Holiday Survival with Bayard and Holmes, Dec. 16

Through the month of December, my writing partner, Holmes, and I are offering solutions and advice for your holiday dilemmas. I’m a pragmatic author/belly dancer who tries to reach a win/win result every time, and Holmes is a man with experience in intelligence and covert operations who thinks 90% of life’s problems can be solved with sex, C4, or hollow points. Together, we are spreading cheer and relieving the tension of the holidays.

Secret agent and dancer. Not us. (Click here for that very funny clip from Get Smart.)

Let’s see what’s on your minds this week. . . .

Mr. Leboykin writes, “Every year I like to visit the nativity scene with friends and family at a Catholic church next to our old town plaza. . . . A small band of knotty-haired, ragamuffin THC storage units likes to set up in the gazebo in the public park next to the church and beat loudly on drums without any hint of an attempt at “music.” . . . Ninety-nine percent of the people in old town seem angry at these crack heads. How can I rid these malodorous vermin from the innocent lives of my neighbors and from my Christmas without going to jail for the holidays?”

Bayard:  Thank you for such a colorful question. I think the key to a win/win solution with this is to remember that holidays are about family. This is an opportunity to create festive memories for your children that will last a lifetime. Give them large soft drinks and send them over to play in the gazebo with the drummers. Tell them that if they just happen to trip and pour their drinks all over the drum heads, they should run like hell to the back of the church, where you will pick them up and take them for ice cream. Reassure your kids that stoned people can’t run fast enough to catch them. In the end, your kids are happy with their ice cream, you’ve made some cherished family memories, and you’ve spread cheer to the 99% of the people in the plaza who prefer Silent Night to The Little Stoned Drummer Boy. Win/win.

Old Town Prague at Christmas

Holmes:  Organize people from 6 or more different addresses in the neighborhood to send a concerted letter of complaint to the mayor’s office politely insisting that the criminal drummers not be allowed to interfere with the holiday festivities. To an elected official, six addresses of voters complaining is an election crisis. Given the choice between making a phone call to the police or pissing off six or more households of voters, the mayor will act in his or her own self interest and make that call. The alternative is to hire street people to urinate on the drummers, which is more fun and creates jobs for the unemployed. If that isn’t spreading holiday cheer, I don’t know what is.

Indeed! No job is a bad job in this economy. . . . Moving along, Tammy writes, “A ‘friend’ has been making excuses not to go to her significant others’ parents’ houses for the holidays for the last few years. This year, the jig is up. Any advice on how to bow out yet again with an in-law-induced-guilt-trip proof excuse?

Bayard:  This is a wonderful opportunity to spread some holiday cheer. Visit your local hospital with flowers and toys for the Children’s Ward, and make sure your in-laws know about it in advance. That evening, have your significant other tell them you accidentally wandered into the room of a patient with Ebola Virus, and now you are quarantined. Rest assured that HEPAA laws prevent the hospital from confirming or denying your presence. This way, sick children get some holiday cheer, you get out of yet another year of in-laws, and they feel sorry for you, to boot. Win/win any way you slice it.

Holmes:  Find some sympathetic, unemployed Cuban political refugees and have them kidnap your in-laws for Christmas. Claim disappointment when the dinner is cancelled. You could arrange to have them “rescued” after Christmas and keep the ransom, as well. Just be warned that the FBI is very good with kidnapping cases, and there’s a good chance you would go to jail, but then you’d have your excuse for next year, too.

Two for one. How about that? . . .  Another reader, Ms. Rosenblum, asks, “How do I get my husband to put up Christmas lights?”

Bayard:  Ah! What an opportunity for marriage enrichment this is. There are only three sentences in the Happy Man Manual. 1) Feed me. 2) Feed my ego. 3) Feed my libido. A happy man is a pliable man so doing any two of these should result in a house so bright you’ll be wearing sunglasses at midnight. Cook your husband his favorite dinner, then get out the ladder and the lights yourself. Struggle with them and ask your husband for help. Make a production of how heavy and awkward the lights are, and climb the ladder slowly. It’s a nice touch if you can quiver a bit, but not so much that he’s suspicious. Then, with feeling, fall off of the second or third rung into his arms. Tell him how strong he is, and how safe you feel with him. This should feed his ego and ignite his primal, protective urges, making him want to climb that ladder and handle the job. He gets two requirements met from his manual, and you get enough Christmas lights to cause airline traffic confusion. Win/win. (Note: If he doesn’t bother catching you, get a better husband.)

Holmes:  That one is too easy. I’m surprised you’re still married, and I don’t know how anything gets done around your house. Tell him you have a fantasy about being violated by a skilled Christmas decorator. We men are really easy. Feel free to use that against us.

We’d love to hear what’s troubling you this holiday season. Please send us your questions, and we will address them in next Thursday’s blog along with the questions that arrived this week. No question is out of bounds, but some of our answers might be.

A sincere thanks to all of you who contributed this week! We love to help people out during this difficult time of year.

Sincere thanks, also, to Kristen Lamb for featuring me as her Guest Blogger today to relate my Diaries of a Guinea Pig. Click here.

All the best to all of you for bright lights and charity.

Piper Bayard–The Pale Writer of the Apocalypse

“Never hit a man with your fist when you can get someone else to hit him with their car.” — Holmes

 

 

About these ads