Eve before Christmas Eve

Here it is, Christmas Eve. Again last night I was mattress wrestling or it seems as though the mattress and I weren't embraced in a full caress. Maybe it was Carrie? She did spend the night and we agreed to get into that bed at 9:30 PM last night for a cartoon and then some sleep. I trusted her to abide by our agreement and I'm afraid I must have slipped off to dreamland without her.

2:30 AM arrives and I drift upward from my sleep state to hear Carrie giggling about something. I realize she has never went to sleep. Maybe she couldn't find the remote control to switch off the TV or maybe she was enjoying herself so much that she just didn't want to go to sleep. We had to have a short middle of the night conversation about the virtues of sleep and the benefits of resting. I won and pounded the "off" button on the remote, doused the lights and waited for sleep to arrive. Carrie wasn't having any of it. "Open the door to the bathroom" she says. "No, Carrie, I don't want to get up again." Carrie was adamant. Fear of the dark causes her to continue her harangue. On this one she wins and I swing those feet to the floor and go through the discomfort of the walk to that door. Light streams through the open door and Carrie has her fear of darkness chased away by the lamplight and I'm back in bed and looking for that comfort spot I know is somewhere on that mattress.

5:30 and I can hear the phone ringing but it's on the opposite side of the bed from me. Carrie and I seem to have switched places on our journey to sleep. I think it was when I had my back to her and she climbed over me to get in front so she could see me. That's when she started complaining about me breathing on her, the covers being too hot and "move!" was almost shouted at me. I wanted to roll away from her but then she would have just done the climbing over me thing again so instead I closed my eyes and concentrated on getting more sleep.

7:00 AM and it's finally time for me to get out of bed and away from Carrie. A few minutes at the computer in the office and I could feel someone in the room. I thought she would sleep in this morning and I would have some hours alone but it seems I was mistaken. Chocolate milk mixed and to the living room sofa with her for some Noggin time and I'm hoping she will go to sleep on the sofa. The sirens blaring from the TV and the crawl tape at the bottom of the screen is warning of tornadoes. The wind is whipping the trees around and the stray dried leaves are being carried by the wind to the lawns that are treeless and previously leaf less. We move to the front porch and sit wrapped in our robes watching the swift moving clouds and looking for signs of those tornadoes. Soon the rain starts and wind driven sheets of it drive us back into the house. Carrie and I watch from the windows as the water rises over the driveway and the wind causes the chimney stack on top of the house to moan and screech it's disapproval. Carrie moves with me from room to room. She is frightened and won't release her clamp on my nightdress. I flick on some lights for her to hopefully lessen her fear. That doesn't work so we move back to the sofa where she can sit beside me wrapped in a soft blanket. We will wait it out here.

10:00AM and all the warnings have been withdrawn. The winds have died down and the water has receded and Carrie and I get into the car for our trip to her house. I'm thinking about the errands I will do as soon as she is safely delivered into her mother's care. I'm also thinking about about that nap I plan on taking as soon as those errands have been completed.

Hours later and I feel refreshed but of course I got some more sleep. It's now Christmas Eve and I'm going to have a quiet evening alone watching movies and if it looks anything like a cartoon I will start surfing the channels for a good movie. Speaking of movies, I did rent District 9 and sat through the whole thing. Big news flash here. I still didn't like it. Daughter watched it later and she felt the same way. It's at times like this that I would like to choke a critic specifically the ones that rated that movie so highly.

It's time to publish this so I can lay the laptop aside and scour the networks for a good movie. Merry Christmas to all and to all I have to say, I'm grateful for the fact that it's almost over!