**MONDAY, 2PM**

I’m in the post office, mailing thank you gifts that have been sitting in my living room since, no joke, last April. I’m trying to seal the shipping boxes, and I go to lift the massive steel tape dispenser, and as it reaches the apex of its journey the tape apparatus disengages and the metal base falls on my middle finger. After fighting off a wave of pain-induced nausea, I finish my business and bitch out a postal worker about the shoddy state of their tape delivery system. By way of apology, the postal worker “helps me” with their automated postage machine thing, which would have been awesome except for how he did it wrong and then some OTHER postal worker has to come over and do the whole thing over AGAIN. Meanwhile, my finger has swelled to nearly twice its normal size, and it fricking hurts. HURTS. hurts.

When I get to my car, I discover that my driver’s side door no longer closes. And I cry.

**LAST DECEMBER**

Grandpa has a stroke on my mother’s birthday and dies shortly thereafter. En route home from his funeral in Binghamton, I get bagged for speeding. This, despite the fact that my grandmother is on her deathbed back in Massachusetts. Grandma passes away within the week, and I double back to Central New York for the funeral. The ticket will eventually cost me $250, even though I send the state of New York copies of the prayer cards and obituaries, in which I am named as “survivor of deceased”.

That story’s here, if you wish to revisit.

**THE DECEMBER BEFORE**

After weeks of frenzied holiday shopping and last-minute music licensing for my upcoming film, my electricity gets shut off, and with it, my heat. Fed up with Newton, I head home for a relaxing holiday. While fueling up at my local Hess, I inadvertently leave my wallet on top of my car and drive away. My wallet, which holds my all-cash holiday bonus from my employer. Three days later, I have a meltdown of biblical proportions, which leads to my mother insisting that I go back into therapy, which leads to my eventual reliance on three different psychoactive drugs simply to get through the day.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, I run into a curb and bust a tie rod. BEFORE I start drinking.

**THE DECEMBER BEFORE THAT**

… was ok, i guess. let’s move on, though, because this is not a story about OK times.

**SOME OTHER DECEMBER**

My best friend comes back from California to visit Katsu and I in our new apartment. She and I are driving to NYC to have a balls-out New Year’s Eve celebration, so the night before we leave I drink an entire bottle of plum wine while she plucks by eyebrows for me. I need to look good, you know?

I wake up in the morning and vomit. Several times. But, determined to make it to Manhattan for the party, I soldier on. On the drive down to the city, the transmission on my 8-month-old car shits the bed. Three days later I take the Fung Wah home to Boston and spend the next three weeks fighting with Ford Motor Company about how to get my car back from the garage in Westchester. The ensuing headaches cause me to sue Ford, resulting in a meager settlement that will in no way make up for my pain and anguish.

That story is here, here, and here.

**A REALLY LONG FUCKING TIME AGO, IN DECEMBER**

After two months of interning, I’m hired to AP on a MASSIVELY AWESOME six hour documentary for PBS! It is SO RAD that I’m going to get PAID to work on a FILM – no – a DOCUMENTARY FILM – less than a YEAR AFTER I GRADUATE COLLEGE!!! I am AWESOME!!! YAH!!

I go out drinking with my new boyfriend, Katsumi, and get sloshed on margaritas. On the way back to my mom’s house we stop at a gas station, and on the way out of the bathroom, I slip in the ice and break both my wrists. All the pictures from this Chrismas feature me and my twin wrist immobilizers in various states of disarray. I have to delay starting my awesome new job, since I can’t even dress myself, much less type out long, angry emails about how our funders are fucking us over.

**YESTERDAY**

I take my intern out for a “thanks for working for us for free for the last three months” lunch. While parking my car, I pop a spring in my passenger-side suspension, rendering impossible all my last minute Christmas shopping.

Spiked eggnog, anyone?