Mulch

"This is Uncle Al, the kiddies' pal! Hello, little friends, hello!"

What ever happened to Alan Sues? The man was very funny. Instead, we've stuck with Goldie Hawn whose creative acme was Cactus Flower in 1969. And her progeny, the adorable Kate Hudson, just doesn't do it for me. (Aren't her eyes kind of squinty? Just asking...) I don't know, call me wacky.

I await to hear from Rich- the man who knows, whether including Since When Fran as a third character thread is a good or bad idea. I already have a mess of Fran pieces that I think would fit the book very nicely. You see, when I wasn't writing Since When, I just kept on writing- mostly the bad and the ugly. (C'mon, that's the good stuff, right?) Otherwise I'd go stir crazy, I think. (The other two threads we already know: my grandmother's loony Hungarian family and: my grandfather's loony Hungarian family.) I think amongst the three of us teams, they'll be more than enough juicy as well as ghastly vignettes to bring out the pathos and bathos in all of us. (Probably over poor Rich's dead body. And I'm absolutely sure he'd beat me in a death-cage match in a nanosecond.)

I am the princess of wussdom. I didn't ask to be. But it is my burden- inherited honestly. (Two stinking, lousy recessive wuss genes. Because how can a wuss gene ever be dominant??? Figure that one out for me, will you?) I'm a fucking marshmallow, and it really ticks me off.

Back to Since When, as a friend of mine has emailed, with much gravitas, "where's the plot? where are the vignettes? Fran, I hate to say this, but it's (beat) a tangle." (For full disclosure, when making these pronouncements, he had yet to read a page of it. This was his response to my, I thought well done, synopsis. He never made it to the book. He was already reorganizing it, without even giving it one teeny GLANCE. Somehow, I think that's rather presumptuous and nervy of him. But that's just me.)

And yes, my sweet darling, I can most assuredly promise you, a tangle it will remain. But with Rich there to guide me, an intelligible tangle. And anyone who knows me at all, knows full well there is nothing linear about me. Yeah, I admit, I did add the (beat)." The line works so much better that way.

I'm glad I'm a tangle. I'm infinitely more interesting this way.

Given my "weakened condition," as my evil sister-in-law has so lovingly described it, I will not go to my thirtieth high school reunion. (FYI, my evil sister-in-law is the one married to MY brother. I want no confusion about this.) I had agita just going up to Washington Heights to the chiropractor today. Reuning seems rather silly since my high school friends are either dead, disturbed, left me for dead (figuritively) or in mourning. (But she wouldn't go if her life depended on it. She'd only go if that would get her Jerry back. Now that, I understand.)

I know we really made the decision not to try to be "a part of things" in said high school. Why change now? And you know, if we had any desire to be "a part of things," our efforts would have failed like a bad recipe. It was somehow a bit more comforting thinking that we had made the decision not to be part of the high school hullaballoo. Truth is, it had not a thing to do with us. I don't want to be reminded of that. Not now, when I'm a gimp.

But the genuinely nice people who are putting the reunion together are also creating a thirtieth anniversary yearbook. I was a bad girl as I was prodded for my bio. (I guess this just isn't a good time in my life to ask me for my bio. So I sent in the following assuming I'd immediately get an email back telling me this won't cut it. Please come back with a real one. But there's no was in bloody hell anyone's taken a look at it. I just got checked in for being a good girl in submitting my bio. I sent the following:

Fran Lipman is alive in New York City. How long she will remain in that condition is anybody's guess. Regardless, she has decided that she will remain in NYC. Either in her home with her beloved husband and two cats or as an additive to mulch for the apartment house garden.

Shit, do you think they'll really print that? Oy gevalt.

FYI, fertilizer is not funny. But mulch is...