Survivor: Chanukah

So, Chanukah.

God, how much longer is this week going to last? Chosen people, my ass. Who can keep up the buzz for eight nights? It's not very Jewish, in my opinion, to be so happy for so long. At the end of Chanukah, there should be a tradition to, I don't know, have all your gifts stolen by anti-Semites. 

'Cause good shit happens but then they steal from you, we will tell our children every year on the eighth night. And then we will eat fatty fried foods and fall asleep worried about cholesterol. 

I was a slacker Chanukah mom. When the kids were little, by the third or fourth night of Chanukah, I just drove through McDonalds while they were napping in their car seats and bought them Happy Meals toys for their gift that night. Done and done. Nothing says festival of lights like The Hamburglar.

Plus, if you add a small order of latkes (McDonalds calls them fries, I explained to my children), you've got your traditional Chanukah meal. Add a couple bottles of wine wine later that night and a few martyred comments about unfulfilled dreams, and more wine and a fight about whose turn it is to take out the garbage, and throw in a couple of smashed dishes and bitter tears and a night spent on the couch and, well, now you've got a holiday. 

I love the beautiful traditions of our people. 

In our family our gifts to each other aren't based on money value; they're based on true value. Like the Chanukah I agreed to go on Prozac. Robin still says it was his favorite Chanukah gift ever. 

This year, however,  I am giving Robin the greatest gift of all: the gift of peace of mind. Which is, as you know, priceless.

So far, I have spent $377.00 on it.

I am putting together a fully stocked trunk of emergency survival items. Come The Big One, Robin and I are going to be okay.

In addition to a week's worth of granola bars and flashlights and sleeping bags, etc, I have packed three (3) pairs of tweezers AND my Epilady into the trunk. And Diet Coke. I'm not going to have my lifeless body tagged "Elderly, obese male" when they dig my unibrowed, mustachioed, fur-legged self up from the rubble. A few weeks of no shaving and they'll think they found The Missing Link. I'll be on the cover of National Geographic. Fuck that shit.

No, wait. Didn't Murdoch just buy NG? Never mind. Nothing's going on the cover that might have to do with actual science. Fuck that shit. 

And I'm packing my good bra. The double underwire one with side lift slings built in. I need those young First Responders to try a couple of heroic measures before writing me off. I need my boobs to say, "Rise up and be counted!" 

Instead of, you know, "Go Down, Moses."

My hope, naturally, is that we never need to use the survival kit. Because I don't want anything bad ever to happen to any of us. 

And also because I've already eaten all the granola bars. I put in enough for eight days but they only lasted one day. 

I might need a Chanukah miracle.