The Real Legend of Christmas

 

Once upon a time, many, many years ago every Christmas Eve, Santa Claus relied upon Wilbur the Red Nosed Pit Bull to help him deliver presents to good little boys and girls and kittehs (but not very many kittehs as they are seldom well behaved) and dogs all over the world. Wilbur was eager to please and loved helping Santa. Wilbur's jaws were strong so that even in the worst of weather he never lost a present and was able to carefully place toys and treats underneath every Christmas Tree.

Then something very bad happened.

One year an especially evil kitteh who wasn't going to get any presents from Santa, because, well, because it was a kitteh and therefore evil, and because it was especially jealous of Wilbur the Red Nosed Pit Bull, pulled a nasty trick.

The night before Christmas Eve the evil kitteh said to Wilbur, "Wilbur, I am your friend and you should try some of this silly water. It is very tasty and it will make you feel good." Wilbur was very happy that a kitteh would be so nice to him and to show his appreciation, he drank many cans of this fun stuff.

Wilbur did feel silly and then he became quite dizzy and passed out cold. Poor Wilbur slept right through Christmas. Santa Claus looked and looked for him but the evil kitteh told Santa that Wilbur said he had better things to do than help a fat old man in a red suit deliver presents to a bunch of snotty nosed brats.

Santa was desperate and immediately contacted a Red Nosed Reindeer he'd heard of named Rudolph to assist him. Rudolph, who was a huge sissy and was never allowed to play in any Reindeer games, had nothing better to do anyway and agreed to help.

And so history took a turn that has long since been forgotten.

Rudolph went down in history as a hero and ended up with the girl.

Pit Bulls became vilified.

Kittehs however, will forever remain evil.

And if Paul Harvey were alive today this legend would end with, "And now you know the rest of the story."

Good day, Merry Christmas, Happy Festivus, and Happy Holidays to one and all from the crew of the Knotty Cat.

 

Originally posted in December 2013. This year I'm too lazy to be original so I'm just reprinting it.

Posted with Blogsy

Just when you think you've got it all figured out...

...you don't!

And right now I'm pretty much on my last nerve.

First of all (and probably the least of our problems) my computer died. Just like that. And every picture I've ever taken is stuck somewhere in its innards. That leaves me with attempting to use Blogsy until I can get it all figured out. I don't like Blogsy and I'm almost certain to have a meltdown before this post gets published. The fact that I just spent about 15 minutes trying to find new AAA batteries in our nav station via a dying flashlight in order to get my bluetooth keyboard working, does not bode well for a peacefull evening. I need two batteries, I found one, I'm holding my breath, and Wilbur is hiding in a corner.

We've been gifting the Knotty Cat with all kinds of pretties this summer. I wrote in my last post that we installed a new holding tank. And there's nothing like contorting your body in all kinds of unnatural positions in an airless engine room while trying to aim a heat gun on uncooperating hoses to make you feel real good about deciding to live on a boat. I sometimes wonder if yoga got it's start at sea.

And then there's the wind generator. Hans has been just itching to get one of these buggers for a long time and one night he finally bit the bullet and ordered one. Oh my, he couldn't wait to install it and with great pleasure he took a vacation day from work to do so. We arranged for an electrician to arrive first thing in the morning in order to make sure it was wired properly since the whole Knotty Cat electrical/battery system is still a bit of a mystery to us as too many chefs have created quite a stew behind all the panels. The wiring was done lickety split and then Hans and I were faced with getting that big stinker up in the air. It may have been October but it was hot and sweat was pouring off of us in no time. There was a point in the afternoon where I'd have taken bets that this project would not be completed by sundown and I'm pretty sure if our neighbor hadn't had a day off work Hans and I would either be divorced or dead. Neighbor had replacement screws and nuts for the ones we dropped overboard, he had the proper saw that ate through the stainless supports we needed to shorten, he gave us a lot of advise, and basically saved the day.

It's not his fault the damn thing doesn't work!

A couple of weeks ago we headed out to the Gulf with hopes of testing our new toy and it was obvious from the get go that it wasn't working. It has three settings; charge, free wheel, and brake. It misbehaved for all three and the only time the amp meter worked was when it 'dropped' way below zero and then swooned. A defective switch was the opinion of our electrician and we had a new one overnighted. The new switch was installed but guess what? No go. It still doesn't work. The latest verdict from our electrician is that the generator itself is defective. At this time I have no idea where this is going.

So anyway, like I said we anchored out. Keep in mind this was after it took Hans an entire day to change the oil and transmission fluids in both engines. The only reason it took so long is because it's been nearly two years since we've had to do this and for the first time we had to bleed air out of the system. After we got back we noticed quite a bit of water sitting in the port engine room and decided it must have happened during the oil change when Hans probably stepped on the dripless shaft seal (expensive stuffing box replacement).

