I could have been someone. Well, so could anyone.

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I am reading Mitch Albom (Tuesdays With Morrie, The First Phone Call From Heaven).  He is sort of Oprah-style uplifting, by which I mean his work is a bit saccharine for my cynical palate, but perhaps this is a good idea right now, a little sweetness.  And the reminders about mindfulness don't really hurt either.  I could afford to take a few deep breaths.  I might, however, need some Michel Tremblay to roughen things up a bit when I am finished.


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I spent a lot of money today on wine and Christmas junk, which is funny because every year we say we aren't doing this.  But that is a tough sell with a 17-year old who loves everything about Christmas -- the giving, the receiving, the lights, the trees, the baking, blah blah blah.  So we get her stuff.  And we do the stuff she needs to do to make it feel right to her.  Oh, and when you decide you aren't doing Christmas it does not really prevent other people around you from doing Christmas to you.  So now you have to decide whether to be an ass and refuse their gifts, be an ass and keep their gifts without reciprocating, or stop acting like an ass and go shopping.  So I spent a lot of money on Christmas junk.

In the spirit of Christmas miracles, when I got home,  I decided to sweep and mop the floor in the mudroom.  (You know, a mudroom sounds like a terrible thing, but in fact it is a marvelous place to keep shoes and boots and laundry and cats and Shane MacGowan's teeth and other revolting things that otherwise bring mess into the rest of the house.  And you can close the door on it and pretend none of it is there.  Except the cat who swears and scratches up the baseboards.)  I do not know when was the last time someone in this family decided to sweep the floor in that part of the house, but it must have been at least a decade ago.


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Last night I dreamed we bought a giant family-sized bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.  (This should have alerted me to the fact I was dreaming because the last time I ate KFC was more than ten years ago, and it still hasn't been long enough.  Yuck.)  In my dream, J decided she did not like the skins on the chicken and therefore was wandering around eating chicken and leaving slimy greasy chicken skins covered in batter around the house.  I found a couple on the countertop, one on the couch, another on the mantle by the fireplace, and so on.  I was quite put out.  In reality, we do not actually eat chicken, not even skinless grilled chicken these days.  Shawn has abruptly gone completely vegetarian, and J and I have always been pretty non-carniverous anyway.  Now that our primary meat-eater has lost his appetite for blood, we do not buy meat anymore.  Especially not Kentucky Friend Chicken.


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