A QUICK WAY TO GET INTO HELL...

Soooo...yesterday at church...

We have this one part of church which I think is just really ignorant...always have and always will. It's the part where everyone stands up and "greets their neighbor". Basically, you shake everyone's hands around you and say silly things like "Howdy Neighbor!" or "Christian Greetings Neighbor!" Luckily for me, we always sit near these two families with teenage girls who used to read my humor column each week and think that I'm the funniest thing since Grandma's coffin fell out of the hearse. So I usually shake their hand, make a stupid face and say something like "Somebody here smells like an overflowing toilet" and then gesture with my head to one of the elderly people nearby. They always laugh and then we make small talk until the organ cranks up, signifying you can stop shaking everyone's hand now.

So anyway ... yesterday there was a family sitting behind us. The dad was near me so after shaking everyone's hand in the nearby vicinity, I figured it'd be mighty Christian-like to turn around and shake the Dad's hand.

I turn around.

He's not looking at me.

I stick my hand out.

He crams his index finger up his nose.

Far.

He is jab, jab, jabbing away at his sinus cavity, trying to pull out the mother of all boogers. While he's doing this, he notices out of his peripheal vision that I'm standing before him with my hand stuck out like some kinda mucus sadist.

"Oh please kind sir...may I have your booger?"

He yanks his fist out of his schnozz, grins...AND SHAKES MY HAND WITH THE SAME HAND THAT HE WAS JUST PICKING HIS NOSE WITH!!!

Okay.

I knew it wouldn't be cool to recoil in horror, although that's the first thing that went through my head.

I just swallowed hard and my hand went limp as he grabbed it and pumped away. I did my best in trying to keep the nerves in my hand from feeling any slimy booger material on them.

The handshake lasted less than five seconds.

But the emotional scars will live forever.

Shaking hands with someone after you just picked your nose in church ... I mean...can't you go to Hell for something like that?

We spent this weekend cleaning house.

We still have a long way to go, but it's starting to look pretty nice. Almost worthy of being lived in.

And if we didn't have Andrew around to make a mess every time we clean something up, it might stay looking nice.

My sister's coming into town today to spend the Eve and the Day with us tomorrow.

I was under the impression that she was going to be staying with her new attorney boyfriend over the holidays.

And she was. Until she screwed all that up.

Y'see...my sister and this guy dated in college for about two months. This took place eight years ago.

And ever since then, he hadn't been able to forget about her. Yes...for eight years, he wished that my sister would someday come back to him.

So two months ago, after she broke up for the fiftieth (and we hope...last) time with her loser boyfriend, she called the attorney and told him she was coming to town to see me and wanted to stop by and see him on her way. He lives in Auburn, about 45 miles from me.

So she stopped and saw him and they had lunch.

He called her when she got back to her home and told her what a good time he had and wanted to see her again.

They saw each other again. And again. And again.

Two weeks ago, they went to New Orleans for five days. Down there, they tried on wedding rings and he told her that he was planning on asking her to marry him.

He's moving way too fast for her. Plus...he dotes on her which she can't stand. She admitted to me yesterday that she can't really fall in love with a guy unless he treats her A LITTLE like shit.

Yes...she's one of those. A woman who HAS to have a man treat her like dirt in order to fall in love with him.

She can't be happy with a guy who treats her like a queen.

I've met this guy and he is BY FAR the best guy she's ever dated that I can recall.

I told her that.

So naturally, she thinks there's something wrong with him.

It's a classic love story really. He never got over her and now that she has magically appeared back in his life, he's determined not to let her slip away again.

If it was Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan, she'd be all over it. Unfortunately, it's her and her boyfriend and she's "bored" with him now.

I told her when she gets here, it's time we had a little "big brother-little sister" talk. She said she wasn't coming. I told her that she was and she was going to listen to what I had to say, dammit.

Basically ... when a female gets to be 35 or so ... her choices for a man start thinning out. Because if most men in their mid-to-late 30s were given the choice of dating and marrying a woman in her mid-to-late 30s or a woman in her early-to-mid 20s ... the young one's always going to win.

It's a horrible fact of life. Personally, I don't have much in common with a gal in her early-to-mid 20s since I can't name a single Backstreet Boys tune.

But MOST men would take that route.

Maybe they wouldn't. I dunno. It's not like I've done research on the matter.

But it should scare her into liking her attorney boyfriend a bit more, don't ya think?

So anyway, she called me back about ten minutes later and said she was going to hook up with the attorney for lunch before coming here today. I guess I kinda shamed her into that.

I just feel sorry for the guy. He's head over heels in love with my sister and she's like "Eh...whatever."

Hopefully I can drill some sense into her head.

Went shopping at K-mart last night. God. That store is the sphincter of retail Hell.

They just finished remodeling the store a month ago, turning it into a "SUPER" Big K or whatever the hell they call it now. Whatever they call it, it's still just as nasty and filthy and scummy as it ever was.

You can't find anything in the store, because everything has been moved from where it's supposed to be. If you're looking in the book section, you're bound to find shampoo, batteries, an Elmo doll and pistachios mixed among the magazines.

I swear, I was walking through the electronics section and there were half empty cups of brown liquid on the shelf. It could have been either beer, tea, or urine from a severely damaged kidney. But it was nasty and looked like it had been there for days.

We bought Andy a laptop computer that he fell in love with. It's not a real laptop, the screen is the sun and she lights up when you touch a button and sings to you.

Very strange, but he liked it.

We also got my sister a bunch of little things to stuff her stocking with. She doesn't know she's getting a stocking, but we didn't buy her a gift because we didn't know she'd be spending Christmas with us. Plus, we decided not to buy gifts this year, but it'd be nice for her to open something, hence the whole stocking thing.

We spent 90 minutes in K-mart last night. I had to come home and scrub the filth off my body for another 30 minutes afterwards.

Alright...time to go clean the den and the second bedroom. Those are my chores today.

Have a very merry Christmas. I've already posted some new pics on Andrew's website and will probably post more tomorrow.

Ho ho ho!!