Encountering George

I need to write this one down before it gets away from me...and in case I'm ever called to testify in court about any of it.

I was in my front yard getting ready for my walk, getting earbuds adjusted, all that, and a boy happened by with his dog. The boy looked to be about ten years old, and the dog was pulling him hard. Couldn't really tell who was walking who, and she was one of those dogs who wants to say hello to everybody and won't take no for an answer. So the boy asked me if I like dogs. I told him that indeed I do. He replied, "She's friendly, her name is Star," and I proceeded to crouch down and say hi to Star, who was indeed very friendly, and I figured that would be the end of it. 

It was not.

"Are you going for a walk?" the boy asked, making a swirling motion with his hand, because we essentially live in a big circle, and I told him yes, that was my plan.

"Can I walk with you?"

What do you say? "Um, no thanks, I'm out here to get away from my own kids and listen to podcasts and get as many steps on my Fitbit as possible before I start my workday." That's what I wanted to say. But what kind of ten-year-old kid, walking his dog, wants to pal around with a middle-aged lady doing her power walk? I kind of wanted to find out. And it felt like it would've been really mean to say no.

My new friend, let's call him George, talked a blue streak and it wasn't easy to follow everything he was saying. It felt like a combination of things going on with George...perhaps some speech issues, maybe an autism spectrum issue, and definitely a "George's mind moves too fast for his mouth to keep up with his thoughts" issue. The information I got from George, as far as I can tell, included the following:

He's in fifth grade and lives with his dad in our development. I asked if he's lived here in our neighborhood long, and he told me, "No, I moved here in fourth grade because my mom can't handle me." 

When he told me tidbits like this about his life, it was very matter-of-factly. He was neither sad nor overly chipper, just conversational and friendly. He'll see his mom this weekend, she lives about a half hour away, and he'll also see his fourteen-year-old brother who lives with his mom. There's a cousin named Sally who lives with him and his dad, and his dad's girlfriend whose name is Gina. He has a six-year-old sister, I asked if she was in kindergarten, he replied he's not sure, he hasn't seen her in a long time. 

There was also a story I couldn't quite follow about him being in the QuickCheck and "someone" phoned Gina about him...he kept repeating "someone" with air quotes..."someone" phoned Gina and then Gina was there at QuickCheck asking if he was ok, if he was safe. Not sure what all that meant.  Of course I have theories. Did "someone" leave him alone in QuickCheck and ditch? And maybe that's why "someone" phoned Gina and that's why he's living here now with Gina and his dad?  The more gentle, friendly, nonchalant questions I asked, the more confusing and complex George's life was starting to appear, and I wasn't sure how much more I wanted to know, or should know. I did get his full name. Seemed like a good idea.  

I've definitely never met anyone quite like George. He was too likable for me to be too annoyed about him hijacking my power walk. So was Star, who kept on having to take breaks to stop and catch her breath on the hills. George voiced his concerns about people in various homes he could point to who are having parties that they shouldn't have because of coronavirus. And he talked about not being sure about if he'll get to go do sixth grade in the middle school next year because of coronavirus. 

George and Star know where I live now. Not sure how I feel about that. But damn if it just didn't seem like a person who wanted to walk with and talk to another human being, in a friendly sort of way, and there I was. There could be the "special needs" vibe thing happening...more times than I can count there've been children I've never met before in my life who've almost knocked me over to hug me around the knees for dear life in public places, or try to sit next to me in restaurants, or take my hand in Walmart or Target or CVS...maybe some of us just give off a "this one's safe to be around" signal and certain kids pick up on it. Or maybe George is just an old chatty fellow in a ten-year-old's body and saw a fellow life form willing to talk to him and jumped at the chance. He mentioned that some nice person in one of the homes here in the neighborhood gave him a Gatorade and he hopes he gets to see her again.

I guess we're living in a world where people like George may be really really lonely for human contact. George used to get on a school bus and spend the day and interact with so many people. Now he's home an awful lot more than he's used to...but when he goes out to take a walk with Star, there are people he can talk to and it looks to me like he's not the type to squander any such opportunity.

