Out with the old, end with the... same?
I am SOOOOO glad the stupid Christmas season & new years is done and behind us. This weekend I will be packing up the same stupid decorations that I painstakingly put out only weeks ago. I really need to get a better handle on the holiday thing and get things put up at the end of November so I don't feel like I am throwing them up and pulling them down within days of each other.
Pike is obsessed with the fake Christmas tree. She is really the only thing I like about having a tree. You can actually see her little face light up as soon as the tree appears. It is as if she truly feels like the tree is there just for her and that we have brought the out doors inside. The second the tree is in place she is under it, looking up between branches with wild eyes. When it is bed time each night I gather her up off her chair and bring her to bed but during "Tree Giving" season she makes it as far as the bed and then runs across the mattress, jumps down and hops (she hops like a rabbit for some reason rather than running like a NORMAL cat) to below the Christmas tree where she refuses to come out. She will circle the base so you are unable to get her.
This year I had the packages wrapped and ready ahead of time and I stood there proudly and pointed out to Jer that this was the first year ever that we were able to afford to get enough presents to cover the entire bottom half of the tree. This of course was GREAT for the "princess" (Pike) as she would work her way in under the boxes and lay down like they were carefully wrapped colorful tents. So the night after Christmas day, when all the packages were now gone and all that was under the base of the tree was a scattering of tissue paper and a few boxes I folded up to put away, she came in and took notice and began howling. She has never done this before. It was a cat melt down at 10 pm at night because she had just then noticed that we had taken away HER packages. To punish us she ate the folded boxes and shredded all that remained of the tissue paper.I don't know how she is going to handle the taking down of the tree this year as each year she gets a little bit worse and if she had that much of a reaction to the missing presents, she is going to go bonkers at the missing tree.
As for new years.... I became the usual living breathing mattress for the cats and laid under a pile of blankets on the sofa with them draped over me while watching movies on the iPad. I rented that movie "Perfect boyfriend" (because I have a little crush on the bad guy Michael Easly. I don't know why it is that he almost always plays the bad guy in movies). I would give the movie about a 4. It was one of those movies that had potential but they tried to fit too much into it by quickly thrusting in scenes that don't elaborate on- for example earlier in the movie she goes to the police to report him stalker her and the police says , "we are looking into his past and it appears he has a history under another name" and then near the end of the movie the lady says, 'I know you said his name was.... and that with his ex girl friend he...." and I thought, "wait a sec... they never said any of that. They either cut out a huge section of the movie to make it fit in a time bracket or they glossed over it thinking the watcher would fill in pieces" I HATE that. And they also had little chucks that you thought would develop into something and it never did. Had the movie been longer and they took the time to add in bits, it would have been great. So I guess I can cross it off the list of movies I was waiting to rent and move on with it.
The husband wasn't supposed to be home until 3 am and by 1 I was starting to drool and head bob on the sofa. I was bound and determined to stay awake because if my man had to work, I didn't want to be relaxing and now awake to welcome him home. I always suffer a little guilt thing about that. He would call me silly if he knew it. He ended up walking in the door at 1:30 (and the cats wouldn't get off me to welcome him in the door and into the new year). He was annoyed at having to work and completely done with the whole day since he had been there since 7 the morning prior. I made room for him on the sofa and lifted my blanket to him and we snuggled in to watch cartoons for the whole 15 minutes we were awake. I woke up at 3 am on the sofa and nudged him to get up for bed.
Our old year ended with a fizzle (and began in a flop) when we learned my father in law had what they call "the double widow maker" style heart attack. He was playing racket ball when it happened (same thing he was doing the last time he had a heart attack. Why is it that healthy people always have these types of things happen to them when they are doing something health conscience?) All test have been completed and nothing can be done until Monday when they will do an angiogram and place some more stents. So he brought in the new year laying in a hospital bed with a crash cart sitting bed side just in case. I would be beyond crushed if something happened to that man as I love him as dearly as my own husband. He is my buddy at art and crafts, the person I sit with at every holiday gathering and we always have good long deep conversations (even my mum has a secret crush on the man) He is the type of father you read about in books and see in movies and secretly wonder if they really exist.