And a merry dysfunctional Christmas to you!

This Christmas is turning out much better than the last three. The first one, three months after I lost my husband, was fairly sucky as you can imagine. This year, here it is Christmas Day and I haven’t felt sad at all or even cried.

The major reason for this I imagine would be the new friends I’ve made - the majority of who are Canadian – and lots of opportunities to go out and socialize. I’ve also kept busy rowing and am lucky enough to be rowing every single Sunday before and after Christmas and New Years.

So onto this year’s dysfunctional family Christmas:

My divorced parents - neither has remarried - are both coming to Christmas at my house. The bizarreness of this is only apparent when you realize that for several years they didn’t even speak to each other and we celebrated two Christmases, one with each parent.

When I say “we” I mean my sister and I. She’s not married and I’m now widowed. She’s currently – well, actually for a long time now – a drug addict who still abuses dope, she has done everything other drug over the years too. This hasn’t done her brain any favours and she now has mental issues.

As a consequence she’s moved out into the country and doesn’t want to see my father. She did text me this year to wish me Merry Christmas but last year I didn’t hear from her at all. (It is very hard to have any sort of sane relationship with an addict. Has been for years.)

So much for the heavy stuff, now for the planning stuff. You’d think that with a mere THREE people the planning would go smoothly. Not so much.

There are three of us, and one of us (not me) is on a diet, despite this we have three desserts. Everyone brought a dessert. Not that any of us actually cooked dessert but we’ve all turned up with dessert.

My father and I had decided a roast pork would be the go, that’s our favourite. When I invited my mother she hinted at her preference for turkey because it’s “slimming”- Dad and I both laughed at that and over ruled her, we’re having pork.

So Dad turns up this morning with some turkey to roast for my mum. Unfortunately it is still frozen and needs to cook longer and at a different temperature to the pork, and in water. This means we can’t roast vegetables in the dish. Nevertheless I persevered and threw everything in the oven.

Except everything didn’t fit in the oven. There wasn’t enough room for all the vegetables. So Dad has taken the turkey home, he lives 4.5 minutes from my place, and will roast the turkey in his oven.

Assuming this all works and everything eventually cooks, which I ‘spose will happen, we will end up with:

• Roast pork
• Roast turkey
• Minced pies
• Christmas pudding
• AND a chocolate pudding. 

For three of us, and one of us is on a diet. 

Oh well. Happy dysfunctional Christmas!!!