Season’s Greetings from the 1010 House!
Well it’s another Merry Christmas and a Krazy Kwanzaa here at the William St. House! There’s been so many faces coming and going through this house over the past year and Tim and I are just scrambling to keep up with it all! As you know by now, Tim is the only house member still remaining from when I came to live at the William Street house and boy has he had a crazy year! Apart from working his job at the welding plant, Tim keeps busy shuttling his snot-nosed punk kids to and from day care while his lovely wife holds down her job as a circus clown. It’s pretty grueling business, especially now that his daughter has acquired a “Sixth Sense” ability to communicate with dead people. We can hardly make out a word she says amidst all the screaming! According to her, she sees the men who have come and gone through this house and the eclectic and often grueling ways they have died. It’s everything Tim can do to get to eat her Happy Meal amidst the blood-curdling screams she lets out, claiming she sees men who have succumbed to dementia or bit it trying to climb to the top of a 3-story scaffold after ingesting a 6-pack of Natty Light and a pint of Beam! Poor kid, Tim says he has set up an appointment with a counselor for after the holidays, but I’m not sure she will last that long. Yesterday I came home to find Tim and his son downstairs and Emma frantically running around in circles in the kitchen with her fingers plugging her ears screaming “I don’t care about your spine! Leave me alone!!”
Jon recently moved out of the house and we all wish him well. He claims he moved back him to live with his mom, stepdad and little brother. On the way, though, he will be spending 6 months delivering humanitarian aid to villagers in Laos. Apparently, this whole village in the jungle has been stricken by malaria, AIDS, and a strange intestinal parasite that makes living an entire day without at least 30 bowel movements quite the chore! Being an avid fan of Walking Dead, the fact that I saw a loaded .45 and a sawed-off shotgun in his baggage was a little bit of a shock, but Jon assured me he was only taking them if the natives started to get “squirrely.” I wish him all the best.
Matt recently got his own room after Jon left and he loves it. Matt is very active in the program, averaging 32 meetings per week and he recently took on his 118th sponsee. According to him, “It’s all about the Big Book and the Fellowship” for him now. I applauded him on his conversion but stressed that the $537,000 in financial amends he says he needs to make for a number of thefts from various convenient stores, churches and orphanages might be a little premature and he might want to think about making a donation to The Salvation Army or taking on an “Adopt-a-Highway” project. I pointed out that the guiding principle behind making amends is cleansing your conscience of baggage you carry from your drinking and using days, not incarcerating yourself for the rest of your natural life. He assures me he is thinking about it, saying maybe he will “paint some city playground equipmen or something.” I stressed to him that there is being penitent, and there’s being a dumbass. He said he would think about it.
And then there was the Christmas miracle! In the short-lived stint I did recently at an area inbound telemarketing center, I ran into Chris! Chris lived in this house when I came here, but soon had to vacate because of an “incident.” I was gone when it happened, but apparently Chris had stolen a Jaguar and jaunted across the river for a night of festivities at The Playhouse, a gentleman’s club in Iowa. I never got all the details, but apparently there was a bit of a disagreement between Chris and a dancer at the Playhouse concerning his visit into The Champagne Room involving a liter of Jack Daniels, the dancer’s thong and a table saw. Chris said he is on “supervised release” and is awaiting trial. I wish him all the best.
As for me, I’m still fighting the good fight, staying clean and trying to mentor the new guys. There seems to be some dissention in the ranks among some of them and allegations that I am taking excess liberties in my new role as house treasurer. I assured Tom, the owner of the house, that everything is on the up-and-up with the house finances despite the Jag I recently obtained at the police auction and the new Armani I insist is necessary for me during my job-interview process. Apparently, nobody told Tom that one should absolutely not trust an alcoholic/addict with money that is not theirs, but he seems to believe me, so I’m keeping quiet for now.
As for my own family, let’s be honest, if you are reading this letter, you probably don’t give two shits about Dad’s lung cancer recovery or Mom’s recently published book about life with my sister, Mom’s “extraordinary daughter” (gag). Yeah, Dave is out in Cranston, RI with his lovely bride and precocious kids and their ballet recitals blah blah blah. Let’s get down to what matters: Maureen is still alive and neither my niece or my nephew has been “disappeared” yet. And rest assured, I’ll come out with a letter equally as nauseating and boring as this one, maybe more! Let’s be honest, I’ve not gotten any calls from any of you informing me of a terminal illness or unexpected amputations, so I am just gonna assume everything is fine at Lake Wobegone, ‘kay?
See y’all next year. Oh, and do me a favor. Suck It.
Happy Holidays!
My Zen Brain 