Key Issues

So It's Like This

Last night I had a situation.

I left my new Dish renewal card keys at the office (along with my DSL connection) and my horse country dial-up was particularly slow at the house and Miss Priss was neck-up in covers with a 101 degree fever and yelling "I'm NOT sick!"

What kind of a kid doesn't want to be sick/miss school, you ask? I will tell you; that would be one Miss Priss who did not want to miss the deadline of the canathon, when her daddy's company was planning on contributing 160 cans. After all, this could mean pizza party.

So, I continued to make dinner, while the entertainmently challenged kids attempted to find a way to live without television. I'm assuming this would have been easier, had one of them not been ill.

"MOM!!!!!" the ill one bellowed.

I stopped stirring spaghetti sauce and went to peek in on her. "MOOOOOOOOOM!!..."

"Yes?"

"I'm not sick."

"Okay, honey. We'll take your temp again in the morning."

So, I went about my business in the Kitchen, all the while being serenaded from the back of the house, "I'M. NOT. SICK!!"

"MOM!"

"Yes, baby..."

"...I'm not sick."

This went on for an hour.

Finally, at some point in the night, not a creature was stirring except my fried nerves. So I hit the wet bar, and my wondering eyes lit upon a bottle of tequila.

I then pulled out my handy dandy shot glass with the magic words etched on the side, "Shots make you SEE double and FEEL single." Then I sat under the object of my sap-covered frustration, my lighted tree, and poured me one.

Or two or three.

And then and only then, did I figure out all of the answers to life's quandaries. Unfortunately, I have since forgotten my findings.

Miss Priss awoke feverless, Dish service is restored, and although the house is littered with a dozen partially unpacked Christmas boxes, the tree is finally perfect.

It houses everything from $30 collector's ornaments to glittered popsicle sticks formed into a star and foam angels featuring my daughter's face. And it is beautiful.

And so it emerges... My Christmas spirit.

Now, maybe, just maybe, I can handle shopping.

Disclaimer: Okay, so it wasn't tequila. I used the shot class to measure out hair color developer. But I thought about the tequila, and I may have braved it, had I been able to get past the ominous looking segmented worm hovering near the base of the bottle.