Val Swaggers Around In Her Christmas Swag

Val made out like a bandit on Christmas! Not a sinister bandit, up to no good, causing problems and pain all willy-nilly to good people who don't deserve it. No, more like a cartoon bandit, with a five-o'clock shadow and a black eye mask carrying a bag of loot that fell into his hands by accident because he's so incompetent and lovable. That's me. Val, the lovable bandit. Am I right?

Anyhoo...my guys know what I like. They gave me scratch-off tickets, which proved to be profitable. Genius gave me that Garmin fitbit thingy.

It's not as big as it looks from that angle. No, it was not faulty, and did not injure my paper-thin old-lady skin. I think that was from the FREE BRACELET for the PRIVATE PARTY at High Winds Casino during CasinoPalooza 3.

The Pony gave me a hat and mittens for my evening driveway walk.

My sister the ex-mayor's wife gave me a soft fleece pullover for driveway walking. Hick gave me a zip-up hooded sweatshirt for driveway walking. You might sense a theme here: my family wants me OUT OF THE HOUSE! Maybe. But I DID ask for those things, so they're off the hook for persecuting Val.

I WILL draw particular attention to two of Hick's other gifts.

I'm pretty sure that hat came from the auction. In fact, Hick admitted to it. My first clue was that before Christmas, he showed me two such hats he got for The Veteran's single-digit daughters. Though theirs had an animal theme, and attached mittens, Hick bragged that he got them at the auction, and they were BRAND NEW. So he confessed under interrogation that my hat came from there, too, and cost, by itself, somewhere between $3 and $5.

Anyhoo...it's not really the hat we're here to discuss, but the sweatshirt. Which is a replacement for my favorite, you know. The one Hick wanted wants to destroy! He even took it, in fact, right before I came down with a severe debilitating illness virus on New Year's Day. The weather here has been frigid. High of 11 on New year's Day, with wind chills -14 that night. I had not been appeasing the Shaming Bracelet that Genius gave me for Christmas. Nor able to wear The Pony's hat and mittens on my walk. Not that I walk overnight at -14, mind you . But I was SICK! Sick as a dog.

Okay. Maybe sick as a pampered show dog that wears a tartan plaid vest, or a cable-knit fisherman's sweater, and is fed braised calves' liver. But still sick. So sick that Hick relented and gave me back my old baby blue sweatshirt. I had worn the new one on New Year's Eve day, but woke up raspy and sore-throated and with a general malaise the next morning. Hick said I should put on some Vicks, and I said that I couldn't do that in my new sweatshirt, that the neck is too tight for than, and the Vicks would ruin it, and tearfully explained that about the only thing that might make me feel better would be MY OLD BABY BLUE SWEATSHIRT. 

So...Hick dug it out of a tall kitchen trash bag, where he had spirited it away from the side of the triangle bathtub in the master bathroom, and deposited it on a pile of his old socks with holes worn in them by his stubby big toes, and gave it back to me before he went outside for the day. 

That brings tears to my eyes. Not necessarily because Hick was so sweet to return my beloved old baby blue sweatshirt that he had no right to steal in the first place, but kind of because I was wearing it when I originally wrote this, all comfy and warm, like being wrapped in a hug from my old fleeced friend, and I just now realized that IT WAS ON TOP OF HIS SOCKS! My old fleeced friend was laying on top of Hick's SOCKS! Cast-off socks! With HOLES in the toes! That had been on Hick's FEET!

Funny thing, though. My new Hick hat matches my old baby blue sweatshirt just as well as it matches my new sweatshirt.

Yeah. I wore my old baby blue sweatshirt WITH THE HAT for five days. I'd like to think that's what put me on the mend towards the fair-to-middling health I am enjoying today.