The Christmas Letter

I have received a few Christmas letters from friends and family again this year. Before l@w school, I created handmade Christmas cards to send out in lieu of the dreaded letter. This was my way of escaping saying anything about my life. Now, I have no time for handmade Christmas cards and those letters just keep coming. The friends from college have started generating those same letters that we once mocked for their self congratulatory and boasting tones. They have babies and houses and property and careers to announce. Conspicuously absent from those letters are divorce, miscarriages, mental illness, crushing debt and rentals. So, this is the letter I have been trying to get Husband to write for us...

Dear Friends and Family,

It's been another banner year here in the land of gorges and waterfalls. January began with a scramble to get together money for Nicole's tuition and books. Even though she failed at her attempts to get a summer job at a lucrative law firm, she decided to keep going through school. Why stop at $75,000 in debt when you can go for platinum at $150,000? And you thought that new house you wrote to us about was expensive!

We managed to keep Nicole from jumping into one of those lovely gorges (photo enclosed), by focusing her efforts on conception. Scheduled romps in the hay may not be sexy, but they do keep you warm for 5-10 minutes. Given that the Gas and Electric Company now keep up correspondence using personal visits for bill collection, that warmth came in handy in the cold months of Winter.

By mid-February, we were doing the "I think I see two lines!" dance. We went through March alternating between bleeds and onesie shopping sprees. By the time April came around, we announced, "IT'S A D&C!!!" We were the proud parents of "the products of conception" named: Percocet, Chlamydia, and Ser0quel.

By Summer, Nicole was diagnosed with the same cholesterol numbers that came before the death of her father, so we quietly mourned the loss of our reason for living: Cheese. At the end of Summer, we realized that Nicole could no longer sit on her ass anymore and had to get a second job. Someone had to pay for mistakes made during our two divorces as well as for the medical bills from Nicole's bipolar fallouts. After a B.S., a Ph.D., and 2 years of law school, she proudly accepted a job selling wine at a retail shop and thoroughly enjoyed catering to former science colleagues and fellow law students freshly back from their $5000 per week summer firm jobs. She never tires of the question, "So what, exactly, are you doing with all your degrees?"

Just as she returned to her futile efforts at law school in the Fall, we discovered that she had managed to miscarry another one when the doctors compassionately wrote off another "product" as a chemical pregnancy. Good times were had by all. But by October, what do you know? It's time to do the "It's a two liner" dance again. After a few more weeks, we joined the misfit uterus club when Nicole discovered the words "bicornuate uterus" in her medical records.
So now we go into this grand new year wondering how we will feed, clothe and house the three of us once the school loans stop coming in June. With a June due date, taking the bar is out and so is lining up her first post-law school job. But, that's OK, because so far, there aren't any jobs for Nicole anyway. Good thing she just got a raise at that wine job. Oh, this maybe baby is in for a real treat at the rented house in the land of gorges and waterfalls.

Happy Holidays!!!
The Husband.

P.S. If you happen to see Nicole around any of those gorges or waterfalls, can you please ask her to wait until after June before she plans any high dives?