Thought I'd share with you the letter Kim and I sent out with our Xmas cards this year. Enjoy!

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Season’s Greetings!

Dear family and friends,

Whew, what a year! We thought we’d get you up to speed with a tidy recap. After all, sharing is what the holidays are all about!

In January, after a rough bout with scurvy, both of us were exhausted, but ready to start the new year right. An extensive craigslist search led us to “Todd” and “Gina,” with whom we soon joined in holy matrimony in a four-way wedding. Todd’s unnatural love of metal detecting in the cold and Gina’s blood pudding fetish led to a quick and inevitable annulment, but all of us remain close. The valuable lessons learned outweigh the often horrifying experience.

February saw a financial downturn in the household, as Jere’s idea of investing all of our money in scratch-off lottery tickets proved to be a mistake. The plan led to an abundance of “free tickets,” but said tickets only produced more losers, leaving us nearly broke.

Things began looking up in March, though, as the $25 left to our name provided us with a miracle, when we exchanged it for twin armadillos, Ozzy and Sharon. The joy we all shared was immeasurable. They cooked dinner, accompanied us to free rock concerts, and even came pretty darn close to beating us at team Scattergories. Alas, any scraps of food we could find went to ourselves (and the cats), so the armadillos starved to death. Dem’s the breaks! Needless to say, March went out like an emaciated armadillo.

April saw rebirth when we found Jesus. Separately. Kim found him in a comedy club—his Sarah Palin impersonation was dead on. Jere found his Jesus ice skating (walking on water, if you will) at Kennedy Plaza in downtown Providence. Upon bringing our Jesi home, we realized we had had two impostors on our hands. We were left with no choice but to force the two men into neighborhood “Jesus fights.” Drawing huge crowds, at five dollars a head (tax-free! Shhhh), we suddenly found ourselves financially sound again.

May brought success in the feline department. Amazing Larry’s straight A’s lead him to a MENSA membership. And after years of getting up at 4:30 a.m. daily to drive Danzig to calligraphy lessons on the Cape, he was rewarded with a full scholarship to Brown. We couldn’t be more proud!

June brought doom and gloom, however. After losing Ozzy and Sharon, we thought it would be nice to have some young ones help Kim out in the soap studio. Unaware of Rhode Island’s strict (in our opinion!) child labor laws, we had them working three shifts, round the clock. Before we knew it we were behind bars.

In the spirit of independence, on July 4th, we broke out. Maximum security, my ass! Which, by the way, still hurts. As a reward to ourselves, we celebrated our newfound freedom by doing some traveling. Through time! Jere figured that enough old baseball cards stuck together using Kim’s body scrubs should create a sufficient a rip in the time-soap continuum so as to bring people thirty to forty years into the past. After a 20-minute trip, we found ourselves in our own home—in 1978! We had a hell of a weekend enjoying the pot and the wood paneling, only to discover we had traveled not through time, but simply through the woods, to the home of a couple of aging hippies some three blocks away.

In August, we went to a Tea Party rally at the capitol. Are those people nuts or what??

In September, Jere (almost) sobered up and decided to give school a ninth chance. Influenced by the Jesus fights (still going strong—Saturdays, 7-9 p.m., Roger Williams Park, seating limited), he declared rooster pugilism management as his major at Providence College. He’s currently running six cock fights a month, with a diverse range of clientele, both human and avian. Kim, in an attempt to embrace the values of our nation’s past, embarked on a new career in 19th-century mid-wifery. (Screw epidurals!) Things were looking up on all fronts.

But everything came to a grinding halt in October, when we found our dining room chairs arranged in a pyramid—on the ceiling! An exorcism was in order, and let me tell you, it’s not like the movies at all. It’s more graphic and more disturbing. But that old gal got the job done swiftly, with only a few injuries to passing trick-or-treaters. Turns out the house was built on an old barracks of the Kiss Army, and the ghost of Eric Carr was apparently pissed.

In November we gave thanks to things being back to “normal.” Jere was able to start a moonshine/Tupperware business and Kim continues Stella Marie Soap with help (when available) from underage, underpaid workers.

That brings us to today. Every day of December, we gather around the fireplace, passing the crack pipe from Kim to Jere to Danzig to Larry, reflecting on the events of 2010. Life is short, people. Enjoy the time you have with your friends and loved ones. Don’t forget to booby trap the chimney.


Here’s to a happy and healthy 2011!