GOING UP... MAYBE? PLEASE?

Don’t you just love riding elevators?

I was on my way to see my publisher, who is located in a high-rise office building that people get nosebleeds just looking up at from the street.  But that’s Manhattan for you – city of excess and bloody sidewalks.

At any rate, I toodled inside, hired a pack mule, purchased supplies and made my way across a solid pink marble lobby the size of Ohio.  Upon arriving at the banks of elevators, I told my Sherpa guide, Niblick, to keep the meter running on the mule, and stepped aboard the nearest vertical conveyance.

The car was already crammed full of passengers, one of whom was carrying in his lunch and, if the odor of same was any indication, he was planning on a feast of three-week old fish that had been marinated in finely aged sewage.

“Floor 267, please,” I said to the elevator boy.

“267?  Oh, you’ll need oxygen for that floor,” he said, handing me a mask.  I dutifully slipped it on.

Off we shot to the first stop – floor 100.  This trip took 1.5 seconds.  During the course of the ride, my head had burst through my hat, which was now hanging around my neck like a Beefeater ruff.  I was also three inches in the red on my previous height and would require cosmetic surgery and a screw jack to remove my breasts from my knees.

After all that, only one person got off.  He’d been short when he’d gotten on, but now he looked like a member of the Lollipop Guild.

“How do I get to Suite 1014?” he asked the elevator boy.

“Just follow the Yellow Brick Road,” he chortled, closing the door in his face.

Next stop, floor 200.  The elevator boy executed a quick countdown, then launched us skyward yet again.

This time, my feet went right through the bottoms of my shoes, my necklace broke, and my earrings were pulled down so low that my earlobes would have been right at home among the Ubangis.

One woman was sick to her stomach in the corner of the car, and a rather large gentleman was experiencing technical difficulties involving methane gas.  Add that to the guy packing the landfill lunch and you have an aroma that would even make Jeffrey Dahmer think twice.  As the minutes passed, I became more and more convinced that Hell had just added a tenth ring, and that elevator was it.

Everyone, but the galloping gourmet and I, got off at floor 200, whether they needed to or not.  But I am made of stronger stuff . . . plus, the idea of walking up 67 flights didn’t much appeal to me. 

The doors slammed shut again, and I prepared for takeoff.

The elevator hurtled upward, but came to a bone-rattling stop between floors 266 and 267.

So there I was, trapped in an elevator with a race driver wannabe, a nerdy guy holding a leaky lunch bag filled with toxic waste, surrounded by the miasma of the revenge of the fat guy’s chili dinner and the pile of vomit in the corner.

This was not the way I envisioned making my transition from this world to the next, somehow.

“Don’t worry, we have a special phone to call for help,” Mario Andretti assured us.  He picked up the receiver and confidently pushed the red button.

Nothing happened.

He pushed it again.

Still nothing.

He panicked and began speaking in tongues.

I slapped him, probably harder than I needed to (though I must admit, it felt awfully good), to snap him out of it.  I’m amazed I could see well enough to actually hit his face, because by that time, the stench was melting my eyeballs.

“OK, how do we get out of here?” I demanded.

He meekly indicated the trap door in the roof of the car.

“Fine.  Give me a boost.”

“Lady, you can’t . .  .”

“You want to go?”

“A boost!  Right!  Sure, no problem!”

You may wonder at the alacrity of my voluntarism.  Had you been there, you wouldn’t have.  I was more than willing to take the chance of falling to a quick death over dying slowly and horribly in the elevator.

A boost, and I was on the roof.  “Now what?” I asked, gulping in the fresh air.

“Climb up to the floor above us and open the door.  Then get help.”

One thing I’ve learned about directions such as these is that anything that sounds this simple usually isn’t.

To get to the door above, I had to shinny up the greasy cable and lean out to step across the ledge.  It took patience, dexterity, and the firm resolve that I was not, under any circumstances, going back into that elevator.

Once on the ledge, I managed to pry the door open and fall in a heap on the white carpeting of my publisher’s office.  Being covered with grease did not enhance my prestige with the firm, I can promise you.

