Tuesday 20 December 2016

Executive, execution.

His heart beats like a metronome, lulling me to sleep. Slowest when it can find mine nearby. When he stops talking, negotiating, threatening and gives in. When his fear becomes my power I feel like I can relax.

Stay, Neamhchiontach. It's Christmas. His voice breaks down into a whisper on the last word and I note the pain audible in his voice.

I'll come back. I don't know as I say it if I want to or if I'm stalling. I forget everything when I'm here.

He tells me he'll replace the things he broke in the front hall yesterday. I nod, uncommitted. The vase isn't as important as the argument that saw its demise. I'd rather replace the goodwill between them. I don't care about a stupid vase.

Not the point. He reads my mind.

It IS the point, I argue and he gets up, heading into the kitchen, suddenly wide awake, like me. The conversation is over and with it, any  power I thought I had in a moment where my guard was nowhere to be found.

***

I got the turkeys today! Five of them. Almost twelve pounds each which is sixty pounds of turkey and probably not enough. Which...is one turkey per oven on the point if I can convince everyone to babysit the birds instead of being here together on Christmas day. Huh. I think we'll hatch them in shifts like we usually do. One in my oven, one in Dalton & Duncan's, one in August's, one in Caleb's and one at Daniel's, with Batman's being the backup oven in case of weird power outages or sudden appliance breakdowns.

(Because I told you about the Kraft Dinner Thanksgiving, didn't I?)

A case of stuffing. Twenty pounds of potatoes, ten of carrots and we're going into full Army Mess mode to get this dinner pulled off. I had to special order the rolls everyone likes because the bakery told me I couldn't buy them out but they will have enough for me by Thursday and I bought cheap white wine because it's tradition and chocolates because no one ever wants dessert. Six cans of cranberry jelly because it's good and three big squashes because they bake up fast with a little butter and brown sugar and hopefully there will be room with the turkeys in the oven. All technical five houses are going to eat together here because I get what I want and because like he said, it's Christmas.