Smackie the Frog

I’ve done a lot of thinking about this letter. In the past years I’ve gone way out of the way to be more and more outlandish and ridiculous, making fun of all of the people who bemoan all of the bad things that happen to them. And so I was sitting around, trying to figure out what I was going to do this year that wouldn’t just seem like I was pushing it too far. It was a really difficult task, and that is why here we are, Christmas Eve, and I’m just getting around to it.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that this year I don’t want to do that. If you want to read something ridiculous and funny, go back to last year or the year before and there you go. Because this year I think it is more important to do something serious. I know, it isn’t really my style, but that’s what I feel like doing.

And you know why? Because our family has been through a LOT this year. I don’t necessarily want to list out all of the crappy things that have happened, but if you are an avid reader of this blog, then you know them. Sure, you could say that compared to most people we are lucky, but that doesn’t mean that we all haven’t had a lot to go through.

I kept focusing on that when I was trying to come up with this letter. We were attacked. What can I write that is going to be funny and distract from the fact that we are still suffering from “crazies” from that attack? It would all seem kind of trite, I think. But the more I thought about it (I really did put some effort into coming up with this), I realized that really things are pretty good.

Sure, I missed Kelly a lot this spring and summer. But right now it is Christmas Eve, and she is sitting next to me, and just gave me an amazing present, so things are good.

Sure, we all miss Phil a ton. But we are less than 12 hours away from seeing him, and he’s going to be here for over a week, and he’s really just a plane ride away. So it really isn’t that bad.

And yeah, Helen was faced with the horrific prospect of becoming a Halley. But in spite of all of that she passed her big exam and got a job at Stanford. Stanford!

And sure, we all wish that Mom and Dad’s house would sell, especially with $140 round trip airfares to Disney World. But they are happy in their new house, and the doggies have a yard there, and there is a fireplace. The old house will sell eventually, and right now they are safe and comfortable. So that’s not something to complain about, right?

Abby hated chemistry and by all accounts did a pretty bad job of being a college “freshman.” But at the end of the day she passed Chemistry, and is going to save all of us by dating this very lovely boy named Matt. So that’s fuckin’ golden.

Sure, Charley went off the deep end and bought a car kit, scaring the crap out of everyone who knows him. And then he went and did what all of us should have known he would. He’s building the damn thing, and doing a damn fine job. Hell, even Dad thinks so. And the car is probably worth more than some stocks would be over the same period of time. So that turned out not to be a bad thing at all.

And good ol’ Baba keeps trudging along, looking as healthy to me as she has for as long as I can remember. She’s going to be with us for a long time. Definitely until next year when I’ll maybe write another funny one of these. Hopefully for decades to come.

I guess without getting too sappy, what I realized is that all of those people who write those really depressing Christmas letters just aren’t trying. I took a couple of days of thinking on the side and realized that in spite of all the crazy stuff that happened to us this year, things are still really good.

And on top of all of it, Dad sold the gay strip club, made a HUGE profit on it, and was able to buy Mom out of bondage. Abby ran away with a 65 year old man who plays the pan flute on the streets of New York, but what can you do? And Phil accidentally wrote a virus that erased all of Yahoo’s bank accounts, but they pinned it on his coworker, so now that poor schmuck is in jail instead of Phil, so we’re real happy about that.

Merry Christmas!