Fellow hypochondriacs: How YOU doin’?

I’ve been oddly prepared for this whole thing. When I had my (wait for it) SURGERY four weeks ago, they had this little thingie you breathe into so you wouldn’t get pneumonia. For some reason I can’t recall, I brought it home with me. Was I supposed to? Did I steal it? Who knows. That time is but a blur.

The point is, I got it out the other day, thinking maybe this will strengthen my lungs. It’s hard to do, first of all, and now my lungs are kind of sore and the exercise makes me cough and I’m all IT’S PNEUMONIA. Because you know how I am.

My temperature is either 96 or 97 every time I check, so. And by the way, I purchased a thermometer on impulse like two months ago. See? Oddly prepared.

So that’s what I’m like right now. Sort of like always, but now with more reason®.

I get to start working from home tomorrow and I look forward to having to think about Oxford commas instead of pneumonia.

While we’re on the subject, the word is breathe. With an e. If you can’t breathe, or you need to just breathe, it’s an e. If it’s pronounced breeeeeth, it gets an e. If it’s pronounced breth, it does not.

Also, the aisles are empty. Not the isles.

Are we clear on that now?

Meanwhile, when I’m not grimacing at bad spelling on social media, I am getting to witness a lot of this ^^. Who knew these animals slept THIS much? It’s amazing. Why do they need this much rest? What are they training for?

I’m the go-getter of the household, apparently, which is saying something. During this, my convalescence, which has turned into this, my isolation, not only did I turn our family slides the right way, I’m also plowing through the books I’ve started and didn’t finish, because there was a time I would go to work all day, then go work out, then go to a movie or something. Sometimes I used to be gone from the house 12 hours out of 24. Okay, that was relatively rare. But I was always gone 40 hours a week. Now I’ve been here every second since February 18 with the exception of one house party, two trips to the garden store, one doctor visit and one vet visit. In all I think I’ve left the house for five hours.

Oh! And I voted. Another hour.

And a lotta good it did me.

Despite my low association with humanity since Feb. 18, I’m still taking my temperature and pausing dramatically any time I cough. I have GERD and seasonal allergies and mild asthma, but I cough once and begin picking out casket liners.

So that’s how things are going with me, and it’s relaxing, and did I mention I’m glad I can work from home tomorrow? I think I can do a whole day’s worth of work, but we’ll see. I haven’t gotten up early in a month. That alarm’s gonna be unwelcome, is what it will be.

In the comments, let’s not talk of anything scary. Let’s all tell a story of a time we said something hilarious. Or somehow perfect.

Like, this one time? A friend at an old job got this sort of weird love letter on her windshield. The person took the core of a paper towel, the brown part in the middle, ripped it open and wrote on that.

Nothing says, “I’m Prince Charming” like a note on a paper towel roll.

Anyway, my friend read me the note, which was fairly creepy, and when she was done I said, “Well, he’s the quicker picker-upper.”

See? Good lines like that. Oooo, or good things you’re doing to pass the time inside.

Contagiously,
June

From underneath Laila Ali

Current situation: My tight-fitting Laila Ali dryer bonnet is atop my head. I’ve got fresh coffee in my favorite mug (for local folk: It’s one of those really thick ones from The Green Bean) and I DID have a dog snout in my lap till just now, when I snapped at my computer.

Does your computer…BOUNCE things at you at the bottom of the screen? First of all, why does everything need updating ALL THE TIME on one’s computer? Surely these aren’t all necessary.

The other day, I finally acquiesced to the CONSTANT bouncing request to update something or other, and after having to shut everything down and wait, then click a bunch of shit to get back on again, once all that was done and I could commence using my computer again, do you know what it did?

It asked if I wanted it to check for updates. Something at the bottom of my screen BOUNCED at me to ask. So you know what I did? I said okay. After being unable to use my computer for 40 minutes so everything could update, I wanted the satisfaction of that damn bouncing thing saying, Sorry. I bounced for no reason. Sorry I’m Tigger.

But you know what happened instead? IT TOLD ME I NEEDED UPDATES.

I HAD JUST UPDATED IT JUST THEN THAT MOMENT.

Goddammit.

So that’s why Edsel took his snout away just now. I just got all set up here at my desk when

BOUNCE

went two, not one but two, things at the bottom of my screen.

“WHAT,” I snapped, and Edsel has left the lap of luxury. He fears my moods.