Anyway, stay tuned. I feel like I haven't seen the last of George. I might wear a small backpack with an extra Gatorade in there next time I go walking. 

You never know.

This Is Where We Are Right Now

So sometime last week, husband mentions ordering something off of Amazon—just talking generally.

I go, “What’d ya order?”

He goes, “I’m not telling you,” with a little bit of attitude, emphasis on the YOU, like I’m not allowed to know about it.

I look at him blankly.

He goes on to say, “Yeah, you know, there’s this holiday that’s coming up in a few days...”

I continue to look at him blankly, but now I’m wracking my brain trying to figure it out. I was born April first, is that here again already? There's no lit-up tree in the corner...how long was I asleep for...have I Rip Van Winkled my way into late March 2021? Or Christmas?  What the actual FUCK?

I had NO BLOODY IDEA WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT.

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why my family could have gotten out of Mother’s Day this year.

I mean, I have NEVER been so “what the fuck” in my life as I am right now. And I have been “what the fuck” many, many, many a time. Yesterday, honest to God, I was trying to decide whether it was Thursday or Monday. I’m serious. (It was neither, by the way.)

“Doesn’t matter,” you say, but it does. It DOES. Trash goes to the curb Monday night, recycling on Thursday night. Still happening. (Just thought you might need a comforting little reminder that there’s still a civilization, kind of.)

And my very large, brawny 14-year-old-son likes to run around completely naked, any day, any season, so I must bid you a civil adieu pretty soon and tend to that. He doesn't understand how many years ago that stopped being adorable, and also, he does not care. One thing about autism, or at least Calvin's kind of autism...no body image issues WHATSOEVER. Free as a bird. Calvin’s 16-year-old sister, Grace, on the other hand, would gladly lead a campaign to have her beloved brother neutered so she doesn’t have to spend so much time averting her gaze and washing her eyes.

“Pants on, Calvin. PANTS ON!!!!”

You’re likely to hear that uttered, muttered, or screamed at any time of any day around here. Naked knows no calendar.

Maybe we should all be naked. There are protesters that want to end the quarantine. Here’s an idea. Protest naked. There are about 3 or 4 humans on the planet that anybody would want to see naked. The rest of us, no-ho-ho. Bet that would do the trick. “Jesus Christ, put your clothes back on and YES you can go back into Starbuck’s. For the love of God, COVER THAT UP!”

And this is where we are right now. At least here in my head. You can come in if you like, but it can get wild in here. Maybe show up naked...if you're a dude whose last name happens to be Hemsworth...otherwise Friday casual is fine...

It's Nice Out...

I've decided it's time to resurrect Everloving Mess, the blog. I don't know what happened. I just sort of abandoned her. She's been calling me back. So here we are.

We're in, I don't know, day three million and two of the coronavirus quarantine, nobody knows what day it is, or time it is, and nobody cares. I sometimes put Baileys into my first coffee of the day and think nothing of it. And such is life.

But today. OH TODAY. So far we've had a spring that hasn't known what it wants to be, but today, oh GLORY, today! It's sixty-something degrees. The sun is drenching us with his molten heat like a lover returned from the war, and the breeze...I can't even talk about it...it can blow all it wants to and you're never too warm or too cold. You could lie down in the grass and die and be totally hunky dory about it.

Well, can't waste that kind of day, can we? It was coming into noontime, I took a look at Calvin and I said, "Buddy, we are going outside to play. Shoes and socks, let's go."

"Shoes and socks" is Calvin's way of telling us he wants to get the fuck out of the house for crying out loud, so that's the only prompt he needed. He was into it and good to go.

So off we went, across the road of our townhouse complex, and into the playground. It was empty, so no worries about having to play keep away from the other kids on the jungle gym. A few neighbors were walking dogs and had stopped to have a socially distanced chat. Every now and then the breeze wafted their conversation to me, it was something about how they like to work out. I liked the fact that people were talking to each other about their lives, out in the most perfect day imaginable. 

