Christmas Eve and other things

Sometime during the night on Christmas Eve ~ Eve,

when the party was over and we were all snug in our beds,

the temperature plummeted to depths it hasn't been in Savannah in many years.

No snow, no sleet, just freezing temperatures.

I got up early as I always do,

took a nice, long, hot, shower,

and proceeded to enjoy the beginning of Christmas Eve.

As others arose from slumber, they got their showers.

Then it was Amanda's turn.

She was almost done,

just had to rinse the conditioner out of her hair.

At that moment,

the water went from hot to stone cold in an instant.

She was out like a flash with the conditioner still in her hair.

Mark and the boys had left to go do some last-minute Christmas shopping.

I was in the kitchen cooking.

We waited an appropriate amount of time and checked for hot water to no avail

thinking that maybe after all the showers the hot water had just run out.

That wasn't the case.

At some point, we realized there was probably not going to be any more hot water

 at Hope Lane on Christmas Eve.

 Disaster!

At that moment Amanda got a call from Mark that his car wouldn't start.

David gets involved at this time to retrieve Jake and Eli and bring them home.

Mark was stuck waiting for Triple-A in a freezing cold parking lot.

Amanda went over to David's house to get the conditioner out of her hair.

David delivers the boys and makes a call to the Tankless water heater helpline.

They dispatch him some useless information.

It's 11:00 by now.

We were all due to meet at

 Jalapenos Mexican restaurant for our annual Christmas Eve Lunch at 11:30.

We changed the time to a little later.

David kept working on the water heater,

 which consisted of pressing a button on and off every ten seconds until infinity.

At some point, I suggested that we walk away from the problem.

We left for lunch with full confidence 

that the continual button pressing was going to bring our hot water back.

We enjoyed the fun time,

 but the hot water heater fiasco was looming at the back of our minds.

Huge amounts of food prep and clean-up require huge amounts of hot water.

Mark never made it.

He had an inordinately long wait for the Triple-A guy.

The problem was a dead battery.

*to be continued