"No. I quit drinking weeks ago! No one noticed, but I guess that's a pretty good indicator that I conducted myself quite well when I was drunk. But this isn't about me right now".

Happy Fucking Monday to all. I�ve finally come out of denial of the holiday season from hell and will begin my Christmas shopping tonight. I expect to be done no later than Wednesday. I also expect to be leaving wonderful establishments such as WalFart, Target and Toys R Us with an markedly grimmer and much pissier attitude than I�ll walk in with. Merry Fucking Christmas!

I swear, this is the most craptastic holiday for about everyone that I know. So, I don�t feel so bad. Well, I do feel bad, just not AS bad knowing that I am not the only one stressed to the hilt.

Nina had her baby Saturday afternoon. She has some mad baby-birthing skills. She had the kid within 45 minutes of walking into the hospital. Pushed twice. Done. But, you know, it was her fourth, and I think after two or three, the kid just slides out and there�s really not much use for labor. I know I went quick with Mickey. Not as quick as Nina, but I was 7 cm dilated at 8:55 and he was out at 9:15. I won�t be looking into the fourth kid theory, though.

When I had Beavis, on the other hand, I pushed for ridiculous amount of time (45 minutes or so) and felt like I got hit by a truck. For days. I would have happily taken a week in the hospital. Meanwhile, my roommate had her fourth in Nina-type time, and wanted to go home that night. Oh and she woke up the next morning and put on her non-pregnancy jeans. I hated her. She made me feel like such a newbie. When I finally stood up to go to the bathroom (at the last possible minute, before they put a catheter in), I bled all over the floor and the first time I changed the kids diaper, he pissed all over the wall. I felt like a piece of shit.

Ugh-baby birthing. I�m soooooooooo glad that shit Is over for me. I�ve had more than my share. And it�s not even child birth that�s the worst of it! It�s the next year of that little eating/shitting/crying creature and the sleepless nights, the hours of holding the thing so it will JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP, ALREADY. I loved all of my babies, but I was always basically the only one taking care of them. Never once did I have anyone come stay with me when they were first born to help me out. With Beavis, I was 100% on my own. With Minnie, Dick was a lot of help, and Hub helped somewhat with Mickey, but that was it. Going back to the bitterness of losing my mom, I never had anyone who I could just dump the kids off with so I could take a break. Nope, no breaks for me. Now, however, my baby is five and I�m all set with taking care of little babies. All set. Baby burnout, five years later.

Anyway, you all are so good to me with the comments. I�d say come give Hub a lesson in communication, compassion and empathy, but you�d be wasting everyone�s time. He doesn�t get it, and likely never will. I�m all done banging my head against that brick wall.

One thing I�ve never addressed, although I do get a lot of comments on it, is my sense of humor. No matter how bad things get, I always have it. And that�s a defense mechanism or coping type skill that I learned long ago.

My dad has a great sense of humor. He has always liked to laugh and make horrible jokes. This is the guy who told me, during my first trip to England in 1980, that the red bindis that Indian Hindu women wear on their foreheads is �where their husbands put their cigarettes out�.

Another joke of his involved these �friends� of his. He said these friends of his went on vacation and when they came back, they couldn�t find their cat. Well, they finally found the cat in the freezer, so they called the vet to see what could be done, since the cat didn�t appear to be dead yet. So, the vet says, �Put a little gasoline on the cat�s tongue, that should help thaw him out�. So, Dad�s friend puts a little gas on the cat�s tongue, and he moved his eyes a little. So, he put more on, and then the cat is moving his head a little. So, the guy decides to give the cat A LOT of gas to really wake him up. So, he soaks the cat in gas and the cat takes off and starts running full speed all over the house. Then, suddenly, he just stopped.

Now, at this part, you�re supposed to say (because the way he told it, it�s not a joke but a story about his friend), �Was the cat dead?� or something like that.

�No, he just ran out of gas�.

Horrible, right? Yeah, this Is the person who molded my sense of humor.

Anyway, my life took a bad turn when I was 8 and my mom got sick. Yadda yadda yadda, my entire life as I knew It was over. It went from a pretty happy life with a mom, dad, two brothers and a kitty cat (we�d have had a dog, too, but the Irish setter we had, Shannon, supposedly ran away, a story that I doubt to this day) to suck, suck, suckage. Yeah, 1978, you SUCKED.