I stood, with the help of a couple of receptionists holding me at arm’s length.  My clothing was torn and hanging in stalactite-like shreds from my body.  I was so filthy, I could have done a guest shot on “The Wide, Wide World of Dumpster Diving.”  The only pieces left of my shoes were the toes.  My hair looked as if it had been styled by Ray Charles, my hands were ripped and bleeding, and every single fingernail was not just broken, but gone!

“There are more people stuck in the elevator.  They need help and I need an ambulance and a bath in Drano,” I croaked.  Then I passed out.

I awoke in the hospital.  My publisher had sent a huge bouquet of flowers.  Smiling, I opened the card as fast as ten heavily bandaged fingers would permit, and read:

Roses are Red.

Violets are Blue.

You messed up our carpet,

So we’re suing you!

I’m out of the hospital now, and I work out on a Stairmaster for an hour every day.

You’ll never catch me on another elevator!

ENTERTAINMENT IN THESE TRYING ECONOMIC TIMES

Entertaining is always a challenge when you have a strict budget; but have no fear.  You can still have memorable, fun-filled parties and spend next to nothing.

Here's how, step-by-step.

Step One:  Deciding whom to invite.

Anorexics are always good.  A whole group of them won’t even go through a single head of romaine lettuce.

Skip the bulimics.  Not only do they eat too much, but the mess they make is unspeakable.

Put some thought into your guest list.  If you are obligated to invite certain people you would rather not, then be sure to invite guests that you know will annoy them into leaving the gathering early.

Step Two:  Choosing a party theme

          There are many types of themes that will blend well with a budget.  For instance, why not throw a “Landfill Party”?  You won’t even have to clean up the house!  For additional ambience, have your son move the car he’s restoring out onto the front lawn and take off the tires.  Oh, and now would be a perfect time to display that old toilet that your husband salvaged from the last remodel job he did.  As a matter of fact, it would be the perfect thing to serve chili in!

 A “hunting party” is also a good way to entertain, and gets the men involved, too.  As the name implies, the men go out and bring back the meat portion of the meal.  But before deciding on this type of theme, carefully consider where you live.  For example, if you call New England home, you can expect to be serving deer, pheasant, duck, or partridge, or grouse.   Down south, perhaps possum, squirrel, or alligator.  However, if you live in Manhattan, you are likely to have a pot of rat, feral cat, pigeon, and stray dog to deal with, and your party will not progress much beyond the return of the happy hunters.

Step Three:  Creating and sending the invitations

Just for the sake of consistency, let’s assume that you’ve decided to throw a “Landfill Party,” since this is, by far, the easiest one for the frugal beginner to throw.  Invitations are a snap, and reflect your theme masterfully.  Simply find a fast food  place that serves on paper plates, and rummage through their trash until you have enough of them.  Don’t worry about it if they are stained--you want them to have been used.  And don’t forget utensils.  You should have no trouble at all finding  enough discarded plastic forks, knives, and spoons to cover your guest list.
Once you get them home, you may have to dry the paper plates off before you can write on them, so get some clothespins and pin them to your clothesline for about an hour.  If you don’t have a clothesline, find someone in the neighborhood who does, wait until they leave for work, and use theirs—they’ll never know.  And don’t forget to wash the plastic utensils!

Once the paper plates are dry, fish an old piece of charcoal out of your outdoor grill and handwrite the invitation.  Don’t worry if it smudges a little.  It’s all part of the effect, and the recipients will adore the personalized touch.

Don’t, Don’t, DON’T spend money on stamps.  Forget the mail service for your invitations.  For the price of a box of Gummi Bears, your kids will be happy to get on their bikes and hand-deliver them.  And if that doesn’t work, threaten to confiscate their computer games purchased in better times—that oughta do it.

Step Four:  Party Food

Instead of shopping for food for this do, after the local restaurants in your area close, make the rounds.  Take several plastic bags with you to separate meat, vegetables, salad, appetizers, and dessert, and start your dumpster diving.  You won’t believe what is thrown away—often with only one or two bites taken out of it.  You should only need about an hour to scavenge your entire menu.  Then, take it all home, trim it up, discard anything rotten, and you’re good to go.  And if you tell everyone that you’ve gone on the wagon, but your guests are welcome to B.Y.O.B, you’re covered there, too.