So last weekend we headed out for a day sail with some friends (where we discovered the wind generator is strictly ornamental), enjoyed (sarcasm) a day of lumpy seas, and after a surprisingly smooth landing in our slip, wondered why the hell the port bilge pump was going off at thirty second intervals.

Aha! It must be the dripless shaft seal! Only it wasn't. We finally figured out it was a repeat of the disaster we encounted in the Intracoastal a couple of years ago. Only this time we were lucky enough to be sitting in a marina with shore power and not sitting in some remote anchorage.

We've no idea why this has happened again and it's really putting the kabosh on our Thanksgiving plans as it appears we'll need to be hauled out.

Again.

Gee, it looks good doesn't it?

"Awe! Say it's not so!!!!" Wilbur cries. "The Knotty Cat rules all!"

If all else fails and life appears bleak, post a picture of a helpless pit bull modeling yet one more baby hat.

 

Posted with Blogsy

A Bunch of Middle Age Cruisers Celebrate the New Year

Rich with his drum machine, and Hans with his new keyboard. Some serious music is about to take place!

This little guy was left out of most of the festivities and he ended up sulking below in our berth.

 

When we ended up at anchor on New Year's Eve around 2 PM we realized there was no way we'd stay awake to ring in the new year. But just after the sun went down we were surprised to get a call from another live-aboard couple in our marina who had finished up their work day. They were on their way out into the bay and did we want to meet up with them?

They ended up rafting next to us and I have to tell you this was a first for the Knotty Cat!! I'm just not a rafting up-let's party till all hours-act like a bunch of idiots kind of person. Especially on what I've always referred to as Amateur Night.

Really, I'm not.

Yet we had a great time. We laughed about anything and everything, witnessed a beautiful full moon rise over the bay, and by eleven o'clock we were back on our own boat with a pouting pitty. We hooked up our TV and antennae, and while Wilbur refused to budge from under his blanket, Hans and I actually witnessed the ball drop at midnight.

Getting up in the morning wasn't so easy but by 11 or so we were finally moving around and enjoying breakfast and mimosas.

Danee patiently waits on her boat while we try to wake up.

On New Year's Day, Hans got the chance to use his new keyboard. Rich and Danee's good friend's motored out and before we knew it, all three of our boats were rafted together and don't think the Knotty Cat wasn't hugely proud of herself. All three boats hanging on her anchor!!! What a girl!

 

So we ended up spending New Year's Day sitting at anchor with good friends and music. The wind also kicked up and many boats with smiling, happy occupants sailed past shouting out greetings to us (at least they didn't tell us to shut up).

Luckily, we got back into our slip with no mishaps since Captain Hans was at the helm and not me.

 

And now we're back to reality and of course our vehicle has decided that the Knotty Cat gets way too much attention. Therefore it decided to light up the dashboard with many alarms and then screamed and beeped at me and Wilbur the whole way to the Doggy Park. I then drove a very scary 4 miles enduring the mushiest brakes in the world to our local mechanic.

The good news is that Wilbur thoroughly enjoyed the ride back to our marina in the courtesy van where he gave our driver many big pitty kisses the whole way.

Here's to hoping this isn't a portent of things to come.

 

Thanksgiving in Florida.

I love Thanksgiving and I believe it may be my favorite holiday of all since the only thing that's ever been expected of me during this time is a healthy appetite. This will be the first Thanksgiving in over 50 years that will not be spent at my parents' home in western Pennsylvania.

I have to admit that if I'd been given the option of living anywhere in the US, Florida would have been at the very bottom of my list. And arriving here during a horribly sweltering August only reinforced my opinion.

But now that we've been here for a few months I've found my opinion has changed. I really don't need six months of lead gray skies, endlessly cold dreary dark days, and worrying about whether I'm going to have to dig my car out from under three feet of snow that playfully fell during the night.

Instead, I wake up to sunny blue skies, take Wilbur to the dog park nearly every day during the week where we've met tons of wonderful people and playful poochies, go on bike rides with Hans to the beach on the weekend, sit barefoot in my cockpit every evening reading a book until it's dark, and then grill our dinner.

Now, I'm not bragging here, it's just that I've found myself adjusting very well to our new surroundings and for that I'm very grateful. However that could very well change when hurricane season rolls around again.

And I think I've figured out something very interesting. I've always associated Thanksgiving and Christmas with wintry type weather (like I said, over 50 years! Really?!) and perhaps if we'd moved to a different city in the north, I'd be feeling homesick, but since I'm so far removed from all that, reality just hasn't kicked in.

