​I do hope you had a lovely Christmas. We were able to share ours with little ones, so I couldn’t have been happier. No, that isn’t entirely true. I would have been happier if I’d been able to bring a fruitcake to the gathering.
 
If you’ve been following this blog for a bit, you may already know that I don’t like to kitchen. Some may say, “cook”, but I say, “kitchen.” If I’m not in the kitchen, people can’t expect me to cook. (No one has ever said, “Hey, while you’re in the back bedroom, why don’t you whip us up a little snack?”)
 
The rules are simple. When there are children in the house, I will feed them. When there are adults in the house, they can feed themselves. Easy. Even if they enjoy kitchening—as crazy as it sounds, I’ve heard rumors of grown-ups who like to prepare food—I will not ask them to whip me up a little snack. The people who know me best realize it’s madness to ask me to prepare them a snack. So, when I volunteered to break a fruitcake to the holiday gathering on Saturday, my hostess knew it wasn’t anything that I’d actually make. We both expected that I’d swing by Costco on the 23rd and pick up a fruitcake.
 
I understand if you abhor fruitcakes. Most fruitcakes are kind of gummy and miserable. I used to abhor fruitcakes, too, until I discovered the delicious goodness tagged with the Kirkland Signature name. Once I got a taste of their treat, there was no looking back. It didn’t matter if I was invited to someone else’s home or not, I brought one home. It would last for weeks and, for weeks, I would enjoy it.
 
Not this year. For the first time in forever, Costco had no fruitcakes. I found a pleasant Costco employee who confirmed the obvious: No fruitcakes this year. At least, not at my store, the only Costco outlet within 100 miles. He’d heard that there’d been shortages of an unknown nature, problems that were yet to be explained, and that only a limited number of fruitcakes had been made. All of which had been shipped to Canada.
 
Canada! Words failed me. Canadians already have everything good in the world, now they take my fruitcake from me? Not just from me, but from everyone else on this planet? Where’s the justice in that? My new Canadian son-in-law is going to have some explaining to do the next time I see him, I’ll tell you now.
 
The pleasant employee, seeing the look on my face, said I could always make one myself. (If you’re the kitchening type, here’s the New York Times “Good Fruitcake” recipe.) Or, if I didn’t like cooking, he suggested I try the store’s Chocolate Chunk Peppermint Loaf. Eight bucks for what feels like eight pounds of bakery good.
 
“Is it available in Canada?” I asked. “Say ‘no’.”
 
He said, “No.” A person can’t climb the Costco corporate ladder without some basic commonsense.
 
I bought the heavy thing. Brought it to the Christmas Eve party where everyone ignored the bulky thing. I didn’t blame them. It smells of peppermint and disappointment.
 
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to post this blog a day early and go build a gingerbread house with the babies. (No cooking involved. It’s all icing assembly and gumdrop decorations.) See you in 2022!

​However, it’s working for me at the moment. As I work on this blog, I’m listening to the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s A Very Scary Solstice Christmas album. Counting today, I have three shopping days until the big event—I once went shopping on Christmas Eve. It was a nightmare I won’t relive—and I still need to buy presents for two people who are dear to me. One is an elderly neighbor who tells me she doesn’t need anything but, as I learned a couple of years ago, will be sad for weeks if she doesn’t get anything; and the other is a newly-minted teenager who says he can’t think of anything he wants, but knows he doesn’t want gift cards or money.
 
His mother says she can’t help me. She doesn’t know what to get him, either.
 
I’ve wasted so much time online, trying to find the exact right things. Along the way, I’ve learned that Wirecutter’s list of “The 27 Best Last-Minute Gifts for the Holidays” has no value for the average consumer. It only exists so that people will click on its plethora of links and generate some income for its parent corporation. Some of the links go to sold-out items, others won’t get delivered until January. Besides, has anyone ever compiled a Christmas list that started with a squeeze tube of moisturizing cream? Is there someone with skin so dry that they all they wanted in their stocking is a three-pack of exfoliating scrubbers?
 
At this point, it’s too late to buy anything online and hope to receive it on time. I’m going to have to venture into the local shops to find something. It didn’t help earlier this year, but… I’ve gotta try. At this time of year, many of my fellow shoppers are bereft of the Christmas spirit. I couldn’t exchange a smile with them if I wanted to do so. With our faces hidden behind masks, we all look like we’ve gone to the store to rob their payroll.
 
