Is it really a perfect Christmas if… nothing goes wrong?
Since moving out of my parents house, and trying this thing called being a responsible adult, I’ve mostly been responsible for cooking at least one of the Christmas dinners we eat each year.
And every year, something goes wrong with it.
Let’s take a look at my rap sheet of Christmas dinners…
One year the top oven kept tripping out the main oven. This wasn’t a huge issue because the main oven was able to get up to temperature and keep it as the short circuits were a few minutes at most and well spaced apart. Our top oven and main oven cannot be in operation at the same time. However, this meant we couldn’t use the top oven area to keep the ready food warm before serving. And some things went cold. It had never done this before, and has never done it since!
Another year the oven fan decided to go on strike. It does this quite regularly because it is in fairness an old oven. Christmas Day wasn’t its best choice.
Another year the oven refused to get up to temperature. The fan worked. The door seals were fine. The light went off to indicate it was up to temp. But it simply wasn’t. What should have been a 3 and half hour turkey max, turned into almost 5 hours with extra time spent under the grill.
We had many years when only one of the twin grill elements has worked.
And my favourite from last year… the turkey had been defrosting in the fridge the previous two days. It wasn’t quite done yet. But that space was now needed for the smaller stuff still in the freezer. So the turkey was removed from the fridge, and the smaller freezer items went in. The turkey was then placed in our back porch. It has a concrete floor and single brick walls. Warm enough to defrost but cool enough to not be a health hazard. Fully weather proof. Or so we thought. On Christmas Eve night it froze outside. Hard. When I woke in the morning to get the turkey in the oven, it had fully refrozen!
And this year?
Well this year, Christmas dinner actually went surprisingly smoothly. The turkey was defrosted nicely. The oven worked without fault. Everything was ready at the same time (yeah I know, creepy right!?). Nothing went wrong.
So what hasn’t gone perfectly this year then?
Towards the end of November I knitted my little boy a green cabled woolly hat. I was good. I used stash yarn. I redid it in a smaller size because the first time it was way too big rather than just giving him a hat to grow into. And he liked it (despite his initial claims he wanted it to be blue). Red and green are his favourite colours, so blue was a surprise. Luckily, when it was finished green was one of his favourite colours again.
Well… the hat has since gone missing. Literally no idea where it has gone. We’ve searched all the likely, and unlikely, places in the house. We asked his preschool. They haven’t seen it. Though to be fair I don’t recall him ever wearing it to preschool anyway. It isn’t at the Mum & Toddler group we go to. Not in the car. It has simply disappeared.
I’m quite sad at this because the cables were quite a challenge and I was super pleased with the hat. More sad than what happened to the jumper I knitted him for this winter…
It was lovely seeing him in it on Christmas Day and Boxing Day surrounded by family.
But what happened to the jumper you may ask? Only the worst thing that could possibly happen to a woollen jumper… something that even advanced knitters fall prey to…
… it snuck into the washing machine amongst a load of regular clothes. And would now be a better fit for a newborn than a 3 year old!
So it would seem, that despite Christmas dinner going smoothly here this year, fate found some other ways to make our Christmas perfectly imperfect.
And tonight is of course New Years Eve. I’m never one myself to wait until New Year to start a resolution, go for my goals, or make a change in my life, but whatever the coming year holds for us all, I so very much wish you a happy and healthy year.
Best wishes,
Sam xox
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