Manys the time I have said to myself that I would much rather stay in bed over Christmas and not have to do the whole holiday thing. The freedom to just sit on my arse and not have to be social, or even dress. Well, seems like at Christmas, wishes really can come true.
I have spent the weekend in bed with 39.5 degrees of fever, even after being dosed up to my eyeballs with paracetamol. I barely remember Saturday or Sunday, but the extreme pain in my belly muscles and throat tell me I must have coughed non stop for most of those 48 hours. Thankfully, I am feeling a good bit better, but I still look like shite, and am absolutly persona non grata at the in-laws which include 80-something year old grandparents and the tiny premie mini-neice who we were to see for the first time now. So, instead of xmas with the family, we are stuck in exile in our little town down the country. We have never celebrated xmas at home and were not planning on doing so this year either so we have no decorations, no food, no nothing. We are also moving at present, so we get to choose if we will spend christmas in the flat with the broadband connection, or in the flat with the telly. We have no presents for eachother and are too sick to go out and get any. Be careful what you wish for.
Actually, it’s not that bad, I have some santa hats in a bag somewhere here, and we have some meatballs in the freezer and some red cabbage (part of the trad dinner) and some herring. We will camp out in the sitting room and watch bad movies on the telly and stay in our jammies. Think of us when you are carving your turkeys and eating your pudding!
Why not celebrate Christmas a little later? It’s supposed to last 12 days anyway. From December 25th to January 6th. Hopefully you’ll be well enough to catch a few sales and get a few things for each other at low cost. I hope you at least feel better by then.
Anyway, whatever you do, take care of yourselves and give yourself time to recover. Maybe a relative could videotape the gathering, and get the tape to you later? This way you’ll at least have seen what the little one looks like smiling, or sleeping?
Well, best wishes for feeling better soon. I vaguely remember having the flu at Christmas one year, I couldn’t have been more than maybe 8. Spent all of Christmas day puking.
Mark your calendars for a day when the two of you can celebrate Christmas together. You could go out in the morning, separate, buy one anotther presents, then meet for a meal later to exchange gifts and unwrap. Kinda sounds like fun. The actual date of the celebration is not nearly as important as the spirit in which the celebration is carried out!
Hope you recover swiftly. Also hope Mrs Iteki doesn’t come down with the lurgie either. Have a good Xmas despite it. I’m sure a few hot whiskeys will assist in this, and your recovery…
I had a roommate in college who went to Mexico City for two weeks at Christmas – and the day she got there collapsed with the nasty Hong Kong flu bug that was so evil that year and spent the entire time in bed.
But at least you have your own bed. And I see you’ve chosen the flat with broadband. Wise choice.
Things are looking much brighter, we now have broadband in the flat with the telly, seems they hadn’t moved the broadband, the router just needed rebooting but I was too weak at the time to prevent mrsIteki ripping the cablemodem out of the wall and fleeing to the new flat with it.
I managed to crawl myself up to the nearest shops today to try and and get some sort of present. It took me three hours, but I bought a lunchbox with an extremely cute and borderline racist illustration of a little asian kid on it that I think will suit herself, and I bought stripey knitted tubing that I am going to cut into scarves for the teddies, and batteries for the camera to take photos of the frog. Yep, those 3 purchases took me 3 hours (it takes 5 minutes to walk to the shops) that is how speedy I am right now. MrsIteki is fit as a fiddle, slight sniffle but that is it. She suspects I have some sort of sweedy flu variant that she has had before but I am getting for the first time. I feel very honoured.
The bed is getting dragged out into the sitting room which at present has the TV and an empty bookshelf in it and it had been decided that the dress code for tomorrow (the swedes celebrate everything the day before, hows that for super-efficiant?) is jimjams, santa hats with blinky lights and either frog-patterned-toe-socks-with-grippies or down-socks (they are like pillows with holes for your feet). The one true benefit of the almost constant coughing is that I get this fantastic husky voice. If Mary Coughlan and Janis Joplin had a baby then I sound like that baby after a hard night. Friends have taken pity on our plight and are uploading xmas songs to us which I am roaring along to, my voice should be completely gone by boxing day (thank god say the neighbours).
We got a package in the post today with cookies from a friend in the states, and the splendid Mellenkra sent me Stikfas (which I have been dying for for at least 2 years now), so we got some presents at least The teddys adore the little Stickfas dude and are trying to claim him as their teddy. The sad thing is, this isn’t the fever talking…
Many thanks for the well-wishing, we were a bit panicked as this is the first ever solo xmas either of us have done without any family. The video is a fantastic idea, we will ring right away and remind everyone to tape lots and to get a copy of the tape to us asap! We are also considering inviting the lot of them down to our new appartment for a mid-January celebration with Irish xmas food. This is turning into a bit of an adventure Hope you all have a great time yourselves!
I feel for ya, Bud. Here I am in the middle of the desert with 400 other guys and the family almost 8000 miles away. Of course, last year was great. I spent it in Hong Kong with my father and sisters. Plus, I was waiting for my girlfriend to arrive shortly afterwards for 19 days of debauchery. Yep, we debauched quite a bit last Christmas. Fond memories.
