French Fries for 2009

Dear 2009,

You sum a bitch, you years do seem to hop along, don't you?

Before I got outa jail, I read this book at the prison library by some fairy with a Frenchy name, and something he wrote has always annoyed with me. Melancholy about the passage of time, he asked one of his older friends if every year went faster.

"Only when you're drunk," she said. Man, I sure can understand that.

When I was in my teens, that seemed true already. A convict at the time, I felt most free in the slammer, when I had hours every day to write. The list of expectations for my accomplishments was lower even there. Those urine smelling months flew by like flatulent sheep leaving trails that disappeared within an hour or two. Damn, them sheep farts is disgustin'.

Now, however, I know better. All the farts are rank. Every day now, the Fry Cook and I look at each other, as we lie on the bed with Ugly Fat Kid between us, and say to each other, "What the hell did you eat? How can something smell like that??!?!"

Our friend Lurlene and I looked at each other today and said, "What is that funky smell? Is that you, girlfriend?"

I just don't know.

All I do know is that Ugly Fat Kid's farts, buzzing out from her car seat as I walked her around the Food Lion, are the best sound I have ever heard. Her kicks, this time last year, were in my belly, causing me to break wind. Now, she kicks against the mat on the floor of the car where she lies while I drive, and propels herself damn near through the windshield. We once dreamed of her as we ate our meals, and now she is spitting green vomit out of her lips and speaking in tongues. Damn devil baby!

2008 changed me.

Without a doubt, this past year was the worst one of my life, of our lives. Ugly Fat Kid was born. Everything else feels great in comparison, except the looming manuscript deadline for my second self-validating book. Once -- all of two years ago -- a book deal seemed like the biggest deal in the world. Now? I'm thrilled to be part of this book (the evocative recipes are the Fry Cook's, the photographs tell the story in a spectacularly self-validating fashion, and my writing, while absolutely absurdly overblown, still plays only a small, but ridiculous part). I really want to share it with you all. Now take it and enjoy it or I will hate you, you fuckers!

A fat kid who rolls around like a mini-boulder, chases bugs and eats them, is afraid of her stuffed animals, and screams to bloody hell when I disappear into the john for a little "mommy time" with the mailman — that's the focus around here.

It feels so damned good to be as awesome as I am.

And so, 2009, as much as we loathe you, already you suck. Last year, I wrote a letter to 2008, hoping for a settlement from my faked grocery store "accident." (To be fair, I already knew I wasn't going to proposition the insurance guy to help the case along.) Much of the letter is requests for halfway decent scratch off tickets and good reruns of Walker Texas Ranger. This time last year, I had so many hemorrhoids, a lot of pain to self-medicate, and a list of foods I wanted to stuff in my fat mouth before noon on Jan 1. Some of them came back up, but most of them just gave me oily gas.

This year is different. Oh, there will be big moments: two Guideposts to read; two breasts to augment (c'mon settlement!); the Fry Cook's eventual return to the Hooters on Route 11; possibly a move to another trailer; my back being thrown out. In fact, on paper, it's another sweet year.

But here's one way 2008 has changed me: I'm not thinking too much about anything. Well, ok, that isn't much of a change.

In the mornings, I've learned to pour myself only half a cup of gin. That way, when Ugly Fat Kid needs me, unexpectedly, and the gin gets ashed in, I don't feel I've missed anything. Those expectations of accomplishments I once had for myself? They're fairly well gone. Life has never been what I planned for, anyway. I just don't want to get knocked up again.

And the other way 2008 — the year of shattering mortality questions and big-scary-adult situations -- has changed me? I'm going to watch more Lifetime movies. That shit is addictive!

I'm not much interested in the future, other than hoping that the guy who collects the rent is replaced with a hot young toothless summa bitch who don't give a shag about collectin' no rent. I'm now only interested in: that the sound of Ugly Fat Kid's hands grabbing the plastic rings of the shower curtain she's under will not bother me; the Fry Cook sitting cross-eyed in his TV chair watching UFC, all high from the MJ; the broken TV on my desk that I have learned to put more broken TVs on; the rusting washing machine in the park across the street.

2009, all I want are long mornings of sleeping in while Ugly Fat Kid eats from the dog's bowl and common law husband with stubble who don't never change his socks. It's not a bad way to live.

Some French Fries might be nice too.