The Annual Bilski Family Christmas Letter

For many, 2010 will live on in infamy as the year the Julian Assange became a household name, the year Leslie Nielsen breathed his last or the year a fairytale rescue of a group of Chilean miners was overshadowed by the infidelities of one its members. But for Libby, Carver and Jared, 2010 was just another year. It had its ups, it had its downs, but the fabric of this little old-fashioned family is even stronger than it was at this time last year. Before I jump in and share the major events of our year, I’d like to take a moment to thank each and every one of you (Yes, even you Aunt Bernice) for allowing us to share our favorite moments of the year in this little labor of love I like to call: The Annual Bilski Family Christmas Letter. On behalf of all Carver, Libby and Jared, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Carver: Looking at this little rough and tumble bundle of joy, it’s hard to believe that just three years ago, our doctor was saying that my low sperm count (Libby is screaming TMI as I write this) would make it all but impossible for us to conceive a baby on our own. But before we called up David Crosby or, worse yet, pulled a Brad and Angelina, we went away for a long weekend in the Poconos. Libby always says that “everything happens for a reason.” Well, at the risk of giving away TMI again, that weekend e-v-e-r-y-thing did happen. And, we believe, that’s the reason we were able to conceive Carver of our own accord.
I believe, like Magellan, little Carver is destined to be an adventurer. But all children are curious, Jared. Au Contraire Bilski newsletter readers from Pennsylvania, Alaska, Michigan and California – to name just a few. Just the other day, Libby and I must’ve dozed off. I woke up to a loud knock at the door. Our neighbor Helen and little Carver – whom we assumed was sleeping peacefully in his room – were standing at the door when I opened it. Unbeknownst to us, Carver had wandered past his sleeping parents, went out the front door and started his trek to … well, I guess we’ll never know where. Turns out, Helen was coming home from the store when she saw Carver in the middle of the street waving goodbye in the direction of our home. Of course, we felt like horrible parents at the time. But I’d be lying to you people if I said that there wasn’t a small part of me that was like, “This is DEFINITELY going in the Christmas letter.”

Libby and I have also noticed that young Carver already has an extraordinary propensity for kindness and compassion. Libby told me that just a few weeks ago, she’d taken Carver to a little park where many of the local mothers bring their children to socialize. The kids were playing among themselves when a few of the more boisterous ones started picking on a little Indian boy named Sachiv. The teasing quickly turned into all out-bullying, and the most portly boy of the pack, Mason, told poor little Sachiv, “Brown people are weird,” and commenced to push him to the ground. All of the children laughed and ran away, as the mothers started rushing over to see what was going on. All of the children except for Carver I should say. Libby says Carver walked over to the tristful-looking Sachiv with Buddhist-like calm, told the little Indian boy, “It doesn’t matter that what they say about you, because God still loves you,” and helped Sachiv back to his feet.

Libby: Wife, mother, lover, nurse, friend and love of my life – where do I even begin? Two-thousand and ten was a year of firsts for my dear Libby. This year marked the first time Libby had ever experienced the phenomenon known as a colonic. For those of you who’ve been living under a rock for the past five years, a colonic is “the infusion of water into the rectum by a colon therapist to cleanse and flush out the colon.” Libby’s first colonic was followed closely by her second, then her third and, according to my latest figures, she’s had 17 colonics during the past fiscal year. For years, I’ve been telling Libby she should pamper herself, but this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. In the way some women are obsessed with chocolate or swiping their husbands’ credit cards (I’m talking to you Shelly!), my wife is literally obsessed with her colon. After extensive research, Libby has learned a tremendous amount about the health – and in most cases, the lack therein – of the colon. For example, according to the Harvard Business Review, women who receive regular colonics are 70% more satisfied with their marriages and 50% less likely to get divorced than women who don’t get colonics. Fellas, if that’s not incentives to get our old ladies out the back door for some TLC on their back doors, I don’t know what is? Not only does Libby immensely enjoy the physical sensation she gets from the colonic process, she also revels in the fact that she’s taking a proactive role in improving her overall health. True to form, Libby has taken her obsession and transformed it into an opportunity to help others. She recently created a small group – 11 women and growing. Every few months, the girls will get together to receive their colonic treatments. After the cleansing, comes the purging. The girls will head to a local eatery and unburden themselves of all the juicy gossip they’d been sitting on since the last session. Libby’s been on me A LOT lately about popping my colonic cherry but, at the time that this letter went to press, this guy was still one of the few colonic virgins in this great country of ours.

Jared: Finally, we’ve come to me. I’ll try to keep this brief because I still have some last-minute shopping to get done – always the procrastinator, that’s me. This year, I managed to survive a slew of layoff scares. But a huge part of me was actually hoping that I would get a pink slip. That way, I’d finally get a chance to see if Scorpion Red Eye had the chops to hack it as full-time gig. For the unfamiliar readers, Scorpion Red Eye is my speed metal quartet, complete with supersonic guitars, blistering bass and hard-hitting drums that are as relentless as Libby’s requests for me to get a colonic. When the band comes together, four responsible adults shed their day-to-day responsible personalities and transform themselves into their chosen ultra-egos, Dale Driver, Jack Stiff, Edgar McRiff and Dennis Wachinski, respectively. With a little help from our tight spandex, which all our wives agree accentuate our extremely average-sized packages, Scorpion Red Eye comes to life.

SRE has come a long way since it first played live for a sparsely populated crowd at the 2001 Norristown Battle of the Bands. In 2009, Scorpion Red Eye played a total of two gigs all year – with one being the Berda’s annual Fourth of July picnic. In 2010, SRE had five shows – and two of them were even paid. There was a moment at the Bridgeport Polish Festival last summer when it seemed to all come to together for us. We were hammering away at the third song in the set when a woman somewhere between the age of a Cougar and a Senior Citizen – Teradactyl is the correct term I believe – approached the stage and threw her Girdle at my feet. My Rock Star dream had finally come to fruition. A member of the opposite sex had thrown her undergarments at me while I was rocking out. I have that beautiful memory safely stowed away until Carver is old enough to tell – eight or so (Libby, I’m kidding, I’m kidding!).

Well, that concludes the Bilski newsletter. We hope you all enjoyed the little peak into the window of our utopia. May this Christmas season find each and every one of you a little happier and a little healthier than last – but still a little worse off than us! (Libby’s screaming at me to tell you I was just kidding about that last part – but I think ya’ll know already ;)

Love,

Carver, Libby and Jared