Blinky Lights

Xmas eve found us doing some of our usual traditions.  Last year I was still able to do my traditional latte, but this year I was not due to my stomach.  Lattes don’t agree with me right now, but who knows.  Maybe they will when the botox kicks in.  You know me, I’m a hopeful kitty.  Still, the point of the latte is to help me stay up late to see Santa who we always track with NORAD.  Well, Master Pravus tracks Santa, and I ask him where Santa is every four or five seconds or so.  (It’s tradition!)

Even if I usually stay up pretty late, the excitement of it all is kind of draining and I get kind of tired at least half of the time and I don’t make it up before Santa gets to where we live.  I started in on my teas early and I sipped on them often.  Master Pravus had a lap top running with holiday songs and NORAD for us to watch Santa’s flight.

We didn’t have a lot of things to buy, but we always have one or two things that we need to get on the final day before pretty much any holiday (who is going out on Xmas??).  I mean, we might go out on Xmas, but not to shop only to go do something fun.  It’s getting dark earlier and earlier around here and as we were out late afternoon on Saturday we noticed some cool lights in a local park near the grocery store we were popping by.  One of them had a giant Xmas tree.  Master Pravus took a couple of pictures of me in front of it, and we took an “usie” too.

They’re kind of dark and they do the tree no justice at all, but it was so pretty.

We also saw this cool display of reindeer and a sleigh!  I love fancy Xmas lights.

We were home pretty early on Xmas eve and we settled in to watch holiday movies and wait for Santa to arrive.  Unfortunately, as we turned on the TV, the entertainment center blinked off.  What the what??

We didn’t lose power to the whole house.

We could see lights on scattered around the house.  There was at least one light in the bedroom (though our lap top with the NORAD tracker and holiday music wasn’t running anymore), the ceiling fan with light in the front room was still on, and the light in the computer room was still on.  The kitchen didn’t seem to be affected either.  Huh.  Weird.  Well.  We figured it was probably a blown fuse.  Nothing to panic over.  Master Pravus put his coat on and went outside to reset the fuse.  He came back in the house and I wasn’t supremely happy to see him because the power wasn’t restored to the bits in the house where there wasn’t power.  So..  It wasn’t the fuse box.

We troubleshooted things for about an hour.  Master Pravus is not an electrician and there’s only so much he was willing to mess around with (I don’t blame him!)  So, there is currently no power coming from sixteen of our outlets.  We have homeowners insurance, but this isn’t an “emergency.”  Our heat isn’t affected, and it doesn’t involve our stove or anything like that so it’s not something that had to be addressed on Xmas eve, but it was getting us both down.  A third of the freaking house has no power!  That doesn’t make for the most festive of nights.  Master Pravus ran an extension cord so that it could run the TV, though during his troubleshooting I did manage to get my traditional Xmas Eve picture colored in.

I usually color in one picture on Xmas eve while I wait for Santa, and I was surprised that the first coloring book I picked up had an Xmas themed picture in it!  It was just a normal “Hello Kitty” themed coloring book.  Master Pravus said he liked my picture a lot though, and I got it done while he was running around so it did distract me a bit.

This year, with Master Pravus being in between contracts, we were pretty lucky on the present front.  We each had bought each other a small present that the other didn’t know about ahead of time (tricky!) and Master Pravus had been given a few stocking presents the last time he went to the food pantry.  Master Pravus’ brother and my MIL had asked for links to our Amazon Wishlists and they really spoiled us this year, with our “tree-vee” (the TV) getting a big pile of presents under it.

I really hadn’t been expecting anything and if it wasn’t for family coming to the rescue we wouldn’t have had such a fancy Xmas this year.  Presents definitely aren’t everything, and I absolutely have had holidays where I have received less and still had a wonderful holiday but it was so nice and I am so grateful for the huge pile we both got!

When Santa was getting close to getting to our state I went into the kitchen and I got his plate of cookies and his reindeer snacks ready:

Master Pravus was trying to figure out a few things like where to plug my button and his CPAP machine in and I pulled up NORAD on Tabuloto.

“How do I know if Santa has been here?  It says he’s on the way to Colorado Springs?”

“I think he’s already been here!”

“How can you tell?  I can’t tell from this map.”

(I can’t read maps for shit!)

::The sound of cookies being crunched from the kitchen::

“KITTY!  The cookies are gone!  Santa was here!”

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

And we both opened up our presents!

My MIL got me a lot of stuff, the boxed Game of Thrones book set, a mug, some tea (not pictured), tea strainers, a clock (that I put up in the Mewtique room, coloring books!  My Brother in Law got me a bunch of gel pens and stickers and orange ginger candies and a pig mug (OMG it is even cuter in person, and some more tea (not pictured) and a cute strawberry tea infuser (not pictured) and it was so sweet of everyone.

Oh, and meet Frank, or Frankie, if you like.  Master Pravus let me have him a bit early because he wouldn’t fit in my stocking!  He’s really cute and he likes napping!  He’s my second elephant.  He and Pachy get along really well.

Master Pravus got me a really cool little alchemy play set that I’m going to set up in Applepig’s room, and when I do I’m going to take a picture and show it all set up.  It’s tiny and adorable and Tyrannous will love playing with it.  It’s awesome.  I was spoiled so hardcore.  <3

After we opened our presents it was really late so we went to bed.  It’s always hard to stay up until Santa comes even with caffeine!

<3