Tuesday 30 December 2014

Twas the Night(s) Before, and Around, Christmas

Christmas Eve

As I write this, it's nearly silent in our nut house. All 5 of the kids are sleeping, 4 of them piled into the same bed. Partner #2 is on the phone visiting with her parents, and Partner #1 is doing last minute gift wrapping.  I am just killing time now waiting to play Santa.

The last few days have just been a whirlwind of decorating and baking and activities and Jesus hunting and basically repeatedly discussing 'the big day' and what it will be like over and over and over again. I'm not saying that cynically, I was the person discussing it over and over and over again; you see, Christmas for me for the last few years have been a little bit anti-climactic, with a dash of depressing, with a particular emphasis on last year.

My daughter's dad and I have a "one year on, one year off" kind of arrangement, which means that every second Christmas is child free. And, as it usually happens when kids grow into adults, my brothers developed lives of their own, and it seemed like fewer of us could even make it to our childhood home for the holidays.

This time last year I was getting ready to move! The tree and presents were tucked in around boxes and furniture and it was a childless year for me. So not only was I not seeing any of my brothers, I wasn't sharing the day with my daughter, and all I wanted for Christmas was to be up here with my new family, enjoying a REAL Christmas! It was the most pathetic Christmas I have ever experienced. Lucky for me, my lovely friend, Sofia, who is from Ecuador and unable to go home for the holiday, saved Christmas eve for me by invited me over for a celebration with a bunch of her friends who were likewise, unable to go home for Christmas. It was really, really sweet.

But THIS YEAR!! It's redemption year! And boy what a season it has been! The excitement has honestly been too much for me to handle at times, and I have had to step out of the room to take a breather... Not even kidding. Thank goodness for my partners oldest daughter, Tawny! Because I was MIA catering to my anxiety often enough, without her assisting Partner #2, I think things may have gone a lot differently.

Now it is all coming to a close! A culmination. Tomorrow is the crescendo, what all this craziness has been leading up to, and I can. not. wait! It has been so long since I have had a Christmas with kids, and 5 kids no less! And to top it all off, I just cannot wait to celebrate with my new family. I am so in love with my family and my life, I just want to share this excitement and be part of it with them! Not only for me but for Isabella as well. I am excited for her to be able to share the excitement of a large family Christmas with all of her new siblings and parents.


Christmas Day

I am so tired.

I will admit, we went a little over board with the presents. I was just so swept up in the excitement! And I wasn't the only one! I had help from the partners and even Tawny came home with 7 bleeding banana boxes full of presents! Which is all fine and great, until its 10 o'clock at night and you have to pack all of those presents from their respective hiding places, top them off with bows, and then wait for Partner #1 to finish his last minute wrapping, before being able to go to bed knowing that the kids are going to hold you to that 5:30 am "at the Latest!" wake up time you gave them....


The pile under and around the tree was absurd! The formerly poor child in me was cringing at all the potential groceries those could have been. But to heck with that nonsense! They are bundles of palpable love and happiness painstakingly wrapped in colorful paper and bows! It took us 3 hours to get through it all. And was it ever worth it. The kids were so happy! Geeze, we all scored! I am materialistic enough that I am mutually as happy for the children, as I am for myself lol.

We had prepared a breakfast the night before that we could just pop in the oven and then we spent the rest of the day snacking on the left overs from our Christmas eve celebration, so there was no cooking to be done, and hardly any dishes. I highly recommend this approach for all you with kids! It's a life saver. And then in the afternoon, everyone took naps!! It was so needed by that time. I think both baby and Isabella slept for about 3 hours.

The hooks weren't strong enough to support all 8 of the stockings stuffed, so we ended up arranging them around the hearth for Christmas morning. 

Also, after having ripped out the carpet about a week ago,  Partner #1 finally managed to get some time to install the flooring Christmas Eve. Literally, he finished, we set the table....

Look at our snowflakes! 

Posing in their Christmas Eve pajama presents!

Boxing Day

Today Tawny had to leave, which was bitter sweet. Everyone was so excited to see her, no one wanted her to go. We all had a good visit though. Now she needs to go prepare for her long anticipated trip to Australia for a freaking year. We're actually fantasizing about spending next Christmas in the Cook Islands and meeting her there.... /sigh. 

Boxing day is the day Partner #1's parents come! Which is basically Christmas numero duo, since they spoil us rotten! You'll never believe what I got either!? My first piece of camo! Turns out my mother-in-law reads my blog and so read Its a Redneck Halloween and my comments on my community's egregious use of camouflage as normal everyday attire. Naturally, that translated into "Natalie needs camo!". And I gotta say, I am absolutely in love with my new rabbit fur lined camo hat. It is SO warm. Not to mention, irresistible....

