.
My focus for the coming month of complete and utter boredom will be catching up on as many shows that I know Christina has no interest in (Eureka, for a start) as is possible, and reading as much Malazan as my stupid newly-ADD-addled brain can handle. And fucking yardwork. I love strawberries and raspberries, but goddamn I hate picking them.
A Wedding in Hanna
For those that haven't been paying attention, or possibly haven't read my earlier posts on this topic, my ex-wife Christina's brother was getting married on June 12th in Hanna, Alberta. I actually booked my summer vacation to start on June 11th so I could attend this specific event, have some time to visit with Christina's family for the first time since things fell apart, and then hopefully hang around the Calgary area for a while.
I don't want to bore you with details. I know you don't give a fuck about every stupid thing I did on this weekend. But, for a quick time-line, the wedding weekend went a little like this: on Friday, June 11th, Christina and I drove to Hanna, checked into our hotel room, helped decorate the hall, and attended the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner; on Saturday, June 12th, we dropped off the dogs in Christina's mom's barn, met Buffy (more on this later) for the first time, I squeezed into my suit, we attended the wedding ceremony and reception, Christina MCd, I picked up the dogs from the barn, and I returned to the hall in time to dance; on Sunday, June 13th, we attended the gift opening, relocated from the hotel to Christina's mom's farm, and visited with family; and on Monday, June 14th, we drove to Calgary.
(It is disturbing for me to imagine what this weekend would have been like if circumstances in Christina's life had worked out differently. Although I had suggested otherwise, I know I would have still attended the wedding, out of a desire to appear stronger than I am. And everything about that day would have been completely different and awkward and painful. (This comment was intentionally vague and will only be understandable by friends of Christina that are in the know about what her life has been like since our separation.))
Duke and Daisy
I spent a fair bit of time this weekend on Duke and Daisy duty. After weeks and weeks of steady rain, June 11th and 12th were two beautiful, hot, sunny days in the Hanna area. That would normally be a good thing, especially for a wedding, but with two big dogs in tow that can not stay in a hot car by themselves, nice weather is a bit of a hassle. While Christina helped decorate the hall, I walked Duke and Daisy around the town of Hanna until there was finally enough shade outside the hall for the dogs to not die of heatstroke inside the car. On the day of the wedding, we had initially planned to drop the dogs off in a kennel, but the only kennel within reasonable driving distance insisted on Bordatella (ie. kennel cough) shots that our dogs don't have (they do have rabies shots!) and are, to paraphrase Christina, complete bullshit (it's apparently the equivalent of humans getting a shot for the common cold).
So, instead, Duke and Daisy got to spend the day of the wedding in a barn. Dropping them off in the morning at the barn was uneventful. Picking them up was a different story. We decided that it would be unnecessarily mean to leave them in the barn over night, so then the question was when to pick them up. I figured foolishly that I could pick them up between the end of the wedding reception speeches and the beginning of the dance, therefore avoiding trying to stumble through an unfamiliar farm yard in the dark. I'm not saying I didn't accomplish this task successfully, but here were the flaws in my plan.
1. I wasn't exactly sober at this point in the evening.
2. Hanna has some of the most randomly placed stop signs I've ever encountered.
1+2. I accidentally ran a stop sign and nearly smashed my car to bits in a huge depression in the road. Apparently that stop sign wasn't so random after all.
3. I was wearing my suit.
4. Said suit was ridiculously tight. (Twenty pounds ago, it fit great!)
5. The mosquitoes on said farm were the most insane I have ever encountered.
6. I didn't exactly want mosquito bits and blood on my suit jacket, and bug spray was not an option because I was heading back to a wedding dance.
1+3+4+5+6. Me running madly away from swarms of mosquitoes in my tight suit must have been thoroughly comical. Fortunately, no one was there to witness that.
Still one of the family
It should come as no surprise that my biggest worry about this wedding weekend was how I would be greeted by Christina's family. I had no reason to worry. And how would they react to Christina and I being unusually friendly for a recently separated couple? Some weirdness is to be expected, but overall I was treated like I'm still a member of their family.
Right away, during Friday's rehearsal, I learned that I was still considered a member of the family by the bride and groom and would be seated in the front row. Seeing as I had a month earlier been offered the chance to be a groomsman, this seemed reasonable.
The reactions from the rest of the family to my presence in Hanna on this weekend varied quite a lot, from "Holy shit, is that Scott?" to complete disinterest. Some, like Christina's mom, already knew I would be attending and were just happy to see me again. Some, like Christina's dad's wife, were shocked but delighted that I was there. On average, Christina's parents and grandparents were happy to see me, but her extended family didn't give a shit (with some notable exceptions: hi, Karen!). And that sat fine with me.
