i am bossy

Meanwhile Back At The Ranch, Where Ranch Equals Small Suburb. Part II.

Yesterday Bossy was all blah blah groupie blah, but readers reader? Today Bossy is all about her new behind-the-scenes obsession: theater.

As Bossy may have mentioned once or several hundred times, her daughter is an actress. And lucky thing, because Bossy’s daughter lives only a few blocks from an inspired community theater.

Also as Bossy may have mentioned once or several hundred times, Bossy is an interior painter. And occasionally Bossy gets the opportunity to volunteer
to help paint sets for the theater, and could that sentence use more words to say the simplest thing? Bossy paints sets.

The community theater’s upcoming youth production is Thoroughly Modern Millie. Although she’s never seen it, Bossy has become an expert on this musical—and she offers the following in depth plot summary: it features brick walls. And jail cells. And ledges. And nightclub windows. Shall we begin?

Bossy’s first task was to mix an appropriate base color to simulate bricks. Note: this is not the same as stimulating bricks—that’s a job left to the mortar.

See how Bossy did that? Wrote a masonry joke right in the middle of her Friday morning? Now do we all sense how desperate Bossy is for weekend wine?

Anyway. In case you’re curious just who is in charge of this set design and doling out the jobs—this guy is in charge of set design and doling out the jobs:

His name is Joe, but you can call him Bossy’s friend Joe. Bossy is a little terrified of her friend Joe, because Joe thinks Bossy is more talented than she actually is. Of course Joe invests similar faith in everyone, which is just one of the really neat things about Joe. The other neat thing about Joe: he sings like an angel.

But the singing like an angel thing doesn’t really help Bossy when Joe is all, “Make this mound of chicken wire and cheesecloth look like a boulder,” and Bossy is all, “The only Boulder Bossy knows is in Colorado.”

See how Bossy did that? Made a geographical joke with seven hours remaining until she can open a bottle of weekend wine?

Back to the brick wall, which was cut from Styrofoam on some earlier day—probably a day Bossy was at home not listing her laptop on eBay.

Bossy mixed a brick red color. Because. Bricks!

As Bossy applied paint to several sections of fake brick wall, her heart was warmed by all of the kid volunteers who were crowded in the parking lot in the rear of the theater, each with their own task:

Kids were hammering and kids were painting and kids were sawing and kids were screwing attaching things. Every single person was committed to their job and—wait—what have we here? Anyone know this slacker?

Why, it’s Bossy’s daughter, and what is that in her hand—a camera?

Imagine standing around taking photos while other people are working! Bossy doesn’t know where she picked up this habit.

Disgusted by her daughter’s lack of work ethic, Bossy returned to her brick walls:

With the base coat completed, Bossy went back into the shop to mix a few other colors she could sponge on top of the brick to give it a more realistic look:

And speaking of the shop, Bossy kind of wants to marry the shop. It’s tall, dark, and handsome. Not really, but it is dark, and contains a million cans of paint and a brush in every size:

Other cool things in the shop: rolls of paper.

And the shop floor could tell a million stories! If it weren’t a shop floor:

Back out in the parking lot, Bossy sponged more colors on top of the base coat:

The amazing thing about set painting is everything you think is an error just adds to the aged look of the stuff you are producing! Or at least that’s what Bossy tells herself. Here is the completed brick wall:

Next Bossy took a break to go backstage and look for her daughter so she could yell at her for taking photos instead of working. Bossy took her camera with her:

That’s the stage door. It’s very stage-ish. And door-ish. And these are the stage lights:

And these are the ropes:

Bossy doesn’t know what all of these do, but she’s pretty sure with a little time she could learn the ropes. See how Bossy did that? Rope joke, still no wine?

And finally, this is the view of the house from the stage, where house equals the cutest theater eh-ver:

Meanwhile Back At The Ranch, Where Ranch Equals Small Suburb.

The above is a bumper sticker, and when Bossy was in her teens this bumper sticker hung on her bedroom wall, only it wasn’t a wall, it was a Wall Unit, and it wasn’t just a bumper sticker—it was a way of life.

But before Bossy elaborates about that time before she was married, before Bossy put away her childish crushes, she would like to pause for a moment in the early eighties—in her teenage bedroom made cozy with burnt orange carpeting—because Bossy has more to say about her Wall Unit.

