09:49 PM
La Familia Yuletide tales

Brrrrrrr! It's cold! :) It was down to freezing last night and I took both heaters in the bedroom because I was laying in bed under the down comforter and two blankets and shivering! Of course, then I woke up three hours later, suffocating in the heat! But easy to cool things down, the cats, otoh, were very unhappy to see one of the heaters turned off, they're heat pigs. They fight during the day over which one of them gets to sit directly in front of the heater.

And the christmas stuff went okay, although it was a comedy of errors at times, I'd been told dinner was at six (and my mother told me Christmas day at first, luckily I mentioned it to my brother who told me Christmas EVE!), I got there at four because he said he needed help getting things ready. I walk in, the table's set, the tree is decorated, the presents are wrapped, the house is clean, food is cooking and they're standing around talking. They got everything done already! I wouldn't have minded except that my niece drives me absolutely batty, she tends to glom onto people and she has this really shrill voice and she talks incessantly and I was the only one there for several hours for her to fixate on. I like little boys. :)

People gradually turned up, I found out that dinner was really set for 7, SIL's family had been told 5pm, stepbrother was told 7:30 and he was late but it worked out okay, really great food, SIL is a fantastic cook. Only thing I didn't really care for was the beef, it was really really rare (which is odd because my stepdad is a neurologist and normally won't eat anything less than medium because of mad cow disease but he never said a thing about it). We all had a great time and the only disaster was fairly minor and didn't happen until after we'd finished eating, as we all got up, one of the tables collapsed, the legs weren't locked but it only spilled some wine, we saved the chocolate mousse pie!

Stepbrother gave niece this mechanical cat, fake fur and batteries and sensor points on its body, you scratch its head, it meows, you rub its cheek, it purrs, you pull its tail, it hisses and growls! It'll scare the bejeebers out of their cats! And niece also got a used vcr so now her dad can watch his shows in the living room and she can watch her tapes in her bedroom, the perfect Christmas present, no more fighting over the vcr.

That was all last night, I've been spending today quietly, snuggling with cats and watching tapes, hey it's 23 degrees in Chicago right now, y'all bundle up there and turn on the heat! We're only 45 here, although it's supposed to get down close to freezing tonight. It'll be a two cat night plus one heater for me.