Let The Stormy Clouds Chase Everyone From The Place

For the past three months someone in my house has had a cough that sounds like the raspy ruminations that stumble from a young ingénue’s lips during the second half of a tear-jerky, 19^th century, Masterpiece Theatre, eight-hour, costume drama. When the hacking begins and the music swells everyone run for cover because little Clarissa Dunn Bobblingbrook is about to let loose her last loogie and float up to the heavens above her eighty-seven room mansion and leave us weeping and wanting.

Here at Casa de Cohen we simply went on with our holidays as if nothing could stop us from being the inherently lazy, lie-about slugs that we are and embraced our barrel-full of get well goodies. With a nebulizer, a bottle of antibiotics, a handful of Musinex, a Benadryl drip, two dozen chocolate chips cookies, bowls of garlic-riddled pasta, a case of sparkling water, and a pile of DVD’s worthy of a Blockbuster sale bin we groped the end of December like a co-ed in a convertible.

One of the few perks of being a hardscrabble screenwriter like my husband is the awesome health insurance and the free nominated films that arrive in your mailbox the first week in December. So while we were feverish, sweaty, tired and snotty I got a free head-to-toe physical and we saw The Black Swan, True Grit, The Kids Are Alright, The Fighter, Winter’s Bone, Shutter Island, Inception, Somewhere, The King’s Speech, City Island, I Love You Phillip Morris, 127 Hours, Toy Story 3, The Company Men, Solitary Man and football, lots and lots of football.

I could complain about how our Christmas was short on gifts and high on hacking or how New Year’s Eve was mellow and in bed by 12:36 a.m. or that we were stuck in the house during a two-week rainstorm and viral infection tornado and suffered insurmountable damages from cabin fever and claustrophobia. But I will not. Because, although most people would have gone ape shit in an hour, our holiday, our seventeen days together stacked one a top another, was glorious and gratitude-filled. Sure, there were things I wanted to buy or do or ignore but in the long run I got just what I wished for all year, a two-week vacation from the world surrounded by my two, beautiful boys and the boob tube burping up brilliance!

P.S. Just for the record, Somewhere was one of the WORST films I have ever seen and I must start 2011 knowing I will never get those two hours back. EVER! Damn you, Sophia Coppola! Damn you!