I guess in general, I hate being interrupted. I assume this has to do with my attention deficit problem, in that I have a deficit of attention. So once you pull me away from something, I get highly irritated because I know it’s going to be difficult for me to get back where I was. It’s, like, all I can do to stay focused in the first place and now you’re pulling me away to say, “How was your weekend?”

The open floor plan at work vexes me. Can you tell?

Anyway, so I’m back in the swing of everything, if you want to call this swinging. I got to work and had exactly what I like, actually. A ton of stuff due in a just-a-bit-scary-but-doable amount of time, no one rushing in to tell me to set that aside to tackle ANOTHER scary thing, and also there was free dessert from some meeting. So.

Then at night, I went to my old movie theater and saw Rear Window.

Isn’t this like the 20th time you’ve seen Rear Window at that theater, June?

Actually, no. The last time I had planned to go, with Ned, and at the last minute I had a crisis du jour and told him I had to cancel. An hour later, my crisis was averted, and I phoned Ned and he wasn’t there.

This was back in like year one or two, when I still liked Ned and I did not know the way of his people, such as he is a

PIT

BULL

about plans. He makes a plan, he sticks with said plan. So what did he do? He went to Rear Window without me.

Oooooo, I was mad. I guess I’d wanted him to stay home worried sick about my crisis. Or dash over and help. But instead he just went to the movie. Like in Family Circus, where the gramma does stuff but with the outline of deceased grandpa.

That was the day I Jack Ruby’d Ned.

I TORE down to the movie theater, and I WAITED outside till it was over, and oooooo, I was burning mad. I should have known then how Ned would be the whole relationship. June? I can take her or leave her. June is French dressing.

Anyway, once people started milling out of the theater, Ned said I BURST into the crowd like Jack Ruby, out of nowhere and full of rage.

I didn’t shoot him, though. I just scowled and complained.

I remember Ned calmed me down by saying, “Every time Grace Kelly was on the screen, I thought about you.” That line totally worked on me, and I am with you on the “Bitch, please” you’re uttering right now. What can I tell you? I was smitten.

Anyway, I saw it last night, the movie I mean, not Jack Ruby, and why is Grace Kelly so perfect? Why am I not her? Grace Kelly would never sit in the front seat of her car and eat Long John Silvers.

I have to go to work, and this new 8 a.m. start time is like to kill me. But before I do, I wanted to share with you this.

You’re welcome.

From out of the crowd,
Joon

On the third day, she “Rose” again

On Friday at work, they let us leave at 3:00, a delightful habit they’ve gotten into before any holiday weekends. I suppose it’s for normal people with families who want to get on the road to the beach, or whatever normal people do.

What do the normal folk do? …I think craft. Seems like they craft a lot. They also seem to traipse to restaurants in big groups, if Facebook is any indication.

Having never been normal for even 14 seconds, I eschewed the creative team’s early happy hour and went home to do my freelance work. Technically, it’s due today, but I’d been moving along on it and thought, “Well, I’ll just see how far I get Friday.”

And I finished it.

I finished it!

“Well, NOW what do I do?” I thought. It was too late to go to the happy hour. So I streamed Goodbye Christopher Robin, which I thought would maybe be a delightful film re Pooh and so forth, but really was incredibly dark and I kind of liked it better for it.

wat we watchen?

Saturday dawned and I continued to have nothing to do, and I assumed I had no money to do it with. Payday is tomorrow night, and they picked a fine time to have a holiday weekend.

holidaay. celebrayte.

Lillee resent sine.

I took Lily to the vet for her rabies shot, and now the only thing she’s rabid about is food. Speaking of which…

“Do you want to go to Lexington and get barbecue?” Ned asked me on Saturday afternoon, and yes. Hell, yes, I did. We will not pick this moment to talk about what an effing heifer I am, because Lexington is a town famous for its barbecue, and for good reason. And here it was being presented to me by my rich ex.

So we got in the car.

“Why are you taking a picture of this?” asked Ned, who is clearly new.

I’m starving to death reviewing these images anew. Mother of god, that was delish.

Say, June, can you store my equipment in those saddlebags?

Anyway, on the way back, I was telling Ned I was considering painting my spare bedroom. Bitchy Resting Face Alex and I had painted it back in 2015, when I moved back after my unfortunate year abroad with Ned, and we’d painted it white and it never really looked fully covered. It was half nude.

