While sitting around the dining room table on Christmas Eve, my parents and I engaged in our typical dinner conversation. They asked me what I was planning to do for New Years Eve this year. I told them that I wanted to undergo a sex change. They were appalled. I told them to relax, and that I meant I wanted to change from having none, to having some. They were relieved, disgusted, and really disappointed, but mostly relieved. Possibly too much information, but they asked, and it's important to communicate with your parents.
Frankly, I like my body parts the way they are. It took a while to figure everything out, but now I'm reasonably proficient with how all of the appendages and orifices are supposed to work. It's like the first month or two of owning a Mac, I kept screwing up desired functions by pressing the wrong buttons, and forgetting the appropriate shortcuts for printing and copy/pasting, but now I rarely get viruses, and I can put together a playlist on iTunes faster than Randy Savage can snap into a Slim Jim...
It's been a cold year. Weather aside, my year has been frigid. I started it off by working for a raging lunatic for nine months that choke-slammed me into my solid cherrywood u-shaped desk to "get my attention" every morning. I started wearing scarves and a bicycle helmet to work to pad his clinched grip around my neck, and soften the blows to my skull. I suffered so many concussions that they became essential for my survival. My doctor informed me that my brain had swollen so much from my compounding concussions to the point of my skull enlarging to accommodate for the excess meat inside of it, and that if I didn't continue with the once-a-day concussion treatment from my boss, my brain would heal down to its original size and drown in the excess fluid of my new super-huge skull.
I reached the point of getting sick of working for someone else, so I took a stab at working for myself. That lasted four days. Three out of those four days I went on vacation, and I slept through most of the one day that I was supposed to actively work. When I woke up, I was so enraged by my lack of productivity and appreciation for the employment opportunity, that I intended to fire myself, but much to my surprise I was able to quit before I could fire myself, and decided to work for Washington State Unemployment. It was a decent gig. Got paid once per week via direct deposit, and all I had to do was make up answers on a five-question survey every Monday morning. They must have been doing a statewide government survey on the current job market because all of the questions were job-related. No insurance though, and no vacation time. Dissatisfied, a few weeks later, I quit that too.
Around that same time in the year, my sister and brother-in-law gave me a niece. She grows faster than my facial hair, and doesn't say much, but her eyes say more through her stares than words could ever accomplish. She tries to stand up now while holding onto someones fingers. It's hilarious. She wobbles around like a hula doll on a dashboard. I received the best gift ever on Saturday, a crystal clear black and white picture of the mysterious miracle that is her priceless face. It will remind me every day to not put my head in a microwave.
I cry a lot now. Maybe I'm finally going through menopause. I haven't read anything about it, mostly because I hate reading, but at least it's one of those medical terms that actually makes sense for once. Menopause: times, in which, we pause from being men. I've never been this emotional. Last night I turned into a wet weeping mess after looking at a can of Campbell's Chunky soup, because I thought to myself, now here is a company that cares. They looked at their product and realized, "No. ...No, No, No... This is missing chunks. Men need chunks. This is unacceptable. It is our responsibility to give America the chunks they deserve".
I tried to give more this holiday season. I don't understand how it contributes to anyone in need, but I made the mistake of going to a soup kitchen this year. It wasn't very flavorful, so I left and went across the street to a Sizzler, but that wasn't very good either. So, I ended up donating a dog that I found to an orphanage in Parkland. Every child deserves a dog. Unfortunately no child (in this case, children) deserves a rabid pit-bull/mastiff that I could barely fit into the back seat of my Accord. I found him behind a Jiffy Lube drinking motor oil out of a tin pan, he wasn't wearing a tag of any kind, so I wedged seven Tylenol PM's into a can of SPAM that I had in my glove box, placed it next to an empty propane tank a few feet away, and screamed "rape" to get his attention. Forty-five minutes later, I had a motionless 160-pound lump of what I thought would be childhood happiness. I was able to break-in to the local St. Christopher's Orphanage through a back facilities-services access door that was next to the kitchen, and left Pennzoil just inside. I named him Pennzoil because that's the kind of motor oil he likes to drink. After waking up, he ate three kids in twenty minutes, which is a downer for certain, but it increased resources for the remaining children. I'm sensitive to the incident, but all things considered, I don't understand the fuss. Overall, it was a nice, quiet, weekend.
Until next time: Give plenty of thought before you give, because a thoughtless gift is dangerous giving, when your gift determines whether or not orphans live.