Jim & Happy : Christmas Day in Larocal

Queen Fizz (wearing the crown of the traditional Three Kings cake)

It was like being children again. We were up at the crack of dawn but not for presents from Santa but to Skype with our families. We set the alarm for 5am but were both awake at 1am because of the silly rooster who lives across the road. His timing is always out but especially early this morning.

At 6am after our Skype sessions with family we went back to bed till 8am to get up again to Skype with Mary-lou and family in Tawonga – short but sweet due to a bad connection.

Mid morning I am growling ‘I don’t want to be doing this on Christmas Day’. I was cleaning up after Fizz who is on heat and totally lost the plot. Jim is hopeless at helping, he keeps heaving. She is leaving little presents around the house (coming out of every orifice) not the type that Santa leaves. Poor girl, she is suffering extreme PMT – I Googled it, apparently a dog’s behaviour can alter and become erratic and that she is. Lola is normally the more dominant of the two but even she is keeping her distance.

I wish that piece of information (the dogs being on heat) was in the ad on the Trusted Housesitters site and the bit about mice living in the house. Another growl.

Meanwhile back to Christmas morning, the stuffed chicken roll is in the oven cooking nicely with the roast vegetables, the table is set and the prawns and champagne are on ice ready to go.

It is now Boxing Day.

Our Christmas Day turned out quite an unusual one – in and out of bed basically. Up at 5am back in at 6am, up again at 8am and so it went throughout the day.

Jim and I shared a bottle of champagne (our last from our Dormans housesit) over the first course of prawns. We were having a fun time.

With our second course of chicken and roast veggies we opened a bottle of local red. I spilt my first glass while trying to rescue our Christmas dinner out of Fizz’s reach. I poured and successfully drank a second glass. By the time our dessert of chocolate torte and vanilla yoghurt was eaten I was thinking, “Oh, I need to lie down, I don’t feel so well.” I put myself to bed and Jim had a snooze on the lounge. Later in the afternoon I felt a tad better so we took the dogs for a walk. Returning home I felt the need to return to bed. I got up for a bowl of soup for dinner about 6.30pm and by 8pm we were both in bed. We watched the final episode of Miss Fisher Murders.

Lights out, that is Christmas Day over or so we thought.

The dogs woke us up with their barking at 11.30pm and then again at 3am – we took turns to let them out to prevent further little (or big) presents being left for us to find in the morning.

Five sleeps to go, no more dog sitting or should I say babysitting. I need to go to the ashram to dry out.