From our house to yours, Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

Carl and Nora spend some time with Val’s laptop and a movie from iTunes while Mommy and Daddy do some shopping online.

This will never again be an entertaining ad campaign for me…

Yesterday morning Carl was fretting about his field trip to the nursing home and riding in the big school van for the first time and Nora was crying while I tried to fix her hair. We were running late and rushing around like crazy people. Another normal day at the Dahlberg house until the lights began to flicker. Then some sockets got super bright and some dim. I told Gus to go downstairs and see if he could figure out what was going on and I started turning off switches to the lights that were now smelling hot.

Gus got downstairs in time to see smoke pouring out of the TV. He started flinging things out of the way wildly to unplug things in the near dark of our very cloudy Tuesday. I called the electric company in a panic and they calmly told me to turn off the main breaker because there was a problem in our area. No kidding.

The whole downstairs was full of smoke.

Turns out a trash truck hit an electrical pole and caused a surge on our street. It is not icy here. There is no snow left on the ground. We have a nice, wide alley, and nothing especially large about our trash trucks. A totally freak accident.

Our next door neighbor, 9 months pregnant and home alone with two kids, called – and luckily the hard-wired phone downstairs still worked. She needed help turning off her main line. Gus ran over. Our neighbor on the other side was already taking his smoking TV out onto his porch. Good morning, neighbors! And Merry Christmas!

When I finally left my ransacked house with the kids, the traffic light was out and there were police cars, city vehicles, electric company vehicles, and TV news crews at the corner and down the alley. The power was off and now we just had to wait, and wait, and wait to see what was fried and what survived.

In all we lost a TV, the VCR/DVR combo, a stereo, a clock-radio, the phones, the answering machine, the washer, AND the electrical on the FURNACE!

The electric company says it’s on the City and I’m not holding my breath to see a dime out of that outfit. And sure, the insurance will cover anything over the deductible, but sheesh, who wants to lay out hard-earned present money for anything practical in the month of December!

So the heat is back on, thanks to one of my wonderful contractors and a very good warranty. We have a plan for the big stuff, and life has returned to normal in a relatively short time. We were very lucky, considering.

But it rattles you. Had we been on-time yesterday we would have been gone when this happened which immediately brings to mind pictures of my house burned to the ground. I will not be able to listen to news stories of people run out of their homes by fire or damage done by trucks plowing through living rooms in the same way again. You just can’t believe how fast totally random bad things can happen.

So I suppose it’s a small price to pay for realizing how lucky we are to be in our nice little house during this very festive season, with our sweet healthy children, and our very comfortable life.

And now one less TV to distract us from it!

Yes, you’re looking at a CD of the 1965 RCA Victor Christmas sampler LP entitled THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS — alternately known in the Dahlberg household as THE GREATEST CHRISTMAS ALBUM EVER ASSEMBLED IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND, THE END, PASS THE EGGNOG.

And only four years after I first started looking, to boot. A present from Santa Claus that arrived at Thanksgiving, via my dad, who is made of Win. Merry Christmas a little early!