Did I mention how cold it is in my house? I feel a little silly whining about it since I'm from Chicago where it is always ass-biting cold, but I've lived in DC for ten years now, so any immunity I had to cold and wind has vanished with my South Side vocabulary. After a decade in Washington, I no longer root for Da Bears, and I order a diet soda instead of a diet pop. The word pop is now only used as a verb, for example popping a cork on a bottle of champagne, or popping popcorn. I only say Da when I'm talking about a book, like the Da Vinci Code. The days of standing on the L at State and Lake and feeling the wind chill factor of 35 below are a miserable memory from childhood, and I now have a good excuse for not going home in December, I work in retail, and it's much too busy to vacation during peak season. It's not Chicago cold in Washington right now, but I worry about turning the heat up and having to take out a small equity loan when I get my gas bill on the first of the month. My partner is going through the change right now and she turns the heat completely off before bedtime. Since I am asleep when this happens, I don't realize it until morning when I wake up rolled like a bean burrito in 5 blankets, gasping for oxygen.
I envy the people in DC who in between Christmas and New Years, live this blissful life of leisure. The folks who stay in the city during the holiday have absolutely nothing to do. You can tell that these people have slept late in the morning just from the happy look on their face. Their bosses have all flown somewhere else, and have ceased to annoy them. There is no one in the White House, no one in the Capital Building, no one at Housing, Education, Agriculture, (don't worry I think there's a guy at the desk at Homeland Security, and two guys sweeping the floors) so everyone who is employed by the Federal Government gets to visit friends, go to parties, schlep their kids around to the museums, and walk their dogs.
Did I mention I hate dogs? Okay, don't spread that around, because if you're a lesbian like I am, you're supposed to love dogs. I never used to hate dogs, but since I moved to DC, people have these weird looking designer dogs, and they hang out in the dog park across the street. In Chicago, we never hung out in the park, because we were too afraid of being mugged, and we never petted anyone's dog for fear of losing fingers. In Chicago, the dogs looked like dogs, not some weird cross between a giraffe and bird. Last week, I went to get in my car, and there was this huge pile of dog crap right where I usually stand when I open my car door. I had to sort of limbo into my car to avoid the disgusting mess. If it were a Chicago dog that had laid that pile in my driveway, I would have been dealing with some tiny little turd that I could have kicked into the neighbor's yard. These giant freak-dogs in DC lay down piles that look like they come from a horse. For three days, I parked my car a block away on the street to avoid Dogshit Mountain. It finally froze one night so I was able to shovel it into the trash can. I also threw out the shovel.
Okay, look....., let's keep this little rant just between us, because if anyone finds out that I hate dogs, I might lose my Lesbian card. My partner would be really unhappy about it.
I know that this is the Christmas season, and I should just shut up and be merry. But after a brutal retail season, I would love to just sleep late and go to museums. But since the sales projections fell so short this year, the retailers have just five days left to lure shoppers into the stores for that little something that was left off of their Christmas list. We retailers have just 5 days to save the economy, and the Dow Jones from certain doom and pull some sort of sales growth out of this holiday season. If you come to my post holiday sale, you will find Fancy French Glazed Chestnuts for fifty cents each, and my face cracking from having to smile for three straight months.
I don't know what I hate more, designer, driveway crapping dogs, happy Federal employees milking my tax dollars, or being colder in my own house than I am outdoors. If you live in DC there are always things that you can hate more, but right now they're all in Texas.
