Festivus wishes

It's 11:30 on Christmas Eve. My cat is recovering from her second surgery (because the first one didn't work), and has now spent 11 days in an Elizabethan collar, eating mainly soft food and getting dosed with kitty Oxycontin several times daily until the stitches come out.

My toddler, after excitedly preparing for Santa's visit tonight, is now terrified of him. Getting him to sleep tonight took about an hour and a half, altogether, and the last time Jane went up to cuddle him (after we listened to him hollering "Mama, I scared!" over and over), she fell asleep in his toddler bed before he did. Her six-day weeks for the season finally ended with today's holiday rush.

I planned to take it easy over the next couple of weeks, but now I'm booked with at least one activity every day but Tuesday next week. I am, however, going to avoid regular office hours during that time, so at least I can spend a little more time at home.

My stuffiness is finally receding - I think I had picked up a little bit of Jane's cold before getting FluMisted last weekend, and that exacerbated the side effects. All in all, I still think I'll go back to the shot next year, anyway.

I just finished up a pair of wrestler autobiographies (both from the library) - Ric Flair's To Be The Man, and Adam (Edge) Copeland's On Edge. Flair tells some great stories, and he is truly still a master of his craft. But you can tell the difference between a ghostwritten book and one that was done first-hand - and Copeland's is far more interesting to read because you can tell he really did write it himself. He's no Mick Foley (the gold standard of wrestlers-turned-authors), but he's pretty good nonetheless. Wrestler books are fun because, except for Foley's books, they can generally be polished off in a day. I'm also reading several other books as well about more interesting topics - I just finished Right Nation, a book written by a couple of British writers who are long-time America watchers trying to explain just why the US is so much farther to the right than virtually every other civilized nation. And I just started on Robert Parker's latest detective novel.

But first, I have to finish putting out the presents and make sure the cookies left out for Santa don't go to waste. If he doesn't make it here soon, they're mine.