"There's an open road that leads nowhere, so just make some miles between here and there."*

Evil Woman Part VI

     This is the second-to-last in the Evil Woman series, and I'm sure it makes all of you sad. It makes me sad, because I have lots of other good dish on Beth that didn't even make it into the New York trip because it happened...duh duh duh...in Los Angeles. But I'll get to that another time. And her name's not really Beth and there's just so much so much good good dirt (and no, I'm not stuttering).

     For those new to this, it's number six in a very long series of episodic work the like of which the world has not seen since Charles Dickens. And he got paid per word, so one wonders why I'm such a blabbermouth, since I do this shit for free. But the previous installments can be found as follows: one, two, three, four and five.

Yet again, my journal from 2009 opens itself to you, dear reader:

-Sophie slept well through the night despite having a stuffy nose. She snored, though, and ground her teeth. I love when she stays awake screaming and crying all night and when I tell Beth about it in the morning, she says, “Oh, poor Sophie. I hope she’ll have a nice long nap this afternoon.” I’d adore a nice long nap as, I’m sure, would Lucia, but I feel super bad for THE INFANT who sleeps 90% of every day. Poor thing must be exhausted from all that eating and pooping.

-We again went nowhere today. Beth and John took Conor to Toys R Us AGAIN and then to lunch at Serendipity. Lucia and I took turns running out for a half-hour or so. That was nice—it really broke up the day and made it seem like it was going faster. 

Augustus Gloop. My second Willy Wonka Reference (weird?).

-Lucia and I both realized that we’ve lost weight, but we were both pretty surprised. I don’t know why she was surprised, since she’s eaten barely anything in the time we’ve been here. But I was surprised because I’ve eaten like a freaking hippo since we arrived on account of all the junk Beth keeps around and buys perpetually—we’re talking bags of caramel popcorn, pretzels, black and white cookies from the deli every day, cake from fancy restaurants and from the hotel staff, huge bags of junk from Dylan’s Candy Bar, Toys R Us, FAO Schwartz etc. I think she's one of those anorexics who gets off on watching other people eat. I asked one night for a bite of dark chocolate—maybe a Hershey bar. She came home with five different kinds of dark chocolate candy bars. And yes, they’re all gone. I ate four and Lucia ate one. Actually just thinking about it makes me sick. I remind myself of Augustus Gloop—my face smeared in chocolate, eating my pain. Which is what I’m doing. Normally I would drink my pain, but for obvious reasons I can’t on this trip. And you know, it hasn’t been so bad. I’m rather pleased with myself. It could be part of the reason I’ve lost some weight, but considering how much crap I’ve eaten in substitution—or from plain boredom—it seems unlikely that it makes any difference at all. I should’ve spent this last 10 days doing a cleanse. I really could have lost weight and Beth would’ve been ecstatic that she didn’t have to pay for me to eat.

-Lucia told me that when I was in New York with my mom last month and she was working all those extra hours covering for me, Beth was writing her a check at the end of the week and the total came to $400.75. And Beth said, “You’ve worked so hard this week, honey. I’m going to give you a little extra.” Lucia was so excited until she drove home and looked at her check. Beth had written it for $401. What a generous woman! Lucia told me if she’d noticed it she would have said, “Beth, you can keep your quarter.”

Elton John: the original Lady Gaga.

-They went to a Broadway show—Billy Elliot—and I was really excited for them. When I asked Beth about it in the car, she managed to brag about how it was sold out but since they “know Elton” they were able to score seats. I said, “Oh, did he write the music?” and Beth said yes but then proceeded to try to drop a little more bullshit. “One time, we went to see Elton's show in Vegas with Rob Roth, and we were backstage and he was going on and on about how much he loved this song that Rob had written. I mean, he just kept saying, ‘I love your song! I listened to it a hundred times today!’ over and over.” I waited for there to be a story, but alas, that was the story. She was just bragging. Fun. And who the hell is Rob Roth? Am I missing something? (Okay, he might be a big deal. He has a webpage. We all know that takes a lot of clout.)

-Unfortunately, though the kids were exhausted, Beth called at 11 and told us to keep them awake so Mommy and Daddy could put them to bed. They were cranky and tired when Beth and John finally rolled in at 11:30, and of course that was our fault. 

*Lyrics from ELO's "Evil Woman".