It was Swedish decades before there was an Ikea, and it was made of blond wood and white laminate. This wall unit surrounded her bed and provided cabinets for birth control pills doll clothes, and drawers for birth control pills socks. And the bridge directly over the bed contained built-in lights for
late night you all have filthy minds reading:

Back to the bumper sticker. Bossy has always been drawn to the music scene because her brother is a musician and his friends are musicians. Even when he was seven Bossy’s brother was a musician and his friends were musicians, and even when he was ten Bossy’s brother was a musician and his friends were musicians, and even when he was nineteen Bossy’s brother was a musician and his friends were musicians except now Bossy noticed that all of these friends who were musicians wore tight black pants.

Thus Bossy’s career as a gropey groupie was launched. And Bossy loved her access behind the scenes—she witnessed how songs were written, and she heard the arguments, and she watched as many of the musicians climbed from the smokey stage and out of their comfort zones.

Bossy felt very respected in that musical environment. The musicians would compliment Bossy by telling her that she had a great ear, which come to think of it probably isn’t the best compliment a musician has ever given a groupie. But anyway, one time one of those very musicians took Bossy on a date that lasted nineteen years.

Not much has changed because Bossy is still a groupie who likes to go behind the scenes, although recently there has been a slight shift in venue. (to be continued.)

Part Two Tomorrow Because Bossy Is So Exhausted At The Thought Of Her Young Self Hanging Out With All Of Those Cute Musicians That She Must Now Put Herself To Bed For The Day.

And Now For The Following CNN Entertainment Headline.

After fourteen seasons and twenty-two Emmys, the popular medical drama E.R. is planning its final episodes which will air next February, prompting Bossy to say, “Wait—E.R. is still on?”

It's been many years since Bossy watched this show—but in case you'€™ve never seen it, here is everything you need to know:

He is a doctor, and his name is George Clooney. He dates a curly-headed girl named Carol, even though it'€™s not her head that'€™s curly, it'€™s her hair:

And then there's this guy:

He'€™s Dr. John Carter, and at first he was snot-nosed from a wealthy family, but then he was snot-nosed from a heroin addiction, except no one knew he was a heroin addict even though his skin was slowly turning grey, and he was accidentally killing patients.

Dr. John Carter dated lots of girls, kind of like Bossy'€™s husband before they were married. Other similarities between young Bossy'€™s husband and Dr. John Carter: they look alike.

Next we have her:

She'€™s Dr. Kerry Weaver, even though Bossy thought her name was Cary until two seconds ago. What makes Cary Kerry a unique television character is the fact that she walks with the aid of a leg brace and crutch due to her physical disability. Unless the actress Laura Innes walks with the aid of a leg brace and crutch, in which case there is nothing unique about Dr. Kerry Weaver.

Which finally leads us to him:

He's from Top Gun.

Every Thursday at 10 p.m. these doctors save lives while flirting over patient deathbeds. The end.

Read More About The Beginning Of E.R.'s End Here.

Look! It’s Ten-Word Tuesday.

As some of you may have guessed, Bossy has been home for two weeks and she still hasn’t sold the pre-owned laptop she purchased specifically to use while on her Excellent Rationalization.

The situation reminds Bossy of over a decade ago, when she gave birth to her second child. Bossy would spend all day with her newborn daughter and her newborn daughter’s sweet button nose and her tiny button eyes and other button things like her button butt:

And then Bossy’s son would climb off the school bus from first grade, and he would flop on the bed next to his infant sister and Bossy would marvel at her son’s enormous earlobes and his enormous pupils and his enormous teeth the size and shape of felled dominoes:

While Bossy was on the road for five weeks, she grew accustomed to her baby laptop and its silver Chiclet teeth and its antiglare widescreen eyes. Bossy is trying to embrace her desktop eMac again, but its teeth are too clacky and its face is too round and when Bossy sits down to work she knows she looks every bit as technologically advanced as Matthew Broderick in War Games.

Which is what today’s challenge is all about: in exactly ten words, can you please share with Bossy the way you rationalized your last unnecessary purchase?

And make sure to check back later today to read everyone else’s comments—the best on the web.

Today Bossy Is Maybe Too Tired To Write. And Here’s Why.

This is Bossy’s mom’s house, and last night the family was invited over for a special Mother’s Day dinner, and what made this Mother’s Day dinner special was the fact that the meal was catered entirely by Bossy’s brother and Bossy’s husband:

The two men planned and shopped and schlepped and chopped and cooked and assembled:

But what Bossy failed to realize about dinner cooked entirely by two men, was how much free time Bossy would have available to sit around and chat with her mom and sister-in-law. And drink wine. Lots of red wine.

