Santa, the North Pole

HOH OHO

Dear Sir --

In the past you have ignored my repeated requests for a holiday timed encapsulated brain tumour. Yes, I understand times are tough and you are not as young a creative as you used to be. Maybe a tumour is too much to ask for.

Therefore, I have decided to change my request to something more easily installed. I imagine it will also be more successful and certainly more greatly appreciated by my near and dear.

I have been a good girl this year. I would like a nice prezzy. I would like a title/tag line.

Something like "Margaret Beach, Inter-supra-solar-system Super Consumer of No-Frillsian Feline Comestibles" -- but better. Something that is so impressive sounding that it confounds the reader/listener but also charms them. Nay, hypnotizes them. Something that says "she is fabbo, and if you are too ignorant to comprehend why, then you should just give up and worship her and buy her gifts"

I see this as a win-win game plan. You get off easy in the manufacturing department. All you really need is pencil, paper and a few elves chained to their desks churning out notions until they spin the golden line. It can happen. I have faith. I believe. Easy wrapping and merely have to program the thing in following my name every time I write it. Really I'm doing most of the work here.

So gimmee.

Yours with sincere respect,

Megs

Merry Christmas

I hate Christmas. There. I wrote it out loud.

And 'fess up, if you have breast tissue, and/or if your uterus has been occupied for any nine month period resulting in some form of off spring, if you have one or more parents, any random loved ones or possibly a cat or several to which you are firmly attached, you hate Christmas too.

This is the time of year that you cease to exist as a person and become a mindless slave to a completely unattainable dream.

You may as well ask for clear skin for life or peace in the middle east. It can't and won't happen.

What will happen is that in some zombie like state you will run about so much and so frantically that you will become envious of the proverbial headless chicken. At least it has complete collapse to look forward to. And its already dead. You have years (and years and years and there is a &%$@ing Christmas in every one of them) and years to go.

No its not the cost of the gift that's important. And its not really the thought that counts either. Its the presence and presentation of the presents. There must be bows and tissue and cookies and cake. A lot of wine goes a very short way so make sure you have a lot more. Don't give the toddler toys in complex packaging and don't give your brother books or everything comes to a screeching halt while tiny bits of Playmoblie are assembled (and some bits lost) by slightly tipsy adults and your brother reads the the dust jacket, then the forward and says "just a second" while he goes on to the first through twenty third chapters. The gifts pile up about him, the turkey and the hostess burns, the teens set fire to the salad servers, the toddler cries and the dog pees on the tree and the remaining four presents (all for you) that were forgotten there.

Oh shoot me now. I deserve the rest. Aim that taser high, kneecap me whatever it takes. I've been asking Santa for a brain tumor for years but I am stiffed every season and left panting at the cash desk and crying over the gravy.

All I want is peace and good will, time to enjoy those forty thousand cookies I baked and nice comfy couch from Ikea, not that hateful battered looking thing my husband is sentimentally attached to. Resplendent upon the over-stuffed Sweedish-ness, I long to lounge with my little dog secure in the knowledge that some one else has done even a small fraction of the behind-the-scenes slight of hand.

I'd cancel it all if I could. Replace it all with a Bless the Hermits' Day in which one takes a vow of silence and cannot be held accountable for any duty time home or away, at the table, or in the kitchen, at the in-laws or with the near and dear.

All I want for Christmas (outside of that cure all brain tumor, of course) is time off for good behaviour.