Step Five:  Party Favors

Though it’s customary to provide party favors to your guests, it doesn’t have to break the bank.  How about this:   When you first decide on the date of your party, start saving the cardboard from inside toilet paper rolls.  Next, go to a Dollar Store, where you can buy a whole bag of plastic skeletons for a buck, then place one skeleton in each roll, and fill it up with soil, then wrap each in salvaged aluminum foil, and voila!  You have a miniature dump site for your skeletal “murder victim.”  What could be more in keeping with your theme?

TOTAL PARTY COST:  $1.00 plus tax.

TSURRIS

She approached the car lot with trepidation. Aura really hated buying cars -- without a boyfriend or some man with her, the dealers always took advantage of her lack of automotive knowledge.

And she was between boyfriends at the moment.

Unfortunately, her clunker had died a loud and messy death and she had to have a working vehicle, so here she was.

"Helllllooo, young laaaaaaaaaddddddyyyyy!"

Aura turned, expecting to see the Big Bopper.  Instead, it was just a huge bear of a man, smiling and blocking out the sun.

"Uh, hello. I need a car. Can you help me?"

 

The vulpine grin that spread across the man's heavily bearded face could have congealed oatmeal. "Certainly I can help you! Step this way."

Aura followed him into his office. When she was seated across from him she saw his name plate . . . "Barry." So this was Barry Trois, the richest car dealer in the entire country, possibly the world.

Barry slunk into his chair behind the desk. "Would you like a cup of coffee . . .uh . . . I'm sorry, what was your name again?"

"Aura."

"Ah, yes. Aura."

"And, yes, I would like a cup of coffee."

 

"Comin' right up," Barry said, striding to the coffee maker. "How do you take it?"

"Sugar, light," she replied.

 

Barry handed her the coffee. "Here ya go, hon."

Aura took a sip. "This coffee is stone cold!"

"Oh, pardon me," Barry said, returning to the machine. "Been having trouble with this lately. Hold on, let me pop it in the microwave."

After a couple of minutes, he handed the cup back to Aura. She took a sip. "AUUUUUGH! What are you trying to do, burn my lips off? People have been sued for this sort of thing, you know!"

 

At the word "sue" all color drained from Barry's face -- even his beard. "I'm terribly sorry. What do you say we skip the coffee and go take a look at some really great cars?"

Through throbbing, tingling lips, Aura said, "That's what I came here for."

They adjourned to the car lot. Aura glanced over the hundred new cars and said, "These just don't do it for me. No style, no class. Don't you have anything else?"

"This is it ," Barry said.

"Wait -- how about those over there? Those look interesting." At the far end of the lot, off to the side, there were three cars parked next to each other.

 

"I don't think so. Not only are those used, but they're . . ."

"Oh, used isn't a problem. Let's go take a look. I mean, I'd really rather spend time looking at those cars than calling my lawyer. Have you got the keys? "

 

"Yes," Barry sighed. "Right here in my pocket."

The cars sparkled. The first one was a vintage Bentley, the second was a SmartCar, and the third was a Corvette convertible.

 

Aura sat behind the wheel of the Bentley. "No, I don't think this is quite right for me. It's far too big and the seat is much too hard."

Barry sighed with relief and offered up a silent prayer of thanks to whomever might be listening.

Next, Aura, who was not a little person, found herself wedged behind the wheel of the SmartCar. "No, no, no! This will never do. It's far too small, and the seat is far too soft."

While she was extricating herself, another prayer left the car lot.

Behind the wheel of the Corvette, Aura sighed happily. "Ah, Barry, this one will do nicely. It's just the right size and the seat is just right, too. I'll take it!"

"Well, I guess I can live with two out of three," Barry thought. They stepped back inside and filled out the paperwork. Aura wrote him a check of unusual size and drove off the lot.

Now the only thing Barry had to worry about was how to tell his son, Barry Jr., that he'd just sold his car.

