You Read, Therefore I Am

I’m back! Wait .. whaddaya mean you didn’t know I was gone?

Didn’t your world feel a little bit empty?

Wasn’t it harder to laugh, cry, flagellate yourself for eating that renegade bear claw that leaped out at you from behind the counter of that Winchell’s Donut shop you don’t remember parking in front of without me there to remind you to do it?

It would be nice if — like all my former boyfriends who turned to monastic celibacy — you, my trusted readers, followed suit.

Laying down that middling Cheryl Strayed’s Wild (I could’ve hiked that trail in flip flops!).

Tossing aside any books written by that John Grisham master-of-the-law-thriller-who-definitely-has-ghost-writers-hidden-in-his-basement-subsisting-only-on-pre-chewed-moki-leaves-via-Alicia-Silverstone’s-mouth.

Boycotting any other form of literature, Hemingway, Ayn Rand, the tattoos on the canvas of Angelina Jolie’s ever-shrinking wrists.

Basically reading nothing until I returned!

So, here I am to save you from what I’m sure was a certain barrenness in your life. This is what I did over break:

• Read my kids’ 25 Christmas lists then committed Hari Kari.
• Read my kids’ Christmas letter to Santa asking if he’s real.
• Replied to my children as Santa, referencing all documents that prove Santa is real, but reminding them that their parents resent it if Santa gives them too many gifts because it ruins their character.
• Cooked pepperoni pasta (a surprisingly delicious dish) three times for a total of 51 people. I expect to be canonized for that, motherf#@kers!
• Swam in a chocolate fountain Henry made.
• Had intercourse with so much wrapping paper I think I’m pregnant with Scotch tape.
• Drank in the ballpark of twenty bottles of pinot grigio (very healthy due to the grapefruit key notes).
• Ate my ass mass in pumpkin pie.
• Forgot to have sex with Henry, turning him into the Grinch.
• Trekked to Palm Springs with the family, where I alternately froze my butt off on the mountain top because I wore the wrong boots, which caused me to slip and fall like an octogenarian high on mescaline.
• Fried my fanny off in a hot tub with God knows how much Stranger Urine.

And, as Henry took down the tree in the living room —

I found myself in the strong embrace of my youngest, while I squatted on the kitchen floor in the midst of an explosion of dirty dishes. She cried into my hair because she didn’t want 2012 to end because she doesn’t ever want to grow up and leave us.

Be here right now, I thought, feeling her dear, strong, growing weight in my arms. And then:

God, whose I name I do not know, thank you for my life.

A quiet moment before we risk our lives ...

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Happy, happy 2013!