Life Goes On At Chez Coma "Need some help?" I asked Squeegee Monkey, who was systematically putting up the Christmas tree. "Don't help," he said, sticking another green hangey- looking thing into the plastic bark looking thing that is supposed to be the trunk. "Why?" I said, with one eye on the SciFi Channel which was showing one of the worst movies I've ever seen which appeared to be about zombie fungus. "I got it." "You sure," I looked back over at him. One thing about Squeegee Monkey, he does a fine job on tasks like this. "I can help." "No, I got it." "All right," I said. I wasn't going to beg. "It's 'cause I tear stuff up, isn't it?" "Yeah," he said off-handedly. "You feeling better after last night." "Yeah," I added. "I still need to talk to dad." "Don't worry about it," he said under his breath. "Jesus Christ, when you have a meltdown, you have a damned meltdown, don't you?" "That I do." "Glad it doesn't happen very often," he added, not looking at me. "You sort freak me out when you do." Neither one of us said anything. When my mom died, he was the one that put one of his hands on my back to comfort me as she took her last breath because Rodent Queen was covering an OVC tournament in Nashville and couldn't be there. I realized for a moment that he and Homer are great together. And he is good to me when he's not rolling his eyes at some of the weird crap I do. "I'm leaving the room now," he stood up and took a step back. We both gazed on the tree which only had the bottom part stuck in. It looked like hedge gone amuck. "Don't touch a damned thing." I nodded and went back to my movie. Life goes on at Chez Coma.  ¶ 12/02/2006 02:55:00 PM