Christmas was off the chain, as they say. I have whiplash that will only get more tender and painful in the next ten days.

Friday evening I held a sweet sweet girl as she cried because a bureaucratic snafu meant she had to stay in the psych ward for Christmas. It was the saddest thing, just a heartbreaking fucking thing. She held it together, though, she was a major freakin trooper.

Today I found out that on Saturday she was sexually assaulted by another kid on the floor. Feel that.

That same Saturday morning I was in a wealthy Chicago suburb preparing for Christmas with a rich rich Television Star. On Sunday morning the world's cutest boy children opened so many toys that halfway through they were just wandering around, dazed and in matching pajamas. We had dinner at the Ritz and TV Star wore an amazing outfit: not necessarily attractive but certainly festive. She looked famous. It was awesome to behold.

My melancholy was staved off by TV Star's Intellectual Dad, who has a WASPy predilection for stiff, stiff cocktails. He got me drunk off of what he called 'appletinis' but which were actually huge glasses of antifreeze and a marachino cherry.

It was nice. Everything was fine. Certain glaring socio-racial-economic factors were in full effect this holiday but this is not news to me. Underneath the holiday sheen are these contradictions, and underneath that, the fact that a rich lady has taken such a shine to sweet Midwestern girls, temporarily motherless, while she is trying to raise good boys in a world of lazy privilege. But I should be at the psych ward next year, not for the Saintliness of it, but because that is where I want to be. The chance to comfort another sad child and be allowed to hold them through a terrible time.

Tomorrow I am off to Armenia. Armenia jacked me up real good, last time I was there: it is now infinitely harder for me to state a fact, immeasurably more difficult to pretend I know anything. Part of me wants more challenge and part of me wants to be told how pretty I am while I eat massive amounts of homemade food. Will they make me that dolma I love? How much lavash can I eat in ten days? What are the chances I'll get yogurt soup? Do they even have yogurt this time of year?

It's not all food: there will be a moment when the core family members I love are all drowsily laying around the stove and I will feel safe and happy, and that, along with the food, is more than enough reason to further my debt and brave the terrifying road through Vochaberd. Life is good and lavash is gooder.

Curse that Peter Vella boxed wine. And my mother.

It's not real, you know. This is creative non-fiction. These are the slings and arrows of martyrdom and sainthood. Pain is what we go through on the way to peace which is what we get right before more pain.

Cary Tennis is a genius and writes for Salon.com and wrote this: "Your past is not something that needs to be repaired. You can't get up on top of it with a ladder and fix it like a roof. You can't do anything about it except regard it with awed attention. It is like the sea, far beyond us, far too deep, far too wide, far too powerful." He has also written a bunch of great stuff about therapy. I cut it out and put it in my journal like a lame weeping wreck. Sister walked in on my fit yesterday and after having established for both of us that it's not PMS, announced that I need therapy. Sisters are not always right, but try and tell them that--nearly impossible when they are actually, in the moment they come home from Target and find you writhing on the couch, correct.

Maybe I'm not feeling that great but let me tell you: I have the greatest Cousins in the world. They are somewhere in this picture. Guess at their shapes and protect their anonymity--the families of Saints are never well represented.

We cruised the Crazy Christmas House on Logan Blvd. We went to Chief O'Neill's and forced the 15 year old to step dance in return for mediocre Irish music. We drank too much and were ridiculously sentimental. We went to St. Sabina and yelled Amen and then we ate a collective dairy's worth of cheese at Lou Mitchell's. It was what I dreamed for us when we were growing up: I dreamt we would always love eachother and want to be together, and develop the sharp but ridiculous love that families have but a softer and sweeter one than that of our parents. Now I am going to buy a six flat and lure them from their parents and force them to live here in the Greatest City in the World. Cousins Run Chicago: we will have embroidered jackets.

So what if maybe I finished the dregs of a box of wine tonight and watched TiVoed Gilmore Girls and then cried gasping dramatic sobs because of Mothers and Daughters? My mascara is all streaky. Maybe I spent the weekend making "yo mama don't love you" jokes with my sister, and maybe when Shoushan called me from Armenia and asked me "Mamad vonts a?" I freaked out and said too much in my toddler Armenian that I haven't spoken in years. Maybe all fucking day I work with these children, these beautiful children, all of the them straight tore up with mother love. Maybe, just maybe, I can't stop thinking about my mother, and being too honest and talky when people ask me about my mother, and maybe I can't shake the feeling that part of what makes me so desperate to love and be loved is that I was raised by a fantastic and mean and sad and dishonest and desperately loving woman who has beaten me and would give up her life for me and has told me 80% of the terrible and wonderful things I believe about myself TO THIS DAY? Goddamn holidays and mothers and women and love and sisters and boxes of wine. Foster care and hurt people and honesty and screaming sermons at St. Sabina church. Every beautiful thing I take in just amplifies all the pain and the needs we have. I think that I just want to say that I'm hurting, and let that sort of lay with all the hurts and loves out there tonight, in Chicago and otherwise.

I was going to write something about the snow here, and how beautiful it is. I was so mesmerized by the giant snowflakes falling between the skyscrapers downtown this morning that I was almost run over by a cab. I carried my camera around today in order to record the sad, familiar, and beautiful return of winter; but no picture can do it justice, and I am a terrible photographer. Anyway, it just took me an hour to get the Scissors of St. Renegade picture to appear in the corner, and I have to visit a kid in the psych unit tomorrow, so I need to get some rest. If you are the praying kind then kindly pray that I can be of some use and some comfort to that child and all the parents and children that let me into their lonely lives. If you live in California I wish that you could walk through giant snowflakes on a 35 degree day.