Oftentimes when I take Calvin to the playground, I get a little bored, I want to read a book or play a stupid game or watch Netflix on my phone, but not today. Nope. Felt too good to bask in the sunlight. It felt good to watch my boy and wonder about all the things he was thinking but can't tell me out loud. I was enjoying watching him spin his bright grass-green ribbon, making perfect spirals like some kind of perpetual motion machine; he loves to do that. Every now and then he'd stop the twirling and look up to see what the bird sounds were all about. Sometimes he'd stop and just look like he was drinking the wind. 

By and by he wandered over to the swings. All the swings had big mud puddles under them, and he was eyeing the situation a little disconcertedly. I told him, "Sweetie, no worries, I don't care if you get dirty, swing on the swings if you want to." And so he did. He loves the swings. I do too. 

That's when I looked down for a sec. I wanted to check out the pictures and videos I'd been taking....seeing about which ones I should share with my people to show them this perfect day...inspire them to come out and drink the wind and soak up the sun like we were doing. It was maybe two Mississippis. When I looked back up again after those two Mississippis, I saw that Calvin had kicked off his shoes and socks and was merrily kicking at the mud puddles with exuberant abandon. Two seconds, that's all it took. Oh well, I sighed. It's just good, clean dirt. Not going to dampen my mood. I went and gathered up the shoes and socks and let him have his way, swinging up into the sky, kicking at the filthy muddy water every time he splashed down to earth, soaking his pants from the hem to over his knee. Who cares. It's a beautiful day. How long have we waited for a day like this. Two million and three days, that's how long.

Sooner or later, the boy was done with swinging and made his way over to the jungle gym--one of those typical newfangled plastic things with the slides and the different ways to climb onto it and plenty of room just to sit and hang out on the little platforms at varying levels. Cal likes to make that thing his own, and on a day like today, having it all to himself, he was a happy camper. He settled himself on the edge of one of the platforms, got his bright green ribbon going, swirling and swirling, reminding me of DNA helixes, getting a little hypnotic to watch...so much so that I must have closed my eyes for a few seconds. It was so nice where I was. There's a gazebo in the middle of the park, and I was sitting on the little concrete floor on the outside perimeter of the thing. Didn't want to be in the shade, not on a day like today. So I sat there, like a happy kid on a porch stoop on the first perfect day of the year, and let myself drift. For a few seconds, though. Not for long. I have a fourteen-year-old autistic, nonverbal boy to look after who has at least 6 inches and about a hundred pounds on me, so it's not like I took a nap or anything. Just closed my eyes for a brief moment, breathed in the day, let out a contented sigh, opened my eyes....

And proceeded to shoot across the green, green grass of that playground between the gazebo and the jungle gym so fast that I KNOW it looked like a special effect from an episode of The Flash. I don't run to get out of the rain, but right then, right there, I  was Jessie fucking Owens. 

Because when I opened my eyes and directed my gaze to my beloved boy, there he was, COMPLETELY NAKED FROM THE WAIST DOWN. No pants. No underwear. Nothing between his adult-sized man genitals and the beautiful beautiful day but a gentle spring breeze.

Yep. My boy, All six foot something, 240-plus pounds of him. Hanging brain in the bright sunlight--swinging pipe in front of God and all the world. (In case you're wondering if we'll be on the news...probably not...someone up there doesn't totally hate me, there were no witnesses other than the birds of the air and some creatures that creepeth upon the earth...squirrels and whatnot).

His pants were wet, you see. From the mud puddle. He doesn't like the way that feels. I should have thought of that. And when the pants come off, well, the underpants just kind of go along with sometimes, now, don't they?

Jesus Christ on a Bicycle. 

My Uncle Dan used to like to say, "It's nice out...I think I'll leave it out."  I'm willing to bet his spirit was delightedly whispering just that very phrase into his great-nephew's ear, just to see what would happen.

So ended our idyllic trip to the playground, on day two million and three of the quarantine, first perfect day in forever, worthy of Adam and Eve before the fall.

And me with no fig leaf.

How To Do This

Let's face it. Our hearts are in tatters. How do we handle it?

Seriously, I'm asking. I'll take any ideas. I'll work through a few here, but I'm open to suggestions.

