Dear Santa,

I just want to start by saying that, especially given all the circumstances, I've been pretty darn good this year. Last year for Christmas, a year I had been feeling even better about, the kids and I were served a whopping serving of heartbreak and feelings of betrayal and the shattering of our family unit. In the year since then, we've endured the struggle to remain a strong and loving family, the realized fear of abduction, absolute poverty, medically insane flatmates and a growing appreciation for our inner strength and ability to come back together as a family.

This year, do you think you could work on dropping off a little happiness? I've already handled the whole presents-for-kids situation--just send the kids the ability to find happiness on the anniversary of their mom's decision to jack things up; give them the ability to be happy with the holiday again, and to be able to enjoy it with each of their parents.

I could go for some happiness too. As much as I'd like, I won't ask for meteors (that's a request I continue to reserve for The Universe) or a booty call. My brother Jeremy says I should ask you for the red limited edition Wii anniversary bundle I want so there you go.

Ongoing Conversation Between Me and Rael

This started two weeks ago.

Rael: Daddy, don't be sad, but Santa isn't real.
Me: What? You don't think Santa's real?
Rael: No, he's rubber. Santa's not real, he's fake. He's rubber daddy.
Me: Does this mean you don't want Santa then beca--
Rael: Nope.
Me: Uhm. . .

Rael: Santa IS real, daddy.
Me: Oh, he's real now?
Rael: Yeah, so now he can come.
Me: Ok.

and so on, repeat, etc. And then today:

Rael: I love you, daddy. Santa's not real, daddy.
Me: Ok. So no Santa then?
Rael: No, Santa's coming.
Me: How can Santa come if he's not real?
Rael: He's fake!
Me: Right, so if he's fake, how's he going to come?
Rael: I think I have enough stuff I can make us a robot Santa and he can come.
Me: OK.

One Week

Last Wednesday I typed:

Starting off, a trailer for blog posts to come: an update on CB the cell phone kid, adventures in guinea pigs, McBoomerangs suck, absolutes, shiny photographs, killing Santa and throwing up at the movies. Brought to you by the letter E and the number 3.
Now it's time I gave you all the pay-off on that statement for waiting so patiently.

CB the cellphone kid came in to work again the next morning and was very contrite and polite. Seeing as it's safe policy-wise to have someone outside with the garbage during the bright of day, we let him go through all of the compacted garbage and, sure enough, no cellphone present at all. Haven't seen him back since.

I also recently learned that I'm a guinea pig for an experiment between my store owner and regional manager. One believes that all management should be nurtured and promoted from within, while the other believes that, while that's ideal, we should remain open to bringing in new management from outside of the current employee pull when a valid and experiment specimen happens to apply (IOW, I was hired to prove that hiring management from without is a good thing). Absolutely no pressure on me at all now. Thankfully, I've been kicking burger butt from the first day and try to stay in that mindframe without focusing on my guinea pig status.

In a similar vein, we have another new manager who comes from without, though she used to be a member of the management team here some years ago, left, and is newly back. I'm not fond of her. She's been gone long enough to be uncomfortable doing a lot of things on her own ("what? work in the grill alone for ten whole minutes?") and tends to overcompensate by being a bit more bossy-slash-impatient with others, which is effecting employee morale, which comes back to me via complaints and makes me annoyed. She looks a lot like a dear friend of mine too, and I HATE that because I don't like associating the image of someone I like with a personality that has a lot of growing on me to do. Bah, rant mode off on that department.

I've begun to say "absolutely" far, far too often and it's starting to annoy me but I seem absolutely incapable of stopping myself.

Shiny photographs is still to come. Grammatically, that sentence would seem to require an "are" instead of an "is" but in this particular instance, "shiny photographs" is one thing (like Jaws is one movie, even though the word jaws is a plural of jaw). Your grammar lesson for today comes from my annoyance at being immersed in papers to grade this week as well. Shiny pictures is unlikely to see fruition before the holiday season nears its end.

Lash is 10, which is five whole years older than I was when my bastard classmates told me Santa was my mom. He still believes in Santa, which is great, adorable, yada yada, but I've been giving a lot of thought on the subject of breaking the news to him. On one hand, I know he'll be devastated if he learns the truth from a "friend" but I worry that he'd have a lot more and greater trust issues with us as parents if we let him know we've been allowing him to believe a lie all these years. I worry.

A few years ago there was this comic by Ed Brubaker called Sleeper. Issue 9 or 10 of volume two had the origin story of one of the main character's friends, a story that involved a good and loving father finding his young son horrifically eaten by a neighbour's dog, causing him a mental break and a life of violent crime to follow. This book made me physically ill and killed an excellent series for me. Fast forward. . .Stephen King's The Mist is adapted to film. If you haven't seen it and don't want any of it spoiled, stop fucking reading.

This is my favourite King short story (though it's technically a novella, which I should stick with so that I can call something else my favourite short). Based on my memory of the story, I was all set to let Lash and Aeia accompany me to the theater to see the film version (some scary, hidden monsters and giant spiders; some evil religious zealotry). The kids misbehaved at the zero hour and didn't get to go. This is a serendipitous happening that I'm very thankful for. I really dug most of the movie and found it a faithful and enjoyable adaptation, all the way up 'til the altered ending. The story ends with them driving off into the mist and an unsure future, which is perfectly a-ok with me. The movie doesn't stop there. In the movie, the main character earlier promises to protect his very young son from the monsters (and at a time where, thematically, the crazier humans are clearly more monster than anything else when he makes the promise), and so when their vehicle runs out of gas in the film (well beyond the story's closing) the loving and protective dad takes his gun and blows his son's brains out. Everything that followed that was just incredibly cliched and ridiculous, but I was too busy throwing up on the aisle in front of me to care. That scene made me understand a clear distinction between something being horrific and something being terrifying or scary as that was just horrific--and unnecessary.