And about books...

It's been torture to finish "The Plot Against America" by Philip Roth because it's well done and therefore terrifying; Nazis take over America, to sum up. I think I'm especially sensitive because I'm working in an agency with muzuzahs on the doors and Hebrew popping up every once and awhile, as well as that Orthodox guy with the side curls. Today on the train it's finally looking up; LaGuardia is giving a rousing speech at Walter Winchell's funeral, there has been forshadowing, America might just make it, and then something doesn't make sense and I realize that page 304 is followed by page 49. Pages 49-80 have replaced the correct pages and then it's page 337 and I don't want to miss everything. Now I have to go to Borders and convince them that they sold me this broken book. Those fuckers.

This happened to me once before, with "Infinite Jest"--900+ pages in and there are 50 pages missing. That book had no plot, though, and so it wasn't as jarring, or tragic, and at first I thought it was a super clever device of Fancy Pants Author and that I was supposed to be learning something. Whatever. I didn't learn jack.

The other thing about books is that Book Lover Dude did take me out and--surprise, surprise--it was not that great. I realize now that it isn't the fault of books and so as soon as I can find one that isn't broken I am going to read it right up. I'm taking the Amtrak to Kalamazoo today and that leaves me about two days of uninterrupted reading while the train is stuck in an avalanche--two days before I have to eat that obese guy in seat 8F.

Introducing...Mariah Carepy!

As a young therapist I am always looking for new therapeutic models to address the needs of my clients as well as the terrifying depression their needs spark in me. The depression I am prone to these days is like tiny painful papercuts versus the deep septic wound that was my childhood; however, pain is pain, and in order to do my job or get out of bed or not eat multiple pizzas I require an immediate intervention. And so I have developed Mariah Carepy, and I will soon heal the world.

The must haves are: Vision of Love, Fantasy, Emotions, Without You, Always be my Baby, Open Arms, Dreamlover, and the newest super belter, We Belong Together. Pick and chose others as your mood demands. Usually I skip that song about dead people she did with Boyz II Men, but yesterday it did the trick and made me cry. By the way, the whole point of Mariah Carepy is to 'do the trick'--to combine the physical, primal scream aspects of singing along with the serotonin-triggering beats but also tweak it with words about God and sex and loss and the associations to moments for which Mariah's music are the cultural backdrop and then...wait for it...Probably during a extended warble, still dancing and still crying, you fully feel the pain and glory of the world. This is cathartic and this is going to prevent you from drinking the fourth beer or eating the eighth slice or calling the ex or buying the slutty top.

Actually, Mariah Carepy insures you will buy the slutty top, because here is yet another layer to the rainbow-flavored cake of Mariah Carepy: Mariah herself is all fucked up, probably more than you or I. Did her sister sell herself so that Mariah could record her demo? Did Mottola beat her? Is she puffy or just healthy? Why would a grown woman wear that horrible, horrible, horrible outfit? Why can't Mariah love herself the way she should? Why can't any of us love ourselves the way we should?

Think about this but also warm up that ass because ohmigod "Fantasy" is back on again.

Christmas time is a mystical time for me, not in a religious way but in a melancholy and tenderly painful way. For me it is the ultimate family holiday... on the Fourth we tell ourselves a big national story about Who We Are and on St. Patrick's Day Irish-Americans tell themselves and others Who We Are and during Christmas families reenact and retell themselves over and over that This Is What We Do. Christian or not there's no school and everyone expects a gift and you better stick close to home. Once my dad married my stepmother these Christmas decorations became part of What We Do, and those dear with the candles fused to their backs protecting the baby Jesus? They became my brothers.

This picture is the reason for the season. This is what I did tonight--that's text, baby, there's some cropping in that thing--and it makes a terrific screensaver! I had time to do this tonight because I got dissed. I got dissed by someone I met via the internet whose pickup line was "I like books." Seriously? Books? What is wrong with me? He told me the books he likes and they are dry, anyway, all nonfiction, with one of those Bill Bryson Idiot's guide-type books thrown in. Whatever. This proves to me ONCE and FOR ALL that books are for chumps. Anyone who identifies themselves by book love can't love them in the sad, secretive, possessive way of the truly obsessed.

The internet dating ocean, valiantly braved by me for one whole month, is too choppy for a Saint. So that's it, people, believers, lovers--no more books and no more searching for companionship. I brave yet another cold winter alone, with only my scissors, my Lord, and the constant loop of 'Cruel to Be Kind' by Nick Lowe playing in my head.

DADDY LOVES TRISCUITS!

My Daddy loves those tasty woven wheat crackers. Often there are teeny wheat twigs in his beard and moustache. We stopped by his house on the way home from Thanksgiving and I grabbed some Triscuits from a (reused!) plastic baggie on the counter and yelled "Hey Dad, I'm taking some Triscuits!" He thought I was taking a box and excited ran down to advise me on what kind of Triscuit would be good for a long drive home, and he knows, cuz he drives a truck. I like that even though he has eaten a box of the same snack crackers even couple of days for the last 40 years he welcomes the new Triscuit flavors.

He recommends Cheddar, but I don't, because they are the only Triscuit made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. I say go with the originals. Get wheat twigs all stuck on your face.