I Wish I Was A Gossip Girl

Because if I was a Gossip Girl, I wouldn't have to deal with this:

"What's the meaning of this?" you ask. "A copy of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF OSCAR WILDE sitting in front of a toilet? Have you gone mad?"

You see, Dear Readers, in the real world, there is the Upper East Side you see on Gossip Girl--that's the part that stretches east of Central Park from Fifth Avenue to Park Avenue--sleek, fashionable, appropriate, moneyed.

And then there's the other Upper East Side--the one that stretches east from Lexington to York. Frumpy, dumpy, and cheap. The Upper East Side in which old ladies hold up the line at Walgreens because they insist on filling out rainchecks for toilet paper and Spam.

That, my dears, is the Upper East Side in which I live.

They don't make TV shows about us. True Gossip Girls don't venture this far east.

In the world of Gossip Girl, that copy of Oscar Wilde would be perched on a dark wooden bookcase in a grand library, probably nestled next to many rare, expensive first editions of books from all over the world.

But in my apartment, the only first edition we have is one of Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys that someone gave to spiceboy many years ago. And that copy of Oscar Wilde? It's on roach duty. That's right. I keep it within easy reach, as it's easily the thickest book we have, and it comes in quite handy when I need to kill a cockroach in a pinch.

Now. Take a Wilde guess what I found when I opened the bathroom door this morning.

Yep.

That's right.

A big ol' cockroach.

So I dropped the book on it.

And since I'm too chicken to lift up the book and confront the squashed roach carcass, and since, unlike the characters on Gossip Girl, I don't have a maid or a housekeeper, and since my husband--the lovely and talented spiceboy--is out of town, there's no one brave enough to clean up the roach carcass for me.

Which means I've been stepping over that copy of Oscar Wilde every blessed time I have to pee.

Or brush my teeth.

Or shower.

And I will continue to step over the book until Tuesday, when spiceboy returns home to Manhattan, sighs heavily at my hopelessness, and cleans up the carcass for me.

See how glamorous my life is?