Patti and I hosted Christmas Eve, but we couldn’t do it at our house because our kitchen and the rest of the house are not usable. I planned to work on the kitchen on my four days off from work, but rain prevented it. We had our hosting night at Patti’s sister’s house. It’s much bigger and less cluttered than our house. Patti made all the food in our kitchen, and we packed it in the car to bring it to her sister’s house. The rain made this much more difficult than it had to be. I loaded up the back of the car to avoid putting things in the trunk that was exposed to the rain.
When we got to Patti’s sister’s house, we had to park on the street. The first task was getting Patti out of the car without her falling in a puddle. I helped her out and got her in the house. They had new carpet so the “no shoes” rule was in effect. Patti stayed inside with her shoes off and I went back and forth from the car to the front door. Patti’s nephew, from her other sister, is staying at the house so he helped. Eventually, everything was out of the car. I took off my shoes and brought everything but the presents into the kitchen.
Their kitchen is enormous compared to ours. We got all the food set up on the island in the center of the kitchen. As we were setting up, people started arriving. Because of my dietary restrictions, I brought food specifically for myself. Patti makes stuffed mushrooms each year, but she prepared a few of them just for me. I should add that everyone who came on Christmas Eve was at least ten years younger than Patti and myself. We get along much better with younger relatives than the ones who are our age or older.
Patti prepared several games to play after we exchanged gifts. One of them was picking up snowballs (cotton balls) with a shovel and putting them into a small bucket while blindfolded. The blindfold was one of my old ones that I never wore that much. It had large eyelashes on it. I and one other person were the only ones who got zero snowballs in the bucket. One of our other nephews was so good he overflowed the bucket. Patti wasn’t going to count them, but she did just to have a number to aspire to.
The evening ended, and people headed home. Luckily, the rain had about stopped by then. We loaded the leftovers into boxes and packed up all our stuff. As I was packing things, Patti said it sounded like a bear was in the living room. It sounded like growling of some kind. Walking into the living room, it shocked me to see Patti’s nephew on the floor asleep. We did the reverse of taking things into the house. This time, I had to put things in the trunk. I ran out of room with all the added presents. We got it in the car, said goodbye to Patti’s nephew who was up by then, and headed home.
Once we got home, Archie meowed the whole time we were taking stuff out of the car. I rubbed him when I could, but when I stopped, he continued yelling at us. We tell the girls that they are lucky that they don’t have to go outside in the rain. Scout’s kids only know the inside of the house. Outside noises are the only things that freak them out. They freak each other out, and bringing things into the house also freaks them out. Every time we must leave Archie outside, we feel guilty. Maybe we can have him inside eventually, but it will be a while.
Christmas Day was a typical gift exchanging frenzy. Patti and I always get each other more presents than we should. In my defense, she started it. As usual, my gifts looked like Patti was buying presents for a child. She got me three remote controlled Disney characters. Two of the presents were battery powered tools. One was a little chainsaw, and the other was a reversible screwdriver. They were different manufacturers from my existing battery powered tools, so I’ll need to find extra space to charge them.
Thoughts from Life 
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