Drop Dead Laughing

What books are you looking forward to reading next? My target is: Linda Howard's DROP DEAD GORGEOUS. I loved To Die For. I know many romance readers resist first person books like the plague (still don't get why this is so, although I totally agree about missing the hero's POV) but To Die For works very well in this format. I don't know whether I would love Blair, the cheerleader, as much if she was written in third person. Anyway, I can't wait to see how she's going to drive Wyatt nuts with all the wedding plans.

I also love Linda Howard's titles. Sigh.

I enjoyed To Die For because the situations in the story, as seen through Blair's eyes, were very similar to my life. I mean, just yesterday alone, I was wondering, while listening to one of the guys droning on and on, where on earth would you find three roofers together, one who seemed to know everything about different cultures from the History or Geography chanel (I don't know which one he watches, only that he likes to tell me everything he'd learned the night before), one who was learning Spanish and could sing Russian lullabyes, and one who was a published romance author?

The first guy is also very deaf and a bit...on the slow side, so both RB and I practically spend the whole day sounding like we're mad at him, yelling at the top of our voices and repeating ourselves several times. He's also in love with his boat and he spends much of the day, in between cultural lessons, talking about what he did to the boat the day before. Unfortunately, he really doesn't know what he's doing, so he ends up telling us about his "adventures," like the time when he accidentally put the motor on backwards and he had to steer left to go right, and vice versa. Or, as RB suggested, he could have steered the right way if he faced backwards. To top it off, this dude's sort of under his old lady's thumb and she HATES this boat, which he named after her.

Then I have RB who is now ordering food in Spanish and confusing the hell out of the Shit and Grits waitresses. He can also tell time now, so he bought himself a watch the other day. Only, he bought a ladies' watch by mistake and the strap was a wee bit too tight. So now he booms out in broken Spanish, "According to my SMALL ladies' watch, it's (whatever the time is)." Let's not forget his forays into the computer world now too. This week, he was telling me how disappointed he was in the information highway. This is from the dude who hasn't touched a computer since he blew up his daughter's hard drive ten years ago. If I roll my eyes any more, they would be stuck to my brain.

Meanwhile, I have to deal with crapenters who don't speak English who are running around pretending they could piece a house together. These crapenters come in crews of 40-50 men and they disappear like a bunch of locusts every other month or so when they realize they really, really, really need to fix the problems out of their pocket. So, we wait for the next bunch of locusts. Rewind tape. Rewatch adventure.

Then there is the joy of meeting with the inspectors who have to deal with said crapenters' work. Of course they aren't going to be too happy with everyone else's because they are getting paranoid that everyone is not listening to them.

Enter RB with his Spanish. Explaining about laying and nailing patterns. I'm on the next roof listening to the two men yelling at each other. I'm thinking, any moment now, ANY MOMENT, RB is going to bust a fuse and all hell's going to let loose. I continue laying shingles, trying to listen to the conversation on the OTHER roof while MY DEAF ROOFER is loudly yapping away about some episode on the History Channel in which they put some poor American in the Malaysian forest to live with some tribesmen... "and did you have a bathroom that looked like that when you lived there, Jenn, huh, huh, Jenn?" And I was yelling back, "No, we walked around naked and just shit wherever we wanted, Jim!" not because I was mad, but because Jim was deaf and couldn't hear, so now the whole world thinks I'm telling everyone we "walked around naked and shit wherever we wanted."

The man RB was yelling to must have heard me and looked in my direction. And then I heard, right from across the roof, "Hey, isn't she the romance novelist?" Ooooh, the romance novelist card was out. I looked over and waved. The guy waved back. "I read about you in the paper! I used to inspect the roofs in Deland. Fifteen years ago. Do you remember me?"

"Oh yes," I said. Now he thinks I walk around naked and shit wherever I wanted to. Oh well.

Next to me, Jim was saying, "What did he say? What did he say? Did he pass the roof? Is he screaming at you? What is he mad about?"

"No one is mad at anybody," I yelled back.

"Then why are y'all yelling?"

"Because you are deaf!!!!!!!!!!"

"But he's not talking to me."

Sigh.

I can go on and on and tell you the rest of the day, but you don't really want to die laughing, do you?

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