Our holiday letter to all (six of) our fans

Hello, friends, family and everyone else out there. What a hectic year! “No rest for the wicked” as they say. Right from the start of the year we were busy. On New Year’s Day Bill lost a finger in a ham slicing incident. And he's always thinking of others first -- that's why I love him. All the way to the ER he worried about his bowling team -- could they win without him? Well, he just went on and on until finally he went into shock and passed out. The good news: The doctors reattached his finger. The bad news: He is still rolling a lot of gutter balls.

In March, an addition to our family -- a dog. I know I’ve talked about this in other years, but this year we did it. A big frisky mutt! It just runs around and barks and eats and barks and sleeps and barks some more. Bill says it barks in its sleep, too, and one night when it was making noises in our bedroom, Bill tried to push it down to the basement. Well, it didn’t like that and before you knew it, it had Bill on his back and its jaws around Bill’s neck. So the dog still sleeps in the bedroom and Bill wears ear plugs. Bill also doesn’t go near the dog when it’s eating.

A low point of the year: Our car blew up in Nebraska. We were visiting friends over the Fourth of July and the men were shooting bottle rockets out of beer bottles. Well, one went a little astray and flew under our sport utility vehicle. I don’t know what it hit under there, but it had to be the biggest fireworks in Nebraska that weekend. It was a sad moment -- Bill really loved to tailgate hybrids on the freeway and flash his lights at them -- but the kids were really impressed. They wanted to see another car blow up. Bill still chuckles about that, but I can see in his eyes that he misses that car.

In August we began seeing a marital counselor. We’ve had some money and sexual issues for several years now, and I’ve been trying to get Bill to do this. Finally he did and you would all be proud of the way he opened up. He talked at length about a young secretary at work he “dated” a few times. I suspected as much, but I thought it was with Tina down the street. She always looked a little too hard at Bill. I enjoyed this at first because it made me feel good that others were interested in Bill and his middle-aged plumpiness, but then I grew to dislike it. All in all, I’d say the marital counseling helped. We still have money and sexual issues, but I feel better. I don’t know about Bill, though. He hasn’t said much about this since.

Both Bill, Jr., and Lisa are in high school this year and it is very trying for us. They are into liberal politics and veganism and they got their noses pierced and then volunteered to work at a food shelf. School is going well: Their teachers say they get along well with other kids and that they have very good handwriting. But we really aren’t sure what to do about having liberals and vegans in the family. Don't you have to eat meat to be big and strong? I don't know. I just hope they will outgrow all this and start drinking beer and wearing baseball caps backwards like we used to -- and we turned out fine. Nothing wrong with a little normalcy, I always say!

And Thanksgiving was an exciting holiday in our household. Bill cut another finger off in another ham slicing incident. We were very lucky this time that it wasn’t his bowling hand, because the dog was right there ready to grab anything landing on the floor. I swear, it looked like it inhaled that finger before it was even halfway to the floor! Bill was very upset, of course, but there wasn’t much we could do. We just hopped in the car and drove to the ER. He, of course, now thinks its a hound from hell, but I still love it. And I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, so I was just glad when he went into shock and shut up. Whoever first said silence is golden is a true poet.

Our Christmas tree is up. No accidents to report -- it was a very normal family event. We went to the tree lot, bought a tree and brought it home. Bill is always very good at sawing the stump even so the tree stands straight. Even with his hand still in a big bandage, he got the job done and now the tree is up and decorated. Bill, Jr., and Lisa sit around it with us and sometimes even talk to us. Yesterday, they asked for advice about sex! It’s been such a long time since I’ve been on a date that I had nothing to say. So I made Bill say a few words since he was “dating” that young secretary recently.

In other news, the dog seems to get along with Bill, Sr., much better since it ate his finger -- it even obeys him occasionally. It’s almost as if it knows Bill is going to have another accident and wants to be there for it.

So after this difficult year, we are one happy family now. There truly seems to be some magic at work during this holiday season.

Happy Holidays, everyone. We’ll send you another report next year!