from our family to yours
Below.
*
Just a disclaimer that this was a Halloween picture of DJ. Allah thought it might be a bit frightening without an explanatory note. I don't dress my kids up like this all the time. Mostly.
*
Just a disclaimer that this was a Halloween picture of DJ. Allah thought it might be a bit frightening without an explanatory note. I don't dress my kids up like this all the time. Mostly.
I'm eight months pregnant with my second child. The first child, almost three years old, has a raging fever and sinus infection. My then husband has chosen to take the overnight shift at his job, leaving me home to take care of the sick child on a holiday evening.
I make little snacks for myself and the daughter to eat while we wait for midnight. Of course, there is no way I'll make it to midnight because I'm suffering from exhaustion, plus the only way to forget that I am so huge that I waddle instead of walk and it takes me about an hour to tie my shoes is to sleep. Forget the daughter. She's on some mixture of antibiotics and cold medicine that knocks her out for hours at a time.
After an hour of coloring and making silly little crafts, I decide to turn the clock ahead, pretend it's midnight, celebrate the new year with a toast of sparkling grape juice (white grape juice and seltzer) and go cry myself to sleep while thinking about the misery that is my life.
Daughter has other ideas. She decided that what she really wants to do is to vomit up a pile of medicine, snacks and chocolate milk all over the living room floor. I try not to cry as I attempt to clean up the floor, my very pregnant belly pressing against the rug as I'm on my hands and knees scraping puke from the carpet. The daughter has passed out on the couch.
I pick her up while she's sleeping - no small feat for a pregnant woman with sciatica - lay her on her bed and change her out of the vomit-covered pajamas she was wearing. I wash her up and tuck her in and she never flinches, never wakes up even once and I wonder if maybe she's gone into a coma and she's suffering from some terrible strain of the flu or a virus that the doctor overlooked, so I stay in her room and make sure her breathing is even and that she responds - even in her sleep - to a pinch on her arm. She does. I feel bad, but love hurts sometimes, you know?
I go back to the living room and clean up the crafts. It's only 8:00. I call my husband at his job to tell him how this night is going but he says he's busy, can't talk and as I go to hang up the phone I hear the sound of a merry party going on in the background and I yell into the receiver I hope you're having fun! Slam the phone down. Go on the couch and pout.
I flip through various rocking and rolling New Year's specials. I'm bored. I'm lonely. I wonder what kind of husband Dick Clark would make. I wonder if his wife gets pissed that he's out every New Year's eve, but then I figure that she's probably in the ABC green room munching on caviar and sipping champagne and saying, Yes I'm Dick Clark's wife. I'm soooo lucky.
I fall into a light sleep, sitting up with the remote in my hand, and I start to dream about the ghost of New Year's past, when midnight meant giant swigs of Boonesfarm wine that someone stole from their father and a joint passed around with Pink Floyd playing in the background and maybe a stolen kiss, even an attempt to get under my shirt, which I respond to with a kick in the shin. If you're not Dick Clark rockin', don't come knockin'. Yea, I always had a thing for Dick. Clark.
10:00 on this miserable New Year's Eve. I decide to go to bed. I call my parents to wish them Happy New Year and I sneak in a few well-placed twinges of self-pity, hoping they'll tell me to pack up the kid and come on over to celebrate with them. But my parents had a long-standing tradition - since all of their kids were old enough to be out without a curfew - that New Year's Eve, being my father's birthday, is their special night and no one is allowed to interfere with it. My father makes lobster and shrimp and he and my mother sit in front of the fireplace and sip wine and enjoy the evening alone. We all comply with their wishes because it's our understanding that this is the only night of the year that dad scores with mom. At least that's what he tells us.
So I get on the phone and whine and cry and tell them I'm going to bed because I just want this year to end and they wish me a Happy New Year and I hang up with my bottom lip trembling as I try to keep from exploding in the biggest fit of self-pity my family has ever seen.
I put on my pajamas. I settle into bed with Dick Clark and the remote. And then I hear the sound of little feet and they aren't pitter pattering, they are running. Full steam. And they are accompanied by the sound of a three year old girl screaming Moommy! I can't stop the poop! It won't stop! Oh lord.
I get up and catch her just as she's about to slip in whatever she's trailing behind her. Oh, yes. Diarreah. Bad, bad diarreah, most likely a result of the antibiotics that I assumed she lost with the vomiting episode. Her jammies are brown and drooping. It's running down her legs. I scoop her up and run into the bathroom, throw her in the bathtub. It takes about an hour to clean up both of us, the kitchen floor and the bathroom. She falls asleep on the living floor, I just fall to the floor in tears. Dick Clark stares at me from the tv. Stop your crying, woman! Get up and make the most of what you have! Right.
I go back into the bathroom to wash my face and see that the daughter, who insisted on helping me clean the tub and the floor, threw some of the used baby wipes in the toilet. I flush without thinking. The toilet overflows. And overflows. I try to stop it. I use the plunger to no avail. I call my father. The...toilet...won't...stop! He thinks I've been drinking. Or smoking. He has no idea what I'm talking about and I take his questions as a sign that he doesn't care.
I want my sisters to come take care of me, but they both have plans. Sorry, you've got to deal with the toilet on your own, sis. There is no way I can convey the misery of my evening to them.
I call the husband while I'm cleaning up the toilet overflow (I finally got the water to stop pouring out) and he asks why I can't take care of anything myself. I hang up. I cry again.
