I’m really not the gal for perky holiday posts, I’m telling you. But this one isn’t half-bad, either, if I do say so myself.

Late on Christmas Eve, what to my wondering ears should I hear but the sound of SNARLING GLADIATOR CURS UNDER THE TREE as I attempted to get my wee lassies asleep. Turns out my old red dog broke a tooth (canine tooth, natch) on my other dog’s face. Spurting blood. Exposed root. Awful pain. This was not the plan. SANTA DOES NOT TAKE THE REINDEER TO THE VET ON CHRISTMAS EVE! 

These are the times when I miss being part of a marriage, because a marriage—when it works well, as ours once did—is a triage team.
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When I was a young’un without a care in the world and no half-completed financial statement to present to the divorce court in 2010, I used to dream happily of future Christmases.

This was before boyfriends entered the scene, as boyfriends have a way of coloring the Christmas dream, and why not? “No, Polynesia for Christmas is EXCELLENT. The challenge of decorating a palm tree! Stuffing coconuts with Grandma’s pierogies! Just you WAIT!”

Reality enters the mix. That’s okay. That’s more than okay. That’s good stuff.

But my magic, pre-serious-beaux, fabulous Christmas dreams were all situated, inexplicably, in a place that looked to my mind like Montana, even though chances were slim that this Philly girl would wind up married to a nice Montana boy. We wouldn’t be able to keep our hands off each other, I figured, so almost yearly I’d be squirting out cheesesteak-lovin’, range-ridin’ pups who had impeccable manners and called their mother “ma’am” at all times.
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Oh, if only everyone had the kind of holiday love and compassion that one faithful reader shared with me last week:

I’m a writer too. Grow a pair and get a job.

Now that’s an old-time, down-home Christmas carol, fo’ Santa-shizzle! Grow a pair of what? Chia pets? I already have breasts. Once, in college? A boy in my freshman tutorial? Toppled me onto a pile of coats? Kissed me passionately? And told me that they were beautiful?

My breasts. Not the woolen coats, or Chia pets. Although they can be beautiful too. A Chia pet with a good haircut? A thing of beauty.

Back to the holidays! Yay! Fun!
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I am going on record and having a mug and a bumper sticker made. The holidays are ridiculunkulous and completely unnecessary. They drive otherwise normally abnormal souls to the brink—single, paired, what-have-you.

Turns out the poor French teacher with the Irish surname at the kids’ grade school was just trying to get a damn chocolate log. Well, at first I thought she wanted a cake shaped like a mouth, and I thought, My, that seems rather lewd for the holidays, for a grade school, but you never know with those naughty Frenchies. But then I realized the sweet woman wanted a few good parents to make a few good buches (not bouches, my bad, no, really, my C+ in AP French).

I volunteered to make my own concoction, a ghetto buche, out of Yodels, paste (what? paste: not just for fat kids anymore!) and icing out of a Betty Crocker cardboard vat. This concept made Madame laugh, the sound of twinkling stars coming out to play over the Eiffel Tower. Her laugh made me love her more than I already do for being a French teacher with an Xtreme Irish surname and chronic holiday buche-depression.
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Dear Mom,

Hi! How are you? Thanks for dropping off the toilet paper and cleaning out that really cruddy pan!

You are three blocks away now in the serenity of your apartment, no doubt reading Stargate fan fiction and chuckling. Did I chuckle once? As a kid? Is that a gene thing? I sigh heavily now. Did I do that as a kid, or is that just an almost-40something thing?

Mom, I really have to get my ass off Facebook. Yes, MOM, I said ASS. I know you don’t like a pottymouth, but I said it because sometimes only ASS will DO when you are a CURMUDGEON BEFORE YOUR TIME. I know that’s hard for you to understand, because your only daughter did not inherit your outrageously cheerful genes, the bright sunshiny ones that send even really scary, non-Mormon vampires scuttling for their coffins. I AM CRANKY, and MOM, I AM BEGINNING TO YELL OUT LOUD AT PEOPLE ON FACEBOOK.
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