I’m one of the 7.2%
I wrote that previous hoax about 8 months ago. Not on purpose, but my personal life was crap and my professional life was busy. I had few experiences I felt I could divulge, and no time to do it. Well, that's all been reversed. Personal life is coming around and professional life is about to fall apart.
So, howdy!
At 23/6, I was promoted to deputy editor the week before Joe Biden was selected as Barack's VP. That weekend was a little busy (if you recall, the text announcement was sent at 3 AM on Saturday). The next week was the Democratic Convention, with its Clinton drama and Obama speech before Greek columns. That wrapped up on Thursday night, and ten hours later... Sarah Palin. After that, I never had a full day off until after the election. We got the bad news, that Barry Diller's IAC would no longer fund the site after January, a few weeks ago. Our site could not get advertising, and IAC is a public company, and I guess you have to justify everything to shareholders these days.
All of our stuff will be archived at Huffington Post.
Sometime in September, I was contacted by a book agent to write a celebrity memoir. The photographer Dan Dion gave my name to my now-agent. I submitted a few hoaxes as samples. The celebrity and I, both over-40 moms of young boys, hit it off. The book was a go. The previous author had flaked out, wasting months of writing time, so the celeb and I got to work, pounding it out on my nights and weekends in order to finish by the December deadline. Palin jokes by day, comedic memoir by night. I thought my trackpad-hand would fall off. My boyfriend took Kilbaby to Texas for a month so I could immerse myself. 13 weeks later, we turned in an 80,000 word book. It will be published in the fall. I had considered that money to be extra money, for a savings account, but I think that soon we will be living on it.
Scary times to be a middle class American, but you are probably aware of that.
I mostly write about Kilbaby in a private blog, but I can tell you he's huge and he talks. His height and weight are off the charts for his age, while his head circumference is slightly smaller (Oh well, athletes make good money too). He's two years and three months old. When Kilbaby doesn't get his way, he lies face down and cries. No matter where he is. In the drugstore, a Starbucks or the crosswalk on 145th and Edgecomb.
And as I refuse to drop my latte to pick him up, I have to lift this crying, dead weight with one hand. Like any good mom, I will remind him what my options were I found out I was pregnant, "Planned Parenthood was 3 train stops away." But he doesn't care. That ingrate.
Kilbaby also lies to me. He doesn't have the language skills to pull off a technical lie, but he can pretend that he doesn't understand me when I ask for an apology for biting me, and that is a form of lying. And insulting, because all day long, this child is a mockingbird.
"Can you say, 'plane.'"
"PLANE."
"Can you say 'tree.'"
"TWEE."
"Can you say, "sorry?'"
"PLANE."
Kilbaby lies and stalls with the cockiness of a baby conceived from $25,000 worth of fertility treatments. He looks up to the ceiling, over to the walls, and around my body, like he is waiting for a bus that is late. His acting is comically bad. His eyes get wider and he rolls his tongue around his cheeks like a sixty-year old accountant who took an acting class because it was on his bucket list. Then I start laughing. Then he starts laughing, because he has won. Kilbaby already knows how to play me. Bastard.