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.

Yesterday, I picked up a hitchhiker named Pete who sang off-key. But he didn't kill me or steal my car.

I am anxious about all my family coming here for my wedding next week. Don't feel like there's enough of me to go around, don't know why they are all driving such a long way to watch me marry my husband of three years.

I am writing and writing and writing, and it feels so good. Some sort of soul massage. It's a mystery, not my usual genre, and here's what I've learned: Dermatologists don't care to discuss the potential of Botox as poison with anybody. Google-image "wound botulism" and you'll gross yourself right on out. I think my googling and my interlibrary loan books have quite likely put me on a special list somewhere, and that a couple of guys in Dragnet suits will show up on the porch any day now, flash a couple of meaningless badges, and haul me downtown for "questioning." And Bryce in Pavillion kills things for a living. That last bit is unconnected to research, just something unnerving I discovered right before I met toothless minstrel Pete, who was walking the wrong way on the highway because the po-po told him hitching was illegal, as was walking along the highway unless you're headed into oncoming traffic. Pete loved my car. Loved that only 907 of them were made. Loved that when the po-po came back in his direction he was already in my car and we were smokin' the competition, such as it was. No tickets. Karma's good. People who have cars should always be kind to those who don't, even if they look like potential killers. Everybody needs a ride sooner or later.

my first ever blog

This is all Shelly's fault. I had to ask her what "blog" meant, and now I'm doing it. For a while, with Sam's input and confusion all 'round, "blog" seemed to mean the unusual situation in which one's period begins while one is sitting on a saddle bar stool at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar in Jackson Hole. Apparently, instead, it means the posting of one's words for all the world to read. I think I want to thank Shelly, but I'm not sure yet.