By The Third Day Of Christmas I Think I Know Where I Am Going

When I was young I used to have this idea that I would pack my bags and leave on a trip the day after Thanksgiving.

I would take one suitcase and make my way to the airport and I figured that just as I was making my way to my seat on the airplane my friends would be planning their trip to the shopping mall and my family would probably be doing the same.

But I wouldn’t be there- I would be flying overhead and I would be laughing all the way.

It was such a grand plan and a grand idea and I wish I had been able to pull it off.

You see, the Anita who could have carried that plan out would not have been the Anita who puts up with things over the holidays like:

A friend who sent me a Christmas newsletter that is about her kids and their bright and rosy futures after sending me this email  after I had told her my 23-year-old nephew had died from a terminal illness.

Are you ready?

This is what she said:

 😦

The one time the Anita who wanted to spend Christmas with her husband in Italy while the other people  were screaming at some poor clerk in her local  Mall for not having what they wanted, or for not jumping fast enough when they said jump  or whatever it is people do nowdays to abuse ‘ the help’  only showed up once, briefly when somehow I got stuck at this stupid, stupid Christmas Cookie Exchange.

After about an hour of  talking cookies and kids and cars and clothes and being asked to guess what loser from highschool so and so had run into recently, the Hostess caught me in the hall hissing into the phone at the receptionist at the Funeral Home I was working at, ” I can’t believe there are no removals scheduled, people die all the time. Find me a corpse, page me, and get me the F%4@! OUT OF HERE!”

 Do you know what?
I thought I was looking forward to the next Twelve Days but I am not.

Yet.