The Ugly Truth

I took the day off today. They made me. Worse. They’re making me take eleven more days off before the new fiscal year rolls around. I have somehow accumulated almost three months of vacation time, and apparently this is a no-no. So I’ve been banished from the office for at least one day a week until I use up all twelve days.

Since Boy is in Vermont and every other person in my life has a real job and is not a control freak workaholic who refuses to take time off because the earth will stop spinning on its axis if they don’t show up for work, I was left to my own devices.

So I slept in...until 6:30.

Then I did all the chores I didn’t get done this weekend because, you guessed it, I worked all weekend.

By noon, my sheets were washed and dried. Bed remade. My bathtub and sinks were clean and sparkling – I swear by Dawn dishwashing liquid to clean my tub since Carrie told me her mom told her to use it. It totally works. – The grocery shopping was done. And I’d stopped by the library, the tanning salon, and car wash.

Naturally, because my car is clean, it rained. And I was left with little else to do but go to the movies. After Carrie and my sister, Julia, and my MOTHER all called me to tell me to go see The Ugly Truth because I am “just like that actress,” I have to admit to being a little intrigued.

I hadn’t been to the movies in a year. No exaggeration. I feel trapped when I’m in a movie theater. It’s dark and uncomfortable. I can’t sit still for that long. It’s just unnatural. I’d much rather be doing something. Anything. But I'd just about exhausted my options, so I checked the movie times and off I went.


The movie house was mostly deserted, and I paid for my ticket and walked up to the ticket stand to have my ticket ripped in half and handed back to me. It was a little disconcerting that the guy doing the ripping kept staring. More so when he followed me as I walked over to the concessions stand to buy candy and popcorn.

Then, after I’d paid for my junk food, I turned to walk to the theater to find him standing there directly in my path, still staring. I just smiled and looked pointedly to the ticket stand where there was now a line of people waiting to have their tickets ripped to gain entry to the mecca that is the movie theater. He got flustered and sped off, and I walked as quickly as possible in the other direction.

There are some very odd little people at the movie theater in the middle of the week.


Well, I watched the whole movie. I had to. It was like watching a train wreck. And, yeah, I’m just like that. Dammit. I walked out of the theater feeling a little nauseous. Some of that was the popcorn.

But as soon as I walked out into the bright sunshine, I felt immediately better.

Because that's right when someone from my office called.

See? They can’t live without me.