He's got a nose like a cherry and a beer-barrel-shaped belly; but he's no Santa; he's the anti-Santa. He's my uncle--or, to be more precise, he's the man my husband's mother's sister married. And that jolly red nose? That's from drinking, his coping mechanism for dealing with my in-laws. (And for dealing with, well, life.) He's also the quintessential "bad uncle," one of the men who've made names for themselves throughout the centuries, the Scrooge, the Bad Apple, the Grump, the Grinch,...

My mom is a super mom. "Super Mom," sure, why not. She is also a breast cancer survivor (type III). Come Mother's Day, I'm really glad to have her around--believe me. But here's the thing: I'm not interested in businesses who try to get me to buy pink ribbon gifts for my mom--not for this occasion. Does she need to be reminded with a pink pin, or a wreath with pink breast cancer ribbons next to the pink roses, that she once had breast cancer? No. If she wants to remember that, all she has...

I started to blog under the title "This whole job thing is seriously cutting down my blog time," but since then have had a phone call from my mother. Here are the contents of that phone call. Numbers 1 and 4 are of particular importance to my point. 1) Starting with the moral of this number's story: Old people shouldn't drive. My step-grandmother struck another car head-on 18 months ago, sending the driver to the ICU. Yesterday he served her with papers: seeking medical damages (past and ...

Hello ladies, have I got a good deal for you! I'm married to a nice, intelligent (brilliant, really), romantic, witty, wonderful guy. But he's got this problem that I, alas, can no longer deal with: He wears the ugliest shirts in the world. I'm talking the throw-away-bin-at-Goodwill ugly. You know when your great uncle or some distant male relative died, and you hadn't the heart to throw out his shirts so you gave them to charity instead? Well, he bought 'em. Thanks a lot. First, there'...

We're poor. H hasn't been able to find a job yet and yet somehow the bills keep coming even though we're not doing anything except job hunting and eating. (Hmm. We should stop eating.) So today I bundled up my ego and took it with me to a temp agency. Ego came back bruised and bleeding. I put on my best clothes, walk into the air-conditioned “We’ve got your money and we’re using it to stay cold and protect our plastic plants” office, and wait to be told to sit down. Wait an inordinate amou...

Not that it wasn't fun, going into his office every week and having him pick apart our brains and histories and emotions, but damn! I'm glad to be done. Fiance (FI) thinks it was beneficial; I think I already knew that stuff, but if it was good for FI then it's good for us. Here's what we learned: Me = highly subjective, FI = highly objective, ergo a lot of me fence sitting and him so far out to pasture that I can't see him. Me = introverted, FI = introverted, ergo happily watching th...

There's a PSA on television about parental involvement that leaves the viewer with the impression that you should grill your children on where they're going and where they've been and what they've been doing and on, and on, ad nauseum. In the PSA, a girl says something to the effect of, "Mom, you read my diary--my innermost thoughts. ...Thanks." Yeah, right. Like I'd want my mom reading about the stuff I thought about between ages 10 and, well, now. When I was six, I read my sister's and ...

I'm mightily pissed off tonight. I've signed at least three contracts for the upcoming...thingy...event...and all of them basically say, "No, we won't give your money back even if you die or if your fiance dies or if the world ends" (and in any of those cases I don't think I'd much care about it), "NOR will we give your money back if we do a shoddy job and screw things up, or if we decide to spill acid on your negatives and throw D-CON in the punch bowl." And then all the money is due before t...

Fiance and I went in for first ever pre-marital counseling session. First the nice bald man poked gently at our history, asking where we met, how we started dating, etc. That was fine and dandy and then he asked about the engagement. We both told the story, fiance deferring to me at one point because "I tell it better," says he. Then the counselor starts rifling through what turns out to be an invasive list of personal questions. I wanted to hide under the cushions on the couch. "Well," ...

Ah, the wedding toasts. Also known as my family's big chance to embarrass me/get me back for all the times I was the obnoxious youngest child. Not that I don't somehow deserve it, but perhaps the wedding isn't the best place, hmm? So Dear Old Dad will get up and say, Well, Tullola will hate me for saying this..., and launch into a most-detailed account of the embarrassing highlights of my life, beginning with peeing all over my grandpa when I was four, including the episode where I went out t...

Not only did I give my brother, who just turned 26, a Nerf gun for Christmas, but a *rapid-fire* Nerf gun. Am constantly dodging from wall to wall to avoid bruises. House sounds like plastic battlefield. Feel like real soldier. Who knew you could enjoy such clutter in your twenties?