I have this picture of us like we're crawling along the snowy ground like the soldiers at Valley Forge, clothes reduced to rags, spirits all but crushed, in danger of losing the thread. That frayed, barely there thread that connects us to...everything real and true and right and worth living and dying for.

I rarely get this melodramatic these days, but these are melodramatic days. I mean, honest to god, I woke up this morning out of a dream that I was a player in a Shakespearean masterpiece, just one of the zillions of men and women merely players.. Felt real as this chair I'm sitting on, costumes and all, iambic pentameter, the whole nine.

I'm not here to talk about the president because I'm too sick of him for words and it gets us nowhere. I'm here to talk about us, because we're all we have, and we're the ones that are going to save us. No great exalted savior rising up to take the reins and make it all go away. Just us, here on the ground.

Here's what I do, you could try this. 

I smile at people. If I'm out at CVS and someone is walking out as I'm walking in, I smile at him, at her. If you're not one to usually do this, and you try it, you might be surprised to see the look of slow delight that comes over someone's face as they smile back. Anyone can do this.

I also joke with people in check-out lines. Check-out lines can be insufferable. People get homicidal in check-out lines. Everybody hates being there. But there's always something funny to touch on. Often it's a tabloid headline. "Oh look! The Queen of England is pregnant with quintuplets!" Before you know it you have a gaggle of people giggling with you. The last time this happened, my 13-year-old daughter was with me, and when we got out to the car she told me, with a sweet grin, "Mommy, you're so cute, you have best friends wherever you go." 

This was the highest praise anyone has ever given me. And for those of you who knew my grandmother, Rosemary Foley Baker, you know where I got it from. I didn't come into the world knowing how to do that. And I haven't been good at it my whole adult life. And I'm not good at it every day. But I work at it, because of what she taught me by being who she was, by doing things like bounding off a 500 mile train trip, 4 hours late because the train had "uncoupled," with stories of a dozen new friends she knew by name. To this day I remember two of them were Tyrone and Randy and they were "real dolls."

I'm perhaps the whitest of white folks you ever will see. Maybe you are too. But I have friends, loved ones, who aren't. I bet you do too. They may fall within the confines of the groups that some psychopaths think don't have a right to be. When I see them, run into to them by surprise in town, or meet up for coffee, we hug. One of my best friends wears a head scarf, I see the wary side glances she gets, I know what some people think of her. When I see her, I hug her tight and kiss her cheek, because I love her...but don't think I don't mean to send a message. This woman is MY friend, MY sister, I dare you to fuck with her. She belongs here as much as I do, as much as you do, make no fucking mistake about it. 

One night when my husband was away I fell down the stairs getting my son a drink, just before dawn, and thought I'd broken my back. Guess what friend came flying to my house at my distress call, got me into an ambulance, made sure both my kids stayed safe and cared for, including my autistic nonverbal one...oh by the way, two out of her three kids at home are autistic too, but still, there she was, so anxious to get to me that she'd forgotten all about her scarf, just raced out the door to get to me, her friend who was in trouble. That's what real Muslims are like, in case anyone was wondering.

We live in a world where a hug, a kiss, a smile for chrissakes, can be an open act of rebellion against hatred. And that's tragic in a sense. But it's also an opportunity. She's not alone, my friend who wears hijab. She's got me, and I'm not the only one she's got.  And your guy-friends who are couples, or girl-friends who are couples, the ones married to each other, or engaged, or dating, and having the nerve to exchange loving looks and/or gestures in public, or (gasp, god forbid) hold hands, they're not alone either. They have you, and me, and legions of others. 

And the Mexican migrant workers in line with me at the bank to cash their checks. Guess what, they're not invisible ghosts-drones. If you know a little Spanish, look what happens to their faces when you compliment them on their adorable kids in your broken, insufficient Spanish, or offer a tissue to the one with the runny nose. It takes a millisecond for the shock to wear off, the shock that a white person has noticed they they're people too, and the smiles come, and the warmth comes, and they even compliment your lousy Spanish because you tried. Their English is a lot better than your Spanish, but at least you tried.

