Kramerica Industries, how may we help you?

Today I called to talk to my husband who was off work for Martin Luther King Day (which I point out that health care professionals DO NOT get to celebrate). This is how he answered the phone without so much as a HELLO.

Joe: "I'm sorry, she's in a meeting with a grilled cheese and Doritos and she can't be disturbed."

When he's home he considers himself our four year old's personal assistant. Probably because he spends his entire day personally assisting her. I have to admit, it always cracks me up when he does it. But there's more you should know about our house.

We have this whole corporate weirdness thing that we do at our house. Everyone pretends they have a secretary, including my son's fish...who by the way (the fish, not my son) are planning on world domination. And who wouldn't need a secretary if they had that on their plate?

I like to answer the phone when the boys call and when they say "Mom?", I like to reply "I'm sorry, she's not available right now, would you like to leave a message?". When they say "Okay...Mom...really.", I like to ask "And your name again?" or "I'm sorry, did you have an appointment? And the number where you can be reached?" My 15 year old said to me today "What, do you have a little notebook where you write all this stuff down so that you can torture us with it later?". Now this is the same kid who's fish are going to take over the world. Let's talk about that for a moment...He's got this GINORMOUS (J-EYE-NOR-MOS) tank of fish that live in his room. He's had these fish forever and they've taken on this whole "entity" of their own. He'll walk into the living room where I'm lying on the sofa and say "The fish will see you now." and turn around and walk out. I guess you have to be there. The fish, in their effort to obtain world domination (I'll probably get a call from Homeland Security about this), also like to order things. I left an invoice on my son's door last week for 10 drums of Miracle Whip and 240 balls of kite string that the fish had ordered (not really...play along with me). My son likes to tell me that they've ordered 55 gallon drums of pudding, 80 pairs of ice skates and sometimes some blasting caps among other things on their list. It just cracks the two of us up. We have this whole fish "thing" going that we are ENDLESSLY amused by. I like to call him and ask "Have you seen them?" and he'll not even miss a BEAT and say that they're filming a commercial in Denmark about Tang or something.

And so it goes at our house. We're simple people...easily amused with pretending that we're running our own company and torturing each other by not letting each other talk to who ever is in charge.

Oh...and the fish will see you now.