Plans for the year end changed, and how!

What a Day!

Have you ever wondered how badly the morning of Christmas Eve could start? Here is what happened to us. I was banking on having a long beauty sleep. The previous two mornings I had got up earlier than usual, as I had to get ready for my morning holiday job. There was hardly any time to have a protracted bath, or a lazy breakfast, forget about doing a little bit of exercise or yoga. Nowadays, due to the winter cold, I've almost given up on morning and evening walks, and bicycling for toning the abdominal muscles.

To turn everything topsy turvy, the alarm rang at an odd unexpected hour, too early for today. It went off at the time I had set for yesterday and the day before, which was at 5:30 am. For some, 5:30 is not that early, but for me it is. My normal time to leave bed is around 7 am, so 5:30 is when I am fast asleep.

So when the alarm rang, I thought it was something else, in someone else's house. Only when my Equal Half shouted for me to leave the bed, I realised it was serious! It was the water heater. Our heater might have exploded. Soon the entire apartment would be flooded with water, and then make way into the floors below us. That would be a mess, not to mention the insurance claims that the down floor people would slap on us.

So it started with a dysfunctional water heater. I made emergency arrangements to catch the overflow with cups, bowls, cloths, sponges, and fill it into a bucket. Anything to avoid major bills. But there was no hot water to wash face first thing in the morning.
So, when Christmas starts on such a bleak , what could we expect? For some reason, our friends who were to visit us for Christmas did not turn up. And we cancelled the Las Vegas trip for the time being. Everything was going wrong.
As the day progressed, some red wine elevated our mood. Another bright idea flashed in our mind. What about Palm Springs? Maybe, we were to go to Palm Springs for the year end, after all?