Yeah. Six. Not many. I woke up earlier than I wanted to this morning because my mind was exploding a little bit about all the stuff I have to get done this week.

I’ve been blearily sitting here on the couch for a while now, trying to organize my thoughts about what I really, really need to do but of course since I’m not lying in bed, my brain has slowed right down and I’m not making any progress about stuff. I have a pad of paper, trying to write a list of critical things to do, but now I feel like it’s not that big a deal anyway.

So here’s our porch.

But it doesn’t actually look like that anymore because last week…the week before? we blew a fuse because in addition to all the lights, we have about four heated kitty pads out there and it was too much for the outlets. Kevin went out a few times and tried to fix them but finally gave in, and we called an electrician who said it’d be a week before he could get here.

But then, Christmas miracle, he had a cancellation and came last Tuesday and fixed things. Yay for that! Except now the two blow-ups aren’t blown up because I think it was too much and so instead they’re just forlornly lying there.

Maybe I’ll ask Kevin if we could plug them in again? I could ask him right now, he’s doing something in the kitchen right behind me, but it seems like too much effort to have a conversation right now.

Overly-tired, I guess that’s my feeling.

And here’s the Hillbilly Hideout, the little warming center we’ve constructed for our outside kitties.

It’s made of an outside table covered with boards on the top and plexiglass around the sides and two heated pads on top of a rug and a pillow. Only three sides are covered, but at least it gives them some protection from the cold. We do have two perfectly nice cat houses with heated pads inside them but so far they’ve been resistant to going inside them which is why we constructed the hideout. We named it that (who came up with that name? Can’t remember.) because it adds to the general hillbilly look of our front porch right now. In addition to the hideout there’s an old leather red leather chair with the leather flaking off and a bunch of other stuff. I decided to cover everything with festive lights and the kitties seem to enjoy it.

Which is all that matters, right?

So now we have four inside and two outside cats. Mom’s friend Wanda passed away unexpectedly on Friday, and she had one senior cat named Marley who is very sweet but wasn’t expected to last longer a few months ago, but she continues to survive, so Kevin and I are adopting her. So tomorrow we’ll have five inside cats. Marley will spend her time upstairs in the guest room, not sure if she’ll ever want to interact with the other cats, but we’ll see how that goes.

It’s sad that Wanda also has two very sweet outside cats who she never brought in because she was concerned that Marely wouldn’t like them. I met them and it seemed like they deserve a nice inside home, but I think Wanda’s sons will be lucky to find them an outside home.

Whew. Things to do. But maybe not so many?

ok then,

christmas countdown grace