Brigit, cowgirl extremis, wonderdog and all around great canine, went missing the other day. She occasionally takes off for cross-country adventures, sometimes with Molly gamely in tow. However, Brigit returns a couple hours or so after disappearing across the fields if someone turns their back a bit too long. She hates being cooped up in the yard and if she doesn’t get to go out, do stuff, she gets SUPERBORED AND SUPER-RESTLESS. Yes, she’s a Border Collie type of animal. Needs near constant stimulation and attention. I am thinking of getting her an actual sheep to keep her busy. Sort of kidding.
Anyhoo!!
She’s missing all afternoon. Up into the evening. It’s cold outside, baby. I mean down in the twenties. She lives in the house. She has short fur. I’m worried one of the farm trucks rushing to and fro hit her. There’s also the worry that the local coyotes led her somewhere and turned on her. Or that someone grabbed her and took her home. Or that…all the worries you get when your pet goes missing.
However, this is not a sad tale of a pet lost or a pet found smashed on the road. The evening drew nigh. I, having worked a graveyard, settled in on the couch to watch Hallmark fare and see if Brigit showed up at the door. I opened the door to check, yet again, for Miss Bridge. We’d all looked for her. Drove around the neighborhood, walked miles in the mud. Did I mention how muddy it is here this week?
She slinks into the house, wet, alive and exhausted. Very much alive. Not hurt. Thirsty. I squeal. A high-pitched OMG shriek. Brigit is home. I repeat, Brigit is home. Yay!!!!!! The sheer relief alone. Coming back from work just days before, I had noticed a dead dog and a car pulling up alongside it, with people getting out to gather up their pet…and I wish they’d gotten a happy ending instead of that. I know that scenario. Where you find your beloved companion dead or dying. That helpless grief that you can’t make that pet better. And how big a hole their leaving rips in the very fabric of your being.
Okay.
It’s the eve before the eve of Christmas. The troops are gathering to wage their final two assaults on the season, of course. The War on Christmas commences! I have no idea what those battles will be over. As the War on Christmas is a super-imaginary Fox News BS PR stunt that’s, ugh, endured. Was it Bill O’Silly who started the current version? The one touring with pumpkincunt to ever dwindling crowds?
As the Pilgrims hated Christmas and…anyway, American history has to now be super-postive, focused on WASP-y folks who were the ‘only ones’ involved in ‘building’ ‘merica.
No, really. Not kidding.
See Texas history books that have cut out nearly all or every mention of brown folks in the annals of American history. These same books go out to the rest of the country. Slavery was just imported labor or however that was repackaged. Ahem. Civil Rights? Good look finding anything other than carefully groomed MLK quotes said by white politicians.
See Ron DeDeathface, guvvie of Fluckida, and how he used an MLK quote to justify outlawing Critical Race Theory anything being taught in any school, ever. That includes where it’s actually taught– law schools. Not even kidding.
I am skipping this holiday this year, and maybe, always. Just done with it. I feel no joy or hope at the approach of the red and green monstrosity that doth croucheth across the end of the year like a particularly Lovecraftian Elder God horror. I went over, a bit, about my aunt and her charmless circle of nutballs. The other set of relatives are nearly as bad. I want to stay home, watch bad Christmas movies, drink whiskey and Kool-Aid [sort of kidding] and just…be. I’ve put up no decorations. There’s no tree. Not even presents. And nobody has said a thing. I’m tired.
My job has me waking up in pain, having to gulp down aspirin, noticing that twinge along my spine from trying to lift, several times over, a client at work who’s pretty much dead weight, not helping or trying to support themselves as they should. A situation that will need assessment quite soon, as it effects all at work, not just me.
Christmas has become the most stressful time of year and I just can’t anymore.
I just can’t.
I remember the Christmas of the past, with the entire family, both sides, there to celebrate. And I remember it probably not at all as it really was and isn’t that the point of holiday memories? That you don’t remember the icky, the awful, the mundane and the boring? You just remember the lights, the smells, the tastes, the sound of paper rustling and ripping. Maybe that it snowed or there was snow on the ground, if you lived in a state with four seasons.
At least, this year, there might be a white blanket on the ground by the time the Elder God settles over the world with a blood-smeared grin. And the guns will be loaded and set by the fire, in hopes that the Antifa will soon be near…bang bang, slaughtering protesters is the newest cool kid thing to do in America! Bring your boomsticks, Civil War Two will soon be on!
ANN WUEHLER 