Is It Christmas Already?

I'm still not ready for Christmas. I don't just mean that I still have over half my presents to buy.

I'm not emotionally ready for it.

The Great Water Heater Debacle of 03 took a lot out of me. I laughed, looking back on the actual day of finding out - that I found out, then left to go on a weekend away. I do love that the more stuff that happens here at the Poderosa, the less upset I get over all of it.

But where it's taken its toll is the clean-up. It's only been today that my carpet isn't wet to the touch. That's a week of wetness. I wet-vacced two nights, and used towels as sponges. I've worried about the musty smell and that my floor underneath might be damaged. I have a shop-vac lying in the floor of my hallway. A basket of old clothes there too, displaced from their hiding place in the laundry room.

This morning at about 1:30 I had a repeat of the GWH Debacle. I was sitting at my computer, sleepily #squeezing away, when I heard water running. "Oh no," I said. Couldn't be. But it was. There was water running back behind that ominous latticework wall. I quickly unscrewed it and moved it aside to find water pouring - and folks, I mean pouring - out of a pipe coming out of the tank and leading straight to....the floor.

I sprang into action by screaming "nononononononononono" and running for towels to put underneath the pipe. I then called my brother-in-law, a fine man who can apparently guess his way through the workings of a gas water heater while in REM-sleep.

I won't go through all the gory details yet again, but he figured this happened because the temperature was set too high. The water had tapered off and quit and I reset the temperature, and that seemed to do the trick. But sleep was out of the question at that point, so I bundled up in the Comfy Chair and ended up dozing for about an hour before rising time came.

I've been flirting for about the past week with the idea of unearthing my big Christmas box from the closet in the back bedroom. It has my ornaments, stockings, Christmas toys, well, everything. It's basically Christmas In A Box. But the Debacle happened, and then the wet floor, and then the Debacle Redux, and now I'm afraid if I go get that box out and drag it into the living room, my house might just explode.

I'm inching towards the holiday, though. Baby steps. I did get my Rudolph characters set put up in my office, complete with the Bumble putting a star on a little Christmas tree I have ("Looky what he can do!"). And I've unearthed the three CDs that have my three favorite Christmas songs on them. The Mighty Triumvirate of Modern Christmas Songs. That would be Elvis Costello's "St Stephen's Day Murders," Robert Earl Keen's "Merry Christmas From the Family," and the Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping."

The third of these, I must say, has cheered me up to no end. "Christmas Wrapping," an upbeat danceable number if there ever was one, contains a serious fistful of lyrics. It reminds me, in fact, of "Ya Got Trouble" from "The Music Man." You know, you don't listen to it for a long time (well, 11 months in this case), and in that time away you get really rusty with the lyrics, so you have to listen to it over and over about 6 or 7 times to get warmed up. Then you're like a well-oiled machine and can spit the words out just as fast as (the late, lamented) Patty from the Waitresses does.

Hey, Stennie - maybe that should be our tie-breaker for the next "Trouble"-off!