One thing I grew to realize, though, is that laughing felt really good. It helped me forget the pain that I was dealing with. I started using laughter to help me escape my pain. I stopped watching tv shows that were anything but comedies. Or cartoons, I could still watch cartoons even if they weren�t funny. I would only watch movies that were funny. In the fourth grade, I bought a book called �How To Be Funny� because I figured if I could make myself laugh, then I�d be all set, I could laugh all the time. (It was silly, but I was 9, people).

I was never the funniest kid in school, but that wasn�t for a lack of trying. I was never really even funny as a kid. I thought I was, though. I have a few teachers from junior high that would totally agree with those last few sentences. How they put up with me and my stupidity, I�ll never know. I will say, however, that when one of those teachers ended up being one of Beavis�s teachers a few years ago, I told him it�d be in his best interest NOT too mention me to that teacher. I thought it would prejudice him against Beavis too much.

But, all of my life there have been people who think I�m funny. I suppose I�m funnier now in my maturity. Sometimes the shit that goes through my head absolutely cracks my ass up. The interpretation to others doesn�t always come out as funny, though.

I can laugh about ANYTHING. And I think it�s so important for people to laugh at shit, especially themselves. Let me tell you, I am the first to laugh when I fall or do something equally as stupid. Everything can be looked at in laughter, and should be made light of to take an edge off the seriousness. Just to lighten things up a little. As long as it�s not absolutely cruel, it can be funny.

I think of jokes about shit that I know need to stay in my head. And I do. That doesn�t mean I won�t crack bad jokes, though. You all know how I feel about racism, but some racial/ethnic jokes are funny and not hurtful. I�m French-Canadian, but I take no offense whatsoever to this precious gem; �What�s the difference between a frog and a toad?� A toad can�t hang sheetrock. That�s fucking funny, yo, although perhaps a tad regional for this diary. But if you�re from up here, you know that most of the drywallers up this way are French, straight out of Quebec. (A lot of them illegal, too, but none got arrested in the stupid �illegal immigrants are guilty of criminal trespassing� scene we had going on up here for a bit until the courts ruled that immigration law shit was is only for the Feds. But I digress). Also, bring on the Brit jokes, for the other half of my heritage. I will laugh my ass off. One comedian years ago did a commentary on British food. I almost died. Brits eat some nasty shit. I know this firsthand. Hearing a comedian go on about ordering �elephant mucous pies� and whether to have corn or tuna on his pizza fucking had me on the floor.

I am by no means an anti-Semite, but to this day, it still cracks my ass up that one of Ned & my friends back in the day was this kid Erik, who happened to look EXACTLY like the cartoon character from �Rubik The Amazing Cube� (totally dating myself here, the show was on back around 1983 or so), so he was nicknamed �Rubik the Amazing Jew� which turned into just �Jewbik�. The kid had more to worry about looking like a cartoon character (especially Rubik, and if you know what I�m talking about, he was one goofed up cube) than his heritage.

Look, I did an image search:

See? If you look like that, you have no choice but to laugh at yourself.

Anyway, this was the same crowd that nicknamed one guy �Stutter� (of course, pronounced �stuttah�), because he had a nasty stutter on him. TO HIS FACE. At first he hated it, but after a while of realizing that #1, we weren�t going to stop calling him Stutter and #2 we did it because we LIKED him, he gave in. He even had a license plate made that said STUTTA.

Ah, if that crowd hadn�t had a tendency to go to parties and break out in fights everywhere and anywhere, I�d probably still hang out with them. Good times, good times.

And the dumbest shit makes me laugh. Over and over. Simple words, most infamously, �log�. That word never ceases to make me chuckle. �Sack� is another, and I�ve had tons of opportunities to use it lately, too. �Crack� is another, and �crackhead�, too.

My grandmother passed away three years ago next February. Her funeral was during a snowstorm. I totally blamed her for getting us out in that shit and laughed about it.

Right after graduating high school, a friend of mine, Dave, killed himself. The funeral was huge, and we were all devastated. A bunch of us went to a friend�s house, where everyone, including Dave�s girlfriend, was upset. It was sad, but after a while, this story about Dave from like 10th grade popped into my head. If I could remember what it was, I�d tell it here, but I can�t remember the whole thing right. Fucking weed smoking. Anyway, it was something funny that he had done in school, so I told it to a few friends. We started laughing and telling all kinds of stories about the crazy shit Dave had done, and it was a nice way to deal with the loss. See, I�m a fucking hero.

My silly sense of humor is always there for me. ALWAYS. I depend on it.

And now, I�m out. Peace out and shit. =)

Listening to: Alternative Christmas music. I guess.

Currently reading: "Guilty As Sin" Tami Hoag

Thinking about: Lunch.