You're My (old) LAAADDYYYYY!!!

I don't write about the Old Lady very much... mostly because she reads this from time to time and I don't need to give her any more reasons to be fucking annoyed with me. She's a very interesting lady, the Old Lady, and the stories I could tell you... shoo-doggies! Let's take a peek into the life of this fascinating woman, this brilliant she-goddess, my... LOVUH!

Now, she's a professor so she works within the "theatre of the mind." Granted, she only teaches, like, one class a semester, but her main focus is on doing research and getting articles published and scoring grants and shit, so it's pretty high-pressure stuff. And she's not the kind of person who kind of dabbles in one thing here, and then works on a little something over there -- she dives into shit whole-hog and bangs it out until she's finished -- which is what made her so popular with the fellas in college. Hello!

What the shit am I talking about?! Sorry... I had a big ol' martini before dinner tonight, so take all of this with a grain of alcohol.

Let's see... she works hard, kind of obsessive about getting things done... Oh yeah! So, when she's steeped in some sort of big project -- an article or a grant proposal -- she oftentimes looks for something kind of mindless to take her mind off all the stressful shit, so she can relax. Like the time she bought a Sudoku book, and then obsessively worked on those fucking puzzles every goddamn night for, I don't know, like four months. It was like, get the kids to bed, eat something and then MAINLINE SOME GODDAMN SUDOKU UNTIL 1:00 IN THE MORNING!!!!

The funny thing was, she didn't even know what Sudoku was a few months earlier, and if she did, she thought it was fucking ridiculous. It was like, puzzles?! Who has time for fucking puzzles. And then it's "I JUST NEED A COUPLE OF BUCKS FOR A NEW SUDOKU BOOK, BABY!!! C'MON... MAMA NEEDS A TASTE OF VITAMIN S!!!! PLEEEEASE!!!!"

Her latest addiction is Harry Fucking Potter. Now, I read the first couple of books a couple of years ago (which is big, mind you -- I'm the kind of guy who reads a book over the course of, say, 8 months, and then brags about it for two years -- "Hey, I read Harry Potter! Did you read Harry Potter? I did! All by myself!!! All the pages and everything!!!"). I'm pretty sure she mildly mocked me when I read them, by the way. Cut to a few weeks ago, and she decides to pick up the first book, because Mr. Z is a huge Harry Potter fan and she wanted to see what all the hubbub was about.

Of course, she's instantly hooked and proceeds to plow through all six books in, like three weeks. It was insane! She'd be up until three in the morning trying to finish a book, and then she'd be sitting there at breakfast grilling Mr. Z about the characters. "Do you think Snape is working undercover for Dumbledore?! I'll be he is! There's this Harry Potter forum I was reading online, last night, and they said they think Dumbledore WANTED Snape to kill him, so Snape could get closer to Voldemort and eventually kill him!!! What do you think, Mr. Z?!?!?!?!"

It's actually very cute, and she and the boy have definitely bonded over their mutual love for the bespectacled wizard man-child, so that's great. Tonight, though, there was a classic moment when the Old Lady was telling Mr. Z what she had learned about J.K. Rowling from her website:

THE OLD LADY: Mr. Z, do you know what the "J.K." stands for?

MR. Z: Well, the "J" is for Joanne, and I think the "K" is for Kathleen--

And here's where the Old lady exposed her true obsession with the young H.P.

THE OLD LADY: Actually, she told me that the "K" doesn't stand for anything.

And I had to jump in and say, "Wait... she TOLD YOU?! J.K. Rowling TOLD YOU that the 'K' didn't stand for anything?" Of course, she kind of hemmed and hawed and said that she MEANT that she READ it on J.K. Rowling's WEBSITE. I saw through it all, though, and was forced to call Jeff VanVondenvoondenven over at A&E's "Intervention," and set up a meeting.

Long story short, the Old Lady's off to the Hogwart's Center for Behavioral Health and Recovery, in Tarzana, California, where she'll deal with her inner Boggarts and hopefully return to us in a few months, clean and sober.

That is, of course, until her next obsession... Speed Stacking.