A few hours later, as Barry was preparing to lock up, Barry Jr., the company accountant, burst into the front room of the darkened dealership.

 

"Hello, Dad. I was just going home after putting in yet another hard day's work when --

and you're going to laugh at this -- I discovered that my car, the Corvette that took me two years to restore and customize with my own hands, is GONE!"

"Ah, yes, son, er, I, uh, I had to sell it."

"You had to sell it. Why this time?"

"This time, because a customer burned her mouth on a cup of coffee, and you know that people have successfully sued over that before."

"First it was my Alfa because some dizzy broad tripped and skinned her knee walking in. Then it was my Ferrari because some moron, instead of opening the door, tried to walk through it..."

"We keep our glass very clean . . . "

"And now it's my Corvette! Excuse me -- I'm going to the Men's Room to throw up!"

Barry Jr. pushed the washroom door so hard it bounced off the wall. He stood at the sink and stared into the mirror. "Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who's the most screwed over person of all?"

The floating face of a wizened old man immediately appeared, causing Barry Jr. to step back in surprise. They stared at each other, until the face in the mirror finally spoke.

"Nu? So vhaddya vant, awreddy? I got the Vicked Qveen on hold over here! Speak, boychick, speak!"

"Well, I...that is...uh…"

"Hoo boy, tongue of silver. Your parents must have such naches!"

"Wait a minute!" Barry shouted, recovering somewhat. He checked the sides of the mirror, and, sure enough, he found the tag -- MADE IN BROOKLYN.

"So vaddya think? I'm from Minsk or Pinsk?"

"Can you help me?" Junior asked.

"Can I help him? This messhugge vants to know, can I help him! Of course I can help him. He's got a goniff for an old man, a shiksa mama who wouldn't know kreplach from gefilte fish, and this one’s an overprivileged schnorrer! Vaddya vant my help for? You're rich from having money! You got the gelt -- go buy another car!"

"But I need some advice about . . ."

"Advice, I got. My advice to you is this: you get yourself a bagel -- are you writing this down? -- some lox, a schmeer and a Dr. Brown's. Things alvays look better vhen you got some decent food in your stomach. Now get moving, schmucko. I got an alteh moid Qveen on the uddah line! Curses I don't need! Feh!

MOE, LARRY, AND ...DOCTOR?

You know what really moves me just to the left of complete apoplexy? 

“No, Carson,” you reply.  “What is it today?”

I will ignore the sarcasm of your snide question, because #1—there’s a bit of truth to it, curmudgeon that I am fast becoming, and #2—you read my ramblings anyway.

The answer is:  modern medicine.

I have never felt more bovine than when I am visiting my doctor.  Oh, and that’s another thing—“visiting” --like it’s some kind of a social gathering—for which you must pay and pay dearly.  And since when do you pay to visit someone, anyhow?  I think a trip to the doctor should be called “fiscal disquietude” or perhaps, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” with a picture of an empty wallet spotted with tear stains, or alternatively, a bleeding stone.

Whether you have health insurance or not, staying alive and well has become financially ruinous.  I happen to have insurance, but the policy I could afford has a deductible that rivals the National Debt; so I’m alive and well and now I’m also depressed and stressed out and eating Cheerios three meals a day to pay for all this good health.

It might not be so ghastly if you could actually have a mutually concerned relationship with your medico. 

It is to laugh.

These days, this is how a patient fleecing usually goes—you sign in and you wait—oh, and before I forget, bring a book with you (preferably War and Peace) and enough food and water to last a couple of days, anyway.  So while you’re chewing on your last piece of beef jerky and are on the last page, the doctor’s assistant ushers you into the inner sanctum, where you will be weighed (love that part) and your pulse and blood pressure will be taken.  I always ask about the blood pressure results, just to confirm how totally pissed off I am by that point.

The assistant looks at me like it’s none of my damned business, mumbles something, then legs it out of the room.

I sigh.  I grab a magazine from the rack in the room.  Oh, joy.  A copy of “Guns & Ammo” from 1976.  I read it with interest, as I am hoping to pick up a few pointers for when I return later that afternoon, with “my leetle friend.”

