| The Incredible Shrinking Woman | |||
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Friday, June 06, 2003 ( 9:03 AM ) Melody The Whitest Man in America Experiences Springer My dad watched his very first episode of Jerry Springer yesterday. Kind of unbelievable, isn't it? He related the entire show to us at dinner last night. Apparently, it involved a Kathy Bates-sized stripping prostitute who took it all off and shook it for the studio audience. Dad was mesmerized. He kept calling my mom into the living room to see it, and she told him she had seen it before. My father thinks that all these years he has been protecting my mom from the crudeness of the workplace. She stays at home and never gets exposed to the "shop talk" he knows I was privy to the summer we worked together when I was in college. He has no idea that she's been watching transvestite makeovers and learning about S&M love triangles on TV since in early 90s. What makes it even better? He told us he was having a lot of trouble understanding what was really going on because apparently the guests were speaking black "lingo" that he doesn't really understand. He also kept making this gesture with his hand that looked like a cross between a gang symbol and American sign language for "I love you" and asking us what that meant. Belinda asked him what time the show came on. She wants to make a special point to get off work early some time so we can go over to their house and watch Dad watch Springer. Good times. # ( 8:37 AM ) Melody Parent panic Halfway through my dad's b-day celebration last night at Bonefish Grill I realized, "Holy crap! The man's 60 now." He kept going on about how happy he is that he's got 85 retirement points now-- the number of years you've been employed with the company + your age (means he's really eligible for retirement at any time), and I started putting two and two together, and now I'm upset. How can he be so old? He doesn't look 60. 60 is a grandpa's age. Then again, my dad is a grandpa, but it's of my half-sister's kids, and I always kind of forget about that until I see them around Christmas-time. 60! I mean-- people start dying at 70, and that's only 10 years away for him! Sniff.. hand-fluttering... OK. I'm OK now. Really-- people in my dad's family live into their 90s. My grandpa's 93, and he still bowls most Wednesdays and has a girlfriend. It's going to be OK for a while. Just calm down and try not to think about how old mom's getting and her family history of heart disease, heart attack, diabetes, and stroke. # Wednesday, June 04, 2003 ( 1:23 PM ) Melody Just like mom used to make Remember when I blogged about the Bacon Broad? Well, apparently she's not limiting herself to bacon anymore. Today when I stepped out of the elevator, the entire floor smelled like a Cracker Barrel. I had to see what she was eating, so I'm took a detour down her aisle-- scrambled eggs from a paper bowl! How is she doing that? To my knowledge, there's no stove in the building-- just microwaves and maybe a toaster oven. To her right was another paper bowl full of bacon. Am I microwave-challenged? Can you actually scramble eggs in a microwave, or did she scramble eggs at home and bring them in with her? I didn't see any styrofoam containers or doggy bags lying around, although I could only get a quick peek. Maybe she has a hot plate. She could have a nice little side gig if she wanted to start making people breakfast at work in the morning. # Tuesday, June 03, 2003 ( 5:18 PM ) Melody Shut up and learn to play nice! It's 5 pm, and I just got off of a 1 1/2 hour long phone call with an author and his agent. The author is convinced that he can edit himself and basically told me that his project editor, who, in my opinion, has made very reasonable edits, can kiss his hairy behind. His editor has asked not to work with him again. The agent is, of course, convinced that her author is the next messiah, so she's not going to be any help with this. Here I am playing mean mommy again. Gee publishing's glamorous. There's a reason most acquisitions editors are women. Somewhere somebody got the idea that we're good with conflict resolution. I suck at it. Come to think of it, the way my mom handled conflict resolution was 1.) Let Laura and I tear at each other's hair until someone started bleeding or 2.) Smack us with our own toys. Wonder which one of those methods will work in this situation? # |
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