So alone. So very alone.

"They'll always be in bloom. They'll never die. Never change. They'll never say you're not good looking. They'll always be in your room where you left them and not suddenly move out into the guest house". Sage advice from Steve Butabi! Invest your emotions in artificial flowers, not people. OK, if you REALLY NEED something warm and alive, get a dog, but I warn you, they'll kill your chickens, and when you find yourself in a POW camp, blinded by a vitamin deficiency, you'll wish you'd stuck with the silk roses. What the fuck am I talking about, you ask? Go have children! If that isn't an ancient Jewish curse, it should be!

Call it "Empty Nest Psychosis", "Menopausal Madness" or "Just Have a Beer and Shut the Fuck Up-itiss", I got it bad, and it ain't good. My boy...MY BOYYYYY, is so far away, and the She-Wolf in charge of his dorm took away computer privileges for a week, which ended TODAY and I still haven't gotten any e-mail! AARRGGHH! No news is NOT good news! It is fodder for morbid imaginations. The worst case scenarios run through my mind like not so fine wine from a torn cardboard box. It is still TWO days until I receive my mandatory Saturday Morning Call from the dear boy, and I'm running low on booze. I don't know if I can take it!

Then there is the light of my life, my "Cosmic Christmas Present", my "A son's a son 'till he takes a wife, a daughter's a daughter for all of her life" kid. The one who is going to PORTLAND to spend HER BIRTHDAY, CHRISTMAS, and NEW YEARS with strangers in a MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREA instead of the woman who went through SEVENTEEN HOURS OF LABOR to give birth to her. But that's OK. No no, don't mind me. I'll just stand out here in the rain. It's fine.

So. To sum up; my children desert me, my dogs kill my chickens, it's gonna snow, the price of beer is rising, the economy is going belly up, the place I work is begging people to take days off without pay PLEASE, I'm old, fat, blind and stupid, and I notice we're out of napkins. I stole that one from Woody Allen. Aside from that, this is going to be the BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!!!!