Will wonders never cease?

You will never guess in a million years what we did on Christmas morning. Ok, first off, morning for a Trini begins at one second after midnight.

I coerced (yes forced) my nephew and his girlfriend (they are now shacked up together in S-I-N, tee hee) to accompany us (DW, TC and me) to my old church, Epiphany of Our Lord Parish, for midnight mass. For the heathen and uninitiated amongst you, this is a traditional mass at the stroke of midnight, Christmas Day. So, after an hour of reacquainting myself with my lost religion, I gathered the troups into TR and headed off for the promised land. No, not that one. Ajax.

See, the deal was that if they came to mass with me, I would go with them to see my sister. Yes, you read that right. I decided, well, something convinced me, that I needed to reconnect with her because our separation may have been over a contrived misunderstanding. I cannot go into it anymore at the moment, but suffice it to say that whenever it can be broken out (and it WILL), all hell is going to break loose. Anyhow, I digress. The five of us headed over to her place to surprise her. Since Desi has used TR before, she initially thought it was him and may his girlfriend. She refused to believe my neice when she told her it was all of us. Not hard to understand when you consider I have not see or spoken to her in about two years. They greeted us all, we brought in some punch a creme and black cake and she was genuinely stunned and touched; we had our moment. She said more than once that our coming there that night was the best gift for her. It was my olive branch for 2006. I suspect that I will have to extend another one in order for her to believe it is real, but it is time to do this.

After we observed my neice butchering the Christmas baking, we headed for our next stop. My brother's place. Yeah, the one that lives in Barrie. LB was not getting a visit that night (sorry LB). So we drove on up, and my nephew called my other nephew to come and open the door and to go wake his father. Bright lad that my nephew is, wake my older brother with some stupid story about cops at the door which just riles him up. Of course, he could not believe that we drove up there. Why is this so hard to believe? I am the only member of the family that drove to almost every residence he has ever lived in in Ontario. The man is getting old and just not too quick anymore. He even refused to indulge in some Christmas cheer so I had to opt out for some tea; lots of tea. My sister in law eventually trudged out and joined us. DW had baked some macaroni pie for our nephew as well since he loves it and there is nothing in Barrie remotely caribbean; nothing at all (which includes my brother). Imagine that DW, a born muchacake, knows more about the foods of Trinidad than that big twit. Sigh. We chatted for a good while (lots of my nephew's Java classes and my brother's ill-fated linux dual-boot install attempt) before it was time to carry the troops home.

My nephew had gone downstairs to his cousin's room to wake her; it is a pig sty apparently. She simply yelled at him to get out of the room. Uhm, you have not seen the boy in how long and he comes up to see you and you cannot get off your ass to see him or your uncle's family? I see. Nice. I'm done with her now (lest I go on about her missing our wedding now too). My other neice was fast asleep and no one bothered to try to wake her so I do not know what reaction we would have gotten. All in all, it was more than a little disappointing. This is not how faimly is supposed to be. I guess we really are different. I drove our different selves home, the nephew and his girlfriend took off to join her family, and mine tumbled into bed for a few hours of shuteye before our Christmas Day guests arrived.

Well, I won't be going out of my way to reach Barrie any time soon again; at least not on the East side, as we have good friends just past them on the West side near the water tower. We also have our good friends in Everett (yes, no longer BF as we spend more time in that area than most) so the trip would not be a lost in any regard. There are many things to be uncovered here as I say again, this is the year of change.

Peace.
Did I mention that LB convinced me to go see our mother together for Easter? Stay tuned (or just be on the lookout for a mushroom cloud appearing above Milton).