“I just don’t think I have enough for paint,” I kvetched, checking my account.

Turns out, I had a few hundred dollars! Because Amazon!

Amazon link. Go shop.

So basically this next part is all you guys’s fault.

I’d toyed with some colors prior, but when I got to the paint store (and does anyone remember the hot man of color who sold me my Labor Day paint last year? I went there about 40 times that weekend, sort of because I’ma bad planner and sort of because he is so hot. “Could you have more obviously had a crush on that man?” asked Ned after we left the paint store, but WHO CAN BLAME ME.)…

…what the hell was I talking about? Oh, paint. Right.

So somehow I convinced self that

PINK

would be the right color. I wonder what inspired me.

A color, and a description of me.

I did not elicit Ned’s help in this scenario, as I have found when we do projects together I mostly want to snap his neck. There’s a whole lot of “Why aren’t you doing it my way” and “Why are you doing this” and “You know what I’D do…” and snap. Neck. Look at the bent neck on Ned.

Pretty much the rest of the weekend was me moving furniture and taping trim and pulling out nails and spreading drop cloths and OH MY GOD CAN WE PAINT YET?

Someone we all know, someone in the asshole family, was deeeeeeLIGHTed that shit was being moved around and things were differented up. I thought cats were supposed to be made nervous by change. Not this one. He was pretty much in there every second I was painting, and likely has brain damage from the fumes, but that’s just the kind of mother I am.

eyeriss bozzered. to not move things pleese.

Finally, after three days, I’d scraped and moved and sanded and trimmed and painted, finally, and then I stepped back to admire my work and was all,

I hate it.

But now I’m stuck with it.

My rule is I have to wait a year before I can paint again.

This might be a nice time to gently remind that I hate advice.

Anyway, then I had to move everything BACK in there, to the room, and I texted my mother to get her advice on where I should put things.

“I don’t like this arrangement,” my mother announced, and who made HER…oh. I guess me, cause I asked. Also, I see I let one damn doorknob stay brassy, and gets what’s next on my agenda.

“I don’t like it either,” I agreed. “It looks like a ship is tilting and everything went to one side.”

“No.”

“This looks like Abraham Lincoln slept here and he had to share the bed with another boarder,” said my mother, who has an active imagination.

“Why does Steely Dan have to get in every picture?” she asked. “He’s like you.”

In the end, this was the arrangement I went with, and I ordered an area rug…

…that’ll really tie the room together, harrr.

I also at some point decided I should shop for, oh, lamps and comforters that maybe would butch the room up a bit. Maybe charcoal accents, or black or caramel.

Then everywhere I looked, I was all, Oooooo, look at the pale pink ostrich-feather ottoman! Look at the sparkly chandelier! Oh my god, magenta fluffy carpet!

So. Butching it up did not go well. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about me, but I’m not good at being butch.

So that’s the news on my cervix guest room. Guest womb. Maybe I’ll invite P!nk over to stay.

if onlee mom had myrror

Tune in tomorrow, when I will have done something else absurd.

Rosily,
Rosalie

Press One for I Hate Automated Operators

You know how when you call a place now, you never, ever get a person? I’m in the rare and elusive crowd who finds that annoying. I know most people adore it.

What I hope is that when I’m having my…exchange with these automated systems that they are not, in fact, recording my responses, because it’s never pretty on my end. For example, my bank. Naturally, they never answer. And they also claim they can understand me if I speak “in just a few words” but

THEY

NEVER

DO. Because my midwest accent is so unusual.

“I’m sorry,” the automated reply will say to me, 100% condescendingly. “I’m sorry; I didn’t get that.”

“Of course you didn’t, you automated piece of shit,” I’ll snap back.

“Are you calling about checking? Say yes or no.”

“YES.”

“I’m sorry; I didn’t get that. In a few words, describe why you’re calling.”

“I’M CALLING BECAUSE YOUR MOTHER’S A WHORE,” I’ll shriek at that point.

The point of my telling you this is that when I get mad at the automated thing, it scares the dog. I’m so busy being angry that I forget this every time, till I look over and he has his pleeze not to beet Edz look. Then I feel like crap. I am not zen enough for a dog this sensitive.

iz dellikit flower

Also, I was calling my bank because on Friday, I may have indulged in the demon rum. Not literally rum. I was being euphemistic. But one of you will ask, “What kind of rum?” and then I’ll have to be all, “No, see, I was just using a phrase to indicate…”

I got kind of tipsy.

