It must be time to go outside. We are out of whipped cream.

So far, the Hershey’s syrup supply is holding up.

“My fellow Americans….”

Also, these turned out to be every bit as much fun as I predicted.

More later. Promise. Right now, I have much better things to do. She’s just stepping out of the shower….

She gets here tomorrow night. Yay!

Waitaminnit, tomorrow? Ohmigawd, tomorrow? It’s time to freak out!

Only I’m not freaking out. I’m just excited. I should be all nervous and scared, but I’m not. I just can’t wait for her to get here.

Fair warning: blogging may be light during her visit. However, there’s reason to suspect quality will improve.

In other news, she and I are the subject of a Christmas fanfic. The Boss at The Collar Purple was inspired by the chained Christmas present and wrote “Christmas Presents” in our honor. And we are honored, although I’m not sure I could ever be this stern with a straight face:

He looked up at Nymph slowly, thunder in his eyes. “You opened the package, didn’t you?”

Struck dumb by the piercingly accurate accusation, she could only stammer, “W-what, what, I mean, why do you think ”

He interrupted her before she could complete the thought. “I warn you, the punishment for lying is much more severe than that for disobedience. Now I ask you again, Did you open your present?”

In a barely audible voice, she whispered, “Y-yes sir.”

“What was that, girl?”

She cleared her throat, but couldn’t raise her eyes to meet his. “Yes sir, I opened it.”

“Go to the table, bend over it, and grip the far side.” She hastened to comply with his order. Her palms were sweaty against the wood of the table and she fought down the urge to wipe them on her clothes.

My oh my, did it suddenly get warm in here?

And how! Yesterday while we are on the phone, suddenly she says “Ow! Hey! It’s stuck! Ow! I hurt my hand trying to pull it off!”

“What’s stuck? What’s wrong?”

“The chain! The chain from your present! I was playing with it, and somehow it got around my right wrist, and now the lock’s closed and it’s stuck!”

(This is technically known as the “Doctor, I don’t know how that got in there, I was holding it in my hand and then I slipped in the shower and fell on it” explanation.)

Of course I’m laughing so hard my teeth hurt. Also, I’m thinking fast. “Do you remember the combination?”

“No!” (This turns out, sadly, not to be true.)

I quickly tell her a combination. One digit removed from the actual. Visions of saying “Oh, gosh, you must have reset the combination while you were playing, now you’ll have to try all ten thousand with your left hand while I tease encourage you” begin to dance in my head. I envision hours of high quality family fun.

Alas, she was not listening to my misinformation.

“Oh, there it is! I got it off. Gosh, I was getting worried there for a minute. Good thing I remembered the… HEY! You gave me the wrong combination!!!”

God, that was fun.

But the real fun of the day was her confirming her tickets. January 10. Best Christmas present ever. Cannot wait.

No, not unwrapping her, you horndogs, not yet anyway; that’s still on track for a much-anticipated day in January. Move along now, nothing to see here. Geez!

No, after Christmas Eve celebrations with family, I called to give her the combination to her tamper-resistant present. I’m sure the tender scene looked something like this:

Then I opened my present from her, and began to pull out…wait for it…socks. Yes, socks. I believe she will need a spanking for that. That, or I’ll have to start teasing her by calling her “Grandma”. Which do you suppose she’d prefer?

Although they are, in fact, very nice socks.

Fortunately, the socks were only packing material for a very nice bottle of usquebaugh, so I got a good laugh and then had a delicious drink. Thus was a good time had by all, and the merriest of Christmas Eves for me in many a year.

As for that other unwrapping: the wait is killing me.

The Nymph and I spend so much time on the phone that her flat rate unlimited minutes long distance calling plan “accidentally” turned her service off (until she complained) for using too many minutes. I am not making this up.

Much of this conversation is fairly prosaic talk about the daily fabric of our lives, and yet we both treasure it highly. I haven’t been sure quite why, and I haven’t questioned it, I’ve just enjoyed it. I should have asked Halley, who knows the value of “Talking About Simple Stuff“:

I was talking with someone today about how much you need someone in your life to just talk to about all the simple stuff that happens during your day. There’s really something satisfying and necessary about the “Honey, I’m home,” conversations couples take for granted at the end of the day.

Exactly.

As noted previously, The Nymph is a confessed present peeper. So I warned her that her Christmas present would come in tamper-resistant packaging. She got it yesterday:

She says she’s still laughing. I figure she’s madly trying all 9999 combinations, in order. We’ll see if she remembers to humor me by asking for the combination on Christmas day.