I can only hope for the strength to go on. I sought refuge in celebrity gossip, away from Saddam Hussein's execution and the totally insane top 10 lists people seem compelled to create. Like this one--of women, of course--from Gizmodo. The point of which is what, a big geeky circle jerk? You guys do realize the world is tipping over into hell, right, while we're buzzing around like top-ten worker bees ranking things pointlessly in order? Just checking.

I noticed Jay Mohr, who is My Type of Guy in a Big Way and would be assembled in some sort of top-ten list if I ever went the other way and did that stuff, got married to Nikki Cox. I also noticed in the article that Nikki Cox had been previously engaged to Bobcat Goldthwait. Shakes the Clown, man. Apparently he's all Sundance-ified, but still, yikes. I didn't need that in my mind.

because mental illness is...well...illness Senate Democrats are trying to introduce legislation that would require health-insurance providers to provide equal degrees of coverage for mental and physical illness conditions.

Republicans think it costs too much, but like I always say, you can pay for being crazy or you can pay for being sane.

bring it on Okay, I got my stuff to make nachos, we have egg nog, Jameson's and Mrs. Field's chocolates, and the stockings are hung by the chimney with care. That sounds so unintentionally dirty. Anyhow, all we need now is Chico and the Man, a marathon of which I am instituting as our New Holiday Tradition.

Nothing says "Christmas" like Chico and the Man.

Side note: In reading through my stash of spiralbound charity cookbooks from East Texan ladies gone past, I found one with a section for cheese balls. Twenty cheese ball recipes. What is it about the winter solstice that makes us mash cheese in a ball with stuff? I'd still eat it, of course, but I'd be wondering that while I was eating it.

(small pimpin down in atx) I guested at MamaPop today. It was nice, like drinking an Irish coffee when your floors are clean and nobody in the house has rotavirus.

He sure showed me! I call this one "I am so mad at you that I will take my pants off and put them on my head, and I will also take off my shirt and put it on my legs. And then you will give me leftover pinata candy!"



It didn't work, by the way.

Ken and Audrey got married, and other good news from the Good News department I've seen the pictures, and they look exactly the way people should look when they're getting married. His face says Holy shit, I just married this hot chick. It's excellent. I think the look on my face when I got married said Please do not jostle me; I have pleurisy. That's really nobody's fault. It was just our Christmas Pleurisy, which is upon us again this year.

Does Mucinex really work?

We did the Family Thing last weekend, including a brief visit to the farm. You can take a kidney out of my mother, and she'll still kick your ass. (However, having said that, I imagine a conversation in which I'll be asked to point out that Sheila doesn't kick anyone's ass physically. More metaphorically.) She has her foley catheter (which I immediately imagined as an Axel Foley Catheter with Harold Faltermeyer theme song), which tomorrow she will remove herself, which slays me.

We're on the wait list to see the Supragenius Pedi Derm on January 26. I am hopeful that he will lay hands on Baldo and deliver an authoritative diagnosis. And hell, while we're at it, maybe he could hand over a pie or something. Or do magic tricks. Or the miracle of the loaves and fishes. That would be really dope.

Minor tete-a-tete with one of those Internet Print Fulfillment companies, who balked at a design incorporating the image of Tux, the open-source penguin. I harnessed the nearby Sysadmin Powers (thanks, guys) and we took 'em to school. Not only is Tux the symbol for free-as-in-speech software, he's also a free-as-in-speech image. We all learned a lot that day and parted as friends.

As soon as I find the camera cable (2008?) I'll show off my snaps of the preschool Christmas pageant. Baldo was the triangle soloist. It's just that good.

When western medicine does not inspire confidence For her surgery tomorrow, my mom has "YES" written in Sharpie on her back over the bad kidney. Just to make sure.

Meanwhile, I am leaving messages on a mysterious voicemail at Children's Hospital of Austin in hopes of one day reaching someone who can confirm the existence of The Pediatric Dermatologist. It's like capturing a unicorn. The nurses at Texas Children's Hospital (in Houston) had heard of him, but no one can predict when he might appear.

down with the sickness, part deux We were already planning to eat nachos for Christmas. Now it's looking like takeout nachos. I believe a family can have meaningful holiday memories centered around takeout nachos. It's all context.

Baldo and I are more virus-ridden than MySpace today. No school for him, no work for me--at least until I go out to a movie I don't want to see after Baldo's bedtime. We canceled a playdate. We are verboten. We will not run errands. We will forage in the cabinets and watch the entire first season of the Biscuit Brothers. We will sneeze and cough. We will make a fort out of blankets and lie in there gawping.

Great. Baldo just told me Delta is advertising its SkyMiles program on nickjr.com. (What the fuck, right? We're sick today.) What, you want to lure lactating mothers onto the planes so you can kick them off?

re: update You know, I keep meaning to come here and write something. But then the cat barfs up pieces of bird in the kitchen. Big pile of feathers, like a cartoon. It was unimaginably foul. And I am the first responder to Things Wrong in the Home. I'm like the police dispatcher: I repeat, there is water coming through the sheetrock in the garage, and it's kind of near an electrical outlet. The shit's about to blow. But then you have to get on it, too, like Sylvester Stallone in Daylight. "But I'm retired!" No you're not. Because you're an American badass, way better than that snobby Viggo Mortensen.

And while I was doing that I was trying to re-learn geometry a little and find percents of percents. I took that fakakta GRE again after successfully navigating the hell that is Educational Testing Service and their Flaming Hoops of Fiery Burning Highly Redundant Doom.

And there was Thanksgiving.

And my mom has been diagnosed with cancer in one of her kidneys and is undergoing removal later this month.

Our supragenius new dermatologist, whom I really quite like despite the whole Mimyx episode, is referring us to a supragenius pediatric specialist from Houston. I know it's time. We were in a totally different doctor's office for totally unrelated reasons, and I was openly pitied by a woman with triplets. Like, "Bitch, I have triplets and I'm kicking your ass at motherhood." Either that or she was only trying to be helpful and I'm hypomaniac. Who knows? Spin the wheel of possible situations.

I appreciate that Baldo has a skin condition rather than a brain condition or a heart condition or a lung condition but people with skin conditions aren't having very much fucking fun. We probably should have seen a pediatric specialist long ago. But that's the thing about chronic health conditions. You reach a point with doctors where they say, "Well, it's managed. That's the best you can do with this condition." And they stop being scientifically curious. They have reached a diagnosis and now you are the captain of your care. Have the pharmacy call for refills. Come check in with me in two months. There are wonderful exceptions to this tendency (Sheila's oncologist at MD Anderson, for one), and I love to hear a doctor admit that your situation may be out of the range of her or his clinical experience and you should move on to the next level of supragenius. A pediatric gastroenterologist saved our butts during the reflux months of yore. It was like being on a team, like passing to Dr. Berhane and she scores!

I know it's going to be like that for my mom, too. I just know it.