grab your flu med of choice and a bottle of wine, and assume the fetal position.

All I want for Christmas is a new inhaler and a fresh bottle of Xanax.

I have decamped to the couch these days because my husband is ill and I think we all know that men who are sick are much sicker then the rest of us. He is coughing and making gross noises and he's all sweaty and I, for one, am having none of it.
Plus I need to be close to the kids, who are also coughing and miserable. Lucy needs breathing treatments throughout the night, and Max needs to be woken up and reminded to pee - in his feverish exhaustion he sleeps like the dead and might not wake up of his own accord.

I'm not sick myself, per se - just exhausted from worrying and holiday weekend-ing and trying to balance my checkbook by counting on my fingers and hoping for the best. I drank too much, I smoked too much. I slept far, far too little.

(In related news, the rumors you heard are true - I switched to menthol cigarettes for the holidays:. Menthol = fucking FESTIVE.)

I mailed out the last package of gifts yesterday because at this point I'm just trying to get it there before the end of the year. Christmas cards should be mailed out sometime in January because I ditched Christmas cards and instead I am going to send out Happy New Year cards - because everyone celebrates the New Year (except me because - I know this will shock you - I am working) - with thank you notes stuffed inside. Because that is what I call efficienct and eco-friendly. I am just trying to reduce my carbon footprint, you see. Bonus: the fact that I have no family photo yet can be remedied next week when we don't look like death warmed over, and I can get 50 copies of the 4 of us looking aggrieved and/or stoned PER USUAL, and slap that baby in there too - then people can stop bitching about how I never send pictures because LOOK I JUST DID.

But I have to pace myself. The perfect moment cannot be forced, it must be captured like a butterfly stuck in one of those butterfly houses at the science museums that are all the rage these days, where little kids pretend that it's all magical and amazing but what they really want to do is grab that huge fucking butterfly over there and pull it's wings off.

So in the meantime, I am headed back to bed wearing nothing but a hand-crocheted scarf to keep my neck warm, and jingle bell panties from the roller girl party because IT'S CHRISTMAS DAMMIT and Santa Hats give me the creeps. I'll probably doze off clutching my inhaler and listening to "Morning Edition" on NPR, and sleep a dreamless sleep, and possibly wake up choking on a Sucrets. Wish you were here...........