My holiday travel plans are set. A trip to the attic to celebrate the winter solstice is first, then I’m off to that little bench in the southwest corner of the backyard for New Year’s festivities. I hope Carol and Betty come along. A solo trip would be lonely.

Betty hangs around with Carol and me most of the time, but occasionally she disappears. When she vanishes, there is a high probability that she has discovered a forbidden object (FO) and is secretly playing with it. If we don’t notice that Betty is not around and don’t search for her right away, then the danger is that the FO will become a UFO (unidentified forbidden object). So don’t tell me that UFOs don’t exist because I’ve seen plenty.

Betty sometimes hangs out in my office while I’m working on work things like teaching and stuff. Betty has fun looking out the window, jumping around like a maniac, chewing on a rawhide, or taking a snooze, but she has an acute sense of when things become a real drag for me. When Betty perceives that some nonsense from an administrator is bringing me down, she brings the remedy: a rubber chicken. There is no cure for administrator-induced agitation that works better than playtime with Betty and her rubber chicken. Betty is happy to fetch the thing when I throw it a mile away, and rubber chicken tug-of-war, well, you know who the rubber chicken represents. I’d be on my way to insanity without Betty the Shrink.