After a melon and prosciutto appetizer, the family sat down to their meal: spaghetti with meatballs and sausage, and a mixed green salad with blue cheese and apples:

And for the next hour Bossy ate like the thirteenth starving child in a family of fourteen. And she drank wine like the thirteenth starving child in a family of fourteen—assuming starving children from large families drink wine.

And then Bossy scarfed a bowl of bread pudding and a dish of chocolate ice cream and more wine, wine! And why won’t the wine come out of the bottle when it’s empty?

By 11 p.m. Bossy was home in bed, where her troubles were only beginning. The first problem was this:

It’s an article in the New Yorker, and Bossy decided it would be a terrific idea to read it as she was falling asleep. It’s about a very promising young chef who found out he has tongue cancer and radiation treatments have ruined his taste buds and now the poor fellow can’t taste his creations and what is this sore on the inside of Bossy’s right cheek?

To cheer herself up, Bossy stayed up even later reading the following article in the same magazine:

It’s about a famous photo retoucher named Pascal Dangin, and when you see all of those perfect women in all of those perfect magazine layouts you can blame Pascal.

The article details Pascal’s ability to seamlessly reshape shoulder blades and redefine cheekbones, and before Bossy knew it she had drifted off into a dream, and in this dream she was a photographer.

And in this dream, Bossy’s assignment as a photographer was to shoot photos of a very wealthy man, because when you are a photographer more famous than Annie Leibovitz you don’t take pictures, you shoot them.

And speaking of the wealthy man in her dream, Bossy has no idea who he was but she will now attempt to capture his essence:

And then Bossy awoke to the tortures of a bedside lamp still on, her eyeglasses crumpled under her throat, and her liver enzymes breaking down the complex sugars of last night's Fetzer Merlot.

Blog Kindergarten: A Bossy Tutorial. Mother's Day.

We have her to thank. She’s Julia Ward Howe — and in 1872 she was all up in Boston's face trying to promote peace, so she called for A Meeting of Mothers. Of course Julia Ward Howe wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic and this we know about Julia Ward Howe: she was not a subtle broad:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.

Next we jump to Michigan. On May 11, 1877 three guys were roaming the streets of a town called Albion and they were totally wasted. Because — get real — it’s Albion and it's 1877. What else is a brother gonna do in Albion in 1877?

But this made the town madder than a wet hen because all three of the boys were sons of strict temperance advocates. Also? One of the boys was the pastor’s son.

The very next Sunday the pastor was so upset about his son that he left the pulpit before the services were over. This is where we meet a certain Juliet Calhoun Blakeley:

Juliet Calhoun Blakeley was sitting in the front row that day and she gladly pointed her sassy Victorian lace-up boots in the direction of the pulpit and took over the sermon, calling on other mothers to join her.

In other words this whole Mother’s Day deal was originally an anti-drinking campaign.

Then for years after, Mrs. Blakeley’s super perfect wouldn’t-be-caught-dead-drinking-in-the-streets-of-Albion sons decided to honor their mother — and all mothers — with a churchy celebration held the second Sunday in May. In Albion. Albion Michigan, which only had like sixty-five residents, three of them drunkards.

So how did Mother’s Day grow from that to this?

As always we get to blame Philadelphia. Because this is one of its turn-of-the-century residents, Anna Jarvis:

Anna Jarvis launched an intense campaign in 1908 to honor the memory of her own mother by creating a national day dedicated to all mothers. She called on local clergymen, business leaders, and department store owner John Wanamaker – who offered the use of his store for the first Mother’s Day service, attended by 15,000 people.

The final element of the equation stepped off a train in Kansas City two years later holding two shoeboxes containing postcards.

And that chucklehead was J.C. Hall, the 18-year old founder of Hallmark.

Bossy Is Coordinating The Development And Implementation Of Exactly Nothing.

Today Bossy is writing a resume for a friend who shall remain nameless, and that friend is Bossy’s mother. Hi mom!

Bossy has tinkered with plenty of these things and has this to say: resumes are all about putting your best foot forward. Your lie-covered foot.

We’re not chatty: we have strong interpersonal skills. We didn’t look something over: we provided editing and proofreading support. We didn’t place phone calls: we identified and cultivated lateral relationships.

We tracked and established and fostered and managed and assessed and prepared and supervised and maintained and solicited and promoted and analyzed.

