{"id":5880,"date":"2010-09-12T03:15:42","date_gmt":"2010-09-12T09:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrsellars.com\/mrblog\/?p=5880"},"modified":"2010-09-12T04:00:57","modified_gmt":"2010-09-12T10:00:57","slug":"spit-by-any-other-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/?p=5880","title":{"rendered":"Spit, By Any Other Name\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mrsellars.com\/mrblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/pizza-boxes.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5907\" style=\"margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px;\" title=\"pizza-boxes\" src=\"http:\/\/mrsellars.com\/mrblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/pizza-boxes.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"216\" height=\"212\" \/><\/a>Pizza boxes were piled on the island in the kitchen. They were empty, and what little remnants of the various &#8220;flavors&#8221; of Italian-American dinner pie&#8230; Well&#8230; Lunch and Breakfast Pie for that matter&#8230; But, I slobber as I digress. Fitting I suppose, given the title. But back to the story at hand&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8230;what little remnants of the various &#8220;flavors&#8221; of Italian-American dinner pie that were left had been tossed into a Tupperware container and stuffed into the icebox for later. At the moment, there was still work to be done.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">You see, before I started blogging to keep folks up to date on my whereabouts and nefarious deeds, I had an e-newsletter. While I don&#8217;t regularly send one out any longer, I do use the list for announcements and the like. And, prior to establishing the e-newsletter, I had a good old-fashioned paper newsletter. I even have an 11&#215;17 paper folder in my basement. Anybody know someone interested in buying it?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">There I go, digressing again&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mrsellars.com\/mrblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/page-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-5908\" style=\"border: 2px solid black; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 0px;\" title=\"Microsoft Word - Newsletter 3.DOC\" src=\"http:\/\/mrsellars.com\/mrblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/page-1-231x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"231\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/page-1-231x300.jpg 231w, https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/page-1-791x1024.jpg 791w, https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/page-1.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 231px) 100vw, 231px\" \/><\/a>Let&#8217;s continue&#8230; AND, <em>before<\/em> THAT, my newsletter was on 8.5 x 11 paper, and stuffed into envelopes. So, when you have 2000 plus newsletters to stuff into envelopes in order to send them out to fans and bookstores, <em>and<\/em> you barely have enough money to print the newsletter to begin with, what do you do? Well, you don&#8217;t hire a mailing service, that&#8217;s for sure. You hire your friends. You buy pizza and beer, invite them over, and make them fold for their supper&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Or, in my case, I join them in the folding while E K strolls back and forth, occasionally slapping us with her riding crop and screaming, <em>&#8220;FASTER LACKEYS!&#8221;<\/em> as she makes us ALL work for our supper &#8211; which, of course, is primarily the leftover pizza crust from her plate that she tosses to us as we grovel at her feet.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mrsellars.com\/mrblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/666-percent-evil.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5910\" style=\"border: 2px solid black; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px;\" title=\"666 percent evil\" src=\"http:\/\/mrsellars.com\/mrblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/666-percent-evil.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"274\" height=\"111\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/666-percent-evil.jpg 456w, https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/666-percent-evil-300x121.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 274px) 100vw, 274px\" \/><\/a>Think I&#8217;m kidding? Two words: Evil Redhead.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But anyway&#8230; There we were, &#8220;Mentos&#8221;, The Chunk Man, E K, me, and even the o-spring, sitting around the dining room table with plastic milk crates of <em>newsletters<\/em> and boxes of <em>envelopes <\/em>and<em> rolls of stamps. <\/em>We had ourselves a regular assembly line going.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Chunkster and E K were on folding duty, because they are both insanely meticulous about such. Mentos and I were stuffing the pre-printed envelopes, and I was pulling double duty putting the stamps on them as well. I really didn&#8217;t have much choice. E K kept kicking me under the table.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Anywho, the o-spring was all of about 4 at the time, which meant she was all about helping. For some reason that changes when they hit the tween\/teen years. However, that&#8217;s now and this was then&#8230; So, back then, she was all about helping, and what she really wanted to do was lick the envelopes and seal them.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Okay, all good. She&#8217;s pretty meticulous too, so once she was shown the process, there was no worry about her slobbering on them or anything.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We had been at the project for better than two hours, with only a short break for dinner. Everything was coming together, moving like a well-oiled machine. Then, it happened&#8230; The end of the line started slowing down. By that, I mean the o-spring was no longer sealing envelopes. In fact, she was sitting in her chair with a bizarre look on her face as she smacked her lips.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">My first thought was that she had given herself a paper-cut. I&#8217;ve done the same on envelopes when not paying attention. But there was no apparent blood and she wasn&#8217;t crying. Just seemingly perplexed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">E K turned to her and said, &#8220;Why did you stop? What&#8217;s wrong?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The o-spring smacked her lips a couple of more times, then said without missing a beat, &#8220;I&#8217;m all out of <strong><em>tongue water<\/em><\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Creative descriptions&#8230; I guess that&#8217;s what happens when one of your parents is a writer.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">More to come&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Murv<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You never know what a kid is going to say. Especially if one of the parents is a writer. Observational humor from author M. R. Sellars<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[497,1477,76,5,105,156,7],"tags":[1624,1503,261,1379,2157,2679,3539,8162,8104,2402,300,8149,677,164,3538,8191,1974,2641,480,8114,1523,336,117,20,1997,452,901,2259,785],"class_list":["post-5880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evil-redhead","category-friends-and-family","category-humor-life","category-life","category-nostalgia-life","category-parenthood","category-writing","tag-basement","tag-beat","tag-beer","tag-blog","tag-blood","tag-bookstores","tag-breakfast-pie","tag-e-k","tag-ek","tag-end","tag-evil","tag-evil-redhead","tag-fans","tag-friends","tag-italian-american","tag-kitchen","tag-lackey","tag-list","tag-money","tag-newsletter","tag-paper","tag-parents","tag-pie","tag-pizza","tag-story","tag-time","tag-tupperware","tag-work","tag-writer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brainpanleakage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}