Before, During and After Christmas

Mmm. Well... At least the ice age has taken a reprieve for the next couple of days. The temperature has finally reached above freezing temperatures. First time for that in almost a month. Right now we're sitting at a nice, balmy 43 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius). The ongoing monsoon we're experiencing, currently, here in the Midwestern U.S., is washing away the eight or so inches of ice and snow we got around the beginning of December. And this is the end of December. Ridiculous.

And yeah, I know people have it worse somewhere else... like in New York, for instance. It just seems like it's taken a goddamn eternity for the white shit to thaw out and for me to be able to walk five feet anywhere I go without risking slippage and neck breakage. With the advent of this current thaw out we're experiencing, I'll be treated to the sight of morons wearing shorts in these chilly, yet not sub-freezing temps. I've already seen a couple idiots wearing nothing but shorts, shoes and imbecilic grins at Wally World. This type of carefree simpleton behavior happens every year when we have even the slightest thaw out during the winter months.

For those reasons and more is why I'm not in my usual delightful mood and why I haven't been doing the blogging thing, lately. I've been too angry, depressed and seething with madness to do much on the computer except check out a few porn sites, humor sites and The Huffington Post website. It's a good thing my wife won't allow me to buy a gun, I suppose. God knows how many bodies would be lying around. Happy Holidays, everyone! And don't forget to go fuck yourselves silly! But not you, my cherished reader, not you. :)

Ah... As you can see I'm purging myself of the nasty negative thoughts in my head by sharing them with you. Isn't that nice of me? It's nice to share, they say.

Surprisingly, there was no carnage or destruction at my wife's Christmas family dinner this year. No mirrors or ceramic keepsakes were broken into a million pieces like last year. And the cat remained safe this year, unlike last year, where it was constantly being chased and whipped by a cat toy by my 3 little nieces. The reason for this is because (A) The cat ran and wisely hid under the bed when it heard my nieces menacing giggling when they entered the place and (B) Half of the time, while here, they were playing around with their little electronic gadgets or watching an insipid Nickelodeon TV show. The sound and sights of children shows drove me nuts time to time but at least everything, including the cat, remained intact.

The only bad moment happened while I was whispering to my sister about the eldest niece's boyfriend. My oldest niece is 17. Her boyfriend is 18 and weighs close to 500 pounds. I was explaining to my sister that the boyfriend has broken all the chairs, a heavy duty recliner and a coffee table with his hefty, morbidly obese ass by sitting in and on them, of course. He destroyed these fairly expensive pieces of furniture at my sister-in-law's and mother-in-law's places and nothing was said to the behemoth, as a result. I don't get that part, especially. I would have told the guy to pay for the damages, lose weight (at least for his own health) or something.

A week ago, I told my sister-in-law that the boyfriend wasn't allowed up to my place for the Christmas dinner because I was afraid he would actually go through my upstairs floor apartment and possibly land on and kill the tenants below. It sounds funny, but in his case, I think it could happen. Beside, I don't have anything he could sit on and take his weight without being crushed to molecules.

This same guy has had his picture in the local paper for entering and winning these all-you-can-gorge-on contests. One contest was for how many Twinkies you can stuff in your big fat face and the other was for pigging out on corn dogs or something like that. In other words, he not only engages in gluttony, he flaunts it, is proud of it and celebrates it by entering in these disgusting competitions.

When my mother-in-law overheard me talking to my sister, Christmas Day, about this dude, she got bent out of shape about it and started defending him. She told me how he had promised to marry my niece after he went through culinary art school and how nice he was and how he made her cry by saying all this wonderful stuff about her granddaughter and so on. With the rate he's going, I don't think he's going to live long enough to accomplish any of his goals.

I have asked my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law if anyone has ever warned him that being morbidly obese like that was a danger to his health. Both said, "No." They said that as far as they knew, not even the boy's parents have tried to talk to him about it or curb his weight with correctly portioned meals.

I said, "That makes me sick to hear that and I don't really have anything to do with him."

In fact, the boy's parents actually encourage their kid to go to my sister-in-law's place to eat all of her food when it's dinner time. And eat, he does. Everything. In. Sight. And nothing is ever said to him about that, either. Disgusting and amazing. I would have already knocked his ass out with a baseball bat, or at the very least, tell him to go graze in the back yard for nourishment. My tolerance for repetitious ignorant behavior is little to none. It's a good thing I don't have children.

Strangely enough, I've been told this enormous 18 year old kid's health is okay. For now, I'm guessing . Of course, it will be just a matter of time before he will eventually have problems with any or all of the following: Diabetes. Coronary Heart Disease. High Blood Pressure. Stroke.

To name just a few.

While I'm on the subject of diabetes and other health problems associated with that disease, another curious type of behavior has come to my attention. I know of two family members and a friend who have severe diabetes and a few of the other health conditions I mentioned and none of them seem to give a shit about it. They eat and drink whatever they want, no matter how much sugar and fat it contains. INSANITY.

Look everyone, FREE DIABETES! Come and get it!

If people want to kill themselves by ingesting whatever they want while having diabetes, they're going about it in the slowest, most torturous way possible- aside from disemboweling yourself with a small fork.