Finally, the doctor, or, as I like to refer to him, “Henry Ford,”  because there is nobody but a present-day doctor who can make you understand the concept of an assembly line better, arrives.

Now, I’ve been going to this ding-dong for quite a while now, and though he’s finally learned my name, he is unable to remember much else about me.  One might think he’d take a moment to consult my file before he walked in; but no.  Such niceties have gone the way of $1.00 a gallon gasoline.

Let me give you an example:

In the initial new patient paperwork that we all fill out, there is an area that requires you to list any surgeries you’ve had.  I had a hysterectomy in 1999, so I put it down.

A couple of months later, I came in for a physical.

“You need a PAP smear,” the doctor said.

“For what?” I asked.  “I had a hysterectomy.  I don’t think that stuff grows back.”

“You need it.  You can still get cancer of the vaginal wall.”

At that time, I had no insurance at all, and I knew a referral to an OB/GYN would cost me big.  My doctor in Connecticut (who I miss sorely—he was all-around great) always did the smears himself, so I figured this guy could deal with it here.

“Can you do it? I asked foolishly

“Sure.”

He got all his mining equipment together squished on the KY and got on with it.  Then, he asked me the question.

“Have you had a hysterectomy?”

“Yes,” I replied, wondering in which landfill my new patient paperwork was currently mouldering.  You’d have been proud of me—I didn’t say anything more than “yes.” 

The holes in my tongue are pretty well healed up now.

So he did the smear.  “Come back in a week,” he said.

“But what about the rest of the physical?”

“I want to get one thing dealt with at a time,” he replied as he hopped it out of the consulting room.

He was with me for a total of ten minutes…for $143.00.  And that didn’t include the cost of the lab work for the test.

OK. One week later, I’m back in his office.  He arrives in the consulting room.

“The test was inconclusive.  We have to do it again.”

Since I had gagged myself before he walked in, I simply nodded.

I did, however, glare at him in a hostile manner.

Another ten minutes, another $143.00, and come back in a week.

Back in a week.

“The test was inconclusive.  We have to do it again.”  Behind my gag, I thought of how fortunate it was that I had had the foresight to have someone tie my hands behind my back.

“But the good news is, I spoke to the GYN down the hall and she told me about a better way to do this.  Should give us some results this time.”

The mere thought of where in hell this guy got his medical training makes me shudder and take to my bed to this day.

So, in we go again. 

“Have you had a hysterectomy?” he asks.

That was pretty much it.  The bonds on my wrists shredded like paper, the gag blew out of my mouth and imbedded itself in the opposite wall as Carson Buckingham, mild mannered writer, went somewhere else and the Incredible Hulk, or S.J. Perelman—I’m not sure which—took over.

“WHAT?  If I’m not mistaken…Doctor…you have been spelunking in my body three times now!  Can you not see that the usual suspects have taken a powder?  Do I need to tattoo my inner thigh as a friendly reminder?  Of course, that won’t do any good anyway, because I have serious doubts that you know how to read.  And where did you get your diploma—Joe & Charley’s Medical School and Fish Shack?  I have seen things lying on their backs at the bottom of bird cages more adept!”

Oh, I did go on—for exactly ten minutes—then he left, mid-sentence. But believe me; I made those ten minutes count.

And when I got the bills from the lab and the doctor, I wrote a two word message on each and sent them back.  And no, it wasn’t those two words.

I wrote, “Finances Inconclusive.”

YOU'LL BE SORRY!

Today’s column is all about family—you know—those people who put the “funk” into “dysfunctional’?

I don’t know what your family is like, but I was lucky to get through childhood without being eaten.  At Thanksgiving, my mother always had to stuff the turkey with Valium just to keep the bloodshed and gunplay to a minimum.

But now that I am an adult, I can look back on all that if not with a chuckle, at least an ironic smile.  I survived.  I succeeded.  I got my first novel published—and not self-published, either.  Somebody else thought my work good enough to pick it up and pay me royalties.

It is about this book that I write today.  Well, not the whole book, but more specifically, the dedication.