Is it any wonder I turn to music to find a small measure of comfort? (If you weren’t aware, the links here generate no income for my parent corporation. Click on ‘em if you like, ignore ‘em if you like.)
 
The HPLHS has produced two albums, A Very Scary Solstice and An Even Scarier Solstice, and I own them both. The 46 songs on the combined song list were Christmas presents for me. When I first got the CDs, these were some of the titles that caught my eye:
 
All I Want for Solstice is My Sanity
Away in a Madhouse
Do You Fear What I Fear?
The World in Terror and Madness Lies
Harley Got Devoured by the Undead
I Saw Mommy Kissing Yog Sothoth—you get the idea.
 
If you’re wondering what the lyrics are like, this is the opening to Death to the World (sung to the tune of Joy to the World):
 
Death to the world! Cthulhu's come
Let Earth abhor this thing
Let every mind prepare for doom
As anguish and woe he'll bring. (And anguish and woe he'll bring.)
As anguish and woe he'll bring. (Anguish and woe he'll bring.)
As anguish, as anguish and woe he'll bring

Up from the sea, R'lyeh did rise
The cultists awestruck dumb
With ancient rites so wretched and perverse, (So foul and base.)
Cthulhu's time is come. (Cthulhu's time is come.)
Cthulhu's time is come. (Cthulhu's time is come.)
Cthulhu, Cthulhu's time has come
 
Unlike Santa, Cthulhu is imaginary, so I can listen to this silliness and laugh. Considering the shopping ahead of me, it might be my only laugh of the day.
 
I’m running out of time to find a present for a 13-year-old. It has been years since I’ve had to find a present for a 13-year-old. My elderly neighbor? She’d probably like a squeeze tube of moisturizing cream and a three-pack of exfoliating scrubbers.
 
If you have any suggestions in regards to the teenager, let me know. In return, I’ll ask for Cthulhu to eat you first. No, no, that’s a good thing.
 
Happy holidays!
 

​One single eyelash. An eyelash that refused to go away. Therein hangs my sad tale.
 
(As you can see by this image, I’ve always had a fascination with eyes. I finished this painting, “Devil’s Claw”, forever ago. There’s a surprisingly small number of buyers who want to hang a skull with an eyeball in it on their living room wall.)
 
Let’s start at the beginning. Waking up and barely stirred by two cups of decaf, I sat down to work on today’s blog. As has happened before, I had no idea on what to post. I was hoping inspiration might strike.
 
Sometimes inspiration steps up and does its job. Other times it gets all shirty and refuses to play. I only knew the blog wouldn’t be about our current projects. My writing life is currently busy but not especially interesting to outsiders. Or insiders, if you must know. It’s a wonder I struggle along.
 
Instead, I thought I might lead with The Indian Express’s article on why so many South Korean women are going out and about with hair curlers on their head. (**Spoiler alert** For these ladies, it’s not about the journey, it’s about the destination. They don’t care how they look on the subway as long as they dazzle their audience at the end stop.) It was vague-ish to me how I was going to segue from hair curlers into anything else but, since my South Korean audience is so limited, I wasn’t too concerned. For me and you, it’s always been about the journey.
 
I’d just wasted 30 seconds chasing down a gotcha link—"Jennifer Grey is 61 and the Most Beautiful Woman Alive”--**Spoiler alert** Jen is 61 years old and attractive. That’s plenty good enough. Would I have been intrigued if the headline had read “Jennifer Grey is 61 and Not Bad for Her Age”? Not for a second. I hate how the clickbait people know this about me—when my left eye started to bother me.
 
It had been a little irritating the night before, but I’d assumed my eyes were dry. When I checked in the mirror, I found a single eyelash clinging to the white part of the eye, the sclera. It felt a little scratchy.
 
Blinking didn’t move the lash along. Neither did eyedrops or bathing the area in filtered water. Relying on the advice of WikiHow, my partner in crime took a Q-tip and gently encouraged the lash to go away.
 
