The 2017 Christmas Newsletter

Hello Friends and Family,

2017 has been an exciting year for our family! Let me catch you up!

Darling child number five is currently in the midst of basketball season, which you will always know by the fumes creeping out from under the laundry room door. He lives off of frozen pizza and tortilla chips, the building blocks of every athlete. Sometimes I nag him via text, and he will eat a fruit snack to step it up. Kid five is crushing Junior year and doing so without a girlfriend. Good job, kid five. Here’s a bacon bit.

Suave child four, owner of a quality high school education, master of sports and holder down of real live job, was denied access to his college of choice and retaliated by vowing to live at home and attend community college, laughing in the face of debt. He also laughs in the face of dirty dishes, overflowing trashcans and mountains of laundry in the hall, which isn’t funny, but is attentive and hardworking at his girlfriend’s family home where he does dishes and takes out trash which now that I think about it isn’t funny either, but what can you do? 

Exhausted kid three is, this very moment, writing the very last paper for the very last class that will finally allow her to very much graduate college. The one that let her in. And then never let her out. Because college is a racket and I refuse to give it the rant it deserves, just know that some things touted since preschool, much like Santa Claus, don’t deliver once you start adulting. Kid three is out of money, out of patience, out of ideas and definitely out of floor space.

I don’t want to talk about it.

Where was I?

Kid two. Go-gettin’ kid two lives across town with her Grammy and works with animals, tourists, and children. I’m not sure which of them gives her more grief on any given day, but she has the adulting thing down pretty well and went out and got herself a little Christmas tree and everything. Just because she travels the world at will does not mean that I am in any way jealous. I, too, have ridden a camel. Just not in Africa.

We have arrived at invisible kid one. Kid one moved to Los Angeles about three years ago to pursue his dream of not becoming a banker. He is busy exhausting every possible avenue that leads to earning an income with art. At the moment, he is becoming a tattoo master and costume designer. If I squint my eyes a little, I can see bankers with tats and some classy bit of leather swag mixed into their three-piece ensemble.

If I squint harder, I can even see kid one occasionally calling his mother.

As for the Hubby and I, we spent this busy year blinking hard as kids dashed to and fro in the earth and occasionally dashed ourselves, hoping to be mistaken for young free spirits. We juggled a lot of dirty dishes while juggling our day jobs. In December, we were blessed with new grand baby, Schubert.

He’s registered at Kahoots Pet Store in the tortoise department.

May your Holidays be Merry and Bright and may your New Year be filled with the delicious sparkle of fresh laundry on hangers.