I went to a barcade with about 20 coworkers. This is how we drove there. BAH.

“I’m sorry; I didn’t get that. Just say yes or no. Is June hilarious?”

A barcade is an arcade that serves drinks, which is as it should be. They should have done this over at Aladdin’s Castle at the mall in 1975, where I would need the step stool to get to my pinball game.

A little Miller Lite woulda gone a long way toward my victory over Fireball.

Anyway, on Friday at the barcade, I don’t know if I hadn’t eaten enough or I drank too fast, but I sure was playing a mean pinball Friday. That deaf, drunk and blind kid. I remember going to the token machine and then dropping scads of tokens on people I knew. “HAVE SOME TOKENS!” I’d screech. I was making it rain, man.

I also told everyone to “PUT IT ON MY TAB!” perhaps a tad lustily.

I didn’t drive, which may have had something to do with my libationsnessness, which is a FINE word.

“I’m sorry; I didn’t get that.”

But I was sincerely baffled when I awoke the next morning with a terrible headache. Why so pained, I wondered. Then I reviewed evening. Counted drinks.

“In a few words, say why you’re calling.”

“You drank too much and that’s why the headache.”

“I’m sorry; I didn’t get that. I’m in denial.”

THE POINT, is that somehow–and can you believe this? Somehow, I lost my ATM card that night. My theory is they handed me back my card at the, oh, bar, where I never ever was except for those 16 times, and that I put my card in my leopard coat pocket (compliments on coat that night, from strangers: 2. Thank-yous in the form of GO HAVE A DRINK ON MY TAB: 2), because I was too busy of an executive to put it back all the way in my wallet, and given how often I FLUNG, FLINGDED, WHATEVER my coat on video games and backs of chairs and as a blanket while I made out with 25-year-old boys in the parking lot,

“I’m sorry; I didn’t get that. I’m in denial.”

who KNOWS where that card ended up.

Once I figured out it was gone, I sweatily looked at my bank stuff online, but no one has used the card, so then I called the bank to cancel it and had the exchange above, where I may have accused the automated teller’s mother of putting on her red light.

Don Jesus, June, just finish this story.

So, a new card is on its way, and I’ll have to memorize different numbers, which I guess is good for my brain, much like 19 whiskey sours was good for my brain on Friday.

Now for the next six months, every time I order something on Amazon,

(Oh, look, one of June’s hilarious Amazon links)

or something from Jimmy John’s

I’ll have to re-key a new card into the system, and does anyone understand what a burden this will be? And all because some MANIAC stole my card right out from under me while I was volunteering Friday night. You try to do good in this world.

I’d better go. My maturity seminar that I lead begins in 10.

Responsibly,

June

Be happy

I just took my last prednisone that I was prescribed in order to try to break up my current cycle of migraines, and what’s more interesting than hearing about someone’s latest round of meds?

Anyway, maybe a month ago, the doctor also put me back on Topamax for migraine, June says, continuing her riveting diatribe on medication, and our goal was to slowly increase my dosage to a fairly high amount. But as of late, because of said increase in migraines, we upped it more rapidly than planned, and let me tell you. Ever since some point last week, I’ve been feeling what you might call a tad blue. Maybe a tinge under the weather.

I was not keeping my sunny side up.

To put it mildly. Good lord, I’ve been Sylvia Plath without the smooth hair.

Two years ago right at this time, Ned and I broke up, and I moved for six weeks into my friend Kayeeee’s place. She was in Connecticut, and very kindly offered me her house while she was gone. My idea was that I would take those six weeks to begin to sort of heal, to regroup, to figure out what went wrong. I decided I’d work out every day to get my endorphins going, and write in my journal, and never use “journal” as a verb the same way I’d never use “orgasm” as a verb, and do my best to get through those first six terrible weeks.

Of course, I spent those six weeks eating fish sticks and watching Eternal Sunshine till tears fell in my ears every night, and also got immediately on OK Cupid in the hopes that I’d meet someone else right away so I could stop Feeling Things.

You all know how that went. Hey, any relationship ever since.

