Resistance to Change

J has off this week, so of course my inner dictator came out. When I got home tonight, it appeared that my house-minion had only achieved half my plan towards world domination: the living room was vacuumed and the dishes were done, but I was greeted at the door with, "Hey, what's for dinner? Are you hungry? And just look how clean the kitchen is!"

I gave the room a cursory inspection. "I see that pile of pennies is still on the kitchen table."

"Yeah."

"Are you leaving that for me to clean up?"

"But I voted for that change! That's change I can believe in!"

I had to hand it to him. It was cute. "I'm so going to blog about that."

"No, you're not."

"Yes I am! I don't have any good blog stuff to put up."

"Why don't you write about how poopy you feel again?"

"Will you get my camera so I can take a picture of that pile of pennies for the blog?"

"No."

So there you have it. My cold is back, which is screwing with my creativity (aka "making me feel poopy") because a conversation about a pile of pennies on the kitchen table actually seemed amusing enough to blog about. I also had a lovely and mildly interesting conversation with our office cleaning lady Dorothy Salter, who is 86, constantly perplexed by foolish people in her life, and probably in better health than me. Apparently, another woman in the city was also named Dorothy Salter, and she recently died. Unfortunately, some of OUR Dorothy's acquaintances got confused by the obituary and began to spread the news that our Dorothy was the one who passed.

"Yah," Dorothy shouted at me today, "This neighbor lady sez to me, 'I thought you were dead! They said you died a month or so ago!" She shook her head and dropped her voice. "She sent me a Christmas card this week. I think she's losing it. Not so right in the head." The conversation then abrubtly segued to a pear tree she planted with an unknown accomplice many moons ago, and the fact that it bore very hard fruit this year, a dozen or so of which she gave to our office. (Click on Dorothy's name for an adorable photo of her. She was recently featured by the local paper, and is horribly embarrassed by all the attention.)

Tomorrow I'll be speaking with a local businesswomen's networking group, followed by a meeting with this lovely woman's book club, and on Saturday I'll be at the Suamico Ale House all day hawking my wares. And by hawking my wares, I mean selling that book with the feet on the cover. Mr. Riley will be my lackey for the day. Isn't that nice of him? And I didn't even tell him about the Pancake and Porky breakfast in the morning!!

PS: For a real post, Malena Lott invited me to guest-blog about "la dolce vita" at Athena's Bookshelf this week to help celebrate the launch of her new novel Dating da Vinci. (I'm the one wearing green on hump day, blabbering on about George Bailey and David Sedaris.) Congrats, Malena!!

PPS: The pile of change is still on the table. Let's see how long it stays there, shall we? It is now day three.