But let me give you a bit of background info, first.

In my family, I have one aunt who is a particular favorite of mine.  We are very much alike.  As a matter of fact, if my cousin wasn’t two years older than I, I would have been convinced that I had been switched at the hospital and handed off to my mother by mistake.  That’s how much alike my aunt and I are.   I should also mention that she is 92 years old.

Sooooooo, I decided to give her the highest honor and the best gift I could bestow, in my amazingly deluded opinion.  I would dedicate my first novel to her.  I labored over the dedication, striving to get the words right.  Here is what I came up with:  “To Mary Rasmussen—a treasure beyond measure.  Love you always, Mare.”

Pretty nice, right?  I thought so.  Of course, there are times when I think SpongeBob Squarepants is real, too, so I may not be the best judge.

Turns out, I wasn’t.

My aunt, apparently, was insulted.  My birthday and Christmas came and went with nary a word.  I haven’t heard from her since sending her the book and telling her to read the dedication.  And to answer your next question, no she hasn’t died since.  I called her house in Connecticut to see if she’d answer the phone, and she did.

I tried hard to figure out what she could have taken offense about.  Did she not cotton to the fact that I dedicated a dark fantasy novel to her instead of some sparkly, diabetes-inducing beach book?  Does she now regard me as the Spawn of Satan?  Is she afraid of me now because she had no idea that my thought processes worked this way?

Probably.

I keep receiving crosses in the mail.  Right around the holidays, a wolfsbane wreath was delivered to me.  I hung it on my door, and it had the added benefit of not only discouraging wolves, but Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well.  I suspect they recognized that whatever unholy entity that lived within was not making a secret of it anymore, and high-tailed it to find someone who was actually worth saving.

A gallon of Holy Water was next.  I drank it and now I glow in the dark—handy if you want to read during a blackout.

But the revolver loaded with silver bullets and an anonymous note suggesting that I “do the right thing” was really beyond the pale.  But I melted down the solid silver ammo and fashioned a nifty napkin holder, so it wasn’t a total loss.

It’s a good thing she’s in Connecticut and I am in Arizona or she’d probably show up on my street with a crowd of torch and a pitchfork wielding nonagenarians!  Can’t you just picture it, though?  The walkers and the wheelchairs scraping down the street, the colostomy bags flapping in the breeze, amid a sea of blue hair and baldness?  A priest, jaundiced from cirrhosis, clutching his side and hobbling down the street at the front of the crowd, swinging an incense burner, and passing out from the fumes?  The members of the crowd with Alzheimer’s, who have walked in the opposite direction and are now having their 40^th cup of coffee at Starbucks, because they can’t remember drinking the previous 39?

It’s all well and good for you to laugh, but I’m having freakin’ nightmares over this!  It’s like the attack of the LIVING zombies!  I wake up screaming in the night!  The mere sight of Metamucil results in a panic attack.  I break out into a cold sweat at the thought of Geritol.  And I can’t even begin to describe what Hugh Downs’ hospice commercials do to me.  I can’t listen to the song, “Old Man River” anymore, or shop at stores on Senior Days or when social security checks are delivered monthly.  My life is spinning out of my control… all over a dedication.

So my advice to you, dear readers, is to dedicate your books to your favorite charity.  Even if they are insulted, you’ll never know it, because they still want your money.

Currier & Ives, May You Rot in Hell! (PART TWO)

(You may want to read Part One of this post first, entitled, “Cursing Up the Christmas Tree” that I wrote for my good friend Nishi Serrano, as a guest blogger.   Part Two will be much funnier if you read Part One first.  Here’s the link:   http://www.nishiserrano.blogspot.com     

See you in a few minutes.  I’ll leave the porch light on.

Christmas time for me has always been a time of reflection—remembering those who are no longer with us, wishing we could forget those who still are.  I happened to be shuffling through some photos the other day and was reminded of the Christmas I am about to relate to you.  So grab some hot mulled cider and a plain doughnut, and join me on yet another sleigh ride through Yuletide Hell…

Last year, I decided to do a “themed” holiday.  It was to be “An Old Fashioned Christmas” in the Buckingham Household, right out of Currier & Ives.

