We pulled into my in-law’s driveway around 6:30 on Christmas Day. “We” being myself, my wife, our dog, and our two cats all crammed into our hatchback for the long drive from Chicago to St. Albans, West Virginia. The house was emptied of people, the wife having received a call from her family that they were leaving for the extended family Christmas dinner as we were driving through Kentucky some time back. The wife was less than pleased at this news.

But wait, let’s rewind the clock a bit further, as the events that preceded our arrival were even more calamitous than our arrival to a deserted house. In fact, let’s start one week previous to Christmas Day. A snowfall of considerable volume hit the midwest, burying Chicago in a solid half-foot or more. Then it got cold. Real damned cold. The thermometer read -4 degrees F on Sunday afternoon when I left for work, but the windchill dropped the temperature significantly below zero. How significant? I’ve heard that at one point it didn’t matter if you read the Celsius or Fahrenheit digits on your (windchill calculated) thermometer.

Our car was now sitting atop and aside a solid sheet of ice.

Perhaps you’re reading this and thinking “Well geez, dumbass, why were planning to drive in the first place? That’s no short distance, and you’ve two different airports reachable by public transportation. You know they do have places you can take your pets.” Well, I have a two-part answer to that question. One: our eldest cat is in kidney failure and requires a complex (and expensive) regimen of medications in order to stay living. While a reputable vet’s office could administer the medications in our stead, we just don’t have a relationship with any of them yet. Two: I did not know my work schedule for this week until December 12th. That’s not exactly typical and it let to many frustrated inquiries from my wife as the dates slipped by. So the plan was we would drive.

Except, the car wasn’t prepared to drive anywhere. Any attempt to move it resulted only in impotent spinning of the tires through the ice. Pushing provided no results, nor did cat litter around the wheel wells. I chipped and scraped and attacked the banks of frozen snow that surrounded the car over the first half of the week to little avail other than injuring my wrist (it still aches a bit when I twist it just so).

And then… it got warmer. Temperatures soared into the 30s and the mounds of snow began to soften. Just the same, the wife picked up a pickaxe on the way home from work one day. There was still quite a lot of ice under there. Coming straight home from work the night before Christmas Eve I threw myself into the digging and at around 1:30 in the morning I threw my fists in the air and shouted “Yatta!” like Hiro from the television show Heroes. I had moved the car.

I went to work the next afternoon—I had to work the night of Christmas Eve though I had requested it off—aching but triumphant. All that was left to do was load the car and drive off. And this is where the dog decided to throw a wrench in the works.

With only a few things left to stuff in the car the dog managed to squeeze through the gate and run at full speed throught the neighborhood. With little to no regard for safety she dashed across what are typically the busiest streets in the area. It was Christmas morning, no one was on the roads or sidewalks. The temperature had dropped over the past day and the sidewalks were now frozen again. In order to run after her I had to stay in the very middle of the street. Frost was forming on my beard and mustache. We chased after her for at least thirty minutes before she was distracted by a dog in a yard.

Dog caught, we were finally prepared to leave. Almost. The air pressure in the tires we saw to be rather low and set about to find a gas station with an air machine. I don’t know if it was the temperature or just shoddy maintenance but there was not a single working air device in a two mile radius. We found them with notes on them. We found them laying disconnected in a pile. We found them seemingly operational but not capable of delivering suitable pressure. And so we threw our hands in the air, wished our tire the best, and hit the road.

Not long after this one of the cats took a shit in his carrier. Then he vomited. Twice.

Yet despite all of these setbacks we arrived, safely, at our family’s house on Christmas night to a house filled with dogs and no people. We gingerly introduced our dog to theirs and were settling in for a lonely night when the in-laws reappeared suddenly. My mother-in-law had come down with a rather violent illness and had to retire.

This was to be grim foreshadowing.

We did all of the Christmas stuff a day later than Americans typically do all of their Christmas stuff and things were generally pleasant. No dramatic events. No drunken distant relations. We exchanged gifts. We attended a party. We played Cranium. You know, wholesome shit.

So the mother-in-law was in and out of the bathroom all weekend? And so the sister-in-law spent the better part of that Saturday doing the same? So what of it? We made it. We did the gift thing. We watched West Virginia win two different sporting events on the same day.

Soon enough it was Monday the 29th and time to leave. Now it was time for the father-in-law to succumb to the virus that had been spreading about the family. But we were still fine, right?

No, we were not still fine. Somewhere outside of Lexington, KY the dreaded stomach virus took the wife. Thinking quickly, we disposed of our leftover foods and she took to using the plastic container as a vomit receptacle. I drove.

By the time we made it into Indiana it was clear that this was not going to last. The cramps had hit me, and the wife was tired of throwing up in a plastic tub in the passenger seat. We stopped somewhere just inside the state and looked for pet-friendly motels. The first one asked how many pets we had. “Two,” I lied, “one cat and one dog.” They only accepted one. So the next place asked how many dogs I had and I correctly stated, “Just one dog!” We were in.

I threw up sometime that night. Just once, but violently. And we slept.

I was still scheduled to work on Tuesday and I thought, maybe, I might make it. I felt reasonably well. We weren’t too far away from Chicago. I didn’t have to work until 3:00 PM. I didn’t make it on time, but I did work that night. I’m told I’m just too responsible for my own good sometimes.

Not one of our best Christmases, all told. But I did make some wonderful things which I have posted here previously. For our friend Melissa, the Simon Belmont needlepoint. For my brother, the Blobert needlepoint. For my father-in-law, the Phillies cross stitch. For my friend Adam, the I don’t come down to where you work… cross stitch. For my friends Marc & Tara, the Wesley Willis cross stitch. And for my wife, the Computer says no cross stitch. So a belated “Merry fucking Christmas” to all, and to all a “Get the hell off my goddamn lawn.”