And I may be a lily white girl, but guess what. I have a disabled child. A mentally disabled child. One of the brightest lights this world will ever see, he is. Don't think I don't know what Nazis would do to him. Don't think I don't know. We all know. Do you love someone with a disability? Do you think they're safe from the insanity we saw go down in Charlottesville last Saturday? If we want them to be safe, it's up to us to keep them safe. To keep all the groups they target safe, groups that any of us could fall into, at any time. And that means coming together, as one body, and affirming the following, without exception:

We are all the same. Exactly. The. Same. The ones who act like assholes, and the ones who don't. The ones who root for your baseball team, and the ones who don't (it took a lot for me to admit that one). The ones who have hardly any melanin in their skin, and the ones who have lots. The ones who are descended from slaves, and the ones who are descended from the monsters who were the enslavers. The ones who grew into sexual feelings for people with different kinds of private parts or the same kinds of private parts. The ones who think the Messiah came already, and the ones who are still waiting, and the ones who don't give a shit. People who were born within someone's arbitrary borders, and people who were not. People who think the government should stay the hell out of their business and people who want the government all up in their grill (p.s. there's seriously no difference, at the top of the real pyramid of power they're just using us all as cannon fodder to hurl at each other, wise up.) 

Particles and/or waves, blinking in and out, mostly the space in between...that's all any of us are, and by some unfathomable miracle we get to be alive. Not just alive, conscious. Conscious!  What are the odds???? And so what do we do, notice fake differences between your wave/particles and my wave/particles and kill each other over them? Well that's pretty fucking stupid.

We can do this. I have faith that we can do this.

Keep the faith. And let's do this.

I love you.

T

Soldiering On

Anyone familiar with the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment will understand why I didn't want to sneak any looks at the election results when I woke up at 3:30 this morning. No matter how dire it looked at 10:30 p.m. when I unplugged from all electronics, as long as I kept not checking, the state of the union was either a Trump presidency or a Clinton presidency. Either/or was better than finding out it was Trump.

But sooner or later, you have to look in the box, and...yep, seriously dead cat. 

I haven't had a gut-wringing, soul-drenching cry in a while, so that was overdue. I needed to get it out of my system before the kids could wake up and see me. It's only 5:00 a.m. now, and I'm cool, so that's done.

So now what?

I'll tell you now what.

What I'm going to do...what all of us who wish things had gone differently are going to do...is this: 

We're going to do that thing that Michelle Obama told us to do. Her words weren't for nothing.

Go high.

Do I want to spend the next several months wearing a T-shirt that says "I didn't vote for him" so I can look Muslims and people of color and women and Hispanics and the LGBT community and disabled people and war veterans in the eye? Yes, I do. But that's not really an option either. Go high. That's what I can do. That's what we all can do.

I can kick ass and take names regarding all the things I have in front of me, all the things that are my job. Taking loving care of myself, my man, my babies, my home, my family, my friends...that's what I can do. The outcome of an election can't take that away from me or from you. If anything, it can galvanize me, and you. To be great. Not again, but as we've always been, whether or not we've had the wherewithal to notice.

I have the wherewithal to notice. I'm great, not again but still, and so are you.

Love you.

- T

The People Who Help

So Cal and I had to take a trip to the school health center today because he needed to have a PPD skin test. I've never had this test; when I was a kid they did this easy thing where they stuck a little whatsit with four short tines into your inner forearm, felt like nothing, then the nurse checked it in a few days to see if it looked like you had tuberculosis. Now they inject a syringe full of some serum under the skin, looks like a real treat for any kid. Anyway, in order for my boy to be admitted to the dayhab program we've been praying and praying to get him into for...however long, I could count the time in gray hairs and wrinkles I guess, but whatever...he needs to have this test. The program requires it.

And guess what, we're in the home stretch for getting Cal into this program. The biggest hurdle, the medicaid waiver you need for a developmentally disabled child to have access to vital services...we finally got that. I'd say you probably heard my shouts of Hallelujah a few weeks ago when we got that news, but I was in such a weird state of shock that I'd actually made it through the bureaucratic hell I'd been slogging through for years that I almost didn't feel anything. I sat at my dining room table staring at the piece of paper feeling a numbness that I waited to turn into relief. But that's another story that I'm not even sure how to tell yet, so on to today's thing, the PPD test. Like it or not, had to be done.

