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If, by chance, you should happen to wake up in the middle of the night and you realize you can see your breath, you may be out of heating oil.

This may surprise you, since it was only a few weeks ago that you also woke up in the middle of the night and realized you could see your breath. Yes, it’s been cold, but that is an awfully fast time to burn through that much oil.  And you were so looking forward to paying the mortgage this month!

So what you do is to pick your way carefully through the basement to check the oil tank, to make sure it’s actually empty.  Maybe it’s only that some rogue vole or porcupine woke from hibernation, stumbled into your basement, leaned tragically against the “emergency off” switch, and died.  One can hope!

While you are down there, try looking around the rest of the basement to see if anything else seems amiss.  If you see something that, in terms of heating ducts being where they should be, looks about as fine as this:

 

then think to yourself, “Gee, look at that.”  Then go back upstairs, make some coffee and some cream of wheat, take the kids to school, go to an appointment or two, entertain a visitor, write some emails, make lunch, do a little laundry, and then have a seat for a minute.

At this point, you should think to yourself, “Wait a minute.”

Then think to yourself, “Wha?”

Then ask yourself, “Who the HUH?”  Again, this is what you saw a few hours ago:

Go back down to the basement, and see if you can figure out what the hell happened here.  With some examination, you may find that the heating duct has been so fabulously, extravagantly weatherized, it’s now much too heavy for the bittle little twist of rusted wire that was supporting it, and that while one end is still connected to the furnace, the other end, which is supposed to be heating the living room, is lolling on the basement floor like a comatose python.  Yay, easy to fix!

Also, it may occur to you at this point that, if there is an 8-inch pipe bellowing hot air into the basement all month

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then that might possibly explain why you ran through that oil so quickly.  Ah so!  See how smart you are getting?  It must be the exhilarating effect of all that blood rushing to your brain from trotting up and down the stairs so many times in a single day.

From here on in, the story gets less interesting.  Pretending not to notice the pathetic little nest made by some enterprising mouse, who had clearly found a balmy but short-lived paradise inside your duct

 

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you just thread some wire coat hangers onto the pipe, screw a few sturdy screws into the ceiling, and hang the thing back up.

It is advisable, at this point, to email your husband several times about your accomplishment, and then when he gets home, ask him if he can go downstairs to “make sure you did it right.”  Husbands: this is the part where you’re supposed to go, “Wow, GEE, nice job with those hangers!  YOU did that with those soft, pretty little hands of yours, did you?  You realize you have saved us over $75,000 in heating bills this afternoon alone!  I also really appreciate you doing this job yourself, rather than making me go down into the basement to do it!” Then, ladies, you can let him come up out of the basement.

Stay tuned next week, when I will be offering a guide on how to keep your marriage strong and healthy by treating your husband like a real man and making him deal with that scrabbling mousy sound you keep hearing in the floor.

I just got home from my third visit to the pharmacy to get our apparently rare and unheard-of prescription filled.  In case you missed it, we spent Christmas vacation throwing up, thrashing around with fevers, and feeling like we had each swallowed a bundle of toothpick shards wrapped in Velcro and dipped in Tobasco sauce.  Strep throat, all ten of us — and guess what the doctor gave us?  It’s something brand new, called “pen-i-cil-lin.”

Utterly taken aback by this newfangled innovation, the pharmacists requested that I wait five minutes while they get the drugs together.  You know and I know that “five minutes” in pharmacy time is at least half an hour; so I browsed around in the produce aisle for a while, because there is nothing more entertaining than a lot of bags of citrus.  After half an hour, I was told to come back in an hour.

I came back in two hours, and was told that they had most of it — – they just needed to mix it up . . .if I could come back in twenty minutes –

The kids were all waiting in the car all this time, enjoying their Christmas vacation and trying to attract the attention of whatever wandering Child Protective Services agents might be passing by.  So I went home with nine-and-a-half prescriptions.  The next day I went back.  Same routine.  Five minutes, then twenty, then “please come back after noon.”

So the next day — okay, it was actually the next next day, because I forgot — I finally got the second half of my last prescription.  But all this time, I can’t help wondering –

What what what is the deal with pharmacists?  Why are they all so crazy?  Is it the combination of working with the public, plus the emotional stress of dealing with death and disease, plus having to wear those dopey white coats that even doctors don’t have to wear anymore?  Is it the combination of supermarket music and the hissing of the free blood pressure machine?  Or are they all just natural born jerks?

My most recent encounter was with the Head Pharmacy Weirdo, a tall, sleek, squeaky clean man with shiny shoes and an laser-guided part in his chestnut hair. He has this “Voice-Over Man Barely Suppressing Maniacal Rage” routine.  I guess he thinks it sounds polite?  I know it’s not his normal voice, because I once heard him having a personal conversation on the phone, and he was just plain screaming, then.  And swearing a lot.  And then he swiveled back around to the counter and said, in polished tones of urbane repressed fury, “And what can I get for YOU?”

Oh-hhh, just some medicine for my kids, sir, if, if it’s not too much trouble.  I can leave if you want.  Just please don’t hit my bad ear again!

The second pharmacist is a woman who – – I don’t know what it is.  She’s nice enough, and will give me my prescription if I come back three times and prove I really want it.  But there is something about her which suggests that there might just be some reptilian life form coiled up inside her skull, hissing directly into the auditory center of her brain, “Yessss . . . tell her it will only be twenty minutesssssss . . . tell her you just have to mixxxxxxxxxxxxxx it . . . yes, yesss, make her read The Pill Book ssssssome more . . . ”  And those big, friendly eyes just stare and stare at you as you struggle to sign your name with a fake pen on the electronic screen.

