The news is heartbreaking.

I know this.  I know what this is like.  I know what it is to lose your home, to lose everything.  I know what it is to frantically try to reach friends and loved ones, to wonder if they are still okay, if they have been spared.

I have seen my entire community dismantled at the capricious hand of nature.

I also know the kindness of strangers and the open door in the night.  I have survived on it.  I was lucky enough to still be living in one of the most affluent countries on earth.

Please, help.   In whatever way you can, however small.

Believe me, it makes a difference.

I know this.

I have seen some really, really stupid warning labels in my life. I think my all time favorite is the hang-tag on a blow dryer that cautioned “Do not use in shower”. I no longer own a blow dryer. Any product whose manufacturer reasonably believes that their clientele would think it a fine idea to simultaneously wash and dry their hair does not include me in its target audience.

But what about the warning labels that are desperately needed that nobody ever thinks of?

Like the one that should be on Veggie Tales videos. The one that should say something like:

Warning – Viewing this video may result in a recreation of the Battle of Jericho around your bed in early morning hours.

Now that one? That one is a real warning.

Have you ever had one of those days when the realization hits you like a speeding train that your entire life is dictated by everyone else’s needs and yours have become completely and utterly irrelevant?

Yep. Going into the end of the first decade of the 21st century, that’s my life.

On top of all the other situations that have conspired to make this holiday a dismal failure, I have been working on an incredibly complicated report for work. We have a situation, without going into too many details, that is rather an unprecedented case, that required analyses that even the regulatory agency overseeing us has never had to deal with. As a consequence, the analysis took longer to finish than we expected. I cannot write a report without the analysis, and I had hoped to make up for the delay in the writing process.

So, despite having to put down two of my beloved pets, despite being so sick I cannot swallow my own spit, despite having my statistics handed to me a week late, I have been working 10 hour (or more) days for every single day this holiday, except Christmas day itself. I have deferred leave. I have propped myself up with massive amounts of pharmaceuticals (now, that’s irony for you), and when I finally had to just admit defeat and inform the client of a one week delay (which, considering the myriad of other factors in their submission package, will not delay  a thing in the ultimate view), they completely, totally, lose their minds.

Unfortunately, they don’t have the breadth of experience for me to try to explain precisely why what we are doing is non-standard, and precisely how the contribution of another contractor adds to the complexity of the issue, so pretty much I just have to suck it up.

With a fever pushing 102, a throat on fire, pain in every large muscle of my body, I have put in a 12-hour day today, and I am completely going to miss Christmas with my family this weekend.

2009 – You suck.

That is all.

I feel like I am tempting fate to write this, but we had a last bit of 2009 sadness on Christmas Eve.  I didn’t want to write about it, on that Christmas when I was just starting to feel a bit of Christmas magic returned, but it was there in the background,  a dark shadow in the corner of the warm holiday glow.

On Christmas Eve, we took a second of our dogs to her final rest.  Anna, my adopted racing greyhound girl, was still bright-eyed and sweet at venerable thirteen, but her body finally failed her.  A disc in her back ruptured, and by the time we realized what had happened, her hindquarters were paralyzed and unfeeling and she could no longer rise to eat or drink or relieve herself.  Her large, clear, brown eyes were a mask of misery and, in consideration of her age and general health, there was nothing we could do to reasonably restore her to a bearable life.  On Christmas Eve, we gave her a final gift and released her from a life of pain.

It was a hard thing.  She was not a dog that you could get “close” to.  She was a gentle, quiet dog, with that inherent greyhound elegance and infinite patience.  But she was aloof.  Retired to her meant retired, and her world revolved around a soft place to lay her bones and good food to eat.

Nevertheless, I got accustomed to stepping over and around her slender but sprawling frame on the carpet.  I got used to her following us around like a gray ghost on the edge of family gatherings.  I got used to her silent, watchful presence.  And without her to announce dinnertime to us in her short, ringing bark, we often forget to feed our one remaining dog until well past the scheduled hour.  I was unprepared for the hole her absence has created.

We have so much more room in our house now.   The remaining member of our pack, our diminutive (in stature only), Jack Russell Terrier is parsimonious of space and resources, even if her personality is large enough to fill a room.  The big wire crates are gone,  the big water jug has been replaced by a modest bowl, and the economy-sized food bin is a sad relic, unnecessary in our new dog-reduced state.

But the spaciousness echoes with a bit of emptiness, and at night I still find myself stepping around the place on the floor, that place that seems still so warm with the memory of quiet gray dog, and a phase of my life that is slowly passing away.

The Angel (Hieronymus) Gabriel

My son is a serious child. He came by it honestly, being passed down from the maternal side. My people are stoic New Englanders for the most part. They will make exceptions, and when they do, they will break into boisterous partying like no others (must be the Italian/Irish genes), but it almost inevitably involves either bars, hockey, or racehorses, or a combination of the three. Daily life is something to be braved. Living is serious business.

This is not to say that Harry is not a happy child. He practically exudes quiet self-contentedness, and when he does become excited, he is his father’s son. When Harry is joyful, the world glows. He dances uninhibitedly. He sings. He giggles with complete abandon.  He smiles with his whole body.  Self-consciousness does not suppress his expression of joy and wonder.

