Christmas at the home of This Man was not your average wake up, run downstairs and marvel at the gifts stacked under the tree. No, Christmas at my house was everything but sweet scents filling the house and presents being opened with care. There was no big dinner with millions of desserts and even as I blog, I can't recall what I ate--if I even ate at all!
Here's how Christmas at my house played out. I woke up around 5:30 a.m and with a great amount of effort, managed to pull myself up, get dressed and drive down to Naval Station San Diego. You see, I had duty, but don't be alarmed because this wasn't typical-24 hour duty. I was expected to be on duty for approximately 1 hour.
1 Hour!
So I got to work just before 7 o'clock, mustered and commenced to throughly clean and empty building. That's right--EMPTY!
With two other pissed off sailors, we cleaned the building only to be told afterwards to go outside and sweep the adjacent parking lot. Yeah, you don't have to tell This Man how ridiculous that was. Finally, just after 8 o'clock, This Man was back on the road and headed home. By then, my son, D had opened all of his gifts and desribed them all to me while This Man changed back into my pajamas. After sleeping way into the mid afternoon, my son, anxious to go outside and play with his buddies took off leaving me restless and bored. Suddenly I was tired of being in the house but with everything being closed, safe for Denny's, the grocery store & perhaps Starbucks down the street from my house, what was there possibly for me to get into?
A buddy of mine sent me a message online, asking were there any bars open and if there were would I be up for hanging out and having some drinks. Thank goodness for Hamburger Mary's!
As it turned out, there was quite a few guys out and about, all tired of being forced to stay at home on "house arrest" which I've come to think of Christmas as. I met up with him and another handsome fella and ended up hanging at Mary's for most of the evening. As it turned out, DB was home alone and sent me a text message, checking to see what I was up to. He ended up coming down to hang out as well. I ended up staying at the bar with DB and the new guy TJ and having a Mantastic time so fun in fact that the next time I realized the time, it was almost midnight (and I got to Mary's at 5 o'clock)! Once the crowd took off, DB and I went to Denny's, had some warm tea and talked before finally calling it a night.
Once back home, I got to thinking about Christmas and when had it become House Arrest. I mean, I almost dread the holiday, knowing that I'll be stuck in the house all day with no means of escape and god forbid, there's company in town--ARGH, that makes it that much more difficult to handle.

Mahalo & Happy Holidays