I’m brimming with merry and bright despite some weird shit going down around us lately. We’ll get into that shortly because for now I am too busy introducing Milo to Rudolph, twirling him to the Kidz Holiday Bop station on Pandora, and getting my own good fix of Diana Krall’s Christmas crooning. Our Noble Fir tree twinkles with a warm glow in our oversized living room window, and it may all serve as a peaceful, seductive illusion.

I’m not neurotic. Well, not full-blown. I wouldn’t classify myself as paranoid because I lived in New York, and my typically laid-back West Coast demeanor pales in comparison to people I used to know there. But like I said, there’s some weird shit going down lately and all the Christmas lights in California can’t camouflauge this daunting moon.

It’s the kind that hangs low and illuminates the water to an enchanting mirthy green. I saw it days ago while driving over the Richmond Bridge in my commute home with a long sea of red tail lights before me. The ghetto birds (the low flying black helicopters in Oakland) that pan for criminals have been absent lately, and in their place this giant pill-shaped moon.

And yesterday, without warning, I returned home to our formerly winsome street lined with period lamps and sprawling trees to a shaven apocalypse. I was told a gang of chain saw massacre-ists came through and did the decapitating.

WTF BEAVIS??

While my friends in Seattle are posting pictures on Facebook of a fresh dusting, a Winter Wonderland in the Northwest, here in the charming community of Crocker Highlands, we’ve entered a barren apocalypse. A starving Joshua Tree trail if you will.

And now while driving Milo to Gymboree, I’m waiting for heads to roll down the sidewalk (like they do outside Mexican nightclubs). I’m waiting for dogs to trot with missing ears, and kids to descend out of their homes with shaved heads. There goes the neighborhood.

But the final blow. The devastating drop. The mother of all his falls so far. My son took his first header from our bartop, a straight free fall, four-feet down to our hardwood floor. I rounded the corner to see him laying there. I panicked. Neither one of us could breathe. Not thinking, I scooped him up in my arms, trying to erase what I’d seen. Not realizing I could do more damage.

But he didn’t have a cracked head, or visible blood or dilated eyes, and later – a hard lump on the right side of his head. The doctor said to see if he could walk a straight line. After the blood-curdling screams – he tore down our hallway in a drunk run, like a stiff-legged toddler mummy. He’s one resilient little shit.

It was all over the iPad. His climbing up the barstools like an orangutan for that electronic marvel. He did it all in a millisecond, before his mom could say No. But I’ll still blame the fall on the full moon, on the werewolves in the bushes, on the uneven plane–the slant of our crazy planet. There’s creepy shit going on, I told you. But hey… Sinatra is back and so are light-up candy canes on nearby walkways.

I would die, absolutely die if he were damaged.

I’ll stop the doom and gloom, wish you a merry Christmas and post pictures of drooling babies and fuzzy puppies on my next post. I swear.

Sweet dreams.