But I DID meet someone. I met my friend Mark. He lives in Florida. In my extremely healthy attempts to not have to feel bad, I cast a wide net on OK Cupid. That site lets you tell it how many miles away you’d be willing to go to meet someone. I believe at that time I set my availability parameters to “anywhere.” Because, hey, dude in Rome. There’s real possibility here.

My friend Mark, and I’m using his real name and maybe I should change his name to protect the innocent.

…My friend Hamlet, and wow, Random Name Generator, was from Florida, which I’ve already said, and way to move the story along, June. “I know you’re in North Carolina, and we’ll never meet, but your profile is great,” he wrote. So I read his profile, and right then I knew. He was our people. He’s hilarious. You would love him.

And so a friendship was born. We talk on the phone old school, the way Romeo and Juliet did. We forward each other hopeless profiles of people who write us (Love2PutItInU wrote me and I STAMPEDED to text that nice gentlemanly message to Hamlet). I’ve heard about his romances he’s had there, I bothered him relentlessly during the hurricane (because who doesn’t want to get a link to Ridin’ the Storm Out by REO Speedwagon during a hurricane?), and he’s had to hear about my hair and also Edsel, and while I’ve had ZERO LEG via OK Cupid these last two years, I did get me a Hamlet, and I cannot complain about that.

The point of my story, here, is that he happened to call me Saturday. “Hey, how you doing?” he asked, and I burst into tears.

“I feel I may be in a lull,” I said.

“Be happy,” he told me. His daughter, when she was little, used to say that whenever things in life were terse. She thought it might just kind of cure everything, those words: lighten the mood, get her out of trouble, whatever. Be happy. It was so ridiculous that it did kind of make me laugh.

We talked awhile, and agreed I should leave the house, and of course that made me feel better, and then careful readers will recall that a hot young man of color made his move, and who wouldn’t feel better after that?

So, I’m glad I had a Hamlet intervention.

But then yesterday I got all dark tunnel again, and it finally dawned on me: It’s the goddamn Topamax. Any time I’ve taken it, I’m dark-cloud June.

The last time I took it was right after Marvin left. Oh, happy day.

And the time before that was in 2008, and it coincided with my first mammogram, when they called me to say, “We found something very suspicious, and it doesn’t look good, and prepare for the worst” and FOR THREE DAYS I SHOOK ON MY COUCH till my next appointment, when they said, Oh, this is likely nothing, but just in case, come back in six months.

Now, a normal person might, say, put that appointment out of her mind, perhaps, but what I did, because please see above–and by “above” I mean 10+ years of this not blog–and then you tell me if I strike you as a normal person. Because what I did was live under this DAMOCLES SWORD OF DOOM for six months, Googling and Web MD-ing until Marvin no longer allowed it, and then obsessing and so on, and in retrospect, I think part of my days of dark dark black dark doom, over there, were half attributable to the Topamax. I mean, that was a dark dark time of dark. Did I say that already? Have I expressed it was dark? Did I get the point across that it was a total eclipse of the dark?

So, I think I can’t take Topamax. I think it makes me sad. The end.

I’ve left a message for my doctor, she says, not The End-ing, and instead of taking two pills last night, I took one. Usually I take another in the morning, as well, and today I did not. I missed my doctor’s return call last night (he always calls me back during the Edsel walk, and I don’t know why I don’t remember to bring the phone, except I have that dog on two leashes now, plus poop bag, plus squirt bottle, and I’ve got a lot going on, man), so I hope I’m not going off this stuff too fast, but I think I am not wrong about this. Because I already feel slightly less Pit of Despair this morning.

Good gravy. Also, gravy sounds good, because prednisone.

Did I mention what’s more riveting than someone listing off her meds?

Rivetingly,

June, emerging from her pit of despair

 

Two ADDs walk into a bar

You know what’s annoying about autumn?

“It’s not autumn yet, June.”

You know what’s annoying about you?

You’re never too old for a fur ball.

I’m trying to think of what happened this weekend, but it’s such a haze, what with the heroin and all. Or, alternatively, 18 bottles of fizzy strawberry water.

I’m OBSESSED.

When a broken purse is the least of your woes

Yesterday was a ridiculous day, from my series of June’s Ridiculous Days.

June sends loving thoughts to people who hold up the line

Last night I had a ridiculous dream. (Oh, good. Someone’s gonna describe their dream.) I dreamt I met a man and didn’t care for him at first, so when we first were introduced, I gave him my most sarcastic of smiles.

