Because when Christmas time rolls around each year, secretly I am actually only six years old and have no patience at all, we tend to string out our gift giving to as many days as possible. To this end, Richard and I did our stockings tonight, on Christmas Eve Eve. Since I got off work extra early, I came home, corralled all of Richard's presents into one heap on the floor of the library and commenced with wrapping. The cats poked their heads in from time to time, but aside from an experimental bap here and there at random bits of wrapping paper they mostly left me alone.

This is not, however, because they were being unusually well behaved; rather it was that Rosie had discovered the shelf on which I've been stashing various finished knitted objects, and was busily shoving them all onto the floor. I might have been a little upset about this except that the items in question were three hats and scarves knitted from an unfortunate yarn choice that (despite label claims to the contrary) felted and shrank in the wash. So they'd been sitting there while I pondered various ways in which to (try to) salvage them, and I figured if it was a choice between the cats chewing on a few slightly ruined hats and 'helping' me with the wrapping paper and the scissors, the hats would have to win.

Of course, I did not realize exactly what Rosie was doing with the things she was industriously dumping onto the floor until much later, as I was getting ready to go to bed, and noticed a familiar color behind the chairs in the bay window. It turns out Rosie had very carefully severed one of the pompoms from one of the hats and had carried it off as a prize. I have no doubt that she has similar intentions for the remaining two hats and their pompoms as well. Yes, some cats catch mice and bugs, but Rosie hunts bigger prey. Stuffed dragons, green beans, and now pompoms. I am almost afraid to find out what is next.

But I digress. I got all my wrapping done just as Richard was walking in the door, so I busied myself getting dinner finished while he headed upstairs with boxes and scissors and worked on wrapping his own pile. We ate dinner and then sat on the couch in the living room while the cats milled around at our feet and emptied our stockings to each other.

There were traditional stocking stuffers – socks for me (Richard got his socks earlier), a chocolate orange for him, paperback books, little toys, a handful of super balls supposedly for me, but which I know are really for the cats, and so on. And then we sat on the sofa and watched random shows on HGTV and ate early Christmas candy and it was a lovely start to the season.

This has been a Holidailies entry.