1. No Billy Tiptons Here

Dear MF Diary, can you get an annulment if your rugged beloved has ladyparts where another variety was promised? Ha, ha, no just kidding. There was certifiable peen. Hence the baby. I don’t think anyone would believe I fell on a turkey baster anyhow.

Figure 1: Dinner at Santiago’s. It started well.

2. The Rain

Holy Moly, there was some rain there. I know, I know, it’s Ye Olde PNWed. But where we are it sort of kills you softly with mist, and you feel fine, but one day you look in your armpit and there’s moss there, and the day after that you’re like that creature that Stephen King turned into in Creep Show. Yuckers.

But Victoria rain, that’s for real. We got soaked like crazy. My shoes shrunk. Hee.

Figure 2: “Checking out” the Victoria Public Library. Ho ho ho. Erm.

3. Rat Behavior

Strudel behaved like someone else’s child. You know, that kid you see in a restaurant who’s throwing forks at their parents’ heads and lighting the edge of the table cloth on fire. You’re like (especially if you’re gleefully childless), “HFS, I will never have a child like that. What is wrong with those people? It looks like all they’re doing is sitting there drinking alcohol with tears silently running down their faces. People like that shouldn’t leave the house.”

Hi! That was us. That was our daughter who was in a screaming puddle of fury on the ferry because we weren’t allowed to stay on the car deck, therefore strapping her into her seat, which would have allowed her to nap. Don’t worry; we learned our lesson and won’t be leaving the house again.

We were almost constantly in public, too, so we had trouble doing the really hardcore toddler lockdown stuff. There were always people swooping in with crayons and offering candy and making goo goo faces at her. And people were giving me dirty looks every time I got the Taser out.

Figure 3: The view from our balcony. Say, that’s the butt of Parliament!

4. An Aside

The cat just threw up on the couch. Steaming chunks of rich sliced beef in gravy are sliding down the face of the velvet cushions. I hate that fucking cat sometimes. How can a cat go from hiccupping to rocket vomiting in three seconds? When cat vomit can change, chameleon-like, to match my furniture, then I will believe in intelligent design.

5. Rivulets of Pure Streaming Love

So first there was wet water rain, and then there was a rain of snot. Strudel got sick within a couple of days of our arrival, which wasn’t too surprising, because Franny was sick on Halloween with a fever. Companion spent the whole trip with a stiffening snot epaulet on each shoulder.

Figure 4: Before the plague hit.

6. Flee! FLEE!

By day five of our seven day trip, we gave it up. We were exhausted. Sex was something to discuss in the abstract. You know you’re in trouble when you get to this point. “So, if we had enough energy to have sex, how would we do it? Ooh, that sounds fu…ZZZZZZ.”

Saturday was the absolute nadir. We trudged around Chinatown morosely, looking in windows without stopping and getting wetter and wetter. We tried to stop into a comics shop, which is normally something that cheers us up, but it was mostly a games dungeon with a shitty selection and the owner was a dick.

We ended up at dim sum, where Strudel would not put one bite into her mouth. She threw something at me, splashing soy sauce everywhere. Back at the hotel, we contemplated our options for abandoning Strudel in Canada.

“Canadians are nice,” I said. “They’ll raise her right.”

“Customs might notice that we had three people with us when we arrived,” Companion reasoned.

We made a pact to go home the next day, which was just in time, because on the ferry ride home I felt like I had been beaten with a stick. I came down with the dreaded fever and cold as well.

7. Cocoon World

For the last two days of our trip we let our catsitters off the hook and just hid in the house. We rented movies and Companion busted into the bread baking book I got him for his birthday on Halloween. Yesterday he made panettone, which is something we scarf around here over the holidays. It’s nice to live with someone who has patience for the yeast breads.

In the end, we recovered. Poor Companion is depressed, because he wanted to have a really nice honeymoon. It sounds lame and trite, but I’m just glad it was with him.