As a survivor of that same Christmas, I’m here to tell you that it was more like something out of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.  Picture Norman Rockwell beating up a small child, and you’ve got the idea.

To start with, I managed to wheedle the entire neighborhood into participating in a carol sing throughout the town.  I secured participants by promising them that I wouldn’t give them any of my Christmas cookies that year.

At any rate, at the appointed hour on December 23, we all assembled.  That crew of singers made the cast of M*A*S*H look positively normal.  I had the route all planned, and so led the way on the half-mile stroll to the first house to be the beneficiary of our jolly vocalizations.

I should mention here that though I have received death threats form most of the great chefs in the country, I actually can sing.  Our first number was “O Little Town of Bethlehem” into which I launched, con brio, expecting everyone else to jump in.

Nobody did.

I got as far as “Oh little town of …” and stopped/

“Well, come on!  Sing!” I cried.

“I can’t sing worth a damn, Carson,” old Corduroy Jenkins said.

This sentiment was echoed by most of the crowd, except for the ones at the back who, by this time, were so gassed on the bottle of bourbon that Alvin had brought along to keep warm that they were ready to sing anything, as long as it was “Little Brown Jug.”

Being the thorough planner that I am, I had forgotten to mention that at least a passing interest in singing would be necessary for our little adventure.

So, after five notes, that bit of Christmas magic was abandoned and everybody went home.  However, even a setback like this left me with my shining visions of Rogers & Hammerstein dancing in my head undimmed.  I trudged home to help decorate the tree.  The “perfect” tree.

After I cleaned up the wood chips, put away the chain saw, and disposed of the now useless tree stand, my children were headed for the basement to get the ornaments and lights when…

“Oh, no!  No lights.  No ornaments.  This year we’re having real candles on the tree.  We’ll decorate it with strings of popcorn and cranberries. This is going to be an old fashioned Christmas!” I cried.

My husband, Stij, growled something about an Old Fashioned sounding pretty good to him right about then—but they humored me.

I had purchased a thousand tiny white candles with their accompanying tree fixtures.  The tree, being two and a half feet tall, only accommodated about 75 candles; which was fortunate since, by the time we lit them all, the first ones were still burning…for a minute or two.

We went through the whole thousand in the first 90 minutes, which ended with a hasty call to the fire department.

Luckily, all that happened was that the tree burned to a crisp, the wall was scorched, Stij’s eyebrows were singed off, and I finally got that sunken living room I had always wanted.

After the firemen left, following a stern warning to my husband about keeping the matches locked up, my son asked, “Where’s Tango?”

Tango is the cat—a Burmese stray who adopted us five years ago.

“The last time I saw her she was sleeping under the Christmas tree, and …OH NO!”

Resembling and outtake from a Keystone Kops short, we scoured the house in complete panic.  We finally found her hiding under the stairs…or what we thought was her.  I was hard to tell under a two-pound layer of built up candle wax.  She looked more like a miniature, extremely pissed off Jabba the Hutt.

The typical wax removal regimen involves pouring boiling water over the coated object—obviously not an option in this case, unless one finds the prospect of holiday evisceration appealing.

Stij took one look at poor little Tango, then turned to me and said, “Well, Carson, we can stick a wick in her and drape her over what’s left of the tree in what’s left of our house, if you want.”

Before I could reply, I got THE LOOK, and kept my mouth shut.  It was the first smart thing I’d done all season.

Upon assessing the damage, I was really surprised he didn’t just skip THE LOOK and go straight for THE REMINGTON.

Instead, he left the room and came back with a pair of hair clippers.

Our family Christmas photo from last year, rather than framed and on the mantle, resides in a dusty album filled with photos of the relatives no one likes.  This is completely understandable.  This piece of Christmas nostalgia depicts two frightened children; a glowering father with no eyebrows; a charred, undecorated Christmas stick; a mother bound to a smoldering chair with strings of popcorn, cranberries, and boughs of holly, and gagged with a book of Christmas carols; and a now vicious bald cat.

Fa la la la la, la la la la.