The truth is: Diabetes is synonymous with a gradual, often painful degradation of the body's parts and internal organs and ultimately- death will fuck you in the ass, as a result- with no lubricant. When you have diabetes, like I happen to have, just giving a "fuck it" attitude towards it and consuming what you want, guarantees all manner of horrible things to come your way. Like being hooked up to a kidney dialysis machine, for instance (no more caffeine for you, fucker). Or how about the lack of good blood circulation which will cause you to lose your feet and your sight. Does that sound like a good time? And healing from a wound or overcoming sickness, no matter how minor? Forget about it, baby!

Here's a funny story... As I was plunging an insulin needle into my belly a couple days ago, a friend knocked on the door. Since I knew who it was, I told him to come in. He came inside the apartment and was jabbering away about letting himself in until he noticed me slowly inserting a needle into my belly.

As I was cringing and curling my toes in discomfort, he asks, "Does that hurt?"

I didn't reply at first because (A) That's a stupid question and (B) I'm kind of busy at the moment and (C) If I don't focus on where I'm puncturing, I could bend the needle in my belly and tear open my flesh. I've done that last one a couple times, due to my wife causing me stress with inane jabber or the time when I was on the cruise ship and it lurched to the right while the needle slit my belly open. Good times!

Anyhow, my wife comes home from work and gives my friend a Christmas gift that I'm thinking he will likely take a pass on because he suffers from diabetes and has to take a couple pills for, as a result (no insulin yet, but he's working on it, I think). The gift he opens is a nearly two pound bag of gourmet chocolate caramel covered popcorn that has about a trillion (or so) grams of sugar in every piece. My wife thought he would like it because he likes sweets. I was just going to him a gift certificate at Lowe's or something but she thought of this, instead. Eh, okay.

Anyway, he opens the bag and instantly starts to gobble down the the contents of the bag with reckless abandon, diabetes be damned. I laughed, as i always do when I see someone doing something bizarre and I asked, "What about your diabetes?"

He said, almost incoherently, while munching and crunching, "My last blood sugar test result at the doctor's office turned out okay."

For now, I thought. He's very lucky in the way that he eats and doesn't exercise that his blood sugar counts haven't skyrocketed. I, on the other hand, watch what I eat and exercise and I'm forced to take insulin and pills for my diabetes. Go figure. Am I somewhat jealous? You bet. I'm not perfect by any means.

The last couple of weeks, I've been severely depressed because of mom not being here for the fifth Christmas in a row. She died in August of 2005 and I was closer to her than any other member of the family. The inner family fracturing, squabbling and accusing my father of killing my mother by my grandmother just adds heaping helpings of stress to my usual decaying mental health at this time of year. To counteract this, I would go out and take pictures of Christmas scenery in the town surrounding me. Only when I'm not around the usual negative people (family and friends) and outside, do I receive anything remotely describing peace. Sad, isn't it?

You can see these holiday pictures at my other website, Pics For Kicks. Going out and taking these pics is very therapeutic. And taking the holiday shots reminds me of the times, every Christmas, when my sister, dad, mom and I would go out, drive around at night and look at all the decorated holiday scenery in all of the neighboring towns.

To top off the near ending of the holidays, my dad slipped, fell and cracked his head wide open on the corner of a wall the day after Christmas. He's okay now but it scared the shit out of my sister and I. He fell at the assisted living place he's living in, due to taking his diabetes medicine but not eating any food with his medication. That will drop the ol' blood sugar to the basement. When I came to the emergency room, he was lying in the hospital bed, talking calmly to me, like nothing happened.

He looked fine but then...

As I sat down in a chair, he asked how he looked to me. All I could see at the moment was a tiny paper cut on his forehead. I said, " You look alright to me. Just a small cut above your nose."

I wondered silently why he had been rushed to the hospital.

But then...

I saw blood spreading on the pillow behind his head. I got up, walked over behind his bed and saw the four inch gaping gash in his scalp on the back of his head and almost fainted. Just then a nurse walked in and put a fresh bandage on his head. Five or so minutes pass and a doctor walks into the room, takes a stapler and staples the gash together with 8 staples.

Ca-Chunk... Ca- Chunk... and so on. He ended up staying overnight because his blood sugar was so low it wasn't even registering on the meter.

I remember the sound of staples going into flesh quite well since I had the same thing done to me when I was 21. Right after my double hernia surgery. I sat in a slightly leaned back chair as Dr. Frable Ca-Chunked Ca-Chunked twenty one staples between my belly and just above my crotch. He gave no warning he was about to do this. All he said beforehand was that he was going to check how the two wide incisions appeared. And then the surprise! Whoopee!

Good times.

Trying to fuck without literally busting a gut was quite the trick back then but I somehow did it. Back then I didn't have diabetes but I did have raging, horny hormones that made me do stupid things like trying to fuck not long after surgery.

Anyway, dad is back at the assisted living place. They're keeping an eye on him and making sure he doesn't go out and drive while healing. He's under strict doctor's orders. I'm sure today or any of the upcoming days he will be screaming and throwing the usual verbal insults at my sister and I, thinking we had something to do with this. Business, as usual.

Yep. Happy fuckin' holidays, everyone. I'm sure the new year will be just as delightful (sarcasm intended) as 2010, minus the honestly pleasurable reprieve of the week long Caribbean cruise we went on this past summer and the times I wasn't around family. During those times, I had nothing but peace.

Below, you'll find a humorous, truthful Christmas message from Bill Maher. After watching it, remember that Oprah Winfrey will or already has debuted her private network, OWN. Which, of course, stands for the Oprah Winfrey Network.

A Christmas Message from Bill Maher - watch more funny videos