duck-shaped pain

I know what I'm getting for Christmas, more or less. I'm getting more than I thought, which surprises and embarrasses me. In a way, I don't feel like I'm really deserving of any such largesse, and also because some of my presents are hardly reciprocal. But I think I did the best I could, under the circumstances, and the last thing I need is a big load of unnecessary guilt.

I bought my dad one of those "Merry Christmas from the Dog" cards as a joke, in addition to an actual Christmas card. The yard has been muddy for days now, so I figured getting a paw print from the dog would be no problem. Except that when I came home, it had mysteriously dried up, so there was no mud to be found, and the dog's paws were astonishingly clean. The card now has on it a faint smudge of dirt, which only resembles a paw print if you really look at it closely. I had to augment it with pen marks, and it just turned out to be a mess. Not improving the situation was that Hoover took my presence in the backyard to mean Fun! Happy! Play! Time and ran around the yard, barking like a loon, while I tried to chase him down. In the end, I had to bribe him with some ham.

Since I'm going to be gone for a week or so, I'm not sure how frequent journal entries will appear. I might have a lot of free time, I might not. Just letting you know. But in case I don't update before then, have a happy holidays and a good New Year.

Thanks to an email sent to me by my friend R., I now know (and now you know, too) that there's a newly discovered type of squid out there. Squid are something that I always find amusing, for some reason. Just the word "squid" cracks me up. And then there's the excellence that is calamari.

In other news, I found out what sort of squirrel I am. Which may be the most useless of the useless Internet quizzes out there, but I get some sort of perverse pleasure out of being able to attach my personality to a particular squirrel. I like squirrels for much the same reason that I like squid (maybe it's the "squ" sound that does it), but I'm not nearly as enamored of eating the former as I am of the latter. [1]

[1] I have relatives that like to eat squirrel, though. The gruesome part involves the skull and a nutcracker, and I'll just stop there before I gross all of us out.

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