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.