It was the triptipan

I have just woken from my post Turkey-day slumber.

I will have details about the meal, apres-party and the real, stuffed black bear at my aunt's house (with pics), tomorrow.

Hope everyone had a great holiday.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Yes. It's early. But nonetheless we made a holiday season pilgrimage to the Yankee Candle flagship store in South Deerfield, MA on Saturday. Just like Clark Griswold, I build things up in my mind, and so it wasn't nearly as exciting as I thought it would be.

However, they have the BEST Santa Claus you could imagine. Even though it was early in the season, I still waited in line for 20 minutes while the troops entertained the little man at the train table. I wasn't sure how he'd react to the man in the red suit considering last year he cried and arched his back as we tried to put him on his lap.

This year though, he marched right up to Santa, climbed up into the oversized velvet chair set next to him and said matter-of-factly, "Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas, Santa. I want a car."

Santa took a few minutes to talk to him about the kind of cars he likes, and rolled the car he had brought with him back and forth across the table. And my son said, "Where's my car?"

Very difficult to explain to a 2 1/2 year old that he has to wait 38 more days to get what he asked for.

Hey! He's not a policeman

A trip to the fire station - what little boy wouldn't like that?

My son (pictured in the red cap) could barely contain his excitement when we walked into the station and he was able to climb inside the big red engine. "I am in a BIG firetruck" he would shout to anyone who would listen. He didn't want to come out. But I finally made him. And when the fireman was showing the kids how he puts on all his equipment before heading into a fire, my son, turned to me, dejected, and yelled, "I want to see a policeman." "Shhh," I whispered into his ear. "We're at the fire station."
"But where's the policeman?" he asked.

And being 2 1/2, he was more enthralled with the fire engine than with the fireman, who was explaining to this group of toddlers how he can breathe clean air through his mask that made him sound like Darth Vader. Finally I gave in and let my son play around on the truck while the fireman wrapped up his demonstration. But a big hit for all the kids was watching Fireman Chris slide down the fire pole. "Again," they chanted.

But the actual firefighters had more of an impact on him than I thought. Because he wore his little plastic fire chief hat and carried around his "fireman" crayons and eraser - handed out to the kids by one of the firemen after the tour - all day long. He brought them to the store. He brought them to his friend's house. He put them on the table in plain sight as he ate his dinner.

3,579 down, 46,421 to go

By the end of the day today, I should have 15,000 words of a 50,000 word novel written.

As part of National Novel Writing Month, I am joining thousands of people across the country who are attempting the ridiculous and idiotic task of completing a novel in a month. The idea is just to sit down and write, without thinking, without self-editing - something that is very hard for me to do. You're talking about a person who will take an hour to write a perfect lede before I can complete a freelance assignment. It makes the money per hour ratio very low.

So I am only about 12,000 words behind so far. And I met up with some friends the other night at a local coffee shop for a "write-in" to try and boost my word count. But there was this couple sitting directly behind us, and it was painfully obvious that they were on a first date. A lot of that get-to-know-you type conversation was happening.

But when I heard the guy talking, very loudly, about how much better he was at his job than any of his co-workers, how he has had three wives and 8 kids with 7 different women, and how his doctors tried to persuade him to go on meds for his ADD, we all wanted to turn around and tell her to run, run as fast as she could and never look back.

But what broke the camel's back for me was when I heard the term "beastiality" mentioned. Seriously. I'm not lying. After that, I couldn't concentrate on anything else but their conversation, which was very anti-climactic after that.