Sometimes a Christmas miracle takes the form of a cat with a bladder infection

The kitty I'm sitting would not agree, I'm sure, but she saved me from my usual overlong stay with my fams, making the trip a 24 hour adventure. Had to get back to give her the antibiotics. Moms will just have to understand about that.

Thank you, little sweet, cute, fuzzy gray and white tiger-stripey Christmas elf, for saving me from my sister's discussions of her relationship with God and her irritable bowels. Thank you for limiting my exposure to my mother's anxiety attacks, tears and criticisms. (She means well, she means well.) Thank you for freeing me from the inane, hackle-raising political arguments between my Christian conservative brother-in-law and my radical, not terribly politically sophisticated left-wing sister (with the irritable bowels).

Thank you most of all for saving me from having to drive home and back on the worst traffic days. I owe you one kid. Except you peed in my lap last night when you couldn't go out during the thunderstorm. So we might be even.

Blahg Humbug!

Is it just me, or do family Christmas get-togethers feel an awful lot like hell on earth? My office-mate's flight home just got cancelled. I've never heard anyone whoop with such pure joy. He seemed even happier than my nieces and nephew ripping open their Christmas presents.

I wonder if one could make money with a business supplying holiday advocates for single women...and men, too. Let me be clear--these are not fake dates. These are life coaches who will advocate for the singleton over the next 3 to 5 days.

These folks could accompany the single person home for the holidays, bringing along cocoa and good cheer for the long flight/train ride/drive home. They could advocate for the singleton with the critical family, providing much needed family therapy in the process. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the advocate would insist that the singleton must not sleep in a "freezing back bedroom of death" with a spinster sister who likes to discuss her problems with bodily functions, but in a hotel room where peace and quiet and single beds reign, if not for the greater calm and mood improvement this would provide, then simply for human dignity. Human dignity! Depending on client wishes, the advocate could then drive said client to a pastry shop or perhaps to the nicest bar in town--even if that's the Boot Scootin' Lounge--to eat/drink the day into oblivion every evening and deflect passes from overzealous pastry chefs and/or drunken wannabe cowboys.

I suppose married people would be very jealous if this were to happen.

Who wants to go into business with me? Calling all advocates (P.S., advocate wannabes, this means you don't have to go home for the holidays either because you're working w/ a nice, single potential cutie...woops. This is not, repeat NOT, a date!)

Yeah, I'm starting to think Hollywood has already made a feel-good movie about this.

Ah well. Peace out ya'll. Happy holidays. Wish me luck.

When Fascists Rock

Okay, that's not really fair at all, but...

My office-mate sent me this really quite extraordinary Klaus Nomi video just as I was finishing the last post. I can't help but think there's some synchronicity.

Please watch at least until he goes into his falsetto once.