Our Christmas Letter

Well, it's been quite a year for Big Guy and me. It all started with the inauguration, and all the speeches we had to make together. Seems like it has never stopped. More TV, more magazine interviews, more radio. What's next, the movies? Ha. Only joking, those will come after we leave office.

There certainly was a lot of infighting for office space in the West Wing, when we first got here in early January 2009. Rahm got the big office next to Big O, and I got what amounts to a closet next to Big Guy's private bathroom. Technically, I'm closer, but I have to wash my screens a hell of lot more than some of the other folks around here.

Toes and Gibbsy and my fighting took a break in February when I was forced to move in with Toes for a period of time due to a glitch in my access to the residence. The therapy required to recover from that three week stay is about 96 hours I will never get back, nor do I particularly want to. Little known fact: while the taxpayers paid for all of that couch time, none of you will be able to get similar treatment under our new health plan that will be passed tomorrow. Thanks! And Merry Christmas!

That February, though, was made all worthwhile when Big Guy, Lady M and I went out on a nice Valentine's Day trip. If I do say so, the conversation was sparkling, and made the pillow talk all the warmer. I don't think I've ever scrolled so smoothly.

This was a year of paybacks of sorts, and most of that has meant a lot of travel. For example, Big Guy and I traveled through Central America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, to thank all of our donors and even some voters who made our election possible. It seems like we've been traveling nonstop, but when you are as big a star as Big Guy, you have a lot of people who want to see you. Things haven't always gone so smoothly, for example, during the Organization of American States meeting, Big Guy was a little too gracious with some of the dictators, and then in Europe, he wasn't deferential enough with some of our stronger supporters (like we should have known that canceling a missile defense shield on the anniversary of the West abandoning Poland to 50 years of suffering was a bad thing?).Oh, well, live and learn. The important thing, judging by my bonus check, is that the Chinese remain happy with us.

One of the things we've found since moving into the White House is that a lot of people are jealous and want to tear us down, kind of like what Alec Baldwin goes through on a daily basis, but without the bloating or crying under an NBC intern's desk in the fetal position. I'm talking about the polling that we've seen, and what the media calls "approval numbers." We see that almost 60% of "Americans" don't like the job Big Guy is doing. But really, what is a number if you can't put faces to those statistics (don't worry, the FBI will doing that a lot in 2010 getting ready for the mid-term elections)? And what is 60% really? For every person who maybe is a little jealous that they don't get to go on fancy date nights, or ride around the world on a whim if they want to buy "real" green tea in South Korea, or have a "job", there is one-third of a person who is happy for us. And that one-third of person is what matters, Toes says, especially if it's the part with an arm to pull the ballot lever in 2012.

Another by product of being in the White House is that we've lost contact with a lot of old friends. Tony Rezko, for example, we never hear from any more unless it's through his attorney, and those notes are so impersonal. I think the Secret Service gets those now, or maybe the Department of Justice. Then there is our old friend Van Jones, who we haven't heard from in about three months. I still have his ice plant and black panther velvet painting he left in his office, but something tells me he won't be coming back for it. We hardly ever hear from Big Guy's relatives in Africa and Indonesia, even though before the election, he said he'd probably bring them all over here. And then there are all of our friends from ACORN who hardly ever drop by the Oval like they used to. Seems all they do is spend time with David Axelrod back in his Chicago office. Some people think it's the trappings of power and the bubble that surrounds Big O that have made him detached, but Gibbsy says that it's because Big Guy cares too much ... about subpoenas, plea agreements, and special prosecutors. Either way, I miss our old friends.

But we also have new friends, all of you, who stop by every now and again to get a little taste of what it's like inside Big Guy's world. It's been a busy time for all of us, but I promise to much more diligent in the coming days, weeks and months in keeping you up to date. Merry Christmas.