Christmas Letter 2010

A long over due Christmas letter from the House of Elle.  Merry Christmas to you and yours.  May your hot buttered rum be less hot buttered and more rum.

It has been quite the year.  We started the year with an attitude intervention for the boy.  That lasted for all of about 5 days before he figured out that empty beer cans and rocks are an awesome toy that will equally make noise and drive his mother to drink.  His plan worked perfectly because that gave him a larger beer can inventory.  He is now building a fortress of solitude out of MGD empties.

In the Spring Elle went back to work.  She now works at world’s smallest independent nursery, but one that is so amazing it trumps all other retail nurseries.  She works for two young guys who repeatedly make fun of her advanced age.  Little do they know that they too will one day be old and turn about is fair play.  Only Elle will be too old to remember that she made such threats.  The three think that a reality show based on the little shop would go over well with the home and garden television circuit.  Watch as 3 young(ish) professionals sell plants and secretly make fun of customers behind their backs.

In June the boy graduated from preschool.  We immediately enrolled him at MIT.  They thought he was a little young, but when we showed them his madd lego building skillz they just gave him a PhD and called it good.  He’s on a wait list for a job at the DoD.  They are waiting for the Republicans to officially take control of the house.  Then they can pass the bigger better bomb bill and we’ll be set for life.

This past Summer the trusty husband was on single parent duty for 2 weeks while Elle jetted off to China.  Both boys survived, but somehow our family now owns stock in the Frito-Lay corporation.  I’m not sure how that happened, but I’m pretty sure that some blood pressure medication might be in order fairly soon.  I survived 2 weeks of teenagers in a foreign country.  We lost one for a little while.  We eventually found her and that’s a good thing because it was our babysitter.  I couldn’t replace her with a chinese substitute… her parents might get suspicious.

I was able to walk on the Great Wall of China.  I think this is a major accomplishment in my life.  It was 400 degrees with 200% humidity that day and hauling my fat ass up 4000 stairs was not an easy feat.  Once I got there I resisted the urge to sit down.  Oddly, the Great Wall smells a little bit like urine.  Speaking of urine, I can now say that I am the queen of the toilet.  Not only did I use the toilet in the Xi’an train station, the toilet without a door in the Nanchang church and the trough toilet at the Nanchang train station I survived intestinal distress on a moving train for 14 hours.  That totally beats the time I peed on the ground in Tijuana.

In September MIT declared the boy’s PhD only honorary and they sent him back to kindergarten.  We dropped him off for his first day and remarkably no one cried.  The trusty husband and I went out for drinks to celebrate.  You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to find an open bar at 8:00 in the morning.  So far he has only corrected the teacher twice and given the bus driver directions once.

The Autumn in the house of Elle was a little rough.  I was once again struck with the plague and lost most of my right lung.  I didn’t need that anyway.  Isn’t that why God gives you two?  Shortly after being cured of the mystery illness the trusty mother-in-law started forgetting things.  She normally forgets where she left her purse, but this time she forgot where Ben & Jerry’s was and well… that’s downright wrong.  She was forgiven when we found out that she had brain cancer.  Now she forgets that we just ate Ben & Jerry’s and we get to go back multiple times a day.  It’s a win-win for everyone.

Last year we were given a new puppy for Christmas.  This year we adopted 3 kittens.  We have now made a family rule of no more new animals at Christmas time.  The cats start waking us up at 5:30 and the dog starts barking at 6:00 and the child starts slamming doors at 6:30.  By 7:00 we’ve spiked our coffee with Kahlua, you know… to mask the scent that we are drinking with breakfast.

For Christmas we will be having a nice quiet dinner at home.  Uncle Bill is still under house arrest and Aunt Judy doesn’t want anyone to see that she really can’t walk a straight line.

We hope that 2010 found you well or at least with a few extra drinks under the tree.  Here’s to a good and mostly sober 2011.

Merry Christmas from Elle, the trusty husband and the boy.