I don’t think I’ve ever uttered the words, “I can’t wait for the holidays.”

Mostly this is because I’ve never been the family type. Given my upbringing, you’d understand. Brief history: my father was an alcoholic abusive bastard and my mother is a self-absorbed bitch. The nurturing a child so desperately needs simply wasn’t provided me, so I was forced to grow up quickly and nurture myself as best as possible. I think I turned out all right, all things considered.

But, I’m sure you can see why things like, “home for the holidays” have never tugged my heartstrings, right?

I’ll be spending Thanksgiving with my sister, and I’m really looking forward to this considering I haven’t seen her or my niece and nephew in six years. I’m not proud of that by any means, but I hope to start making up for lost time.

My best friend, Rich and I are now planning to spend Christmas together, which we have never done. Rich is like my brother. We’ve known each other for 15 years, so he is definitely family.

Since my new job closes its offices the week between Christmas and New Year’s, I thought a visit to Florida would be a nice idea. Initially, I told Rich I’d be happy to come after the 25th so he could do the family thing, but he responded with:

I think it would be great to spend Christmas together. We could even
go ALL out and make a pallet in the living room floor in front of the tree
and sleep in front of the tree with the lights on and Christmas music - be
all sentimental - and, we could cook Christmas dinner together. I would
love that.

Me being the emotional fool I am… got all teary-eyed reading that.

I really can’t wait for the holidays.

I need a surplus of umbrellas.

Of the two in my possession, I left one in a friend’s car the other day and another here at my office yesterday. I should have just taken the Metro to work this morning, but it wasn’t actually raining just wet and dreary with what I would call a barely noticeable mist. The majority of the trek was fine, save for the drop in barometric pressure giving me one helluva headache.

But, of course, when I was about ten minutes away from my office the skies decided to open. Just enough to mat my hair to my head and sprinkle my glasses to where I couldn’t really see, but thankfully not a torrential downpour.

If you would like to donate your gently used but fully functional umbrella to me, please let me know.

I could be $5 richer right now. Not that $5 is a lot of money, but when you find some on the floor or on the street, it’s like the little prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box that always made you smile when you were a kid.

Someone on my office floor dropped $5 and a smoothie card for Robeks in the restroom. Had I found this on the street amongst hundreds of people, there’d be no way to find the owner…but since this was on the restroom floor with only about 12 women to choose from, I put a note on the mirror that instructed the owner to come find me with details on the amount that was lost. Don’t want to risk just any greedy woman trying to claim it, ya know. Some of them are downright bitches without their morning lattes and $5 is the perfect amount to buy one.