So this wasn’t the happiest of holiday seasons. I had just put up the tree, spent HOURS rethreading new lights into The Pink Nightmare’s pre-light madness to get dark sections to work, dragged all the boxes up from the basement when . . . . the houseworkers who went on hiatus returned! They tore out every window to put the new ones in, which meant gaining access outside and inside to the windows, which mean major moving of things including the Christmas tree. I just had it and put the tree away and took everything back downstairs. Things were getting broken left and right, I was not gunna let Christmas get ruined anymore than it had been by them breaking ornaments or the Baby Jesus!

Then they decided to take out the giant kitchen window, tear the walls down (which meant packing up the entire kitchen and moving things elsewhere) and that’s where we are now. Yes they were gone for weeks and decided that two weeks before Christmas was the opportune time to do all this. Hey I had nothing to do! Sure I can just take time out to pack up half the house, forget decorating. No trouble at all, not like you couldn’t have done this all say . . . when it was still warm out!

Anyways, below is some of the progress on the kitchen nook which is being redone . . . Oh a skylight is going in where there is no dry-wall in the one photo.

So there was some issues as to where we would even be for Christmas, but we did manage to drive down to my mom’s Christmas Eve night. My mom had to have a new water heater installed that day, and apparently the workers there did not bother to close her back gate. We arrived at 10pm, it was dark, I didn’t think the gate would be open and couldn’t see it either. So at about 10:30 Christmas Eve . . . Nikko and Ebbie go missing from the backyard! After walking up and down the street calling them, Ebbie came back. She ended up at the back door barking to be let in, or at least responding to our calls. Nikko was another story. We walked for an hour with Princess and Ebbie on leashes, hoping they’d draw him out. Then we drove in the car even further. NOTHING. I was about to just burt into tears. I had given up, he was not going to be found tonight, so we were on our way back home when my mom called. At about midnight, she found him . . . . directly across the street. He knew he did bad and had been hiding out the whole time. The little shit! I was just so relieved to have him back safe and sound at that point. He knew he did bad though, as his ears were down the whole night without me even having to say anything. He also insisted on sleeping with me/us, when normally he and Princess always sleep with my mom. He stayed by my feet the whole night.

While I was going back and forth between Virginia and NJ before Xmas, John did decorate our tree. We put it back up eventually, and he did it while I was gone. On the 23rd I put out some minimal decorations, pictured below. It’s no where near what I normally do, but with the amount of banging and disruption I didn’t need stuff getting broken. I was already in a foul mood, if they broke the Baby Jesus I would have flipped shit!

We are now in the process of cleaning up the house. This FINALLY includes throwing away crap that needs to be thrown out, the basement and the two rooms on the first floor that will be my study and a new guest room.

Happy New Year! 2013 SUCKED . . .