ADIEU TO 2010 AND THE HOLIDAYS AND THE O'S

Ahh what a fine holiday season it was and a decent year, not great, not bad, just so, so. I ushered in the new year like an old man, I watched New years Rocking eve with the wife, watched Dick Clark say glrb flugarb walglrb, saw the ball drop, gave the wife a kiss and changed the channel to HBO. I don't like new years that much. I haven't been invited to a good new years party since the millenium and I don't really care. Two years ago I half invited a neighbor over who showed up and drove me nuts. I got crazy drunk and he got me so whacked out on his chronic'd out super weed that I thought I was gonna die. I prefer to do my drinking on Christmas, I like a good Christmas drinking spree, new years is kind of depressing.

I had a gig with my band 2 days before Christmas and it was pretty awesome even though I couldn't sing. I have a tendency to get terrible bouts of bronchitis in the winter. I got the bronchitis around thanksgiving and went to the doctor who gave me antibiotics and steroids to clear out my lungs. It was working well but then I went out boozing and did Karaoke at a Korean joint in NYC till 3:am and surprise, surprise, my bronchitis came back with a vengeance. Leading up to the gig I had band practice and couldn't sing and began a strict regimen of tea drinking and soup swilling in order to fix my throat that was hoarse beyond belief. None of these things worked, I showed up at the gig with the hope that I could just push my way through 3 hours of singing with glasses of water and maybe a few beers. After the 3rd or 4th song I came to the realization that my voice was pretty much shot so I might as well get to drinking. After the 1st set, a health food store owner gave me a bottle of some sort of dirty, jungle root juice to swallow to coat my throat. I asked him if there were roofies in it and if he planned on date raping my ass. He assured me he was not and so with my instrument needing help and for my art I swilled a bottle of the shitiest, most foul tasting, taint elixir to ever pass my lips. I coughed and wretched and guzzled a beer to remove the rot from my mouth but to no avail. I thanked the man for whatever piss he had induced me to swallow and then told him to go away before he was no longer capable. The stuff actually worked for a little while but by the end of the gig, Ted's voice was officially awol. I drank some more, flirted with the waitresses and drunk audience members and went hope at 2:00am in order to wake up at 7:00 to bring my kids teachers their Christmas presents.

Christmas eve: Spent the day alone. Usually I would go to the In-laws in Mass. for Christmas eve but with my illness and cough it was deemed unsafe. I did my food shopping for Christmas dinner and made my way to the local watering hole where I bought 15 dollar Belgian ales. Ridiculous price, ridiculously good.

While at the bar I asked the man sitting next to me who kept ordering some sort of pink martini what he was drinking he said, "A cosmo."

I said, "Which one are you, Samantha or Carrie?"

He said," I'm secure in my masculinity."

I said, " I bet you have the most masculine vagina in the whole bar."

It was beautiful being alone for a good part of Christmas eve but as the sun went down and my wife and children were away I did miss the whole family thing. I got over it though.

Christmas: My kids wouldn't fall asleep and I couldn't sneak all their presents down stairs. My kids bedroom is right next to mine and the Toys R Us bags that all their toys were in are louder than a fucking Billy Mays commercial. I ended up setting my alarm to 3:00am to get the presents out of the eve's in my room take them out of their noisemaker crinkly bags, stack them up and cover them with a blanket in order to bring them down. It went off without a hitch. The kids were amazed. Somehow, Santa got in the house again.

Christmas: opened stuff, started drinking mimosas at 7:00am nice day, cooked a turkey, a ham and some other crap, siblings came over, merriment was had, read a book, fell asleep by the fire.

Day after christmas: Jets lose to Bears ruin my weekend they make the playoffs anyway. Snowstorm hits. My sister cancels her party I drink at home. Strange girl found sitting on my front lawn. I go outside in the middle of blizzard. "Hey, can i help you?" I say to girl.

"I'm waiting for my friends to go sledding."

"Are you fucking nuts?" I say, as frozen wind drives a foot snow on top of girl.

"Come in my house and wait for your friends in there." I say.

"No thanks." She says.

"OK then." I say leaving her on my lawn in a foot of snow as more comes down.

20 minutes later I ask my son to see if she is still sitting there.

"Yup" he says

I go to the door. "Get in here!" I shout.

"OK!" she says, no hesitiation. She done. She runs into my house.

She disrobes by the door, she's attractive. what grade are you in?" I say thinking she's about 16 years old.

"I'm a freshman at the university of Vermont."

"Ohhhh" I say, as Porno music starts in Ted's head. She's cold and wet, I offer her my fire and hot cocoa. Her stupid friends actually show up to go sledding. She leaves. I drink alone.

Next day: shovel snow for 2 fucking hours. Wife keeps asking son to make sure I haven't stroked out.

Thursday: Take wifes cousin into NYC to go to the metropolitan museum of art. She's impressed with my immense encyclopedic knowledge of bullshit. We walk through central park see kids sledding. We go down town to McSorely's warm up by the old stove, have a couple of beers. Go to an Italian joint, go to another bar. Go home. Good times.

Happy new year.