Merry Christmas

We had the best Christmas!  We were blessed to go home to Idaho and spend the holiday with the people we love the most.  Incidentally, they are also the people who don’t care if we wear makeup or clean clothes.  It’s the ideal vacation.

Our only hope was that there would be snow.  Eva has been talking about playing in the snow in Idaho for months and I was worried her dreams would be slaughtered.  I didn’t need to worry because it snowed.  And snowed.  And snowed.  My daddy spent hours running his snow-blower up and down his neighborhood.  Our car almost got stuck in the snow.  It was a lot.  Eva loved it.

We were able to enjoy all the fun things that accompany Christmas; our annual gingerbread house competition (we didn’t win),  Swedish Christmas Eve dinner (I ate like a horse), Grandma Brown’s chicken noodle soup (I ate like a horse’s cousin), a jigsaw puzzle that was impossible to finish, conducting the train around the tree, seeing the Sasquatch Santa in Pendleton, and visiting dear friends.  We also had new adventures as well when Grandpa took us for ice cream at the Idaho Drug soda fountain.  The week was over too quickly. 

Eva didn’t bother to wake us up on Christmas morning and had her entire stocking emptied onto the floor and was starting in on her presents when Michael ran downstairs to stop her.  Then she had to patiently wait for Grandpa to come in from snow blowing the entire county before she could resume.  She was a good sport and was rewarded with the Princess Cupcake game she’s been asking for from Santa.  The old guy really delivered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most exciting parts came courtesy of our dog.  We left Portland in the evening after Myke’s office Christmas party to drive as far as Pendleton.  Late at night and in the middle of nowhere, the inside of our car began to smell like a sewer.  We thought our dog had graced us with a flatulence, but after the smell didn’t dissipate with the windows down, I suspected something much fouler.    I looked back and there he was, teetering on top of our suitcase and hanging over the seat onto Eva's shoulder.  She was wailing out, “The dog’s stinky breath is on me!  Get him off!”  I knew that the dog had pooped in the back of the car.

Michael pulled over and hopped out to assess the poopage.  He opened the door and gasped, “Oh, no!” and then gagged.  It was poop all right.  The diarrhea kind.  And a nice pile of vomit as a consolation prize.  Our car was loaded to the brim, we had no garbage receptacles of any kind, and Eva was still hollering about the stinky dog breath in her face.  We had no choice but to litter.  And we littered good.  Michael rolled up the dog bed and chucked it into the sage brush on the side of the road.  Then we sped off into the darkness. 

We had guilt over breaking the law.  I’m not a litterbug and I really detest those who are. But we had no choice.  It was a poop emergency.  I quickly absolved my guilt but Michael had a harder time letting go of his sin.  He fretted that a gust of wind would pick up the poopy bed and slam it onto a car’s windshield, causing the driver to careen off the road and meet his death.  I laughed at the image and then told him to quit being ridiculous.  The worst thing that could happen is someone might stumble upon the dog bed and think he’d found a great treasure, only to be surprised with a diarrhea-vomit concoction.  That would be more tragic. 

But the most tragic thing of all happened when our dog decided he was nervous and needed to chew something.  He chose a wool Pendleton blanket at my parent’s house.  No problem. IT’S ONLY A TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLAR BLANKET, JACKASS!   Our dear dog is going to the kennel next time. I hope he finds something cheap to chew on there.  

Merry Christmas!