My mother calls to see how it's going with the toilet. I break out into a long, wailing cry, the kind that Italian grandmothers invoke over the coffins of their husbands (whom they hated while they were alive). Nobody loves me! I'm now sobbing and my breath is coming in deep heaves. No...body....loves me! I'm all alone and the toilet won't work and Natalie is losing her lunch from both ends and the baby is kicking me and I smell like poop and vomit and my husband is in New Jersey having the time of his life and I bet Dick Clark would never, ever do this to his wife!
When I'm finally done, my mother heaves a heavy sigh. Fine, come on over. I wrap the daughter in a heavy blanket and we walk across the street to my parent's house. It's 11:00. I fall asleep at 11:10. I miss Dick Clark ushering in the New Year and when I wake the house is dark and my parent's bedroom is closed so I assume that my dad got his yearly present anyhow, which makes me want to throw up just thinking of it and thinking of throwing up makes me relive the whole sordid evening in my head. I curl up next to my daughter, in the room where I used to sleep back in the day and I wish a whispered new year greeting in her ear. I silently make some resolutions, some that take years to complete, but I do eventually complete them all.
Except for marrying Dick Clark. Who, it turns out, is really a robotron. So I hear.
With the exception of a post or two 
Before you all go grab your latest issue of TV Guide and start circling the various holiday specials you intend to watch (A Kid Rock Christmas, anyone?), I'd like to talk to you about something.
Rudolph. Is there a creature so beloved as that red-nosed reindeer? Is there any stop-motion animated movie that tugs at your heart more? No, of course not. You will gather - and by you I mean everyone, Christians, Jews, Atheists, Satanists - in front of the tv with your children at some point in the next month to watch this time-honored tale.
Well, I'm here to put a stop to that. Rudolph is not a cuddly, warm, fuzzy story. Rudolph, in fact, is a tale of pacifism and appeasement and mental abuse.
When Rudolph is first discovered to have the light bulb nose, his father is appalled. Ashamed, he tries to cover up his son's nose. What kind of father is that? He is telling his kid right off the bat, kid, you're ugly and you embarass me. Diguise yourself in public. Right then and there someone should have called social services to tell them that there was a brute of a stag emotionally damaging his child. I mean, the poor kid has a disfigurement. They should have been helping him, not making him feel even worse about it.
So everyone eventually finds out about Rudie's nose anyhow. The kids torment him and pick on him and turn him into an outcast. He's not allowed to join in their games because he is, gasp!, different!
So what happens? Rudolph goes off on an adventure (where he comes upon the Island of Misfit Toys, but that's a whole other dissertation), where it is discovered that his nose can actually come in handy. Hey, the kid is a freak, but he's a useful freak.
The rest of the reindeer gang find out that Rudolph is going to lead Santa's sleigh through the snowstorm. You know what happens. They suddenly love him. He's a hero. Even though he's been scorned and ridiculed and isolated, the other reindeer discover that they can use Rudolph's disfigurement to their advantage, so now they'll let him in their little club.
And what does Rudolph do? He leads the damn sleigh and saves the day. Now everyone in this movie, from Rudolph's parents to his girlfriend to Santa, the other reindeer and the Yukon guy mock him throughout or at least make him feel like crap. Apparently, Rudolph has no balls.
This is all his father's fault. Dad turned Rudolph into the reindeer equivalant of a nerd when he taught Rudie to just take the abuse from his neighbors and classmates because he deserved it. After all, he was hideously deformed. In essence, he taught his son not to stand up for himself.
If Rudolph learned anything at all on his great adventure, he would have turned around and said fuck off and die you miserable bastards. Find some other sucker to save Christmas for you. And then he would take out his AK-47 and turn the whole crowd of miserable reindeer into a carnivore's dream. Then he would go back to the Island of Misfit Toys, become their ruler and plot to take over all of Rankin-Bass land.
So parents, don't let your babies grow up to be Rudolphs. Don't watch the show. Or it could be your kid standing in the middle of the forest one day, gunning down all the kids who wouldn't let him play their reindeer games.
This has been a public service announcement.
My idealistic fantasies of what tree decorating night is supposed to be like have once again been shot to hell. I should probably lower my expectations. Or come to the realization that idealistic=unreal.
More on that tomorrow. 
I have decided to give up 
Dimebag, formerly known as Diamond (back in the Pantera glam days), whose real name was Darrell Abbot, was the brother of Damageplan/Pantera drummer Vinnie Paul and the son of country singer Jerry Abbott.
It's a bizarre kind of story. Not only did the gunman intentionally single out and kill Darrell, but he shot blindly into the audience, killing three people. The gunman himself was killed, so we'll probably never know what made this guy freak out.
And I'm sure I'll get a lot of "who the fuck cares?" comments/emails, and they'll all be deleted. Because, as a fan of his work, I care.
According to the Damageplan message boards, a bassist from the opening band tried to shield Darrell and was shot. Also, they are reporting that another member of Damageplan, Pat Lachman, has died and one of the other victims was a security guard.
DJ had just picked up a Guitar magazine last week that came with a DVD of Dimebag giving guitar tips. He was in awe of Darrell's talents.
R.I.P. Dimebag - you will be missed.
Those of you who have worked retail during the holiday season will understand my reluctance to speak about this before now. The memories are horrific, brutal and sometimes cause flashbacks that leave me curled up in a fetal position, sobbing and begging to be sedated.
She's not as nude as Rox's girl but you gotta admit, she's got it going on. And she looks just like me! Yea...just like me. Mmhhm. (cue Jon Lovitz)
That whip is to get you motivated to vote for both 
