February 12, 2003

Today is the day to redesign your boudoir.

Valentine's Day is just a few days away. You can do better than Valentine's Day, can't you?

Without much explanation, although probably related to my Lindsay Robertson interview, reader Erin Cheever sent me the following jokes, so here they are. They are probably funnier than anything you will ever read on my website:

Television news anchors do it with a straight face.

Lighthouse keepers do it high.

Xerox repairmen do it to make copies.

35

Five minutes later, after Sven stormed out in less-than-manly tears, Lillibet's phone rang again.

"So I don't want to go see my sister," George whined.

"I thought you hate me now," said Lillibet. "And, hello to you too."

"Yeah, well, I do sort of hate you a little, but I have nobody else to talk to...I mean, somebody who's aware of this entire situatinon."

"Ah, yes," said Lillibet.

"Why did you send me those notes anyway?" asked George, more courteously this time.

"I dunno," resonded Lillibet. "I was bored and had some extra magazines lying around. Plus, I thought that maybe if you felt pressure or fear, your writing might come back."

"No, they were just sort of distracting."

"Oh well. So where do things stand now?"

"Well. I saw Geflen, and he hasn't called me lately to brag about his book. I saw my parents, and--"

"You know, I haven't seen anything by them in Reader's Digest lately."

"You read Reader's Digest?!"

"It's for research," Lillibet responded in a huff. "I'm studying what the middle-aged, middle-class read." The fact was that an old flame of hers was an editor there and she enjoyed keeping track of what she did and feeling superior over him. Lillibet kept tabs on all her old relationships, even those going back to preschool. It was amazing that she had time for her work.

"Hmm," said George.

"Have you been working on writing?"

"It's been weird. I tried it a few weeks ago and I just ended up re-typing something that I had already written. But I did it a few days ago and I wrote something that I had already written, but it was different."

"Did you send it to the New Yorker?"

"Look on page 40."

"Do you think that now that you're getting your writing back, the people who you think took it from you are losing it again?'

"That's wonderful exposition, Lillibet."

She ignored this. "What about your brother?"

"Oh, um. Well."

"What?"

George said in a smallish voice, "I don't really mind if he keeps writing."

Lillibet raised her eyebrows.

"Stop that," retorted George. She wondered how he could have heard that.

"George, you've got to go see your sister. You might be really prolific, but you can't spend the rest of your career re-writing what you've already written."

"Fine," said George.

"Plus, we need to figure out why this has been happening to you."

"Can't we just resolve it without explaining it?"

"No," said Lillibet. "That's stupid." And she hung up.