RIVER CITY JOURNAL: PLEASE EXCUSE THE PANTING, THIS WAS RUSHED

When you have just told the waiter you would like some of the homemade pistachio ice cream is no time to remember that you forget to write this column. But, by golly, here it is.

This week started out soppy. And it didn't get much better overall.

Not soppy just because of wet weather that turned into cold weather, but the soggy kind of soppy that comes from runny noses and other symptoms of the flu or the bug or what's going around or whatever you want to call it.

Call it a mess.

Not to mention this is the absolute last week of shopping before Christmas. And it is the absolute last week of hectic newspapering this year. Like the retailers who support the newspaper, the holiday season is the busiest time of the year. Good advertising support means larger newspapers. The only problem is that most of the everyday news dries up as the big day draws closer. Not to mention that government has shut down. The good news on that score is Americans are discovering how non-essential most of government really is. The bad news is no government produces no news.

But hand it to the stalwart news crew at this newspaper. In spite of the runny noses, everyone has worked valiantly to cover all the bases and put out the best newspaper possible. The news staff has performed admirably, even though a key editor is off with a new and, judging from the photos, beautiful baby daughter. Another editor had to leave for a few days to attend a funeral in another state. One of our essential paginators -- they're the folks who assemble this very page, and all the others like it, on a computer -- called in complaining of food poisoning, but it turned out to be the good old flu bug. Another paginator took off a day to head off a full-blown confrontation with the flu, and it seems to have worked. Others are coughing and wheezing, because sometimes the flu wants to play nasty tricks and stay and stay and stay like an unwelcome house guest who not only eats everything in the house, but does it on the family-room sofa and complains because you don't keep no-caffeine soda in the refrigerator. Oh, you know somebody like that?

So, in spite of the little ups and downs that make a workday challenging, you thought the week had gone pretty well. Until Thursday night, that is. That's last night to you, compassionate reader. Like 10 hours ago.

There you were sitting in one of Cape Girardeau's nicest restaurants with your wife and younger son, fresh from the big university in Kansas where he is a senior and has just landed a job with one of America's most prestigious aviation companies and is celebrating his birthday anniversary, and it hits like a dump truck without a driver: You haven't written a column this week.

So many other things had gone so well this week: All of the folks you work with pitched in to get everything done. A three-page, single-spaced, typewritten letter from your oldest friend from college days who is godfather to both your sons arrived complete with photographs he had taken during your younger son's visit several months ago. A postcard from your older son came in the mail from Africa, where he is taking a year's leave to do more exploring -- this is his third trip, and he may decide to stay. The card came on the heels of a 6 a.m. telephone call from said son, who had commandeered the only telephone in Uganda capable of international calls, wishing us a happy holiday. Your mother learned from doctors in St. Louis that everything seems in order after a frightening Sunday that included an ambulance ride to the hospital in Poplar Bluff.

It shouldn't have come as any surprise that something disastrous was about to happen.

Given the heroic efforts of so many others, you see, it just didn't seem right to skip the column and count it as a holiday lull. It would have been anti-Christmas, somehow, to take the easy way out and substitute "The editor is on vacation" for a column you intended to write but overlooked in the seasonal bustle.

Of all the gifts to be enjoyed and appreciated this year, none will mean more than the unstinting commitment of so many good people to getting the job -- any job -- done. How could you do any less?

The result: This column. Rushed. Fresh, that's for sure. You promised to have it done in 15 minutes. It has taken 30. Sorry. Merry Christmas everyone. Especially all you readers who, from time to time, say nice things about the scribblings that appear in this space. God bless you one and all.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.