The Pennsylvania Shelter for Homeless Fruitcakes

(Fruitcakes like the bready bricks full of jellied somethings, nuts & raisins. Not fruitcakes like your wacky Uncle Wally from Toledo.)

Every year, tons of healthy, hopeful fruitcakes -- all with limitless potential and shining futures -- are lost.

Is it overcrowding? Is there a fruitcake population crisis? Should we perhaps extend the Fruitcake hunting season to compensate?

Is there a universal misunderstanding about how to appreciate a fruitcake? Are the mindless sheep in this world afraid of fruitcakes because they don't understand them? Should we educate the masses? National Fruitcake Awareness Month?

Or are there genuinely a few truly bad fruitcakes out there, ruining public opinion for the rest of them? Maybe a fruitcake public awareness campaign through the media would help? Maybe some positive, human-interest stories in the news to counterpoint all the negative press they receive?

Regardless of the long term solution, we have an answer to the short term fruitcake fiasco right here at The Pennsylvania Shelter for Homeless Fruitcakes. This holiday season, when you are blessed by a visit from the Fruitcake Fairy, think twice before chucking that innocent little brick. Don't waste a fruitcakes special talents by using it as a doorstop, holding down a tarp with it, or using it to do bicep curls on your weight bench. And please don't regift the helpless cake. Nothing is as traumatic to a pastry as to drift from home to home, never feeling wanted, never getting the care a cake deserves.

Send your unwanted or neglected fruitcakes to us, via Parcel Post (don't forget to tell them it's perishable!) and rest in the knowledge that you made a positive change in the life -- however short -- of very special fruitcake. It takes a special pallet of skills and experience, and it takes a special kind of taste for the unique to properly care for the fruitcakes of the world. And that's just what our non-profit organization offers.

So remember: Friends don't let friends regift fruitcakes.

Resplendent in my black-jeweled battleshorts

I don't know what to do with that statement. Maybe a Creative Writing or high school English teacher should assign students to write a short story starting with it?

The work is slowing/stopping and the holiday season is settling in here at Hults Headquarters. Gwamma Gaye has traversed the country and is now safe in the hands of Ben & Milo, who escort her about lecturing her about anything and everything that crosses their little minds. The house remains relatively picked up. The dog is a little less depressed & a little more doggy than usual (I hope to improve things by taking her to the Dog Park later today). Max is clearly feeling the electricity in the air and just as clearly unclear on how to appropriately express his excitement.

Now if it would just snow. . .

The Bestest Birthday Ever

I was seriously set to have my first depressed birthday. You know how people get to a certain age, after which they'd rather not spend a day thinking about how old they are, how many good times will no longer be had, and how close they are to their dying days? Yeah, I thought maybe 37 was a good year to start that. As Oliver's Daddy says "37, halfway to heaven". I've finally reached a turning point. Prior to 37, birthdays were for imagining the incredible possibilities and discoveries my future held. Here at 37, I'm starting to have an equal amount of college fund, IRA, and mortgage payoff thoughts. I suspect that from here forward, the concern will outweigh the wonder. My Albert Brooks is kicking my Kicking Bird's ass. Notorious B.I.G. is so far out of the picture it's not even funny.

But then, we went and had a simply phenomenal day. AK got paid. I got paid. She took me to breakfast where I'm sure I ate something nice but mostly I had about 6 cups of coffee. This increased my productivity a great deal and served as a legally stimulated rose-tint lens for the rest of the day. I finally got new tires on The Monster Truck. I had a very humourous McD's lunch with my twinkies. I had a pocketfull of Lux profits and shopped casually (change'um heap big tires take many moons. . . ) for my loved ones' Christmas gifts. I was reminded of my childhood, because we alwyas decorated the Xmas tree on my birthday, so that was always the beginning of the season. I must admit that, AK's dramatic lawn treatment and contrary (or meteor-hunting, you decide) light-up animated lawn buck (he looks skyward and shakes his head slowly from side to side) notwithstanding, I'd not yet caught the Christmas spirit. Shopping for gifts got me in the spirit of giving.

