Twas the Night Before Christmas

And all through the house not a creature was stirring except txholdup who was cussin and fussin because he still couldn't find fresh pasta for the lasagne he planned on making for Christmas Day.

My best friend is coming to visit on Christmas Day and is staying until after New Year's Day. She and I met in the 70's in Ann Arbor which was a hotbed or radical, political thought during the Vietnam Era. We demonstrated weekly at city hall for 1 1/2 years until we finally enacted a sexual preference non-discrimination clause. We went on to elect the first open gay people to city council after years of running a drag queen for office in the most Republican ward in the city. I was on the negotiating committee of my union when we won the first sexual preference contract language ever in the United States. We counter demonstrated against the Nazis that showed up every April to celebrate Hitler's birthday. We helped elect the first African American mayor in a city that was less than 10% black. We disrupted medical conferences at the University of Michigan where the speakers were espousing electro-shock as a method of curing queerness. In short we grew up together and that bond has lasted for decades.

Now to the current crisis. She is a vegetarian so I thought I would make lasagne for Christmas Day. It is a festive dish surely fancy enough for Christmas. It is one of the dishes where the meat isn't really a focus so leaving it out is no biggie. I haven't made it in 7 or 8 years becuase it is fairly expensive to make. There are few dishes made at home that cost more than $50 to make unless they include seafood. But where to get pasta? Ann Arbor has a population of 200 some thousand, Dallas in the millions. Ann Arbor has one of the best delis in the country Zingerman's. Across the street was Pastabilities where I could walk in pay about $5 and get sheets of lasagne pasta freshly made that morning. Dallas hasn't got a decent deli I have been looking for 19 years. And fresh pasta, ugh forget about it. I went to the mall and seriously considered buying a pasta machine but being such a tightwad I couldn't see spending $100 to make the pasta for one meal. So the quest continues. Will I find the pasta in time to save Christmas dinner? Or will I be forced to boil boxed, thick pasta with those stoooopid ridges and ripples that take up so much of the lasagne pan leaving that much less room for the Asiago, Parmesan, Romano, Mozzarella and Riccota. Stay tuned, maybe Santa will drop some down my chimney.

To all of you have a happy winter holiday celebrating whatever your beliefs are. May the New Year bring fullfillment of your dreams and ambitions and may the Europeans please get their shit together. Amen.