Hello to anyone who cares to read my drivel. I'm Tara and if you didn't know, I'm completely normal. Yup, nothing magical with me and if you hear anything, then you'd be wrong and you need to check your sources. In fact if you heard anything from a girl with long blond hair, please just ignore her, she's an idiot...
And now I'm being shouted at by the blond girl, aka Saskia, to write what I came on this blog thing to write about. Garh, don't you hate technology. I do, it just gets in the way all the time. Actually, there's a funny story about me and technology...
Hi, this is Saskia, Tara is a moron. Period!
This is Tara and no I'm not a moron. Saskia is!
(Insert some cat fighting and you have your relationship)
Anyway, so I'n going to start with it being two days before Christmas. Now Christmas wasn't really a big thing in my family, after all, Nathaniel got the good presents and well I didn't and mum and dad were off doing whatever they were doing, but obviously its only been the past few years where my house is full of people, all the time and there's at least two people who love Christmas. Lottie and Lionel.
On that day, the Monday, I was about
this close> () to calling for Chris Cringle's elf back-up. Aliyah had destroyed four baubles already thinking that they bounced... no they don't
hunny. Saskia was driving me nuts as she was parading around the house trying to
find everyone's presents and singing "Deck the Halls" as loudly as
she could which not only grated me but even mild mannered Hannah was getting
impatient.
Henry had tried six times, over the weekend, to try and wrap
everyone's presents and he was running out of time and between them, Sam and Lionel had eaten
nearly £150 worth of mince-pies, Mr Kipling's Frosty Fancies, Cadbury's
Chocolate Yule Logs, and four yes FOUR huge Christmad Puddings that I had been
saving for dessert for Christmas Day. To say the least I was not impressed.
The Monday morning should have been easy and simple, but it wasn't The UK was experiencing a horrible storm and all of the fairies abandoned their posts, I was losing patience with everyone because I couldn't even sit down to go through all of the bills that had to be paid and Aliyah refused to play ball with me and sleep was began having a screaming tantrum at the top of her lungs in her room.
She stomped her feet loudly and even Aunty Lottie, who usually was able to calm her down, didn't manage to sooth her. Ali didn't get her sleep and would be grumpy for the rest of the afternoon, and this all happened before eleven.
I'd sent the boys, minus Lionel who was helping a gnome to chop some wood for us, out to get the vegetables, of course a lot of people in Britain freak out and panic buy during this time, but I'd stockpiled our vegetables in the other plane, so we'd have a good supply of everything and could pick and choose at our leisure, well we could of, until Henry, Sam and Darren came back empty handed. Apparently someone had found out about our stockpile of vegetables and had swiped, EVERYTHING. Needless to say I was beyond fuming.
So once again I sent the boys out with a list of what we needed and a lot of money. But after half an hour, Henry called me on the phone telling me that everything I wanted was pretty much gone. "Apart from the stomped on and bruise vegetables, that's all we've got." But I wasn't going to let them give up! I gave them eight other shops to get to, but because they were spread all over Bristol, I was pushing my luck asking the boys to go into Newport for me.
"I'm not going over to Wales," Henry had told me at half three that afternoon. "I'm losing light, it's raining and I want to come home."
We still didn't have any vegetables and I was determined to get them. So, slightly bending the rules, I contacted Cassandra, Saskia's mother, and told her to transport the boys to London and see if they had any luck there. I switched my phone off and unplugged the land-line as I knew Henry would be angry with me. Meanwhile, Hannah managed to get Aliyah to sleep for two hours and during that time it was quiet enough to wrap everyone's presents, it was until Saskia was let loose.
"What you got me?" she'd ask as I was practically pushing her out of the kitchen. "Is it returnable?"
Yelling in anger, I had to kick her in the shin to force her back, just so I could close the door.
By half four the presents were all wrapped and I could let Saskia in, I then heard the doorbell ring and the boys traipsed into the house with only two small bags of sprouts. Apparently London, was a bit dire to walk around and by the time they got there a lot of the grocers had run out and they'd have to wait until the following morning for more.
Annoying as it was, I had done something at least, and I apologised for sending them all the way to London but though Aliyah wasn't in a grumpy mood, Henry sure was.
Tuesday was utterly abysmal and everyone flatly refused to leave the house as our street was close to being flooded. The rain had lashed down during the night and the wind were so furious a lot of the park's branches had fallen into the road near-by causing a bit of mayhem.
I called for a meeting in the living room and addressed it quite plainly. "We have no vegetables for Christmas Dinner tomorrow." Darren clapped and laughed as he hated vegetables, but it was Lionel who really took a blow and left looking dumbfounded and upset. "If there's no vegetables, there's no dinner, Darren. It's that simple." That shut him up, but no one wanted to venture out in the horrid storm. As the day of Christmas Eve dwindled away, we all came to a horrifying thought that we may never get Christmas Dinner.
Then, when the eve of Christmas Eve finally arrived, around six o'clock, the house went into sudden darkness. Our electricity was cut off and Aliyah, who needed a nightlight, began screaming continuously which upset the entire house and... no one really got a good night's sleep. We had to put candles all over the house to give us enough light. The only good thing that came Christmas Eve was Chris Cringle, who visited at around half one in the morning and gave us all a bit of Christmas cheer when we woke up in the morning, still, with no electricity. Aliyah got a battery powered night light, Saskia got a book "The Cringe Who Stole Christmas," Lionel got a cook book on how to prepare dinner without power, Lottie got a elf knitted jumped, Darren got a lump of coal attached to a puppet of Grumpy from Snow White, Henry got a small Egyptian statue of himself in his Lion form, Sam was given some wellington boots that had chicken feet on them and I was given a pendant with angel wings on them. Chris is a very thoughtful man, with a very dry sense of humour.
By ten that morning, Lionel was trying to come up with food that we could make with the turkey, but there wasn't much, but as it turned out, our Christmas was saved that's to... my mother! Of all people! But then again I also blamed her for also ruining it in the first place. Apparently she had stumbled across a large vegetable patch and as it was unguarded decided to make a Christmas dinner for the other's but had a lot left over and decided to give the rest to us. So Lionel got to cook his turkey and vegetables, Aliyah managed to get a good nights sleep and I finally managed to get through another Christmas unscathed.
It was another manic Christmas, but families never have a quiet Christmas and I don't think I will ever have a quiet one, of course, there's always next year...
Oh and any notion of elves, fairies and gnomes and other planes are just a figure of speech. Honestly, I really an just normal.
