Well: so much time spent screaming things from the inside out and never, ever, making a sound. Take the swimming pool, for example. The stalls in the family change room are super fantastic for all sorts of despair, these five-foot squares of charmless concrete real estate where your comfort and dignity are heavily discounted, all of this going back and forth to stuffed lockers and changing your clothes while hopping on one foot and taking these gruesomely half-hearted showers and that chlorine tang in your nostrils and the floors oozing with some miasma of discarded body water and spit. Just far, far too much nudity from everyone involved. I'm sorry, was that your ass in my face or my face in your ass? The place is surround sound, which is just excellent for the many decibels of screaming and crying children in all the stalls around you. Oona farting wetly in the background. And there I was, about to oh-so-gingerly pick up some seeping, filthy towels off the floor when C suddenly seized them like two pigs who'd escaped their pen, balled them up and stuffed them in a bag and then didn't wash her hands. Can a person vomit and moan at the same time? I did, at least within the confines of my grimacing consciousness. "Would you like to share a smoothie on the way out?" she asked. "Of course I would," I said.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, despite her lack of hygiene, C has got herself published on an academic level. Congratulations, C! This is how she describes it:
I wrote an article for a peer-reviewed journal, Business Communication Quarterly (SAGE), and after making changes as per the reviewers, it has been accepted for publication.
It is for a section called “Innovative Assignments” and it is about informational interviews and interpersonal communications skills.
I don’t know the publication date yet.
Woo-hoo!
Stop making me laugh.
ReplyDeleteAs for my publishing announcement, you forgot to mention that when I wrote to a colleague to tell him about it, I closed my email with "In your face, Brennan!"
It's all about professionalism in my little world.
Yuck! That's exactly how I see the family changing rooms too...that's why I've never been there. Congratulations to your lovely wife. I must comment as well about the veggie posting below, and remark that eating veggies is a good thing.
ReplyDeletecongratulations, c! and i love this post.
ReplyDelete