Now I can blend with the locals and no one will suspect I am a complete outsider....

The in-laws come out fairly regularly, but its nice to see them in this capacity, with the kids all hopped up on Christmas spirit! The excitement is infectious.

My mission has been to clean out the house of all junk food, so we can start fresh in the new year, after all our partying is done, and boy does it show! In my defense, that dress is drapey, that's not ALL belly!

Wrap Up (Haha! Punny...)

So all-in-all I think I could safely say that it was a pretty damn magical Christmas. Crazy, and hectic, and at times, stressful, but nonetheless magical. It was exactly what I wanted Christmas to be.  

I am coming to realize, that family isn't necessarily the unit you were born into. It's the group of people you choose to surround yourself with, who you choose to open yourself up to. Our family may be a far cry from most people's ideal, but it's the one I have chosen, and it is exactly perfect for me. 



"Hey, I'm Poly!"

You know, I didn't want this blog to be political. I simply wanted a satirical rendition of my adventurous life that I could share with my family and friends. The only mention of my relationship status was to be my references to Partner #1 and Partner #2; casual and nonchalant, like it should be. I should not have to make some big "Hey I'm poly!" announcement. I should not have to explain myself. Nor do I suppose I have to in any sense of the word... However, as circumstances would have it, I am in a position of constantly being reminded of the people who disagree and outright hate my choices. In trying to maintain the few familial relationships I have left, I expose myself to painful reminders of the people I am trying to forget in an effort to preserve my emotional sanity.

This leaves me in the awkward position of trying to understand them, their reasoning, their ignorance, if only so I don't have to face the fact that perhaps this whole time they have thought little to nothing of me? I shouldn't hate someone just because they are misguided and stupid, right? But how do you rationalize easily rectified ignorance? How do you make allowances for hate?

In my attempt to explain away these peoples painful words and actions I have come up with this understanding,

Humans have a need to categorize, it's how we interact and function in life. For example, we introduce some one as "This is my wife, [Name]" or "This is my friend, [Name]". We need to qualify things, we need categories in order to understand and relate to the world around us. The problem lies in the fact that there is no frame work for polyamory, there are no categories because people don't know about polyamory! The only relations we have to categorize it are Polygamy, Subservience, Brainwashing, Cheater, etc. So you tell someone you're polyamorous and the only way they can understand is to file it under one of these headings. Which unfortunately is completely misguided. The general public is simply misinformed.

It says a lot about about society in general, that a person can understand hate, can understand child abuse, can understand spousal abuse, can understand damaging patriarchy; can understand infidelity and lying and cheating, but someone says that they love more then one person and that all parties involved are agreeable, they simply cannot compute. Period. That's not possible. We are exposed to hate and violence day in and day out through all forms of media, so we understand it. We don't necessarily agree with any of it, but we understand that its there, that its very real, and its part of our lives. The only exposure we have to love are limiting Hollywood rom coms and fantasy romance novels. Even coming into typical monogamous relationships, we have this unrealistic expectations that if you find "The One" everything is going to be sunshine and rainbows, and you will never fight, and never be unhappy for all the days of your life. And that's just not realistic. We haven't been exposed to a realistic portrayal of what real life relationships are like. On the same vein, we have not been exposed to the fact that there are alternatives to the standard "nerdy guy gets the cheerleader". How about "nerdy guy gets the cheerleader, who also happens to be with the quarterback, and they all live happily ever after"? Where is that movie?!

When we hear "polyamory", we hear all the terrible things that could be associated with it, because that's all we know. We do not hear all the wonderful things that are definitely are associated with it, because we have never been given the information to know. We have never been given the framework to understand.

If I look at it this way, I can forgive those people whom I trusted. At least, I can not hold their ignorance against them. As it stands, with the limited exposure they were given by society, they were set up to fail the sibling/father/grandparent/friend test. Where this explanation falls short is in the fact that there ARE resources, there ARE venues for these people to understand. I didn't expect anyone to necessarily "get" my decisions, they certainly didn't have to like them, but if they cared for me, they should have, in my mind, made some minuscule attempt to understand them. They should have trusted my judgement enough to have made an effort. A comparison that makes sense to me is that like extremely devout people who ignore evidence that contradicts their beliefs, these people in my life ignore any information or evidence that I can give them because it may contradict what they need to believe my relationship is.  I  would gladly answer questions, I would cheerfully point them in the right direction to find answers, I would have very happily provided them with the building blocks on which to expand their categories!! But that would have required a base desire to understand on their part, which I am coming to realize these people did not have. They did not want their narrow little worlds shaken by fact and knowledge, by love and understanding.

