Why does my pillow smell like Cheetos???

My co-worker, Gracy, is highly proficient in what the French call "le tirade." She rants at you, artfully and at length. A frequent target of her ire is president Obama; she calls him Barack O'Vomit and pretends he's of Irish parentage, which never fails to enrage me. How quickly some people forget what the alternative was, what a vote for Obama was a vote against...the prospective post-apocalyptic wasteland of a Sarah Palin vice-presidency. It still gives me the willies, just thinking about it...whatever the president's shortcomings, he's not vice-president Palin, and that still means a lot to me.

The winter solstice: longest night of the year. An amazing coincidence, as I've been sitting here all evening trying to work out a gift for Gracy, and it just won't end; I'm completely in the dark. Something practical? Something sentimental? Something aloof and/or oozing nonchalance? I can't make any headway on the issue. Maybe there's a book I could get her, "How not to be a Ho"...that'd make a good Christmas gift. It's festive, and seasonally appropriate; "ho ho ho" and the cuckolding of Joseph all that. Or maybe something to help with the drinking...God only knows where she's sleeping it off tonight, if being blacked-out is the same as sleeping. Probably not; she seems to cause a lot of "mayhem" while "blacked-out" and the worst thing she does when she's sleeping is shove me around a bit, with some coarse language thrown in for emphasis.

I can't rest till I get this sorted out; once it's done there's no going back. Dear, sweet, wayward Gracy: I apologize in advance for any misunderstandings.