‘Twas the night before Christmas…

And it has occurred to me that that entire poem is kinda bullshit, because it’s 8:30, all but two of the presents are wrapped and under the tree already, and whatever my wife and I are about to settle down to it is sure as shit not going to be a “long winter’s nap,” because we both know good and goddamn well the boy is going to wake both of us up before seven. There’s no way those children were all snug in their beds. They were waiting.

I, of course, in my role as Chief Troll of the household, have told the boy that he can’t open any of his presents until our small coterie of guests arrives at 4:00 tomorrow. We won’t hold him to that– and he knows it– but it’s still fun to say. I probably shouldn’t enjoy crushing my son’s soul as much as I do but at least he knows me well enough that he never believes a single thing I say any longer.

End-of-year posts will start soon; I usually do my Best Books post a couple of days after Christmas, but I feel like my book choice over the next few days is going to be really important to my timing. I know I just finished one today that might make the list, and there’s a couple that are high up in the rotation right now that have been really positively received. We’ll see what happens, I suppose. 

In which I broke my promise

My big plan from yesterday to post something longer than a paragraph for the first time in several days ended up flopping, falling victim to the worst anxiety attack I’ve had in quite some time. Anxiety attacks are not normally known for carefully justifying themselves, but this one made even less sense than usual, given that I could not and can not come up with anything in particular that I need to be anxious about. But that’s not how mental illness works, of course; the shit fucks you up whenever it feels like it, and for whatever reason mine felt like fucking with me last night, and it was all I could do to sit at my desk and idly web surf last night. Putting any sort of coherent thoughts together was just not happening. I took a brain pill at like 8:00 and went to bed early, and today I’ve been more or less back to normal, whatever that is.

I’m done with my Christmas shopping– have been for a week or so now, so long as we don’t really consider find a Christmas gift to give my wife and tell her it’s from the boy to be a real responsibility. He told me again today that he didn’t have any ideas for her, and while in principle I agree with my son that my wife is one of the more difficult people to buy for that I have known in my life, I asked him if he’d asked her what she wanted, and he looked at me like that was a rare and challenging idea that no reasonable person would have ever come up with on their own. 

Sigh.

There’s an update on the Dr. Curry situation, too; after several months of calling everyone I could think of short of the actual police (multiple lawyers, the state medical board, the newspaper, the Better Business Bureau, any number of online doctor things) and getting no help from anyone, I’d decided that I was at the very least going to spend several hours Friday morning camped out in his parking lot. I brought a couple of drinks, some snacks, and a book, fully prepared to be there all morning at least. I was genuinely considering just breaking into his office if nothing appeared to be different, although it had occurred to me that one final (legal) remedy might be to see if I could find the owner of the building and see f they would let me in. The last resort would be to contact the police, and if the police didn’t or couldn’t do anything about the situation (and, let’s be real, the police were not going to be useful in this case,) well, I’d been in the building enough times to know that all I’d need to get into his office proper would be a crowbar and five minutes. The place is not exactly Fort Knox, and that’s taking the harder route of going through the doors rather than trying to haul my fat ass through a window.

Anyway, I won’t post pictures this time, but there were two new signs on the door– one from the landlord (!) advertising that the building was for rent and that loitering and trespassing was discouraged, and that the building was under “video severance,” which is about the level of competence I’ve come to expect from everyone involved in this damn ordeal. The second was more interesting, advising anyone looking for their medical records to contact the Indiana Deputy Attorney General through the Department of “Complex Litigation” at the AG’s office in Indianapolis. They provided a phone number; I called it and left a message when I got home, but as it was the Friday before Christmas I’m not holding my breath about a swift return call. I’ll try again on Wednesday and if no one answers that time I’ll try again after New Year’s. One way or another I hope they don’t make me jump through too many hoops to get Dad’s medical records back. ”Complex Litigation” makes me hope that someone has had more luck finding an interested attorney than I did and is suing the ever-loving shit out of this son of a bitch. 

So, yeah. I didn’t get arrested, which makes the story less funny than it ought to be, but at least I’m a step or two closer to getting this out of the way. 

Made it

I live.

Tomorrow, I might even write something.

Proof of life

No matter what else happens, in 44 hours Winter Break will have started. There is, I admit, a slight possibility that it won’t matter because I’ll be locked up for messily dismembering a student, probably someone from sixth hour but who’s counting, but probably I’ll be home and relaxing. Right now I’m on the couch and watching my son play Elden Ring. There have been worse Tuesday nights.

Oh this just isn’t fair

My Algebra kids have a final on Tuesday, God, and as much as I’d like to see a massive blizzard start at 5:00 in the morning and cancel school this week, if you could put it off until Wednesday morning and then maybe have it last a couple of days I would appreciate it. Thanks.

Survived

Four days, which should be easy, until Winter Break, and I plan to spend the rest of tonight with a book.

In which fairness is stupid

I am tired, and crabby, and in no fucking mood for anyone’s nonsense, and the particular type of smug ignorance embedded in this TikTok is precisely the sort of thing that gets right on my nerves when I’m in this type of mood. Sure, okay, Congress gets lots of vacation time away from DC. Sure, Steve Scalise is a fucking asshole. Sure, the four-day work week would be just dandy.

But do you think the person who put this TikTok on the internet realizes that Congresspeople, like, actually have shit to do other than make laws in DC? Which is not, for the most part, where they live, and is absolutely not where their constituents live? I don’t know about you, but I would kind of like for my Congresscritters to be accessible to me once in a while, or at least be somewhere in my state, and I don’t have the time or money to fuck off to Washington DC every time I want to fucking yell at someone.

Yes, it is true, Congress takes lots of time away from lawmaking, and if you want to make the argument that they take too much, go ahead and make that argument. But let’s not pretend that it isn’t a good thing that these assholes have to come home every once in a while, and I don’t even think that the person who created this even realizes that’s what is going on. 

ETA: So long as I’m bitching about people bitching about Congress not working hard enough, let me point out that it is not at all abnormal to hear about bills getting debated until late at night, and that while I hardly have a cushy job, at least I can pretty well guarantee that I’m gonna be in bed by nine every night if that’s what I want.(*) I don’t know how the fuck these sixty- and seventy-year-old lawmakers are even remotely conscious at midnight much less still being awake and giving speeches no fucker is listening to.

(*) It is very much what I want and it almost never happens. I can’t guarantee a Goddamn thing. Ten if I’m lucky.

How is it not Thursday?

This week has been twenty million thousand days long, and yet somehow I am fairly certain it is Wednesday right now and not Thursday, as it absolutely needs to be. I am able to accept the idea that it is not Friday and tomorrow is therefore not a weekend, but the notion that tomorrow is somehow also not Friday is completely unacceptable. I know I whine a lot about being tired around here– the overload is starting to take its toll, y’all, and I need Winter Break to get here so I can reset myself– but I have been so tired this week that I literally forgot to write a blog post yesterday. Forgot. I have been writing more or less daily on this site for over ten years and I forgot to post yesterday. 

I feel like about four hours ago I had something else in mind that I wanted to talk about today, but I absolutely cannot remember what it is. I’m going to curl up with a book for half an hour and then go to bed so that I can curl up with that same book in bed for an hour.