Just take it out for a test drive. No obligation. Cheap at twice the price.

Snotting, coughing, chills and fever keep you up all night misery, Day 13. To be fair, there are no more chills, fever, keep you up all night misery at this point. Most of the misery now belongs to any person within hearing range of me for the first hour or so each morning, who has to endure snorking and horking and nose-blowing and gaggy coughing until things start to settle down into routine coughing and sniffling. 

Rick’s Christmas to New Year’s holiday was spent in virtual confinement with me and my malady, so we turned to that most undemanding and reliable sickroom companion, the television. First there were movies, and then I introduced Rick to the wonderful, awful world of Six Feet Under. I watched the whole series in a big gulp a few years ago, but Rick was new to it. 

I remember when my friend Susan told me over and over that I really must watch this great show on HBO, and she knew I would really love it, because it was about this family of undertakers and one of them is gay! Oh boy! I think that description explains why neither I nor Rick saw it in its original run on television. I saw part of an episode by accident in a hotel room one night, loved it, and once I figured out what show it was, called Susan and asked why she never told me about that great show on HBO. (We are funny with each other that way. Ha ha.)

When I did convince Rick to sample it, he responded with equal enthusiasm, and so we ordered up the whole five years’ worth from amazon.com. And that is how it happened that we spent our whole holiday in and around the embalming room of the Fisher family mortuary.  

Our only regret is that we are closing in fast on the final season, and we have forgotten how to relate to actual live people. We may have to start at the beginning and watch the whole thing again. 

Meanwhile, the puppies have grown up and moved away (they didn’t actually move away), Margarita and her Italian Lover FlaVio have left the building (and the country) with their dogs, and I dynamited the contents of my laptop after spending a week trying to sync my new iPods. Yes, plural iPods; excess runs in the family. Rick surprised me with not one, not two, but three new iPods.

The man knows what I like. (iPods and gay funeral directors.)

Santa, you of all people know how I hate to complain. I got a lot of cool stuff and thanks for that, but can you please take back the snotting, coughing, chills and fever keep you up all night misery that you brought me early, on my birthday, in fact?

I suppose Rick requested the part about me not being able to speak at all for days, but I am bored with it now. Please send a Return Authorization Number immediately, so I can trade this in for something I would like better. Which would be, well, pretty much anything.

Thank you.