Remember that headline? From the opening scenes of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? Headline of a newspaper reporting the "big storm" Santa Claus needs Rudolph to lead the sleigh for? (BTW, to the folks who complain about "everybody only liked Rudolph after he proved he could lead Santa's sleigh on a foggy Christmas Eve"...um, 𝐠𝐨 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧. Hermie and the deer—followed by Yukon Cornelius and the Bumble—get back to Christmas Town and Santa apologizes to Rudolph—as well as promises to find homes for the misfit toys—as does Donner—and presumably the others—before Santa gets the weather report and asks Rudolph to lead the team.)

Well, we didn't get the blizzard (thank goodness, because Atlantans would have thought it was the apocalypse), but we did get the cold! On December 22 the temps were in the 40s. The next day the high was 19°F. Christmas Eve the high was 21, and it only got up to 31 on Christmas Day. It was cold, even for me. I put Tucker's sweater on him and bundled up in my RI-weight winter coat, lined hat, and lined gloves and was pretty warm outside except for my face and knees. Thank goodness for the boot socks!

I prepared early: shut the outside faucets off, took the flags down due to high winds on the 22nd, and left the faucets dripping downstairs. But boy was it cold, even in the house with the heat. Snowy fluffed up and we put on sweats and warm socks and it was still chilly; the heat couldn't keep up. I kept warm by making gravy for Christmas Eve spaghetti and pork ribs.

Christmas Day we lay slugabed and didn't even open gifts until noon. (Both of us gave each other lots of books. I also got a CD,  Dinner was spent at the Butlers with friends and good food and a gift exchange near the Christmas tree, and when we got home I watched The House Without a Christmas Tree. Good times.

It was good earlier in the week: we were vindicated! James had a video visit on the Winter Solstice with the nutritionist, which the doctors at Wellstar had insisted on, to purge us of the Evil Sodium! This was the first appointment we could get. She asked us a series of questions, which we answered honestly, and talked a lot about the low-sodium foods we ate (we even knew the numbers). At the end of the interview, she admitted that, based on our answers, we were doing everything we could.

So there.

Later on that day we went into downtown Marietta and walked around so we could see the Christmas decorations before they got torn down on Monday. Had a nice time there, too.

Labels: Christmas, Christmas decorations, friends, health, television, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:10:00 PM

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