**

PSA: If you are a new reader to this blog, this will not make much sense unless you read this post first.

Also, maybe don’t read further if you’re in a workplace that frowns upon comically nerdy depictions of genitalia. Ok. Carry on.

**

I don’t talk about my roommates much on this blog.

I do that on purpose. In part, because they are both pretty private people with their own lives, and I don’t want our living situation to become fodder for comedy, for me to begin trolling their lives for material.

But if I’m being honest … it’s also selfishly because I don’t want you to learn that my roommate Alec is vastly funnier than I am.

We exchange Christmas presents every year, in this amazing gift-giving, boozy bonanza — an excuse to buy one another the kind of shit we would buy for ourselves. It’s our fourth in the house together, and there’s a rhythm to the tradition: we mix drinks, we play the Yule Log repeatedly on Netflix, we crack the same lame jokes about how absurd it is to be watching the Yule Log on Netflix. We mark the years in memories: Well, the first year was the homemade Harry Potter Snuggie; the next year there was the custom recycling bin; in what flea market did you find that antique porcelain urinal again? It looks so good now that you made it into the plastic dinosaur terrarium.

I don’t know that Alec even really reads my blog. But he was the first person I called downstairs to stare at my laptop on the day that this happened. I wrote a post awhile back about trolling a marketing firm that was trying to shill sex toys on this blog; the truth is that I held off on publishing that post for a good six months because I was working at a summer camp and was concerned that my students (or worse, their parents) would somehow discover it and have me fired. After all, the kind of person who works with children is usually NOT the same person advocating (albeit satirically) hot-gluing googly eyes onto dildos and vibrators. Alec was my first reader of that post, and encouraged me to go for it. And if I can make him laugh, it’s a good barometer that I’m doing something right.

So. Both people I know in real life and loyal readers of this blog can tell you: I’m operating at full-throttle sentimentality a lot of the time. I cry easily. I get choked up when I see cute babies. Stories of selfless human kindness, or adorable animals, or the right song on the radio at the right moment: it’s all fodder for this relentless drive to share my embarrassingly gooey feelings with the world. I’m not proud, exactly — I always wanted to be this sort of Dorothy-Parker-esque, cigarette-smoking, sharp-witted woman who had a punchline at the ready instead of a kleenex.

Which is why I’m not exactly proud to admit that I got a little misty-eyed when I opened an ornately gift-wrapped box and found this:

It’s literally the most thoughtful present anyone has ever given me. A googly-eyed dildo. Dressed as Princess Leia.

I have no words. I have received any number of amazing gifts over the years, but this one — this one is my favorite.

Merry, merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, one and all. My heart is bursting, my soul is joyful, and there is a fucking Star Wars Penis on prominent display in my bedroom. Joy to the world. God bless us, every one.