my holiday season, or Why I Won't Listen to You Whine About the Difficulty of Sticking to Your Diet With All These Holiday Cookies Around

my grandmother (the zippy irish-catholic one, not the portuguese teenage-mother one) was admitted to the hospital tuesday for reasons no one has been able to pry out of my hysterically shrieking aunt or my belligerent brute of an uncle. we knew she'd been sick since october, and while she claimed it was just a nagging cold, my grandfather told us a few weeks ago that she secretly felt like hell and was getting worse all the time. we're pretty sure she has pneumonia, and we're completely sure she was supposed to have surgery today for an aortic stenosis. she had multiple bypass surgery over a decade ago, and she's been mostly well since then, but it's tough to take perfect care of your body when you're a short, round woman in her seventies with no income and a husband who can't walk from one end of the house to the other without at least a little assistance. i have no idea who'll take care of him while she's recovering. more troubling to me at this point is that i have no idea whether or not she actually is recovering; i didn't hear from anyone this afternoon and couldn't get a hold of anyone this evening. my poor sister called me yesterday while i was at work, crying so hard she couldn't even breathe to speak. when she came back into her body she told me she was sure our grandmother had died, because of the hysterical and/or belligerent messages, all bereft of actual information, left by our relatives. she kept asking me to call our dad (it's his mom), but since he switched jobs a year and a half ago i don't even know what town he works in. i, here in boston, didn't know anything had happened at all until i was knocked on my ass by my desperate, breathless baby sister and was busy fretting over my tiny cat, who had x-rays tuesday that revealed a left kidney the size of a malnourished grape and an airway pattern consistent with chronic allergic bronchitis. i'm not fretting over her just now, as she's sleeping sweetly in my lap and not feeling badly about anything. i am, in fact, not fretting at all. i'm completely calm. i'm packed for manhattan, i'm leaving my phone on, i'll take what comes as it comes.

but i do not care how much chocolate you've eaten this week (i see it too, you know, i pass all the same counters and tables you do and i don't eat it, IT ISN'T THAT BLOODY DIFFICULT) or how fancy the electric razor you bought for your boyfriend is, and i was not moved by that awful diamond commercial, and i haven't played a video game since my atari 600 crapped the bed back in 1992, so i'm not impressed by whatever thingy with the guns and the cars and the secret lap dance, i just . . .

i have things on my mind. it doesn't mean you can't talk to me, but it does mean you have to say something.

so. as there's nothing i can do for anyone by staying, and no one seems to desire my assistance anyway, i'm looking forward to wandering around nyc and not speaking to anyone for the next three days. i hope you all have a pleasant weekend. try to do a genuine thing, if an opportunity presents itself. i'll thank you for it when i get home.