Greetings Friends ...

Greetings! Another year … another letter … To our new friends, this letter came about in 1999 when our son was born and I made the colossal mistake of writing a heartfelt letter to which Robb was appalled. People, he said, don’t really like those feel-good letters. They want to know that our lives are so insufferable that, by comparisons, everyone else is pretty good. So – this letter is for you! This year started out with me setting up a doctor appointment for Robb. He does not like doctors because they touch people. I thought this one might be safe as this had to do with Robb’s inability to sleep. Reluctantly, he agreed but now refers to that appointment as “that time you tricked me.” He did a sleep test but then traveled so much he needed me to get the results. HIPA prevented it. He replied:  “I just need to know if this is just them giving me the results, me calling them names and demanding my money back, them calling the police, me destroying the office in a rage, and ...

Dear Friends and Family – By now, most of you know the routine. This is the anti-holiday letter so if you’re looking for excellent news and sweet family stories … move along. If you want to follow the ancestral lines of the Grinch family, well, you’re reading the right letter. I’ll start by saying I think I have a stress fracture because of Tommy. If you’ve seen “The Pink Panther” in which Peter Sellers’ “houseboy” constantly attacks him to keep his martial arts skills sharp, please note that this kind of thinking is real. It’s stupid but it’s real. This is my fault as I signed him up for a street-fighting, grappling style of martial arts (his instructor is the real deal!) and Tommy likes to be authentic, thereby attacking me when the house is dark. Now we both creep through the house, neither speaking, both waiting to attack. Katie just likes to attack herself. She does this by passing out, face first on the ground. The first time was when she was standing in line in Austin to ...

Dear Friends and Family – It is that time again … a time when we tell you everything that went wrong in our lives so that you can better appreciate the fullness and joy of your own lives. This idea was created by the highly unsociable Robb who infamously told me almost 15 years ago that people don’t want to read happy, cheery, “our lives are so awesome” letters from people. They want misery and suffering so … Katie has trichotillomania, the uncontrollable urge to twist and pull her hair. This is the only explanation I can offer that we never got Katie’s graduation pictures done. She was too busy pulling and twisting her hair. She also got pulled over for talking on her cell phone while driving through a school zone while also trying to change from a pair of short to pants while driving and wonders why we didn’t let her take her car to college. She just put in an application at Texas A&M to drive the shuttle buses on and around campus with the goal of being able to “have t...

Dear Family and Friends - Indeed, it is that time again.   For those of you new to this letter, please see www.allredgreetings.blogspot.com .   For Robb’s benefit, letters from 1999 to present are being offered… But the premise is this: Robb hates happy letters in which great times are highlighted. This is our anti-happy and to borrow from Tommy, there have been many burnages this year!   [A burnage, as in a burn, as in “oooooh, burnage” is when someone burns you with a witty comeback or something just goes wrong, was coined by Tommy!]   Here goes: Got a new car and 10 days later was hit by an uninsured, illegal.   An owl ate our cat. Tommy has some kind of unidentified rash on his leg and Kerri has now been diagnosed with asthma. Katie’s eyes are crossing again and we’re back to more CAT scans. And for reasons we do not understand, Tommy’s hair grows up . He wears a Panda hat to flatten his hair but it’s not working. He’s totally mi...

Dear Friends and family - It’s that time again when letters of holiday cheer travel the world to friends and family with tidbits of good news and morsels of triumphs and jubilation. Yeah … well… not here.   We could tell you all the wonderful and cool things that happened but why? What’s the point? The economy is in the toilet, we’re all getting older (or fatter) and no one really wants to hear how great another person’s kid is doing.   At least, this has always been Robb’s contention and so, in honor of his holy grumpiness, we submit the anti-holiday letter.   Following last year’s marathon that we ran, in which a man urinated on Kerri during the race but I didn’t believe that a man would actually urinate upon another runner and had her sit in really strong-man urine for longer than I’d care to admit, Katie had her face removed in a complicated surgery that involved a plastic surgeon, a neurologist and Ear/Nose/Throat specialist to remove a tumor that left her w...