During the wedding reception and dance, I attempted to sit with each group and let them see that I was doing okay. The best conversation was had with Christina's dad and his wife. They admitted that they had been very worried about me being alone in Regina and were happy to see that I was doing okay, although I had to insist it was true before they would believe me.
My favourite WTF moment of the weekend came early Sunday morning during the gift opening. Christina's bible-thumping (irrelevant but fun detail) grandfather (on her dad's side) said the following to me about Christina (paraphrasing): "Hang onto that one. She's a keeper." I laughed, quite hard, initially thinking that he had just cracked a pretty damn good joke. But then Christina and I started discussing the comment and were left wondering if it had in fact been a joke. It was entirely possible that, despite MC Christina's groan-worthy jokes during the reception about not being an expert on making a marriage work, he had forgotten that we were no longer together (or, ridiculously, assumed by our non-asshole-ishness that we were back together). To this day, I still don't know how I was supposed to take that comment. If he had meant it seriously, what did he think when I laughed out loud?
Even better, when we told this story to Christina's mom later that day, her response was that he had gotten it backwards (Christina's unnecessary clarification: implying that she should have held onto me). BURN! And Christina's grandmother (her mom's mom) immediately and hilarious echoed that sentiment. It's pretty awesome (for me, not so much Christina) when your ex-wife's family thinks she made a huge mistake leaving you.
Buffy the Finger Slayer
I have a new kitten! Buffy the Finger Slayer!
The second reason, besides not wanting my dad to have to deal with cat shit on the floor every day when he was looking after my cats, for putting down Cinnamon in May was because there was a strong possibility I would come back home from Hanna with a new kitten. ("I'm not heartless" context.) And I did!
Buffy is lucky to be alive. Luckier than the rest of her family, certainly. Christina's mom rescued her, bottle fed her, and apparently turned her into a completely psychotic monster. Christina's mom could not keep her, so she offered the kitten to me, her favourite ex-son-in-law.
I had to arm wrestle Christina's brother for her, but I won handily. (This blog has no fact checkers.)
Buffy fanboy alert! I have always wanted to name one of my cats Buffy. Furlicity was going to be Buffy, but Christina wouldn't have it, so I picked an even stupider name that I assumed she would reject and say, "Okay, fine, call her Buffy." Didn't work. This time, Christina couldn't stop me, because Buffy is my cat, not our cat, as per Christina's mom's insistence. However, after meeting Buffy, I strongly considered going with Darla instead. Buffy is a little monster and loves to bite the shit out of you, making her very much worthy of being named after a vampire. In the end, I stuck with my original plan, because she's also a worthy Finger Slayer.
Resting in Calgary: Yay, Softcore Gay Porn!
Due to unending rain, the plan to spend a few days camping in the mountains during the week of the 14th was scrapped. We instead decided to wait for a reasonable day to do a day trip. That ended up working fine, but that story is coming in part 3.
So, with tons of inside time on our hands, we naturally decided to watch a shit load of TV. (We also visited the super cool and educational Body Worlds display at the science centre and checked out the large and growing Cross Iron Mills mall, but there's not a lot to blog about there, other than to say: "We had fun. Yay!")
Christina has wanted me to watch the Showtime version of Queer as Folk with her for years, so this seemed like as good a time as any to start. She had scared me away from the show earlier by overstating the gay-porn-ishness of the show. While gay sex is definitely a big component on the show, it does not dominate the screen the way she made me think it would.
So imagine my surprise to learn that it is actually a pretty good show, with equal parts humour and drama, diverse characters, and only a couple storyline missteps in the two seasons that I have watched so far. On the downside, it's not exactly the most unpredictable show in the world. I saw the season one cliffhanger coming from a mile away, but I didn't expect the brutality and the effect it would have on early season two episodes. I also correctly predicted a major character's sudden death out loud to Christina minutes before it happened on screen, which was greatly amusing to me. The show also has a hilarious conceit in that every handsome guy that comes along is 90% likely to be gay.
One thing that I find interesting is that I am somehow able to enjoy the show despite not being able to identify with any of the characters' lifestyles at all. Usually I get attached to a show because I can identify with one or two of the characters on screen. And I'm not saying this because they have gay sex. If I am to believe Queer as Folk's depiction of the gay lifestyle, only one in five gay men has a healthy, stable relationship, and nearly every gay man parties at gay clubs every weekend. I can't identify with that shit at all.
To be continued...
Next time: a day trip to the mountains, and a surprisingly spontaneous (for me) Canada Day long weekend trip to Northern Saskatchewan.
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