Bah, Humbug!

There's no denying it: I' m getting old. I've become the dreaded old coot sitting on a rocking chair on his front porch, with a rifle on his lap, yelling at passing kids to get off his lawn.

The coming holiday season is weighing on me like a lead blanket: I wake up tired in the morning and go through the day in an exhausted daze. I am trying to avoid the stores as much as I can and to buy my presents online. But it's only the first week of the month and I'm already running out of money. Just the idea of buying a Christmas tree, decorating it, watering it every day, then dismantling it before vacuuming away all the fallen needles seems like an impossibly streneous enterprise, like climbing Mr Everest or sorting and filing away 10 years of past income tax returns. So no Christmas tree this year: instead, we're going to use the huge ficus tree that I had to drag in from the balcony in preparation of winter. As to the presents, I have a cunning plan: cash for everyone.

Now if I can only stay in bed with the doggie until the end of winter...