I've had this happen to me. Once with my mom, once with my dad. I do not blame this child one bit, not one bit. And I don't mean that in a funny way, because it was incredibly upsetting at the time. And I'm still totally creeped out by it.

A bold peasantry,

No SHIT. That's exactly what I was thinking.

Oh, man, that does sound good.

No, the worst thing you can be is a smoker. Sites like Jezebel don't permit body-snarking; when is the last time you saw or heard of a place that won't allow comments about those dirty nasty smokers?

Yes. I smoke; I love to smoke. But I don't try to pretend I'm not taking a health risk every time I light up.

I am so sorry to hear about your brother's health. I'll be keeping you and him in my thoughts/prayers.

My hair never looks better than it does then.

Ha! Yes.

Ditto, exactly. The yearly vow renewal always felt more like an ego stroke than anything else.

Ditto. I was surprised to see it called "teabagging," since there was no insertion-into-mouth.

Yes, this.

Because publishing is a slow business. Because hundreds of different boilerplates exist according to agent/agency and so the contract department has to track down the correct one. Because the boilerplate isn't printed as-is and mailed off to be signed but is then negotiated further, and that can take a month or two…

If memory serves, which I believe it does, she had a two-book deal with Kensington. The first book was a compendium of her blog posts, basically, and the second was supposed to be new stuff. She agreed to the deal through her agent.

See my other response in this thread. :-) My husband isn't my employee. And especially not when I might not have been able to do this if he hadn't been the sole financial support for the family when I first started; granted I quit working outside the home to be a housewife and mother and not because I just wanted to…

Exactly.

Yeah, but to essentially just fire him from a business he was instrumental in building, was a large part of, and supported her while she built, is shitty.

Thank you for clarifying/figuring that out! I was so confused! :-)

Somehow I think the fact that she apparently told him to start looking for another job tells us everything we need to know about why they split.

I only heard of them because she got a publishing deal and then fucked it up by acting like a spoiled entitled moron.