04 January, 2005

New Year

...Forget the hearse 'cause I'll never die/ I've got nine lives/ Cats eyes/ Usin' every one of them and runnin' wild....

"It's not a holiday unless there's booze in Mama's glass." -me.


As the archives demonstrate, I'm indestructible, therefore, any time I spend 'dead' is purely voluntary.

New Year's Day is a top-down day. Today is practically bikini weather, but I'm in no condition. Holiday eating brings a smackdown to the Naked Season body. Have I mentioned I'm feeling zaftig?

Hawk is here again, gone again. We've begun to write another murder mystery together. Slay Ride has been very popular, and we've kicked around ideas for another collaberation for years, including a Civil War show, but this one is about washed-up superheros. Murder, writing, performance and my husband, all in one car. Paradise? Close enough.

I drive south, on a mission. SK is firesaling all assets of the now-defunct Chesapeake Music Hall. For sixteen dollars total, I pick up a mink stole for me and a rabbit jacket for Fuzzy. Yes, Baby Diva has acquired her first fur. Call me an enabler.

Et ensui, nous avons le dejeuner avec La Reine a chez-t'elle, moi, et les enfants aussi, le dejeuner Francais, pour la grande lesson. Nous trouvons du potage et des sandwiches, et tout c'est bon.

Holidays are lovely. Kahlua spiked coffee, brandy spiked egg nog, 5 litres of wine, and innumerable champagne mimosas grease the meshing metallic gears of familial interaction into a smooth machine with a high-performance, high-maintenance whine.

And yes, I would like cheese with that, thanks.

Highlights include Bowl games (great game, Wolverines, except for that bit about not winning), a New Year's Eve murder with the usual suspects, the birth of eleven Golden puppies, Boxing Day Brunch and Poker Night with BirthdayBoy, Christmas Roast Beast cooked by a vegetarian, traditional Christmas Eve lobster dinner, (well lubricated with beaucoup de vino), unharried holiday shopping, and an evening out with BuddahPat.

Let me preface: five days before Bedlam, when assorted family members and various hangers-on descend upon me to partake in food and holiday joy, my darling Mother decides to have her floors redone. This means moving herself and her three and a half (one very pregnant dog counts as one and a half, doesn't she?) INTO MY HOUSE. Before FlyLady, I would have flipped my wig. Instead, I was only very slightly peeved. I bought prespiked eggnog and handed her a snootful when I was in danger of being annoyed. Or had one myself. Or both.

At any rate, because of her unexpected presence in my home, I had an unprecedented Night Out with BuddahPat, without tiny tagalongs, who complain that raw fish isn't their favorite. Go figure.

BuddahPat:

...and I'd tilt his head to the side, point his toes toward the ground and hang him from the doorknob with the laces from my tennis shoes. That's a lot of green, there.

You hung GI Joe? I'm not doing well tonight. Well, worse than usual.
Oh, yeah, he was always being hauled in for a court martial and convicted of treason. Your turn. You have the high balls.

The stripey ones are high? Oh, look, they are.

Wendy:

Sorry, you're right. That's where the Yeungling used to be, before we counted everything for the new owner.

New owner? (Ellen is almost, but not entirely, incoherent.)

Ellen:

I'm retiring. Next two months, gonna find me a farm. Hogan's Alley, that's the new name. We closed today. I'm celebrating.


He regales me with tales of his cats, reminds me which sushi platters I prefer, refils my saki, introduces me to the SkyeBar, makes faces at my chocolate cherry martini, drools over a Scandinavian waitress sashaying over in spraypainted pants. She carries our creme brulee.

Sprawled on the sofa, we face an air duct and pretend to watch television, amidst young hipsters out to impress themselves with how cool they are. He gives me a blow-by-blow of today's episode of Most Extreme Maximum Challenge Event. Or something.

And there she is, sliding down the hill in a bowl. She has to stay upright because at the bottom of the hill, there's a little puddle of water. Do you know how many naughes it took to make this couch?

One? And this event is called?
This is called Irritable Bowl Syndrome. Obviously, you have no idea what a naughe is.

Well, I thought it was sort of like a bison. Whoa, did she just tip over into the puddle?
Naughes are like furry mollusks. She sure did. It's dirty water, and you know how the Japanese are about that.

Very clean, the Japanese. So this sofa, it took thousands of naughes.
Very likely.


I flip the purely decorative scarf he gave me over one shoulder.

But there's only one navida running around cold and fleeceless?
The fleece from that navida probably made twenty scarves like yours. They're sort of like llamas.


Drugs. Who needs 'em? We've got imagination, baby.

(Back In Black; AC/DC)

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