etty to make it in there."

Daisy turns to Tony and they do this leaders-of-the-commune meaningful-glance
thing that makes me apeshit. "Maybe we could get a doc to come here?" Daisy
says, at last.

"And perform surgery in the kitchen?" I say back. All the while, my knee is
throbbing and poking out from under my robe.

Daisy and Tony hang head and I feel bad. These two, if they can't help, they
feel useless. "So, how you been?" I ask Daisy, who has been AWOL for three
weeks, looking for her folks in Kitchen-Waterloo, filled up with the holiday
spirit.

"Baby, it's cold outside. Took highway 2 most of the way -- the 407 was drive-by
city. The heater on the Beetle quit about ten minutes out of town, so I was
driving with a toque and mittens and all my sweaters. But it was nice to see the
folks, you know? Not fun, but nice."

Nice. I hope they stuck a pole up Dad's ass and put him on top of the Xmas tree.

"It's good to be home. Not enough fun in Kitchener. I am positively fun-hungry."
She doesn't look it, she looks wiped up and wrung out, but hell, I'm pretty fun
hungry, too.

"So what's on the Yuletide agenda, Tony?" I ask.

"Thought we'd burn down the neighbours', have a cheery fire." Which is fine by
me -- the neighbours split two weeks before. Morons from Scarborough, thought
that down in Florida people would be warm and friendly. Hey, if they can't be
bothered to watch the tacticals fighting in the tunnels under Disney World, it's
none of my shit.

"Sounds like a plan," I say.

We wait until after three, when everyone in the happy household has struggled
home or out of bed. We're almost twenty when assembled, ranging from little Tiny
Tim to bulldog Pawn-Shop Maggie, all of us unrecalcitrants snagged in the tangle
of Tony's hypertrophied organisational skills.

The kitchen at Tony's is big enough to prepare dinner for forty guests. We
barely fit as we struggle into our parkas and boots. I end up in a pair of
insulated overalls with one leg slit to make room for my knee/soccerball. If
this was Dad and Mum, it'd be like we were gathered for a meeting, waiting for
the Chairman to give us the word. But that's not Tony's style; he waits until
we're approaching ready, then starts moving toward the door, getting out the
harness. Daisy Duke shoulders a kegger of foam and another full of kerosene, and
Grandville gets the fix-bath. Tiny Tim gets the sack of marshmallows and we
trickle into the yard.

It was a week a