Calvin's bus came, I shuffled him quickly into the car, and drove him to the clinic for this newest episode of torture I was about to put him through. As I was driving, an assortment of vignettes flashed through my mind, kind of MTV herky jerky style.

The haircuts that have made me feel like a toddler trying to overcome a Mixed Martial Arts heavyweight champion.

The dental work where we tried to wrap him up like a papoose in the special device designed for that purpose to safely restrain him, but that he was able burst through like the Hulk...and the screams that I can still hear and the memory of crying for a half hour before I could start the car for the suffering and wild-eyed terror I'd just helped put my child through.

The blood work a few months ago that took three grown men and me to get accomplished.

The...um...constipation interventions where I've herded him into the corner of the bathroom...you don't need details, they're gross...but I'll tell you that last time we did it I almost ended up with a concussion when my head hit the sink at some point.

The experiences in parking lots lately when Cal is unsure where he is and why, and if he has anything to fear, which can send him bolting for escape like a bull out of a chute, with Mike and/or I both having to frantically wrestle him away from oncoming traffic, noticing kind bystanders putting their hands out to stop cars because they get the gist of what we're doing--and, fortunately for us, not mistaking us for child abductors. (I may or may not have recently face planted outside the local Dollar Tree during one of these adventures. If there's surveillance footage, it's probably hilarious since nobody was killed or overly maimed.)

Anywho, during the ten minutes or so it took to drive the boy to the health center, these were the thoughts meandering around my mind. By the time I parked the car I was shaking. I got out of the car to let Cal out and realized I'd forgotten to turn off the ignition and remove my keys. Yeah, I was in great shape for this.

So in we went. And there they were: The kind-eyed, mom-like nurse practitioner who runs the place, her teeny tiny beautiful and excellent young assistant, and a gorgeous hulking young Latino man, built like a linebacker, who was interning as a temporary assistant. We'd strategically scheduled this little event for when this temp was working.

Cal went immediately into shaking scared animal mode, eyes darting, trying to edge his way out the door, little mewling noises that said "I know this place and I don't like it." The team looked to me for a plan, and I explained that there was no sweet talking or comforting or bribing or cajoling that was going to work, and trying anything like that would just prolong the agony.

"Will he kick?" the woman in charge asked.

I explained that he won't so much kick as just do anything he can to flee. He doesn't lash out at the people perpetrating the violation against him. He just puts all his impressive strength and 139 pounds of very stocky build into getting the fuck out of there, whatever it takes.

I remembered that the way the blood draw had finally worked was to get him on the floor. Nothing to fall off of, easiest to keep him still. So we got down low, beautiful tiny assistant on one side of him, me on the other, startlingly gorgeous linebacker physician's-assistant-in-training supporting and bracing from behind...some terrified screaming, some heartbreaking crying when the needle was inserted and the fluid started going in, and then:

The deed was done.

(And not for nothing, that looks like it frigging hurts. If any of you have had it done lately, you can let me know.)

And up we came, the four of us telling Cal how good and brave he is, my sweet boy calming down pretty quickly, and me looking him right in the eye and promising him donuts. Calvin's food has been very carefully controlled lately. Sky-high triglycerides and some other startling blood work numbers have forced our hand. We've melted twelve pounds of my heroic sweetheart in the past few months through sheer hard work and determination. But today, he was going to get donuts, goddammit. Just for today.

As we got ready to leave, I looked at the three healthcare providers in the room and my eyes clouded over with tears. I wanted to wrap my arms around them each, one at a time (especially the hunky intern), cry on their shoulders, and really tell them how people like us wouldn't be able to get by without people like them. But I had a boy pulling me toward the exit, a boy who'd really earned some donuts, so I settled for the most heartfelt thanks I could get out of my mouth before I was urged out the door.

I hope they know how much they mean to me.

I think I'll send them this post. So they'll know.

Happy...I mean Merry...Aw F-ck It...

