Alarm

You'd think the two large Vicodin that I took would have knocked me out for a good eight hours.

At 4:57 I woke to the sound of Alice in her bed . . . slurping and licking . . . something on her back end.  I poked her with my toe.  Whatever was there is gone or drowned, so let's wrap this up, shall we?  She stopped and went back to sleep. 

I couldn't.

I laid there thinking . . . of Christmas presents . . . pathology . . . going back to work . . . money.  Suddenly, I had a lot of things to do at 5am.  I also had a very warm bed, gray light outside my window, the lingering grogginess of prescription pain killers and nowhere to be. 

Pathology: not much I can do to change that, and I will learn more about a second round of radiation at my next doctor's appointment.  Let it go.

Going back to work: not until Monday.  Three more days off, and UCLA seems to have survived just fine without me.  Let it go.

Money: not where I want to be, but I'm fine.  Contemplating Christmas presents, so it's a first-world problem.  Let it go.

*slurp, slurp, slurp*

Clearly my toe did not get its point across. 

I scooped Alice out of her bed and put her in ours.  She pawed and nudged her way between me and D.R and snorted smugly as she settled her warm nose by my neck, right next to my new incision.  (Dogs know.  Oh, they know).  She was already snoring as I draped my arm over D.R.'s chest and his feet and knees intertwined with mine. 

The chilly morning is turning pink outside and I am warm and happy.  There is some serious stank breath between the three of us and Alice's head smells musky and--geeze, is that onion?! Where this creature sticks her head, I cannot say.

And it occurs to me that perhaps it was not worry and the Unknown that woke me early this morning. 

Perhaps it was gratitude.

I'm Dreaming of a . . .

Christmas has finally come to the Dunn/Edmonds Alliance.

D.R. LOVES Christmas--like, silly-clapping-school-boy loves Christmas.  It's pretty cute.  I certainly have my ideas of how decorations should go up (organization and order, maybe?), but I have learned over 5 years of co-hab that Christmas is D.R.'s domain.  My Martha Stewart-y visions have been replaced by glitter garland, fake cotton "icicles", and random Santa figurines (Harley Santa!) placed on any empty flat surface.   I cannot control it; I can only hope that our little apartment can contain the merriment.

A few things that make our Christmas village complete.

Denver Broncos candy canes.

Our tree is jam-packed with ornaments.  Some branches have two or three, but we can't stop ourselves from buying more.  We probably should create some sort of ornament database to prevent repeat purchases (there are a lot of cake ornaments), but the end product is always a twinkly catalog of our childhoods, travels and memories.  These are our Christmas stories. 

Lord Vader and the Holiday Armadillo always make an appearance. 

We tape all of the Christmas cards we get to our front door.  We had a pretty impressive collection last year, which serves as a reminder of how loved we are even from afar.  Wonderful.

Holiday window gels.

Finally--finally!--I convinced D.R. that we had to pare down our collection (do you think Martha has window gels?) when I showed him this collection of random winter objects and creature parts that looks more like an autopsy than a winter wonderland.  He agreed under the condition that more would be purchased to replace them.  I'm fighting a losing battle here, folks.

Not just Santa's village, giant cross-country skiing Santa's village.  Santa smash!

Besides the tree, I think this is my favorite bit.  I wasn't kidding about those random Santa figurines all over everything. 

Hope you are all enjoying the season.  If you're not, come on over and D.R. will make you enjoy it.