First allow me to wish everyone a delightful holiday season of your choosing. I must admit that I haven’t even really acknowledged any festivities as my life has been consumed by The Move. It has attained capital status in my mind simply due to the sheer, overwhelming number of hours it has consumed thus far and I haven’t moved the merest hint of a box yet. No, we’re painting. Sweet mother are we painting. I’ve worn blisters in my blisters from the amount of painting, and we’re nowhere near done yet.

I’ve determined that there are fewer occupations I’d enjoy less than painting the interiors of houses. I imagine proctology to be worse, to be honest. Unless you have a preoccupation with assholes — both literal and metaphorical — and a healthy fascination with the workings therein, there’s very little to recommend a career in proctology.

(Let’s explore this aside a bit: who actually chooses to become a proctologist? I mean, aside from the proctologists out there. Do people enter medical school with the stated intent of acquiring a Doctorate of Assholes? Are these perhaps people stuck in Freud’s anal phase of development and can’t escape? I just personally can’t imagine the thought processes. “Well, it’s down to pediatrics or proctology, but children make me squeamish.”)

Anyway, I’m not overly fond of assholes of either type and yet at this point I’d willingly and gladly jam many implements into scores of rectums rather than paint one more damned wall.

We had the pleasure of being able to be utterly cavalier about drops of paint getting on the carpet, a situation that one rarely finds oneself in. Today the new carpet goes down so we were trying to get as much painting done as possible before then. I believe Cat will be glad to have that phase over as there’s only so many times that “OH MY GOD, I JUST SPILLED PAINT ON THE CARPET!! HAHAHAHA!” remains funny. We didn’t get it all painted, but enough to be satisfied.

Now I am tired. I think I’ll sleep some. At my desk.

P.S. My spelling checker has no entry for “proctologist.” Ooo, burn.

This may be late unless you have a wife or other loved one with a birthday soon. Better late than never. No, I didn’t write this, though I wish I had.

This is the time of year when we think back to the very first Christmas, when the Three Wise Men — Gaspar, Balthazar, and Herb — went to see the baby Jesus and, according to the Book of Matthew, “presented unto Him gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh”.

These are simple words, but if we analyze them carefully, we discover an important, yet often overlooked, theological fact: There is no mention of wrapping paper.

If there had been wrapping paper, Matthew would have said so: “And lo, the gifts were inside 600 square cubits of paper. And the paper was festooned with pictures of Frosty the Snowman. And Joseph was going to throweth it away, but Mary saideth unto him, she saideth, ‘Holdeth it! That is nice paper! Saveth it for next year!’ And Joseph did rolleth his eyeballs. And the baby Jesus was more interested in the paper than the frankincense.”

But these words do not appear in the Bible, which means that the very first Christmas gifts were NOT wrapped. This is because the people giving those gifts had two important characteristics:

1. They were wise.
2. They were men.

Men are not big gift wrappers. Men do not understand the point of putting paper on a gift just so somebody else can tear it off. This is not just my opinion: This is a scientific fact based on a statistical survey of two guys I know.

One is Lloyd, who said the only time he ever wraps a gift is “if it’s such a poor gift that I don’t want to be there when the person opens it.”

The other is George, who told me he does wrap gifts, but as a matter of principle never takes more than 15 seconds per gift. “No one ever had to wonder which presents daddy wrapped at Christmas,” George said. “They were the ones that looked like enormous spitballs.”

I also wrap gifts, but because of some defect in my motor skills, I can never completely wrap them. I can take a gift the size of a deck of cards and put it the exact center of a piece of wrapping paper the size of a regulation volleyball court, but when I am done folding and taping, you can still see part of the gift peeking out. (Sometimes I camouflage this sector with a marking pen.)

If I had been an ancient Egyptian in the field of mummies, the lower half of the Pharaoh’s body would be covered only by Scotch tape.

On the other hand, if you give my wife a 12-inch square of wrapping paper, she can wrap a C-130 cargo plane. My wife, like many women, actually likes wrapping things. If she gives you a gift that requires batteries, she wraps the batteries separately, which to me is very close to being a symptom of mental illness. If it were possible, my wife would wrap each individual volt.

My point is that gift-wrapping is one of those skills like having babies that come more naturally to women than to men. That is why today I am presenting…

GIFT-WRAPPING TIPS FOR MEN

• Whenever possible, buy gifts that are already wrapped. If, when the recipient opens the gift, neither one of you recognizes it, you can claim that it’s myrrh.
• The editors of “Woman’s Day” magazine recently ran an item on how to make your own wrapping paper by printing a design on it with an apple sliced in half horizontally and dipped in a mixture of food coloring and liquid starch. They must be smoking crack.
• If you’re giving a hard-to-wrap gift, skip the wrapping paper! Just put it inside a bag and stick one of those little adhesive bows on it. This creates a festive visual effect that is sure to delight the lucky recipient on Christmas morning…

YOUR WIFE: “Why is there a Hefty trash bag under the tree?” YOU: “It’s a gift! See? It has a bow!” YOUR WIFE (peering into the trash bag): “It’s a leaf blower.” YOU: “Gas-powered! Five horsepower!” YOUR WIFE: “I want a divorce.” YOU: “I also got you some myrrh.”

In conclusion, remember that the important thing is not what you give, or how you wrap it. The important thing, during this very special time of year, is that you save the receipt.

It’s always interesting to meet your neighbors after a move. When we moved to our previous house we were unusually lucky in that our neighbors were all well-adjusted, generous people. I’m hopeful that this trend will continue, especially since we are only moving about 200 yards down the road. We already know some of them: D in particular (I’m not going to fool everyone here, as Javahead will know who I’m talking about, but the rest of you will have the incredible adventure of trying to figure it out! Wheee! I know you’re giddy.) seems like a great person, and her husband seems so as well.

