Warm up

 

Wesley Chapel, Florida (high 73, low 53)

Hopefully, our cold front is over.  Two cold nights with below freezing temperatures were enough for me.  Saturday  night, the temperature dropped below freezing before 8pm and stayed below freezing all night long. 

Before we went to bed on the coldest night, we set the furnace to kick on when it got down to 55, turned on the electric blankets and were nice and toasty.  We have a little space heater that works quite well, but I am not about to let it run overnight when I’m not keeping an eye on it.  I don’t want to wake up and see a cat standing on a a heater like the Ducks did  here. 

 

In keeping with our motto, of put off for tomorrow what you can do today, we started Christmas shopping Friday.  We don’t buy each other much anymore.  We buy what we want all year long, so we cool it for Christmas.  We just have to pick up a few things for Mom and my brother, but it still takes some time.

Yesterday was spent wrapping presents and getting ready for Christmas, including coloring my hair for the first time in ages.

Today, we have a few more things to  pick up and some errands to run.  We open presents on Christmas eve, along with our traditional home made pizza that Mom makes.  She may be getting older, but she still hasn’t lost her touch on making pizza.

We’re planning on getting up early and making our traditional run to the beach on Christmas morning.   We didn’t get to do it last year because we were leaving for the Keys the day after Christmas.  It’s always nice to be at the beach in the early morning.

Baxter has been an extremely bad boy lately, and I’m not sure Santa is bringing him anything.

First, every morning he  runs in the bedroom, (usually about 5: am) jumps on the dresser and  then scratches on the window shades.  It’s just a quick scratch, and just a game for attention.  He gets sprayed with water,  jumps down, runs off,  and does it again in a minute.  This continues a dozen or so times until we finally get up.  Al has started arming himself with a pistil grip sprayer filled with water and they play a game on who’s faster.  He tries to get on the dresser, do a quick scratch and jump down before Al shoots him.  He usually is soaking wet by the time we get up.  I have to admit, we end up laughing by the time it’s over.

Yesterday, Baxter got “dirty pants” after a visit to the kitty pan.  He has long bloomers and sometimes “stuff” sticks.  He was extremely upset at his predicament, and was doing the kitty version of the moon walk, trying to remove the offending turd.  Thank goodness we have no carpet.    I try to keep him trimmed back there but he is a holy terror trying to trim mats or excess hair.   He is so big and strong that it’s a real challenge.  I had to enlist Al’s help and between the two of us, we still had a devil of a time.  After being scolded a few times, we were finally able to clip and clean off the mess.  He was one po’d cat…and mama wasn’t too happy either!   I seriously considered throwing him in his cage and letting him deal with it himself.   He has a mat on his chest that I really need to cut off, but I need to regain my strength and save that for another day.  Maybe I need kitty drugs!

Merry Christmas to you all.  I hope Santa brings you everything you want  and you enjoy the holiday.  I know he already brought Rick and Paulette what they wanted!