It doesn't feel like Thanksgiving here at all and in my opinion it could very well be July right now.

After having my Halloween display vandalized I was unsure of what to do for Thanksgiving.

I still haven't bought any new plants but I did cover our dock box with a fall themed plastic table cloth and adorned my tacky pink flamingo with an Indian headdress.

I found some feathers at Michael's and fused them to a scrap of fabric with Wonder Under. I then hand sewed it to Pinky's head.

A bit of a closeup.

Maybe I'll be more creative at Christmas but only if I can figure out a vandal proof idea for my decorations.

I'm very happy to announce that this year Hans and I received an invitation to a Thanksgiving get together with a friend of Hans' from his college days at CMU in Pittsburgh. It's been several years (and possibly decades) since Hans has seen Mark but we're very much looking forward to celebrating this holiday with an old friend and his family, and tons of their friends.

Poor Wilbur. Visions of Sugar Plums may be dancing in his head but he will not be stealing and eating pumpkin pie, shrimp, or butterscotch creme pie this Thanksgiving.

But don't worry about the little man, I have a feeling he'll be treated to a big peanut butter and biscuit stuffed kong.

And as always we'll leave the NFL station on for him so he can keep track of the games while we're gone.

'Tis the Season

We're still tying up loose ends of things that need to be taken care of before getting back on the boat (and we're really hoping that Hans' new Canadian passport gets here on time!) but instead of boring you with those details I'll post about the holiday season instead.

Christmas has come to mean many things to me over the years.

When I was in the first grade it was the sheer excitement of making paper chains for our Christmas tree out of green and red construction paper, watching The Grinch and Rudolph on TV, fighting with my sister over who got to hang what on the tree, Santa Claus, and of course all those wonderful presents.

When I had kids of my own, and it was all about waiting until they were asleep (which seemed to take forever) so I could try to quietly sneak all their presents under the tree, and I can still remember how thrilled they were when I (with a lot of drama) complained that Rudolph and his cronies had left chomped up bits of carrots all over our deck, and did anyone happen to see Santa's sleigh tracks (made at around 3 AM with a broom handle) on the deck?

Then I was suddenly single with two jobs, and three kids who didn't care if I put up a tree or not as long as they got presents. Honestly, I tried to keep the Christmas spirit alive, but it's tough when December was the month the township snowplow knocked over my mail box and when I called my dad for help, I had to first get past my mother (who doesn't have a job but wants to tell me about what a bad day she's had and how my father is driving her crazy). It's the December where it snowed every single day and I found myself shoveling the driveway (in between my two jobs) at both 7 AM and midnight thus leaving me feeling like a wrung out dishrag, or the infamous December when the muffler fell off my car and the starter on my daughter's car died, and the only time I had left to shop for presents was Christmas Eve.

And finally, December is the month of the company Christmas party. The entire month.

Oh sure, Christmas parties are just peachy keen and tons of fun when you're an attendee of one or perhaps two, but just try being a waitress for an entire month times ten years of them and then see how you feel.

Putting up with beer deaf drunks, bossy wives who envision themselves as Mistress of the Manor, discovering the freezer is broke when it comes time to serve 48 scoops of liquid ice cream, struggling with fifty pound trays of dirty dishes on your shoulder all night long because for some reason everyone wants to congregate in the only narrow doorway to the room... I did this for over ten years and I'll never forget the weekend I clocked in over 32 hours (in addition to my full time job) from Friday night to Sunday evening at a beautiful private club.

I still remember how tired I was on Friday night (and was already wondering how the hell I would make it through Sunday) after the first party ended at around 2 AM and we still had to tear down the banquet tables and put up round ones for Saturday's brunch. After Saturday's brunch we tore down those tables, completely rearranged the dining room, ordered pizza, and folded about a thousand napkins in preparation for The Big Party.

The Big Party was thrown by a wealthy local contractor who was a good customer, employed a lot of townspeople, and we were to be on our best behavior.

I knew it would be an interesting night when I saw men arriving in everything from filthy jeans and flannel shirts to leisure suits and cowboy boots, to women in ball gowns and homemade tattoos to flannel shirts and cowboy boots.

At these parties the waitstaff is usually given three to four tables of eight to ten people each. The menu is set; meaning everyone gets the same soup and salad, and a choice of three entrees (beef, fish, chicken, and the occasional vegetarian dish). This allows everything to run smoothly (for the most part) and hopefully a good time is had by all.

I immediately knew I was in trouble when I discovered that one of the men I had to wait on had such tremendous BO that it made my eyes smart and I felt like I had my nose jammed deep in his armpits all night long. He exacerbated the problem by dousing himself with an entire bottle of Aqua Velva and I then spent the rest of the night taking a deep breath before launching myself at his table, expelling it after I left, and ended up feeling like a Japanese pearl diver for the remainder of the evening. I felt very bad for the man at my next table who had a terrible speech impediment and I acted like I didn't notice it at all and was very patient even though we were expected to get our orders to the kitchen 'yesterday'!

