Here’s My Jolly, Holiday Newsletter For This Really Fucked-Up Year!

Dear Family and Friends

There’s no place like home for the holidays, right? Well, no place like my home after nine months in lockdown with my family.  If I’d known, I would have locked myself in the back yard tool shed with that raccoon family. At least they wash their hands before dinner.

I like to think we ‘rise’ to any occasion in our house, just like that sourdough bread I was delighted to have the opportunity to bake. Unfortunately, I didn’t have 400 year old yeast starter brought over on the Mayflower by ancestors. I had my own yeast starter; My gynecologist prescribed something for it.

Our neighborhood got into communal gardening and I helped by starting a bee colony. I ordered honeybees on sale from a discount bee company in Asia. How was I to know the difference between honey bees and murder hornets? Our neighborhood still can’t visit the garden and from what I can see through my Haz-Mat suit, I won’t be able to gift you any honey this year. Or ever, according to the Department of Agriculture.

I know you’ll miss hearing about our family adventures while traveling in some exotic, foreign locale. This year, unfortunately, only my sanity took a holiday. It left about two weeks after lockdown started and had its passport stamped in such exotic locations as Paranoia, Depression, Mad-As-A-Hatter, Anxiety and The Phobias.

I don’t know about you, but I have newfound respect for hair stylists! Who knew coloring hair was so complicated? Apparently not my husband! My hair is now several shades of rainbow and, with the additional COVID-19 pounds on what could be described charitably as my ‘Rubenesque’ frame, I look like the butt-end of a unicorn.

We proved we’re still a family with an entrepreneurial spirit! Bathtub wine-making seemed like such a good use of the bathtub, since no one in our house was bathing. It was looking good until the dog fell into the tub and the wine made his hair fall out. I’d bottle it and sell it as hair remover but no one’s shaving, either. Now I use the bathtub to hide behind the shower curtain and drink my wine straight from the bottle.

Here’s a math riddle for those of us with kids in Zoom classrooms: If Mommy buys 100 rolls of toilet paper on Amazon, and duct tapes her kids to the wall, how many cosmopolitans can she drink before she runs out of cake and her neighbor calls Child Protective Services? Nobody in our house got that right!

I’m sure both you and your husband managed the ‘disruption’ of working from home. Funny story: My husband was into a deep dive on me, when our kids disrupted into our bedroom, unannounced.

I’m sorry to say that we did not rekindle our love for jigsaw puzzles and family game night. I did rekindle something, however! I lit a fire under my husband. He suffered a few second degree burns but, by God, that garage is clean!

And as long as we’re ‘re-crapping’ the year, suffice it to say that when the septic tank exploded from all the toilet paper use, our kids used their new-found craft skills to make ‘poopie patties’ which we used as fuel when the tornado hit and shut off our heat and electricity.

All in all, this year was like the ten biblical plagues of Egypt. Except for the locusts. Wait, does having your kitchen invaded by ants count? If so, I’m solid.

No, this year hasn’t been great. Santa’s sleigh is probably being pulled into a deep, dark abyss by the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. But there’s always next year; Unless that asteroid NASA has been talking about decides to take a slight left turn.