Christmas Eve

(Edited to fix dates - drink to forget, etc)

HO HO I am drinking.

After euthanizing our cat, I went to work and sat at the library door live-streaming a funeral with my co-worker because her neighbor, who worked at the airport, died of the virus over the weekend. 

It was an open-casket zoom meeting. 

It was super weird.

But spending a couple hours with a dead person is a traditional holiday spirit power-move. It could be worse. It HAS been worse. It WILL be worse. So buy the biggest goose you can find and stop being an asshole. 

Absolutely right. Even with a dead cat and a phone funeral, this year doesn't even crack the top 5 Worst Christmases I Would Punch a Ghost to Avoid Revisiting. 

Christmas 2004 2003: father-in-law told Mike he was "pussy whipped" because he didn't make me cook Christmas dinner with a 103 degree fever while staying in the unheated basement with a sick baby.

Christmas 1994: traveled to Vancouver to see my dying grandmother, who then died, and in her absence my mother's 6th grade class wrote "condolence" cards which included ones that said "I don't care that your mother died" and "I'm glad she's dead". 

There were others. Divorced, dumped, pregnant, sick, regifted gifts from the previous year. Most were good, though.

So, you know, basically I can do whatever I want now. Think of your worst christmases. Is fucking up the roast going to top that? PROBABLY NOT.

So what I want to do is bake until everyone is happy. Breakfast took two attempts because of a sausage mishap and I got 140-proof rum in my eyeball while soaking pie cherries, but then I started making gin spritzers and things started going smoothly.

SO FAR:

Eggnog Pie (as yet un-stepped-in).

Apple tart with lychee glaze, because I didn't feel like making apple pie. 

And a terrible selfie with the cat in the wrapping-strewn ruins of my bedroom while the kids watch the Grinch.

There will be roast beef. And Yorkshire pudding. This year was stupid and we can do something about it right now.

This has been your annual reminder to take the holiday by the neck and shake it until joy falls out, folks.