Who wet the bed on Christmas Eve?

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, I was writing this newsletter -- what, you wanted something about a mouse? The following serves as a prologue to this year's infamous DadFace Family Year-In-Review Newsletter (scheduled for New Year's Eve).

Christmas Eve obliterated my original plan for this newsletter.

What a day I had. Christmas Eve could be an entire newsletter in itself. 

The first thing I remember — but now that I think of it, the first thing I did was bail out the bathtub for the 37th time because I'm running the faucet 24hrs a day to keep the rest of the pipes from freezing and that bathtub drain is inexplicably backed up again — but the first thing I remember was the cat wetting the bed. 

That's right, Ruby Rumpelstiltskin Williams (formerly "Turtle"). A cat so fastidious she has used the bathtub as her personal toilet. That Ruby Rumpelstiltskin not-Turtle Williams sauntered onto our bed, chose my side, and wet away.

How do I know?

Because I saw her. I walked back into our bedroom and thought, that looks like -- certainly not! Not my Ruby Rumpelstiltskin Williams, who means so much to us that we changed her name to show her the vision of success we had cast for her, exactly like the biblical name changes of Jacob to Israel and Saul to Paul. Exactly. 

That cat looked back at me with the most guilty look I've ever seen on a cat's whiskered face.

And then I felt her go over to the dark side. Her guilty eyes narrowed into defiance. I sensed her transmit a message directly into my mind: Merry Christmas, Humans. Then she fled.

Well, have a happy new year, Ruby Rumpelstiltskin, formerly Turtle -- formerly Williams.

After that, I tried to get the holiday back on track by rushing headlong into our favorite Christmas Eve tradition — shopping.

Last Christmas Eve we couldn't find candy to make gingerbread houses. 

We're not talking anything too exotic. Candy canes. Red hots. Gum drops. But the store's management, sensing the urgency of the moment, had decked the candy aisles with Valentines chocolates. And that's when it all went heart shaped. 

This year we decided to be more practical. I needed a length of pipe and some connectors to fix a broken pipe. Ever since we moved to the Houston area we've brought historic winter freezes. (Yes, we dripped our faucets. That's why I was getting up every few hours to bail water out of the bathtub.) 

I expected the plumbing aisle of Lowes to be packed and most pipe fittings out of stock. But I found what I needed with minimal jostling.

It wasn't the same story when I came back 5 minutes before closing. Assistance needed in the plumbing department. Customers weren't as laid back. Someone stormed out and yelled, "This is what they did to us last time!"

He must have meant the time the power grid for most of the state went down last year. Some people called it SNOWVID. This year wasn't anywhere near as bad. Except for the timing. Last time it was February, away from any major holiday — unless you count Valentines Day.

Someday I will put a gift from a sponsor right smack dab here. But it's Christmas so I'll sponsor myself and share a writing rule I broke today. Next Day Writing Rule: Anything you write at night will be made better by rereading and revising the next morning.

Equally important but in direct contradiction... Don't Overedit Rule: Communicate your point and don't let grammar get in the way of writing and living life. (Otherwise you'll spend all your time reediting everything to death.)

Oh, and we went shopping today too. Gotta have those batteries.

Merry Christmas, Humans.

— DadFace