I woke up this morinng to the strewn, discarded remnants of Christmas' recent ghost. My mother's gifts arrived at two. This year, I received an inflatable, cheerfullly flowered ottoman and chair, a cheerfully flowered puzzale, a broken santa ornament and two books. After a long night of wandering around a large, badly lit, nearly empty room of partons needing refills of iced tea , i drove home. i began watching a movie. I paused it three times; to get leftovers twice and a beer once. There were titles separating each segment of the movie. One of the titles read "is that all there is?" I had to change my tampon, so I paused it again. i began singing an echoing rendition of that song. As i came back into the living room, I absent mindedly picked one of the books and brought it outside, with no jacket, into the warm night along with a night light and a half-smoked cigarrette someone had left from the night before. i read the first sentence of the book and then it occurred to me to wonder how my mother chose this book, knowing that she was not a reader. The description on the back left no overt clue, so i kept on reading. In the middle of the first paragraph, chimes across the street began talking and the book described the character driving through the pan handle of texas and i knew that's why she bought it for me. it was sweet enough to make my chin quiver slightly. The last sentence of the first paragraph went as follows: "He switched the shit-kicker airwaves and listented to songs about staying home, going home, being home and the errors of leaing home." The cigarrette was over and I went inside. It smells like steak.