I am not going to go radical and overhaul Monogamy is for Manhattan to become a politically charged medium. In fact, I sincerely hope that this is the last time I bring up my poly status at all! But I want to start an understanding. I want for when someone mentions polyamory, that the other person can say "Oh yeah! I've heard of that!". I want to provide society with the absolute very basics of understanding simply by introducing the term "Polyamory" into peoples lives, so that it is not this completely foreign concept immediately categorized and understood with hate. I am in no way saying that this life is for everyone, in all honesty, it is extremely hard. I simply want to try to help make things ever so slightly easier for future poly folks who are brave enough to come out to the world.

I am lucky enough that I have this blog, that I have people who enjoy reading it! It boggles my mind sometimes, and I love it! So I feel like it is my responsibility now to try to spread this around a little. So please, to the dear person reading this post right now, please share this post with someone. Please share the concept of polyamory with someone, introduce someone to the idea that maybe there are other options, that there are people out there who actively practice alternatives. Heck, if you want, simply whisper the word "polyamory" to someone, so that maybe their curiosity will get the better of them. And pass it on. Let's give someone the first brick needed to build a foundation of understanding. I realize that sounds cheezy, but if it means I helped a fellow poly person out, I will risk my ego lol.

So please please please share it.





Saturday 13 December 2014

Bruno from Schweiz

Wow, the last few weeks (month?) have just been a whirl wind! Gosh, the last post I wrote was November 13. It seems like eons ago, so much has happened since then.

One of the things was that we had a giant snowstorm. Giant to my standards anyways. It snowed for about 36 hours straight and then on day 2 our power went out for about 14 hours. It was grand. To top it all off the nearest cell tower also went out, so the partners cell phones didn't work for a few days too. Hahaha suckers.

But in the midst of all this, we were supposed to be loading up 2 cattle liners full to take to an auction yard in southern Alberta where the prices are better. One truck didn't even make it anywhere near our area of the province and the second one made it to about a half hour before our house when he got stuck! It turned out that it was a good thing he got stuck when he did for 2 reasons: 1) He got stuck just before a massive hill that would have been completely unmanageable in his truck, and the consequences of going off the road there would have been disastrous, and; 2) There are 2 ways from our location in to Alberta and both were closed at the time. So instead of our animals being stuck on the truck, they were just stuck in our yard for a couple more days.

So partner #1 heads out there in one of our vehicles to see if he can help the trucker get unstuck and ends up calling a little while later to see if we can bring him some tools. Our second vehicle, although 4-wheel drive, still didn't have snow tires on (mostly due to my laziness and our lack of funds at the time). But the tires it did have on were still all seasons and pretty good, though not the best. So I have to venture out and brave the storm in my inadequate vehicle, never daring to go over 50 km/h. Here's a picture to show you how great it was.
To the snow's credit, it was quite beautiful. 

It took me about twice as long to make the trip. I slid several times and saw 2 other vehicles in the ditch. 
when I finally caught up to them on the hill, they had the chains on the tires of our minivan and they were still having trouble navigating the hill! 

In any case, they got the truck unstuck, but decided it would be suicide to drive the hill, so we took the trucker home with us! His name was Bruno and he was really quite nice. Because the storm just kept bloody going, the passes never opened, and our power was out for so long, Bruno ended up staying with us for over 2 days! The whole time we were giggling to ourselves and wondering what he must think of our family since we offered 0 explanation and just operated as we normally would. 

During his 1st night with us, while getting to know each other, we found out that Bruno is from Switzerland and used to live and work as a chef in Nakusp, BC, which is a very small and beautiful town in the Kootneys that just so happens to be home to much of my extended family. So I asked Bruno if he knew of my 2nd cousin (Aunt? Once/twice removed?) Barbie who owns a prolific camp ground in the area, and he responds with "Yeah I know of her. Apparently her and I are very distantly related somehow". So it turns out this utter stranger from Switzerland,  who just so happens to be stranded while hauling my partners cows is somehow, in some very convoluted way, a relative of mine! It was the weirdest coincidence I have ever experienced in my life! 

I ended up calling up my Grandfather to tell him about it. He got a good chuckle out of it and said he would call up his sister to ask her if she knew anything about Bruno from Schweiz. So far I haven't gotten a response from him. But we heard from Bruno a couple times. He let us know that he made it to Alberta in one piece and to thank us for our hospitality, which made me wonder yet again, what his impressions were of my family lol.

Otherwise the last month has been a whirlwind of cattle liners, cows, airplanes (I went to Vancouver Island), and Christmas shopping! By the way Christmas shopping when you have a family of 8 is insanity! Stockings alone are so involved! I mean.... I don't know anything about stockings.... That's Santa's job....

Also I took this picture of a horse....