Naddafinga!

"My little brother had not eaten voluntarily in over three years." (I couldn't find one that wasn't spliced up. My apologies.)

It finally feels like Christmas. Cold. Snow. You need cold and snow. A couple of weeks ago on a 60-degree day, Molly asked me if it snows in December. In the old days it did, kiddo. And then it came. Twice. There is snow on the ground though not much due to the rains which followed the other day’s white-out. In all the Christmas movies depicting the coziness of the holiday season in New England---the chimney smoking, the mom in the window waiting for her grown children to come home, the frozen-over pond on which children skate (I will dedicate another entry to why ice skating sucks and how a cold, bruised ass and bound feet do not a happy person make)--- never once have I seen the cold rains and mucky puddles that follow the fluffy whiteness. I’m going write a holiday movie titled “Wintry Mix.”

Still, despite the rain, I could make a snowball if I wanted to.

Our home is decorated so that also helps bring the Christmas on. Our apartment is so small and our holiday decoration collection so vast, that the resemblance of our home to Santa’s Workshop cannot be overstated. While decorating, in a scene reminiscent of “A Christmas Story” in which the curly-haired wife breaks the Old Man’s fishnet-clad leg lamp, I knocked Dan’s 20-pound stone gargoyle off the top of a six-foot high book shelf and it plummeted to the ground, breaking both its feet in the fall. (Fortunately, the hard-wood floor sustained no injury.)

“What happened next was a family controversy for years.”

“You never liked that gargoyle,” Dan mock-yelled.

He’s right. I never did. I have expressed this multiple times. Not only does it weird me out (the gargoyle and also the realization that the man I’m sharing my life with is into such things), but I don’t think it has any place in a living room (unless you’re the Hunchback of Notre Dame). Find a place for it your five feet of man space in the spoffice, I say.

But I caved and it took a spot high atop the bookshelf where I would hopefully never notice it. Now that I think about it, I can’t remember why I caved. I think it must have had something to do with the stance I took against his hanging this picture in the living room:



A cool picture, yes, (and painted by an old friend of Dan’s) but what I want staring down at me as I engage in hand-to-mouth fudge shoveling on my couch? I think not. The gargoyle must have been the lesser of two evils on a day where I was trying understand the concept of compromise.

I was trying to put a Santa hat on the gargoyle (very cat lady-ish, I admit) when the accident happened. Rather than using a chair, I opted to try to maneuver a reach-and-throw technique which ultimately ended with the gargoyle being shoved off the cliff, er bookcase, into the cob-webby chasm which lies behind the kitty-cornered shelving unit.

I apologized repeatedly as Dan moved the bookcase from the wall to assess the damage and sweep up little stone toes. His quietness told me that he was irritated with my clumsiness (a fate he’s learning he will be eternally suffering) and I really felt badly*. The truth is that I probably would have been more careful had the possession been mine. How wrong is that? Had it been a stone Justin Timberlake statue (a much more suitable element of living room décor) and not Dan’s gargoyle that fell, I would’ve been not only crushed but also pouty about Dan’s carelessness. And, yet, after the short-lived silent treatment, he not only accepted my apology but also really forgave me. I think he even felt badly about my feeling badly (or bad about my feeling bad). Whatever the grammar, I’m convinced that it’s this ability of his to shrug things off rather than go nuts that has kept him looking young enough to still get carded and why people are genuinely shocked to hear that the guy is 41. (We’ll save for later the problem I have with a 41-year-old man---with whom I share a bed---owning a stone gargoyle.) It’s Dan’s calm nature that will give him all those extra years later on.

I’ll take early death and still get good and pissed once in a while.

Furthermore, there’s still a part of me that wonders if the repression of all this anger every time I break his toys, leave the sink full of dishes and take up 75 percent of the bed, is going to be break him and ultimately lead to my early death being at his hands. As we were unpacking our tree from its long plastic tote (allergies), Dan said, “This is where I would put your body…”

Nothing says Christmas like a little Scott Peterson humor. The screwed up part is that every time he makes a joke like this---and it’s a go-to joke for him---I laugh and laugh. It’s the funniest thing to me, this kidding about killing me. Once he asked me what picture I would want him to give to the police should I mysteriously disappear. (I’m laughing while typing it; soul mates.)

After the incident Dan asked me if I crossed the gargoyle off of my "to-kill" list.

I wonder who’s on his.

That’s it, no Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle for him this year.



*Grammar club---I know I’ve discussed this with a few of you privately, but it’s time to put it to the public: Does one feel bad or badly? I’ve read that since it is modifying the noun and not the verb, it is not an adverb and thus does not require the l-y. This same source said that to add the l-y would be to say that your ability to “feel”---that is the act of touching---is lacking. To not add the l-y make me feel weird. (Not weirdly.) Discuss.