This is post is unrelated: my sister is hilarious

This post is completely unrelated to theatre or the arts, really. But it's an email from my sister, The Writer, and is actually too funny not to share. Also, it sort of deals with the joy of a "day job." She has a bright future ahead of her.

Also, she swears a lot...so if you're offended by that kind of thing, you should probably stop reading now.

Still reading?
Ok, don't say I didn't warn you...

Dearest Rick,

I have a method to writing e-mails. When I respond to my multitude of correspondence (I am a popular person and apparently a fucking MAGNET for chain mail), I usually look at everything that was written in the e-mail sent to me and address each point in the same order in which it was presented. And I have to say -- just an observation --that e-mail you wrote was possibly the longest document of all time. On the plus side, I read the whole thingand it was not painful on my eyes. Kudos.

In any case, let us proceed:

Point 1: Snow. In T.O.
Response: Fuck snow.

Point 2: Long-distance relationships.
Response: Fuck long-distance relationships.

Point 3: [Anonymous]'s long-distance relationship.
Response: That sucks. What happened? I like her.

Point 4: Prickly Pear people [This is a long story.]
Response: Who the fuck are the Prickly Pear people? And why are they bitches? And how you gonna own your shit and tell them hoes to step off right quick for you break your left Sorrel off in they ass? These are all pertinent questions.

Point 5: Dog walking with BFG.
Response: You live in a zoo-land. With pee and creatures. And Internet. What a strange twilight zone of a world.
Also, Golden Doodle sounds like someone's massive and highly-valued shit.
Also, animals are like incontinent human beings. I do not tolerate vomit on my couch. Regain your continence, I say.
Also, job hunting has become a hobby of mine, now greatly impeded by the fact that I am employed. Also, no complaints.
Also, I support your yoga pants/not having real jobs correlation. I myself have worn yoga pants everyday this week.

Point 6: You requested an account of Francis' eight-year-old birthday party a la [very big fancy] Hotel.
Response: Fucking ridiculous.

[Roomie] and I show up at 3 p.m. and wander into the hotel side of the [very big fancy] Hotel when we should have gone into the residence tower. God forbid. We proceed to the 12th floor to meet Marge, Executive Assistant to the family, and Nancy the Doormat, Francis' mother. Nancy is nice, smiles often, and is kind of old to have a young child. No offense, Nance. Francis' father, Frank, looks like a pot-bellied, balding pedophile. He followed his son around all afternoon with a creepy half-smile.

In any case, [Roomie], me, and Carlos the bellhop load balloons, face paint, and loot bags onto a hotel cart and head over to the Atlantic room on the hotel side to set up. When we arrive there are linen table cloths and small Fiji waters on the buffet table. Someone is presenting the Juicy Juice boxes in a fucking Longaberger basket and there are waiters in full uniform (complete with bowtie) preparing to wait on eight-year-olds, possibly the most degrading gig of their lives.

As we wait for Nancy to bring over Francis and her husband, Marge provides us with the Xeroxed, highlighted, colour-coded, seizure-inducing schedule of Francis' eighth birthday, including a fifteen minute increment for arrival and shuttling of children to the appropriate room, checking tiny midget coats and sticking nametags on snot-nosed kids so that when I feel inclined to yell, "Stop the fucking shenanigans, you heathen bastard," I can instead take a deep breath, calm my nerves and respond in a simpering voice, "Stop the fucking shenanigans, Sebastien, you heathen bastard." We assemble with four other babysitters, all of whom are post-college twenty-somethings and find this entire experience just as ridiculous as [Roomie] and I do.

There is one guy, Tim, who is a godsend in the presence of twenty or so young boys who apparently fear eye contact with females other than their mothers. The children dance briefly on the checkerboard dance floor to Rihanna and Chris Brown before realizing that dancing is stupid and tackling is awesome. In the presence of Nancy and Marge, I'm not sure how forceful to be in my disciplinary actions. I should also mention that, prior to the arrival of the other children, Francis ran into the Atlantic room, did not respond to our hellos, informed us that he had a fever, and then walked over to the corner. When Marge brought up a game called "Leopards on the Loose," Francis insisted that it be called "Leprechauns on the Loose," and the nine adults in the room spent the next twenty minutes frantically coaxing out of the child what we would call the people the Leprechauns would be capturing in the game.

From the moment they entered, the girls were clearly the most well-behaved. While the boys attempted to asphyxiate one another with hula hoops, the girls used them for hula hooping. The face paint that Francis so vehemently opposed ended up being the highlight of the party, and I got to make children look ridiculous without being punished for it. Two kids had green faces, and I drew a dragon on someone's cheek that looked like a circle. When the girls came over for face paint, they requested a guitar on their left cheek with sparkles and glitter and stars and hearts and flames and ponies and magic in the center. I painted a guitar in the two inches of free face they had and then dabbed some colours inside. Fucking Picasso.

By the end of the day, I had all but ripped off Sebastien's arm, who seemed unfamiliar with the abstract concept of stay-on-the-mother-effing-dance-floor. Tim walked around with a megaphone, trying to convince the heathens that they were "helpers," and without him we probably all would have died. Or maybe a child would have. Whatever.

We gathered up coats, distributed loot bags, and ate some cake. Francis puked later on, and by six-thirty I had made a hundred bones for smearing washable face paint on children and memorizing the problem kid's name. As [Roomie] and I left, I realized that Nancy the Doormat had given each of the six crowd-control sitters a hundred dollars, and I tried to imagine how much the gourmet pizza and the high-end juice boxes might have cost but I thought I might cry if I knew those numbers. So I went home and drank heavily. It was a good night.

The end.

Point 7: Original thoughts I might like to add.
I am going to NY this weekend. Irresponsible. Huzzah.

KBYE.

xoxo,
dfg