Nice lady otherwise, though.

The third pharmacist is actually a rotating position.  It is generally filled by a wholesome-looking man in his early twenties, usually the tender, baby-faced type.  He works hard, shows concern, and appears to know his alphabet.   Kind of jittery, though.  Has a tendency to jump nervously when one of the other pharmacists calls his name; and he doesn’t appear comfortable turning his back to his co-workers.  Just too polite, I guess.   Tender Young Pharmacist #3 generally lasts a month or two, and then he disappears.

And then I notice there is a sale on that body building protein powder.  Special formula!  Private label.

Maybe it’s time to switch pharmacies.

1.  It’s all very well to say that we should preserve Advent as a penitential season of waiting and preparation, and you shouldn’t jump the gun and celebrate a feast that hasn’t yet arrived.  But you know what that gets you?  One mother having a nervous breakdown trying to get it all together on Christmas eve

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and eight kids who stare at you blankly when you suggest singing Christmas carols. Because they didn’t learn any Christmas carols, because it was Advent.  Next year, we’ll be less liturgical, but more sane.

2.  Homemade peanut brittle is way, way more delicious than store-bought peanut brittle.  But store-bought peanut brittle doesn’t rip hunks of flesh off your hand if you accidentally touch it during the hard crack stage.

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3.  I can’t decide if I’m delighted that our new charter school is so easygoing, or a little disgusted at how truly awful the Christmas concert was.  The upside was that it was held at a Baptist church, so I was able to take the disruptive younguns into a sound proof, glassed-in balcony with fully stocked playroom, complete with changing table, crib, rocking chairs, and piped-in sound (Baptists!).  So I could hear 63 recorders shrieking their way through “Jingle Bells,” but the performers couldn’t hear me moaning in agony through the same.

Meh, the kids are happy, they’re getting a good education, and they sound horrible on the recorder.  Yeah, I guess I’m delighted!

4.  There was a great, big bat swooping around just over the heads of the congregation at midnight Mass, and nobody could figure out what to do.  Isn’t that what the Knights of Columbus are for?

On the other hand, I was blown away by the utter composure of the three priests concelebrating Mass.  They didn’t miss a beat and were utterly focused on the liturgy, even as different sections of the congregation let out little involuntary shrieks and gasps.

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I tried really hard to wrench a metaphor out of the situation, but nothing happened.

5.  We are incapable of not going overboard for Christmas.  It’s far, far too late for us to train the youngsters to be thrilled to find a box of colored pencils and an irregulardickey

under the tree.  So we go a little berserk, and buy them extravagant presents that delight them.  So sue me!  The rest of the year, they’re lucky if I can remember their names.

6.   A few days before Christmas, my son got sick.  Then everyone else got sick, one by one, until everyone except my husband and some miscellaneous toddlers had fever and chills, severe sore throats, vertigo, headaches, muscle aches, and near-fatal surliness.  Some of us were throwing up, some of us were wandering up and down the stairs in a delirium, and one kid developed some rather theatrical Strange Bumps all over his head.

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So on Monday, my husband spent four hours shoveling snow, and then insisted on calling in to work so he could stay home and take care of us, since my limbs weren’t working.  He handed out Tylenol.  He plumped pillows and poured orange juice.  He set up humidifiers, washed pukey sheets, played Go Fish, and sat through countless hours of Wonder Pets.  He cheerfully leaped out of bed half a dozen times to sooth crazed and querelous children who didn’t know why they were up.  In short, he is my favorite husband ever.

7.   I didn’t write a Christmas letter or cards.  It’s been a strange and disconcerting year, and many Things have Changed for our family – – and it was all just too hard to explain in one of those holly jolly update letters.  I’ve been fretting a lot lately, and falling prey to a stupid spiritual distraction, worrying whether there really is something wrong with my attitude about femininity.  Maybe I really am turning my back on womanhood with my pants-wearing, gin-swilling, fart-joke-making ways, and making the world a worser place in which to live in.  It seems like everything I do is lacking, and I’m so tired of being this way.  I was moaning about this to my husband, and said, “Well, this year you accomplished this, and So-and-so did that, and she made so much progress in this — but I didn’t do anything!”

And he said, “But you made it so that all these things could happen.  You kept us going.  You kept us together.”

That is actually the best thing that anyone has ever said to me.

And when I think about it, it’s pretty darn feminine, as long as you’re looking for more than high heels and homemade cookies.  Not that I have no room for improvement, but I guess I’m doing what I was put here to do — and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by the person I love the most in the world.

Of course you notice, if you re-read number 6, that we are both under the impression that the other one is the one who is holding this whole freak show together.  ‘Snice, isn’t it?  You should be glad to know us!

Today I am 36.  Yesterday I found a gray hair, and a piece of my tooth fell off.  A little piece, but still.

Then my dear friend, the lovely, fecund, and irrepressible Justine Schmiesing sent me this:

And now I feel better.

(Also, my husband woke up early and took the kids to school even though it wasn’t his turn, and he got me lots of presents with receipts, and we’re watching Dumbo for home school today, and we’re going out to my favorite restaurant tonight, and there’s coffee brewing.  But you’re not here to hear about that!)

I’m actually going to close comments so you don’t feel like you have to wish me a happy birthday.  It’s bad enough Facebook is pestering everybody about it.  Yes, I realize I could take my birth date off my profile, but – – but then nobody would wish me a happy birthday!