I have had a very hard time getting in the Christmas spirit in the years post-Katrina.  Normally I am almost embarrassingly enthusiastic about Christmas.  I will start playing Christmas carols as soon as it is decently appropriate to do so.  My standard for not driving people nuts is that I try not to turn them on until the Friday after Thanksgiving.  I bake cookies from the same Christmas cookie recipe – handed down to my mother from her mother-in-law.  I have Christmas ornaments on my tree dating from 1979.  I still have them – our Christmas decorations were the only thing that survived Katrina completely intact, riding out the storm safely ensconced in the attic, where they narrowly missed getting crushed by a fallen pine.

But since Katrina, I have only take those decorations out once.  I haven’t had the heart to put up a tree and decorate a house that, try as I might, I have never been able to apply the word “home” to and have it ring true.  I did it once to give it a good college try, but I never had the same wholly warm feeling.

But this is the first year that my son is showing demonstrable excitement about everything Christmas.  It’s like he suddenly woke up into a big dream, and it’s all unbearably wonderful to him.  The Christmas tree, the decorations, the lights, the presents, the cookies – he wants it all, and he drinks in every last bit.  And I am warmed to find that it is not all Santa Claus and toys, either – I mean it’s some of that, but, he’s FOUR.  That has to be remembered.

Despite the excitement of the wrapped presents under the tree, the subject of God and Jesus and the Christmas Story comes up in conversation a LOT with Harry.  It’s Baby Jesus’ birthday.  And Baby Jesus came because God loved us.  That’s Harry – without prompting, without lecturing, it is child’s pure interpretation of God’s love for the world, as reflected in a parent’s love for their child.  To him, Christmas is a giant celebration of that love – the love that forms the center of his life.  The constant love that forgives, that guides, that never abandons.

So our Christmas tree is back in our living room in the place of honor, and the mantel and door are decorated with greenery and holiday greetings, and the happiness of Christmas, through a little boy’s wondering smile, is finding a way back in our hearts.

And isn’t that the meaning of Christmas?  That a little boy should teach us to be better people?

Just ask Harry – he’ll tell you all about it.

The best “Man’s Best Friend” anyone could have.

See you on the flip side, old man.

I am determined not to give in to Facebook and Twitter. I write to think, to roll ideas around in my head, to try to express the wonder and absurdity of the world I live in and it’s just not possible to do it in 150 characters or less. I do NOT Tweet. The very image that twittering, tweeting, and otherwise making bird noises conjures to me cannot be in any way taken with an ounce of seriousness.

And I am a serious person – even about my humor.

It’s an Irish thing, this seriousness about life.  Just listen to an hour of traditional Irish music and you will get the picture. At the end of an hour, you have either set your jaw or put a gun to your head – it doesn’t really leave room for any gray area in between.   Life is something to be borne with grit, and when it cannot be borne, well, that’s why God (in his most infinite and merciful wisdom) gave us whiskey.   Even our frivolity has a grim determination to it.  Happiness, when it comes, is a blessing, but it is certainly not a birthright.  At least not to the Irish.

This blogging thing is no different.  It must not be done by halves or dashed off with quick abandon.  It’s irresponsible.  It’s frivolous.  It’s inherently un-Irish.  We are, after all, the land of bards and poets, and all the historical weight of the literary world that goes with it.  It’s a blessing and a curse.

So rather than go about half-arsed, I simply haven’t gone at all.  If I am to wallow in my own self-pity, by God, I will do it the Irish way and I will wallow alone and when I am done, I will write a song about it.  Or, according to my personal inclination, I will blog about it.

Pass the whiskey and God Bless All Here.

My blog has been pretty regularly silent.  I know this.  But I am going to ask you for a little more silence.

Each Veteran’s Day, we thank those who have given years of their life, or their full measure, in service and defense of our country and our ideals.  All those people who has served who are reading this – from a woman who still tears up EVERY SINGLE TIME the American Anthem is played, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

But I would like everyone to do a little something more than thanking the military men and women you personally know on this day.

Take a moment and go view our most recent Fallen.

Pick a soldier.  Any soldier.  View their page.

Look at their hometown, their age, the circumstances of their sacrifice.  Close your eyes and picture these young men and women, lost in the prime of their lives in horrific ways, far from their homes, and think upon the things that they and their families will never have.

The birthdays lost.

The children lost.

The father who will never see the first steps, the fingerpaintings, the high school graduation of his daughter.

The mother who will never come back over the sea to tuck her son in at night.

The college diplomas never earned.

The empty side of the bed.

The empty plate at the table.

The aching hole in the heart.

The only compensation, the inadequate pittance that we can offer for that horrible loss, is our recognition and our will to remember.

Take a little time to look at even one of those soldiers today.  And keep their memory alive.

“Harry, why did you want to turn a watermelon into a fairy?”

H:  ” Because I wanted the fairy to turn me into a dog.”

Ah.  Perfectly sensible.  In context.