No one understood that their Prime Rib would be 'medium' (and no I can not turn medium into rare!) and all the men ordered an end piece. Just how many end pieces do you think a prime rib has I wanted to ask.

As I was madly clearing soup cups, dropping off salads, refilling water goblets, and serving drinks, a man from a neighboring table (not mine) flagged me down, and since I had to be polite and couldn't say "Sorry you're not my station," I was forced to acknowledge him.

He was of the 'filthy jeans' club and he and his cronies were having quite the wild time. He was laughing so hard he could barely speak but unfortunately he did. "I want you (by now he was doubled over with laughter), I want you (snicker, snicker) to take this ( he held up his cup of untouched french onion soup) to that table ( he pointed to a table clear across the room) and tell them (snicker, snicker, and by now his friends were guffawing with laughter too) that it's from me."

I was stunned, decided to take my chances (after all it was my word against his), said, "No," and walked away.

In the middle of trying to serve the main entree one of my customers stopped me and instructed me to watch him. He then went through a very dramatic demonstration wherein he performed a magic trick and bent a spoon. By now I was numb with disbelief as I'd realized earlier in the evening that this particular group of construction workers were the very ones responsible for building the elementary school that all of my children had attended. I still thank God that I never possessed that nugget of information when my kids were younger or I probably would have ended up with ulcers because I surely would not have been able to afford send them to private school.

Anyway, the magician waited with bated breath for my praise.

"Wow!" I exclaimed, and he glowed with pride. "Honest to God!" and here I placed my hand over my heart and he sat up even straighter. "I haven't seen that trick since the sixth grade, and I wasn't impressed with it then either!" As I walked away his friends howled with laughter and punched him in the arm.

I did feel horrible though when the man with the speech impediment gave me hell on one of my trips to his table. He had been shut off at the bar for being drunk, was very upset, and implied that I was the one responsible. I'd only served him one beer and having no idea what he was talking about I assured him I'd done no such thing, but he never did believe or forgive me.

After dinner, along with clearing tables, we were required to continue running drinks for everyone. I was standing at the bar waiting to place an order when the bartender, without missing a beat, and while shaking a whiskey sour said to me, "Laura, would you please go into the kitchen and see if you can find the remainder of this gentleman's tie? He seems to have misplaced it." It took me a moment but I looked at the man next to me and nearly died when I saw that his necktie did indeed stop short about three quarters of the way up his shirt front. I felt my face burn and I waited in horror for the 'gentleman' in question to raise hell about being insulted. Instead, he gave me a big smile and after he left I realized he was same man who'd been ordering CC & gingerale from me all night long (and lucky for me I hadn't noticed the tie issue since he'd been sitting down) but was really getting 'well' whiskey and 7UP because the bartender said he'd never notice.

An executive and his wife got into huge fight and she retaliated by jerking all over the dance floor in her very low cut gown with one of the construction workers, who having no idea he was being used, turned beet red with the unexpected pleasure of being chosen, and the exertion of trying to keep up with her.

The last of the guests left at around 2 AM and once again we had to rearrange the whole dining room for Sunday's brunch. Only then were we finally able to sink our exhausted bodies into the comfortable sofas of the darkened bar and enjoy the moon sitting low over the frozen lake. With beers in hand we gossiped about the single 'sequined evening gown' who seemed to spend quite a bit of time with the married 'Fu Manchu mustache', found out some of the guests had taken bets on which would happen first; the executives wife's dress would 'fail' or her dance partner would drop dead, and tried to figure out a remedy for getting the smell of sour sweat out of my nostrils.

We got through Sunday's brunch, and re-set for a late afternoon company party which I'm sorry to say was very staid and therefor very boring (ie: no sequins, magic tricks, cowboy boots, or dirty dancing), and finally after cleaning up the dining room from that party I went home.

I'm still not overly fond of Christmas, mostly because I will never forget the overwhelming feeling of futility I endured for so many years, so it shouldn't be a huge surprise to hear that I still don't put up a tree or decorate (but I'm not a complete Scrooge and have stored all my treasured ornaments in a box in my sister's basement). But Hans is a whole different story.






You can see Hans has put up not just one, but three trees!!

I just shook my head and said, "Fine, but you're the one who gets to take them down after Christmas!"






Merry Christmas, Happy: Holidays, Hanukkah, and Festivus, or just plain old Bah Humbug to one and all from Laura, Hans, and Wilbur!