Holiday Greeting 2005

 

I would like, at this special time of the year, to thank all of my friends and loved ones and to assure each and every one of you that I will pay you back. If I can get the still photos of the tantrum from the surveillance video at Target, I’ll get a Christmas card out to you soon.

I’d like to take a moment, as I sit beside the colorful Christmas tree, to let you know all of the wonderful things that have unfolded in our lives in the year that’s past. Unfortunately, one of them is not my head. My face has begun to wrinkle.

My cat Hep has become addicted to ear mite medication. If she doesn‚t get a couple of drops in each ear each day she gets mean. She doesn‚t have ear mites. She never did. My elderly cat Annabelle has found two or three more places to pee outside of the litterbox, but the vet says her heart is still quite strong. What a blessing. Our entire house reeks of“Pet Odor Be Gone.”

My oldest daughter is fourteen years old this year and what a busy one it has been. She lied and invited her friends to a Green Day concert that she wasn’t going to. She lied and invited her friends to a Halloween party that we weren’t having. She hid out on the school yard to skip math class two days in a row, telling her teacher our family was out of town for a few days after Thanksgiving, and when she got popped the teacher hugged her and told her she loves her. We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. She got an “excellent” in citizenship in math, which is not easy to do at Through The Looking Glass Middle School. Naturally, we couldn’t be prouder.

My youngest boy is seven and in his third year of gymnastics. He asked me on the way to a meet a few weeks ago what, “focus” means, which explains his response to thousands of suggestions, admonishments and pleas throughout his lifetime. It may turn out he doesn’t know what “listen” means either.

My eleven year old daughter seems to have developed a hording behavior with food and likes to isolate in her room a lot. We’re expecting big things from her.

Forgive me if this letter doesn’t make sense. It’s not the ear mite medication, though I’m never far from it myself, it’s all the travel. Did we trot the globe his year or what? I heard through the grapevine at Through The Looking Glass Middle School that we went to Alaska, Mt. Everest and an uncharted island, which certainly explains our late return after Columbus Day.

I finally finished the first draft of my book for Crown Books. It took me six years and it comes out next fall. There have already been some accusations of plagarism. Apparently there are some similarities to the works of Mark Twain and Suze Orman. I have been unavailable for comment.

Wishing you the most - uh-oh, sorry, gotta go, the dog is lifting his leg on the tree.

-Paula Poundstone