I finished the RC body I'd painted for the CFX Pro's Only Contest/Secret Santa, and posted pix for my fellow pros, furthering the whole sharing-is-caring vibe. I planned tomorrow's (today's) Pittsburgh RC racing trip with buddies. I had the most MARvelous birthday dinner, which included, believe it or not, what The Guiness Book of World Records has documented as The World's Most Expensive Ham. And it was worth it. All 3 of my puppies had a loud barking, tail-wagging good time at the dinner table making up songs and singing them. Mostly with no food in their mouths. AK paid many bills and sighed mighty Sugar Mama sighs of financial relief. I just can't say how many things went horribly, terribly, downright depressingly RIGHT on December 8th this year.

All that followed up by a perfect day of RC racing with my RC racing buddies. We all finished our races, were blessed by the Traction Gods, and for the first time ever I actually hung with the fast guys. I came in last, but I came in last in the very competitive fast truck class which may be more of an accomplishment than coming in 2nd in the less competitive stock class. And it was a CLOSE last :).

I will close today with an excerpt from the IM conversation AK and I are cyber-having as I blog. . .

BringsCrickets: Ben: My favorite book is this book--Timmy Turner!
BringsCrickets: Lovessss t rrrrr uuuuuu ck! Love struck.
BringsCrickets: That's how you make people get married!
Lapper808: Thats funny. Sounds like Milo Monologue
BringsCrickets: Ben keeps trying to marry Milo off and send him off to get his own home so he can stay and live with Mommy by himself.
BringsCrickets: Milo is interested in this idea and has announced that he'll be getting a house in Indiana.
BringsCrickets: Where he will become a "liver" when he grows up. That's someone who just lives.
BringsCrickets: I explained that in order to just live he'll need money which will require some marketable skills, but he has time to figure that stuff out.
Lapper808: Milologue: Very authoritative, medium-to-high volume diatribe. Partly unintelligible, wholly imaginative.
BringsCrickets: LOL
BringsCrickets: Often begins with "Seeeeeee . . ."

Woooohooooo!

Snow. You want it? We got it. Fluffy, making-the-air-white, sticking-for-now snow.

The twinkies are out playing in it, getting use from their mommy-made mittens. As I glance out my longways garage window, I see a VERY happy golden poodle flying up & down the street also.

As Ben & Milo watched the first flakes falling this morning, they were QUITE convinced that today was Christmas. The discussion was spirited, and they made quite a case: how could it be snowing and NOT BE CHRISTMAS???

Christmas Letters

We are sending Christmas Letters out this year. Writing an e-mail today to my favorite mortgage broker, I was reminded of the idea that someone, somewhere, should try sending an honest Christmas Letter. Maybe one that includes the rotten stuff as well as the phenomenal accomplishments of every family member. Either that, or someone should just lie about how sunny and bright their year was. Here is an excerpt from the e-mail, including two fantasy Christmas letters . . .

"Happy Holidays to all! Little Mikey went to prison this year, but it's only his 2nd strike so he'll be out soon. I'm still battling the venerial disease I picked up in college 15 years ago, and Marge my wife had to change anti-depressant medications because she was hearing voices. Our cat died of cancer, shortly after it ate little Becky's hamster . Merry Christmas from the Johnsons!"

or. . .

"We hope this letter finds you as insanely overjoyed as us this holiday season! Mikey was accepted to Oxford, but deferred his enrollment so he could head up the Congressional Commission on Really Important Secret Things. Little Suzie skipped both the 4th & 5th grades, and won her first Nobel prize this past summer. My wife Marge ended world hunger and saved the ozone layer this year, and I am now the President of The United States. Happy Holidays!"

What will your Christmas letter say this year?