Happy, um, holiday wrap-up. There's some cheer in here, I swear

After having a buttload of company this last week, I feel like the parade has kicked me off the float and continued down the street without me. Luckily I’ve been feeding my face so much that I have the extra padding to support a fall. A very long fall.

God, I hate holiday pudge.

I couldn’t help it though. I’m a nervous eater, a social eater and a solitary eater. I also eat when I see someone crying into his food instead of putting it into his mouth—like my brother. He barely touched his food. Instead he spent four days at my house sleeping and playing online poker.

He’s decided not to get back together with his ex fiancée, Holly, but he still missed her, and so did I. Not just because she puffs, but because I am now the cheese that stands alone again. The sad, little cheese amidst a family of sausages (more specifically, my single father, my brother and Chuck). Sausages that fart too much, have a tendency to be sexist and who blame perfectly reasonable rants on fluctuating hormones.

Bastard sausages!

Poor Mrs. Mullet.

The last family trip we went on to France (pre-Junior, in 2004) was so traumatic I can’t even look at the pictures. Well, no, the reason I can’t look at the pictures is that I look like absolute shit in all of them. My testoster-filled company gave me no lead time in the morning. They’d wake up and want to jump right into the car. There was no time for primping or preening or even showering.

Even by French standards, I don’t think a shower every four days is unreasonable.

Not only that, they wouldn’t let me read the map. They wouldn’t let me drive. They wouldn’t even let me play darts at the pub! I was so furious about that, I got drunk, grabbed a dart from my brother’s hand, hucked it at the board and yelled, “How’s that for someone with tits?”

(I’d like to lie here and say I got a bull’s-eye but the damn dart hit the board and fell to the floor, confirming my dickhead family’s assertion that I couldn’t throw darts. I did, however, catch the attention of an Irish man who liked my bravado and wanted my number. Too bad dumb Chuck was standing next to me.)

Knowing this, you can imagine my complete lack of interest in a Sausage and Cheese family trip, part deux, which would now include a toddler.

A male toddler.

Holly, will you marry me?

(Pssssst, Chuck? This is why your Christmas gift of a GPS was lukewarmly received. If I want to use a map—which I am perfectly capable of doing—I will use a godamn map!)