So I’m back from my North American megatour (Cancun * Boston * Montreal read the T-shirts) and today’s my first day back working at now-not-even-the-trashiest gossip rag, Us Weekly. I’m catching up with all the other freelancers, and one has just had a baby shower. (Is everyone on the eastern seaboard pregnant? I think so.)

Anyway, she tells me how her crusty old aunt is at the shower, talking to her mom about things maternal.

“Oh yeah, I had a ‘mis’,” the aunt rasps with a wave of her hand (with a ciggie or a stiff drink in it, I imagine). “Everyone has ’em. I went to the doc, and he didn’t believe me, but I told him I knew, because I’d _passed_ something, you know. It looked like a shrimp.”

At which point, by way of illustration, she points her liver-spotted, bejeweled hand to the shrimp dip on the table. And the mom-to-be’s mom casually reaches down and scoops some up on a cracker.

I laughed till I cried, but maybe that’s also because this office doesn’t have much oxygen.