It steadfastly refused to budge. By now, I’d lost an hour I could have devoted to researching “Facts About the Brady Bunch You Won’t Believe.” (We almost had a different Mrs. Brady! Cindy’s lisp was real!) I was getting a little anxious. The ophthalmologist’s office person said he could squeeze me in later that day.
 
“Don’t use another Q-tip on your eye!” the scheduler chastised me. But…but…WikiHow….
 
Once I arrived for my appointment, the first thing the assistant did was take a Q-tip and try to dislodge the stubborn eyelash. She didn’t do any better than we had. When the doc joined us, numbing my eye so that he could use a pair of forceps to pull the lash out, he told me that it was unusual to see one trapped under the eye skin. Not “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” unusual. More of a “It Sucks to Be You” unusual. Then he told me to put medicated eyedrops in the injured area for the next week.
 
Does the eye have skin? It seems unlikely. The doctor was probably dumbing things down for his audience. He hurried away before I could ask him.
 
I’ll bet this kind of thing never happens to Jennifer Grey.
 

​As I expect you know, I like to paint and gourd craft. (No, no, I'm not going to go on and on about it.) This Christmas ornament was an early holiday gift for a friend and I loved making it. With this, I got to do both! I gave it to her in a fancy gift bag. Back in the ancient times, so long ago that there was no internet, I used to wrap some Christmas presents in the paper from the Sunday comics. Those were the dark days of three television channels and newspapers that were actually printed on paper. If you’re wondering how people survived during those terrible days, you can take your Bitcoin and go elsewhere.
 
Oh, who am I kidding? If you’re reading a blog on a website, you’re too Old School to be into crypto currency and NFTs. Or maybe that’s just me. Let me go on.
 
“Why does Santa use the comics to wrap his presents?” one of my children asked one Christmas morning. I answered the question with a question: “Why shouldn’t Santa use the comics to wrap his presents?”  It was a satisfactory non-answer. Santa is inscrutable. This is the guy who watches everyone to see if they’ve been naughty or nice. The same guy who has the power to be everywhere on the same evening, delivering gifts or lumps of coal. Thinking about it, Santa’s a pretty odd duck, using his superpowers in rather bizarre ways. Who’s to say he wouldn’t subscribe to The San Jose Mercury News to get his daily scoop and, later, force his elves to wrap some of his giveaways in the color newspaper comics he’s collected?
 
No one, that’s who. Not if they want to stay off of the Naughty List.
 
For those of us who could barely afford to buy presents, much less wrapping paper, the color comics collected from friends and family helped stretch the budget. Much like I need these opening paragraphs to stretch this blog. These opening paragraphs serve a second purpose as well. They’ll allow me to test my ProWritingAid app before the 30-day return window has vanished.
 
Last month, ProWritingAid had a 50%-off sale on its lifetime plan. For only 199 Black Friday dollars, I could use PWA forever. Yes, I’m relying on science to discover how to extend human life beyond a few measly centuries. I need the time to get caught up on my cleaning.
 
Half off is a deal. Hesitating, waiting until the last day of the sale, I bought the thing. I’ve been wanting a basic writing program for years because I’m tired of my writing partner pointing out my grammatical errors. I mess up on commas all the time. If I have to be corrected, I’d prefer a software program point out my errors.
 
When my partner asked what I was downloading, I told him I’d bought an early Christmas present. Then I left it on my computer, dreading the idea of using it. Let me try it out—right now—on the words I’ve written for this blog so far.
  
In only a few seconds, PWA has kicked up twenty-five different reports about my 500 words. Grammar, style, “readability enhancements” … I can see how some of this might be useful. Other parts of the program don’t see helpful at all. I learned that “0% of (the blog’s) sentences start with a past participle. You might consider adding some.” No, not me.
 
The app also reassured me that I hadn’t used any offensive language. Just wait until I try it on one of my manuscripts.
 
Despite all of those reports, PWA isn’t quibbling about much of what I’ve written. It is unhappy that four of my sentences started with the word “I” as this “can lead to boring writing”. Me am sorry about this. This writer will try to do better in the future. It also warned me against using the words “Christmas presents” so closely together in the opening of this piece. It was suggested that I use “Christmas displays” or “Christmas gives” as a substitute.
 
Clearly, it’s not a perfect program.  I’ll give it another couple of weeks and see if I’m returning my early Christmas gives.
 
It wouldn’t be the first time.