Taquit-oh, June

Ned has to move. Did I tell you that? Our gaylord–well, HIS gaylord, is selling the place, a thing we distinctly asked him about in 2014 when we moved in, and he said he had no intention of selling.

Of course, I'm one to talk, having kicked out my poor tenant, fmr., after just one year.

Speaking of that whole debacle, since Ned has to move and all, it's thrown him into quite the tizzy. I know you don't KNOW Ned, but perhaps you've been able to glean that change is not something he embraces with glee. Also, decision-making. Not his strong suit.

"I'm going to go look at a house right now," Ned texted (text) me right at the end of the day.

"You want me to come with you?" I asked, knowing that was dumb.

"Yes," he said.

I knew he did. I knew that's why he was telling me. I knew he'd be thrown into panic at having to possibly make a decision, and that he needed someone to remind him of the home's good and bad points so he could obsess for 45 years. I also knew I had no business going to look at a house with Ned.

So I put the address in my phone and off I went. Because wise. Wise old owl. Wise old fat owl, according to some.

It was in his grandparents' neighborhood. They'd lived in a tree-lined part of town with a private trail and lake, which Ned remembers fishing and swimming in as a kid. "Oh, it'd be cool if you lived here. You could go to the same job your grandfather did (Ned works for a family business), live in his neighborhood. You'd be just like your grandfather, except, you know, with no wife or kids or commitment whatsoever."

Hey, passive. How's your aggressive?

There turned out to be a huge monkey mural in the living room, which if you ask me is a selling point, but Ned was not taken with the idea. The good news is he doesn't have to debate whether to take the house. "You want to go to dinner?" he asked, and who am I to turn down a free meal and all of you are shouting "JUST GO HOME, JUNE. YOU HAVE FINE CHEF BOY-AR-DEE PRODUCTS RIGHT AT HOME WHERE IT'S SAFE. JUNE."

So I got in the car and we headed to our Mexican restaurant. "Our," fmr.

It's one of those nondescript places, in a strip of stores, that's really good. TinaDoris and her spouse took us there in 2013 and we've gone ever since. It's the taquito place, Fay.

Ned and I went there one Sunday evening years ago, and I got mad at him–I forget why but I think it had to do with me feeling jealous of another woman because it almost always was–and we argued all the way to my house, where I got out of the car, stomped toward the house, then at the last minute turned around and hurled my leftover taquitos at his car.

Ned backed out of my driveway in a huff, then had to drive all over town to find an all-night car wash, because he could hardly pull up to work Monday with taquito car. The worst part of that story is the next day at lunch I said, "Ooooo, I have those leftover taq–no, I don't."

For some reason Fay loves this story. I guess she enjoys my rage and ridiculousness or something. She brings it up at every opp. I just said opp. Once after our endless breakup Ned called me, and I told Fay, and she asked all Stevie Wonder-ly, "Did he just call. To say. Taquito?"

Then she had a bust made of herself.

Anyway, there we went, Ned and I did, and you'll never guess what I ordered. "You'd better finish the whole thing right here," Ned said.

Careful readers will note not just Ned, of yore, but also the background of this photo. Because who's back there behind blue-shirted guy? Is it my tenant? FMR.? Of yore?

"What are YOU doing here?" I asked her, because of all the margarita joints in all the world, she had to come into mine, fmr. With my boyfriend, fmr. The relationship that ruined her life, fmr. The life she had in her cute little rental house, fmr.

If you were her and you saw me there with the person I broke up with, which as a result rendered her homeless, would you not have pressed my face into the deep fryer?

"It's National Margarita Day!" she announced. Thank god she's taken to drink.

"I'm here with Ned," I told her, because everyone has to know my everything. She and I have plans to do our dreadful workout tonight, which will not begin to burn off the margarita/taquito combo she and I had going, but it's a start.

The point is, I can't do anything clandestine in this town without getting caught. The only other thing I have to tell you is that I was complaining to Ned about how when I get up in the morning, Edsel, Steely Dan and one or both adult cats follow me into the bathroom. Steely Dan stands on my shoulder the whole time, like we're posing for a Very Special Olan Mills portrait.

"I'm surrounded by animals in that tiny bathroom," I kvetched. "I'm like St. Francis of A-piss-i."

Then I called Fay to get the name of her bust worker.