A Christmas Memory

I'm stealing this idea from Elizabeth, because her latest post reminded me of one of my favorite childhood memories of Christmas. When we were little enough to still believe in Santa Claus, our parents had a tradition that I've never heard anyone else mention.

On Christmas Eve, after it got dark, one of my parents would take me and DeeBee for a ride around town to look for Rudolph's red nose in the sky. No matter how cold it was, we'd roll the car windows down to listen for the sleigh bells and peer into the sky to find that glowing nose. No telling how many times we'd see a tower with a red twinkling light at the top and mistake it for Rudolph. But we weren't fooled by that - we were out to find the real thing. The adventure was always fun of course, but usually unsuccessful. Except for that one year.

I must have been about 5 or 6 years old, making DeeBee around 7 or 8. I remember that we weren't too far from the house when I looked up and saw a red light descending towards our house! I recall yelling, "Daddy, there it is! It's going to our house! Hurry and get back home!" I also remember Daddy smiling and chuckling and doing whatever he could to delay getting back to the house. (While one parent was driving the kids around, the other was home putting out the Christmas gifts that Santa "dropped off.") I didn't understand this until years later, so I was pretty frustrated that he didn't rush back to the house. When we finally returned home, my mother was there saying "Oh, you just missed Santa!" It was so real and pretty darn magical!

I was so certain of what I saw, that when I tell kids about it today, I don't feel I'm lying. My six-year old eyes saw what they saw. What an awesome memory and creative tradition my parents gave us!

LiMINTless

Back in April, Stride Gum promoted a contest to rename their mint-flavored gum. The grand prize winner was to receive $10,000 and a year's supply of Stride gum with the new name on the package. Stride later closed the voting and ended the contest claiming a "technical glitch." Instead of allowing online voting to take place, they just randomly selected five entries and gave them each $25,000.

Addison entered with the name "LiMINTless." Stride sent her a box of gum with her entry name on it and an apology letter. At the very least, she has a lot of gum and a funny story. :-)

"Wild" Morning

We're having a rough go of it lately with our pets. Just looking out the backdoor window, I see two handsaws dragged out into the yard, a plastic container of what was probably fertilizer or weed killer (some kind of poison, I'm sure), and the water hose wrapped 4 times around the tree. The rest of the hose is in bite-size pieces throughout the yard. And that's Duke's handiwork just TODAY.

I don't think he made a good impression while Leigh, my father-in-law, was visiting either. Leigh was staying in the guest house out back, the little house with a door that doesn't always stay closed during a strong wind storm. Duke discovered that if he ran full speed towards the door, he could easily knock it open. And open it he did, and took it upon himself to drag many of my father-in-law's belongings out into the yard. Not all of the items survived, if you know what I mean.

And then there's the latest episode with Junior, that I'm still a little shocked by. Everyone knows he's mean and bites and stalks and attacks one or all of us every single day. I woke up this morning and turned on the TV to just lay in bed for a while. Junior walked up wanting to be petted, which I obliged KNOWING I shouldn't. I don't let him do this, but for some reason this morning I decided to be generous. I only petted him a few seconds before realizing I should just push him off, so I raised my hand to push him away...and in a split second he attacked me, biting my face in three places. It was so sudden I didn't have time to get him off of me quickly enough.

Once I did though, well...let's just say I got him to leave the room. The mirror revealed 6 punctures and enough blood to piss me off a little more. I felt pretty stupid letting him come near me like that, so I don't blame the cat. I still make the claim that he's a feral cat, and that we'll basically be living with a semi-wild animal under our roof until something "unfortunate" happens. Okay, I'm just kidding with that little bit of sarcasm...I'm not going to do anything to him. And I'm not scared of my cat at all, just still reeling from what happened this morning. Mostly I think it pissed me off because I'm vain, and I had to go to school looking like I had a major breakout. I thought about taking a picture and posting it, but like I said - I'm vain.

Anyway, what do you do? I know if I had a small child and the cat did this to him/her, I'd probably feel obligated to get rid of it. I think what bothers me is that we're taking care of an animal that no one else would have, and it's just kind of weird when they turn on you. So add one more story to the list of Junior stories. I sure hope Duke never bites my face, because I'm likely to lose half of it if he does.