the ocean

The Reason for the Season

So it has been an eventful holiday season. As has been my recent custom, I kicked off my holiday season with a run of the thrilling amateur theatrical known as the Chicago Bar Association Show. In a truly timely move, it had a Star Wars theme. And I played Luke Skywalker. This is the part where I pretend I was way too cool to be totally jammed about getting to carry a lightsaber.

Because my mom is now living in Chicago (at least part time), I actually partook of the holiday market at the Daley Center and the windows at Macy's this year as well. Generally it is kind of nice to have my mom as an excuse to act like a tourist, but this was somewhat like pounding nails into my skull. No, scratch that; pounding nails into my skull could never draw this kind of horrific crowd.

I hosted Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at my place. This largely involved playing Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You video over and over until nothing made sense any more. There was also brunch food! Loosely defined. Gummy bears are a brunch staple, right?

Now we're in Quincy for a few days. Mold-related events, largely. Hoping to get some Taco Bell breakfast in there somewhere, though.

Well...

I hesitate to say that I am back, because the fact of the matter is I may well disappear for many months at any given moment, much like Renee Russo's career. I promise that I won't come back with a new face, however.

I don't have that much by way of explanation, either. Mainly I just had stuff to do. Dealing with my dad's passing, my mom's illness, their two houses in a city five hours away from mine, the mold that chose to grow in one of those houses, the many acres of grass surrounding those houses that never seems to stop growing, except for when it is covered in giant piles of leaves or snow. Also watching my fair share of HGTV, to be sure. But blogging never really made it to the top of the list or, frankly, even to the vicinity of the list. And there are actual lists at all times, I mean that. That's why half my income is invested in post-its.

Not that there aren't things that, in retrospect, I wish I'd been commenting on. Robin Thicke becoming the saddest person in Sadville was pretty fascinating. I enjoyed the Sony leaks, if only because I share Angelina Jolie's passion for developing character through anachronistic wigs. Oh, and Kim Kardashian's ass photos. Actually, I probably wouldn't have commented on those just because I know she wants us to. And yet I just did! Damn you, Kim, you evil genius!

Anyway, I am back? Sort of? Or maybe I'm not? I guess we'll all kind of just have to wait and see.

Merry Christmas!

Well, there’s really no way around it: my 2014 was pretty terrible, and not just because the Saved by the Bell Lifetime Movie turned out to be kind of underwhelming. My dad passed away unexpectedly and my mom got sick. Overnight I went from gossiping about whether Beth from accounting had lap band surgery and googling my own name to see if my undergrad had finally taken down my terrible haiku poetry to arguing with insurance companies about how many x-rays is too many x-rays and wondering whether “On Eagle’s Wings” has actually become mandatory for memorial services. I helped pick out cemetery plots, only later noticing their dangerous proximity to a tombstone bearing the image of two larger individuals riding a motorcycle, and tracked down back issues of The Utne Reader to take to hospital rooms. I realized yet again that I learned absolutely nothing of any practical use in law school.

None of which is to say that this year was entirely bad. My mom got better. And introduced me to the wonders of HGTV’s Love It or List It. I took in one of my parents’ dogs, a beagle/dachshund mix with the style and attitude of a mid-career Diana Ross, who enriched my life by gently nosing me awake each morning at four and rightly despising the many pirate and princess and cheerleader costumes I inexplicably purchased for her. I went to the Mall of America, where you can find that perfect mix of Old Navy Performance Fleece and indoor log flume rides run by glue-sniffing teenagers who may or may not have just broken up with their girlfriends, and the Minnesota State Fair, where you can experience cutting-edge art composed solely out of dairy products. I appeared in an educational video for traffic court defendants, because that is a thing. So yeah, bereavement is rough, but Midwestern mini-vacations and Canadian couples whose televised real estate misadventures have murder/suicide written all over them sort of make it bearable? Somehow I feel my wit and wisdom on this subject is unlikely to be gathered for an inspirational volume with a forward by Nancy Grace any time soon.

The holidays, of course, present a special conundrum. How can you focus on handcrafting all 197 characters from A Christmas Carol out of toilet paper tubes and twine in the face of such grievous loss? Under the circumstances, is it even right to spend time delivering a body block to a swarthy woman in a tube top over the last pair of clearance L.A. Gears at Shoe Carnival? And what, exactly, is the exact nature of the relationship between Lady Gaga and Kermit the Frog? It’s all very disturbing. But ultimately, we have to put these questions aside and just move forward, because, well, that’s what human beings do. There’s a reason we’re still here hardening our arteries with cheese fries and polluting the hell out of our environment in our Chrysler LeBarons while, say, the Malagasy Hippopotamus totally crapped out in 1000 A.D. We’re built to survive.
And while we’re at it, we might as well thrive. So let’s all have wonderful holidays and amazing 2015s, whether we like it or not. There are bound to be plenty of low points; Girls is still in production and Taylor Swift is unlikely to be crushed by a meteorite any time soon. But there will always be high points as long as we have each other.  And Netflix, of course. Three hundred plus episodes of Murder, She Wrote can really hit the spot.