I have a feeling, just a rough approximation really, that I will be the least pious person on the culdesac. That’s alright, they needed a bit of diversity in there. I’m just hoping they won’t be the judgmental type of pious people, keeping close eyes on comings and goings on Sunday mornings. “I didn’t see you going to church on Sunday, would you like to join mine?” Nice thought, no thanks.

I did meet my next door neighbor at some point over the weekend. I’ll call him M. Perhaps I was strung out on paint and polyurethane fumes but he struck me as an odd duck. Seemed nice enough just… stilted. Stilted in the “Hi I’m M. We stockpile ammunition and eschew electricity in the name of Christ” genre. I may be totally off base here but that was the first impression. First impressions are so precious.

I’m sure everyone will be super nice and of the non-weapon-stockpiling nature.

Though I previously belly-ached about painting I have a newfound enemy. Wallpaper. Wallpaper is my new bane. Not installing it, heavens no. Removing it.

Our new house has wallpaper lovingly — and rather snugly — applied in the kitchen, dining room and, in border form, around the living room. The patterns are not to our liking. Actually, they could be glorious, richly extravagant patterns for all I care, we’re simply not wallpaper people so it would have come down anyway. As it stands the kitchen pattern is a startlingly-floral floral pattern and the dining room is some sort of rustic picnic scene writ-large and replicated a billion times. So, it fell to me to remove some of the offending paper to make way for pleasing shades of paint. I merely had to remove the border in the living room and such wallpaper as exists where the fridge will be placed tomorrow (so we can paint behind the fridge and never move it again, silly).

Are you personally involved in the wallpaper business? Do you sell or install wallpaper? Even corollary activities, like adhesive manufacture. Have you ever created artwork that could be subverted into the tileable format that wallpaper requires? Do you perhaps provide accounting or even cleaning services to someone who may or may not have a roll of wallpaper or bucket of paste for sale in their business? If you can answer “yes” to any of the above, you are Satan. You will inhabit a special corner of hell for all eternity for the crimes in which you have colluded. Remember, we don’t only go after the terrorists but also the people that support them. So shall it be in this case. You are not innocent.

I really think that NASA should look to the wallpaper industry for materials research help. Anything that could cling so tenaciously to mere drywall has got to have some merit when it comes to, for instance, shuttle reentry. Behind the fridge there are now great gaping expanses of backing-less drywall waiting to be spackled and sanded into some semblance of smoothness since the damned wallpaper had created an impermeable, permanent molecular bond with the substrate. I had some very choice words on the subject matter, I must admit.

I bought this crap that was touted as being “THE ONLY ONE THAT WORKS” for removing wallpaper. It has “special enzymes” that help remove the wallpaper by eating the drywall underneath it so you’re left with nothing but framing and some nails. It’s a shade of blue most easily defined as “Industrial Solvent Azure” that is supposed to imply CLEAN! in a way that green or perhaps, you know, clear wouldn’t but in fact is only good for staining carpet that I don’t care about since it’s getting replaced today anyway. I eventually lugged a bucket of hot water and a sponge onto the ladder with me to clean up the gloopy blue residue and quickly came to the conclusion that the plain hot water worked every bit as well if not better than the expensive, staining blue crap so that’s good. I actually plan on creating my own wallpaper removal product and charge more than them: it will be a gallon of water that I’ll spit in — special enzymes, you know — and I’ll just say “FOR BEST RESULTS, HEAT REMOVAL COMPOUND BEFORE APPLICATION.”

I’m going to retire on the proceeds from that. Then travel the world assassinating wallpaper designers.

I would like to ask a big favor of you folks in readerland, especially those of you that know me well. In the future, if I ever make even the merest hint that I’d like to move again please knock me unconscious and strap me down somewhere until the fit passes. When I’ve once again been convinced that a move is not in fact in my best interests, you can untie me and send me on my way.

We are finally out of the old house as of 1:45AM this morning, ending a string of about a week of long nights. Then it was up bright and early to be at the closing so we could hand over keys and tell the new owner important things like “as the fireplace hasn’t been used since the house was built you may want to inspect it before using it so you don’t wind up burned to a crisp.” I am currently sitting at my desk at work trying to remember how to spell my name. I believe I remember my birthday and stuff, so deep, core memory units are still intact. However, short-term memory and motor skills are noticeably reduced. My eyelids feel to me like they have planks attached to them. Stout ones.

Something odd occurred to me as I was making that final trip. I believe that the amount of crap that is currently sitting packed up in various degrees of disarray in our new house has expanded to fill the increased capacity. Did all of my possessions take gaseous form and just inflate to the dimensions of their new storage? Seems like it. By far the most depressing sight of many depressing sights in the new place is the garage. By all measures more spacious than my old garage and now so entirely stuffed with shit that there is literally no room for more. No, really. The lawn mower — that I morosely pushed down the street from the old house to the new house at about 11:30PM last night because the movers wouldn’t transport it the 300 feet to my new house in the back of the truck as it seemingly contained trace amounts of gasoline that if ignited in the short time of the journey would evidently, from the stern disapproval of the moving guys when asked about moving it, take out most of our zip code, all while simultaneously pulling the big rolling trashcan… yes, I’m sure I looked grand — had to enter its new home in the crawlspace because there was simply nowhere in the garage for it to go. Admittedly there’s a lot of unused packing material in there and some boxes that were already emptied by Cat, but even accounting for that the amount of stuff is just staggering. If I’m actually parked in my garage this time next year I’ll be frankly amazed.

So, keep an eye on me. Remember, it’s for my own good.