Which leaves Bossy with one remaining question: why are we so unemployed?

Hello Thousands Of People Who Googled Bossy Looking For Lindsay Lohan’s New Song.

Do you remember Bossy’s old pal Lindsay Lohan? Well, yesterday she released a dance tune called Bossy, which makes all kinds of sense because apparently Lindsay Lohan didn’t receive the friendly memo from the real Bossy, and that friendly memo went like this:

Because Bossy likes it when the word bossy belongs to Bossy:

For instance, if you Google the word bossy and hit I’m Feeling Lucky, you will end up right back here, maybe even simmering in a vat of broccoli casserole:

When Lindsay Lohan carelessly sings, “I’m just a little Bossy,” she doesn’t understand that i am bossy isn’t just a state of mind, it’s a brand—even if that brand is insomnia slathered in firming serum rinsed with heart palpitations.

Lindsay Lohan’s song threatens to wreck Bossy’s Google recognition, and therefore Bossy is not a happy camper. Do you know what it looks like when Bossy is not a happy camper? It looks a lot like this:

And this:

And this:

And here are other random unhappy campers:

Where Bossy Has Another One Of Those Ideas.

Bossy was feeling very overwhelmed by her house the other day, which is nothing new—but Bossy has become insufferable because she’s been living in a car trunk for five weeks, and now believes all belongings beyond a container of Pringles and a sturdy pair of uglies constitute clutter.

Dirty wet washcloths, paperwork, weeds, dog hair, pollen, bathtub grime, unworn clothes, dog hair, oak tree funk, wilted lettuce, unworn shoes, more weeds, unworn jackets, dog hair dog hair!

Bossy needs to spring clean, and while she’s at it she needs to clean for last winter and the summer prior and the entire year before that.

And she needs to reclaim her garden and sell her unworn clothes on eBay and finish painting the underside of her porch and reorganize her home office, and scrub her vegetable bin, and instead Bossy does this:

So Bossy got thinking about all of her friends who are avoiding similar lists, and when Bossy says all of her friends she is talking abut her friend Martha. And then Bossy thought about her friend Amy who isn’t avoiding much of anything, but Amy likes to drink beer. And so Bossy called these two friends, and when Bossy says called she means emailed.

And in this email Bossy described forming a Grrlz Moral Support Co-Op, where each friend donates two days of their time to the other two co-op friends in order to accomplish things on their to-do list, followed by a third day where the two friends are available to assist in the tasks of your choosing, and who thinks Bossy could make that way easier to understand with even the smallest amount of editing?

It’s like this:

And when Martha received Bossy’s email she was all, “Hellza yes, I have many things on my to-do list that would benefit from forming a Grrlz co-op!” And when Amy received the email she was all, “Beer!”

And so yesterday Martha and Amy reported to Bossy’s house at 11 a.m. for Day One of the Grllz Support Group Co-Op, and raise your hand if you think that name is too clunky to catch on?

Anyway. For Bossy’s designated day, she decided to make it all about gardening. Which means weeding. This is because Bossy’s garden is totally overrun by a hideous purple-flower weed—and lord help Martha, if she would have stayed in this spot for two more minutes the weed would have wrapped itself around Martha’s roots and cut off her supply of water and air:

Here is another angle of the overwhelming mass of weeds, and Bossy’s Grllz who crawled around on their hands and knees while Bossy snapped photos also crawled around on her hands and knees:

In no time at all three hellacious hours, the Grllz were done and the garden was beautiful:

Which is when Amy thought it would be relaxing to sit in a chair and sun herself be attacked by a Great Dane and a ball:

Soon Bossy invited the Grrlz into the house for a very healthy low calorie salad. And a crap load of beer:

Today Bossy and her friend Amy are going to Martha’s house, where they are going to build walls replace windows polish silverware. Bossy will provide more details as they become available, and in the meantime, go out there and form your own Grrlz Moral Support Co-Op! The midday beer is delicious!

Ten-Word Tuesday.

Bossy thoroughly enjoyed how entertaining her readers reader was last week when the question limited the response to ten words. And because Bossy is nothing if not shamelessly repetitive, she wants to offer another ten-word challenge:

Today Bossy is thinking about summer, which begins in one thousand hours. In exactly ten words, can you please share with Bossy what you are doing to prepare for bathing suit season?

Hopefully it's not something contained within Bossy's Dr. Seuss Weight-loss Poem.