Merry Christmas from the Family

So this semester got a little crazy. Some of my students are apparently on drugs, and some of them seem have have volunteered for frontal lobe lobotomies. Yes, you have to do your homework and pass the exams to get an A in the class. Even a C.

I got A's in my automotive classes, which made me happy.

But then I had some sort of psychobilly freakout that left me feeling panicked and out of breath, which wouldn't be that weird if there were anything to panic about or if I'd done something worthy of breathlessness. Plus, too, this mysterious tickle/pressure/not-quite-pain started below my left ribs. It started the Friday before Christmas and got worse all weekend, and all the vodka in Fremont County wouldn't put it right. So I called the doctor's office for an appointment, and the receptionist asked what was wrong. I said, "Christmas is trying to kill me." She said, "don't worry, Christmas is trying to kill everybody." But she made an appointment for me anyway. By the time I got there, I'd googled "mysterious pain below ribs," and concluded that my spleen was on the verge of exploding, since that's really the only interesting thing in that location.

The doctor turned out to be a nurse-practitioner, which was perfectly fine because she still had a prescription pad. She said that I'm depressed. I said, "of course I'm depressed. Christmas is trying to kill me and my spleen is going to explode." She said that my spleen is fine, that I don't have a pain at all, just some phantom thing my body dreamed up to impress upon me the level of stress I may or may not be having. I said that it still fucking hurt. We talked about my mom, who's dying of ALS, and for whom this would be her last Christmas most likely and how all she wants are leg warmers, and how I feel obligated to visit, but how nothing in my family is ever going to work right, leg warmers or not.

And I started to cry.

Because of my spleen, really. I'm fine with the family shit. Really. And I love Christmas; most of all I love the pressure and stress of this particular holiday. It's my favorite. Really. The music is great and the stores are delightful this time of year. I especially love the music IN the stores. Really.

So she gave me a prescription for anti-depressants and Xanax for the "panic attacks" (which is her way of saying "Christmas ambushes," I think). So I went home, took a Xanax, had a shot or two of Stoli, and then fell flat on my face in the snow next to the sidewalk, skinning my nose and both cheekbones. My gift to you, gentle reader, is the gem of knowing that Xanax and Stoli don't mix. Well, kind of they do, but they fuck with your sense of balance and render your arms useless.

And if you don't know the song, please try to find at least a snippet of Robert Earl Keen's "Merry Christmas from the Family." If you do know the song, please play it loudly, at least twice. It's the only part of Christmas that wasn't trying to sneak into my spleen with a suicide bomb.