You know what I'd like to get for Christmas? And Chanukah? And Kwanzaa? And Boxing Day? And Yule? And Beltane? And Solstice? And Big-Fat-Man-With-The-Long-White-Beard Day? And all of it? To keep with me all through the year?

I'd absolutely LOVE for people to stop pissing and moaning about what we should all say to each other about having a lovely season.

Christians, I hate to point fingers, but this one is on us. My findings are based on the small sample of my own experience, but I gotta tell y'all, I have NEVER heard or read of a non-Christian who was even the tiniest bit ticked off about being wished a "Merry Christmas" during the latter few months of the calendar year. Not a once.

Any bitching or complaining I hear or read, on the other hand, is coming from people who think they're not allowed to say "Merry Christmas," that there's some prime directive coming down from somewhere to persecute them into saying (gasp) "Happy Holidays" to people. As if suggesting that saying "Happy Holidays" is akin to dropping a flaming bag of dog poop afront your manger scene. Really? REALLY? Is this such a big insult that we're flooding social media with it? Wasting rage we could be saving for Donald Trump and those fucking barking Jingle Bell dogs? Sorry, they get on my nerves...but actually, this is great, if you're offended that I hate the barking Jingle Bell dogs, vent your spleen at that, just get the hell off the "don't tell me happy holidays" crusade. (P.S. There's also too much Steve and Edie on the radio, but I'd better stop before I invite death threats toward my general direction.)

Because I LOVE you all, but this petty little war over Merry Christmas v. Happy Holidays really makes you sound like little bitches.

And by the way, you might notice something about the word "holiday." Stay with me, because this is a subtle, complicated one: The word "holiday" is actually a compound word that means the same thing as (wait for it) HOLY DAY.  If anything, it's got more of whatever god you like in it than the Christmas word. Did I just rock your world? Blow your mind?

Wait, there's more. The word "Christ." Anyone? It's Greek. It has to do with being annointed. Blessed. Holy. Oh, there it is again.

Have a happy Christed time. Annointed, blessed, holy time.

In other words (drum roll):

IT. IS. ALL. THE. SAME.

So for the love of Krishna, could we please get over it? Because don't look now, but we have bigger fish to fry, people. While we're all bickering amongst ourselves about how to (or not to) wish each other a lovely winter season of light and love, there's a tiny orange clown-haired demagogue all up in our faces suggesting we bring back the Third Reich. A splinter group of self-hating, diseased psychopaths have hijacked Islam (a faith based on love and respect for all life) for their own murderous purposes, so here's what let's do, let's ban all Muslims. That'll do the trick nicely. Let's paint an entire race of people, who've contributed more light and color and art and brilliance and joy to humanity than could ever be measured, just like all other races and religions, with the same brush. Real smart.

I happen to love and honor a whole bunch of Muslims within my personal sphere, but even if you don't know or care about a single one, is that the kind of world you want? The kind where we're all born into some religious group or other, and have to either (1) live in paranoia that the other guy is crapping all over our cherished beliefs or (2) advocate that we kick out everybody who doesn't look and eat and talk and pray exactly like us?

For me, that world just plain sucks.

But P.S., if that IS the world you want to live in, how long do you think it'll be before the evil darkness that's hating on them decides to come for YOU?

Because in a world where we're run by this kind fear and distrust, no one is safe, no matter what group you're in. That's the one truth you can take to the bank. And it's what the black hats hiding in the shadows are counting on. If we turn on each other, it makes their work a hell of a lot easier.

So let's stop all that crap, shall we?  It's a bad dream we can all wake up from, That monster we're all full of hate and terror about? It lives on our hate and terror. Feeds off it. We can starve that monster to death if we want to. This is not some pretty metaphor. It's the truth. Do your own research, and you'll see it too.

And with the monster dead, that'll make for such a merry everything that no one will have the time or inclination to give a flying you-know-what about what to say around the whatever log or tree or candelabra you favor. We'll all be so happy together, no one will even notice where the light is coming from, because it'll be coming from everywhere.

Merry Happy Jolly Christed Annointed Blessed Holy Time Of Light to all of you.

And for the Love the whole sorry lot of us, be kind.