January 2006 was, for me, one of those months where you feel like you cry every single day. Which is, of course, an easier way of starting off an entry than, "Dear F&D Readers: I think I cried every single day in January, which is one of the reasons I haven't been here."

You name it, it went wrong. Nothing disastrous -- everybody's healthy, life goes on, blah bling blah. It was more one of those strings of experiences where so many things get depressingly fucked-up at once that you almost get used to it after a while, ping-ponging between (1) self-indulgently despondent misery; (2) gnawing righteous anger and resentment; (3) eye-rolling frustration over paperwork and dentistry and obnoxious, time-consuming bullshit of that kind; (4) ponderous questioning of where your life is going and how you're going to get from this January to next January having just lost everything you invested between last January and this January. You use up your purse-sized packet of tissues, you learn to close your office door when it's coming on so that people don't wonder about you. You learn to avoid certain music, and you try to stay up until you're very tired so that you don't lie in bed and talk to yourself.

True story: one of the ways I get myself out of moods like this is to do something productive, so about three weeks ago, I undertook an enormous cleaning and de-cluttering of my apartment, over which I wound up unreasonably pleased with myself. At one point, I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom, listening to a lovely audiobook over cute compact speakers, sorting through papers and thinking that things were really improving, because I was sort of pulling it together in a productive way. Clearly, this, too, was all going to pass. It was at this moment that among the papers I was sorting, I found a receipt. I looked at it, figured out what it was for, saw the date on it, and immediately burst into tears. Greeeeat. But hey, you keep going, right?

Right. It was with this in mind that I headed out of town last weekend for my Music Stylist's Super Bowl party and chicken-eating contest. (Fortunately, you don't have to eat chicken competitively, which is a good thing for me, because although I enjoy the occasional run-in with KFC, I don't want chicken to feel like a mountain I have to climb.)

Now, you have to understand that at last year's event, the MS won his own contest for the very first time in nine years. Despite having no evidence to suggest that anything untoward occurred, I carefully planted the idea in his ear that his win was illegitimate, because others chose to let him win out of courtesy to the host. Not only did I insist that quotation marks were required around last year's "victory," I even got his very own mother referring to how he "quote-unquote won last year."

So what would this year be like? Would he win again? I feared that the aging of the population in attendance would mean that there would be no one to put up a decent fight, and I knew I was not prepared to put one up myself. My solution was to ship in a secret weapon from out of town: the Couch Baron. If you recall, the MS and the CB met last summer and spent happy hours recalling every episode of The Simpsons that had ever aired, so they were already acquainted, and CB was only too happy to start early with psychological warfare, texting the MS to boast of his chicken-eating abilities.

The CB got to Minneapolis on Friday, and we went out that night for a lovely seafood dinner, at which the waiter expressed his admiration for CB and served us an outrageous amount of really good food, from fried jalapeno cornbread to giant potato puffs (referred to comedically as "Tater Tots") to pretty margaritas. (In fairness, I think all margaritas are pretty.)

The next day, we road-tripped to the hometown of the MS. (M. Giant and Trash had been supposed to come, too, but Trash came down with a highly suspicious case of laryngitis and claimed that she couldn't go. I personally believe she was afraid of the chicken.) There, we found our way to our hotel. It is remarkable how big a room you can get for $70 a night in a midwestern city, compared to the fact that in Manhattan where much of my hotel-staying occurs, you're lucky if the taxes and fees only amount to $70 a night.

That night brought a glorious dinner prepared by Mrs. Music Stylist, and attended by me, CB, Mom of MS, MS and Mrs. MS, and their beatifically awesome children, Mini-MS and Princess Fearless. Mini-MS is almost five, and Princess Fearless is almost two. Man, are they cute. Of course, Mini-MS is addicted to his LeapPad and all its variations, one of which is this... thing. This thing that plays music. This thing that plays "The Yellow Rose Of Texas" and "Frere Jacques" and, most notably, that "Val-a-reeeeee, val-ar-raaaaaaah" song. There are a total of ten songs, which is the perfect number for Mini-MS to go through in order, from one to ten, and then... back from ten to one! And then he changes it from flute to drums, and then he changes it from drums to violin, and then he changes it to this low honking noise, and then somebody figures out a way to distract him so that we will not all sing "The Yellow Rose Of Texas" every day for the rest of our lives.

The next day, I went with MS to pick up the chicken. Which came in an enormous carton, accompanied by multiple trays of mashed potatoes, buckets of biscuits and cornbread, and various other extra-nifty items. We were about fifteen minutes late picking it up, which was rather amusing, since it had sent the poor KFC manager into a brief state of panic, wondering if the order from the previous day for 160 pieces of chicken was a prank.

Chicken was served at about ten after four, and kickoff was at 5:30, and by the time kickoff came around, CB had already marked off ten pieces on the big tote board. (Oh, yeah. There's a tote board. My favorite part is that Mini-MS and Princess Fearless had their own lines, with their awesome leg-and-a-half totals. You should know also that there is a point system under which certain pieces are worth more than others, which avoids unfair results based on overconsumption of wings.) It was at about this time that I think MS realized that he was not going to "win" this year. At some point, he adjusted his ambition so that all he wanted was to beat his personal best. CB was every bit the gracious winner, except for the part where he commented that the total MS ate last year was so pitiful that calling it a "victory" was "an insult to finger-quotes." Actually, CB and MS ate the same total number of pieces of chicken, but CB beat him on points. As the MS put it, he tied in the popular vote but was screwed in the Electoral College.

It is remarkable how diving into a stupid experience (I am going out on a limb and calling Chicken Bowl a stupid experience; I am sure that both MS and CB will forgive me) will cure what ails you. Between the flying chicken-related insults, dishing with friends in the greasy haze of the next morning, and listening to Princess Fearless perform her unique rendition of the alphabet song (recently transcribed by MS as: "A B Dee Dee Eee Ech Gee, W X Hi and See... Yay! [clap clap clap]", I actually began to recover.

There is still plenty of uphill battling left, and nothing was, you know, fixed by attending Chicken Bowl, but I think I can begin to envision what getting out of that crap month will be like. And weirdly, having had the biopsy experience right before Christmas -- although it means that if you stretch back to about mid-December, I have had maybe the most tumultuously irritating six to eight weeks ever -- I really am better at keeping some perspective and differentiating between things that are legitimately disastrous and things that are just obnoxious bullshit.

It's what it means to have a lot going on in your life, which I didn't used to and now do. It means more stuff goes wrong. Sars always repeats her dad's advice that it's better to regret doing something than regret doing nothing, and it's easy to see the happy part of that advice and lose sight of the fact that it means you will sometimes regret doing something. I think I am better than I used to be at accepting that this is part of the game, because you can't guess right in all situations, you know?

Anyway, the next time you have an obnoxious month, I highly recommend being a spectator at a chicken-eating contest. It's remarkably therapeutic.