Chapter 4 - The Courtship of BPZilla

After not having time to post for several days (work gets in the way of life sometimes, doesn't it?) I decided to change the order of disclosure a bit:

I know I promised (over a week ago) a synopsis of the wedding ceremony itself, but I realized that you really haven’t gotten a clear picture of the courtship/engagement yet, and it would get my knickers in a twist to go all out of chronological order like that.

Boss, as I think I’ve mentioned, is a little eccentric. And sometimes paranoid. Andheseesvisionsandhearsvoicesthereihavesaidit. And he has great faith that those visions and voices come from above. Sometimes, I tend to agree, weird though it may seem. Other times……. I’m pretty sure they have another point of origination. I’m just saying.

Like the whole marriage thing. He’s had quite a number of girlfriends over the years, and has carried with thinly veiled pride the idea that he’s a chick magnet. In some respects, I guess it’s true. He’s very emotional and passionate about his work, and let’s face it, passion is attractive. So over time, he’s garnered maybe more than his share of female attention. Mind-bogglingly YOUNG female attention.

Not that long ago, he was pretty much head over heels about a 21 year old girl. He met her on vacation. I saw pictures. She was a cute little blonde thing, who I noticed right off was dressed rather skimpily in the emailed pic I saw. He was thinking she was IT. After hearing that he was spending lots of time corresponding with her, and they were engaging in reciprocal thinking that each other was just the bees’ knees, I advised him to ask her dad for permission to have a relationship with her. Boss and Blondie’s dad had become pretty amiable during Boss’ vacation, so I thought it was a good plan. And I also suspected that her dad was going to think, “You creep, you’re nearly as old as I am! Keep your skanky hands OFF my untouched flower of a daughter.” Which is apparently pretty much what he DID think, although he used a much more gentle tack in actually breaking the news to Boss.

Interestingly, Boss never did ask me for romance advice again.

So then, Boss experienced a romantic dry spell, during which he vowed to not share any further details with anyone besides his closest confidantes, of which I am not one. Especially not after the advice that tanked his romance with Blondie. So, when B/PZilla showed up, all of us at the office kinda got blindsided. But not THAT blindsided, because we knew Boss must be spending a little extra time behind the scenes SOMEWHERE.

In fact, Dh and I went to the gas station once (ironically, right across the street from the Arby’s where my van magically appeared on the night of the bridal shower. I think it’s the anti-Bermuda Triangle, where things mysteriously appear instead of disappear…) and there was Boss’ vehicle parked in the corner of the parking lot. Okay, this gas station is like 15 miles away from anyplace he normally goes, and he had no appointments in this direction of which I was aware. Not that I am aware of EVERYTHING, but I mean, I see the guy’s Outlook schedule several times per day, so I’m pretty hip to what’s up.

We thought, okay, what are the chances we’d run into Boss HERE? Too weird. We drive up behind him and he SPRINGS forth from the vehicle. Glad to see us! Thrilled!!! Oh, and he’s here because Somegirlwehaveneverheardmentionedbefore from a town we know the EXACT location of (and it’s 25 miles away) texted him and told him the gas prices were cheap here. Uh huh. So he came on down to top off his tank. That was the most economical thing we’d ever heard. It almost brought tears to our eyes. Each of them had burned over a gallon of gas travelling to save $0.03 per gallon on a fill-up they didn’t even need. How fiscally brilliant. And by the way, the pumps are over THERE.

And that was our first introduction to BPZilla. (Hey, it would have been cool actually, for the sake of the story, if it HAD been a bP station where we first met her, but alas, the bP is kitty-cornered across the street. This was a Speedway.)


So, we knew something was up. We just weren’t sure what. Or how long it would take, though we suspected, knowing Boss, that time was of the essence. Within a month, I got an early morning giddy phone call from Boss, letting me know that he’d asked the question the night before, and she’d answered in the affirmative. Wow. Just wow. Oh, and congratulations!!!! …….I think?

I mean, they hardly KNEW each other. She is a cutie, and very photogenic; has the right color eyes. Yeah, eye color mattered, something about one of those dreams. And they say she can sing like an angel, although she’s never done so in my earshot, so I can’t promise. Oh, and she can type 80 words per minute. I know this random piece of secretarial trivia because I hear it quite often. The first time I got wind of this amazing prowess was when Bzilla walked in to a meeting I was having with Boss, just days before the engagement took place:

She breezed into our building, swung wide the closed doors of our conference room and sauntered right over to the table where boss and I were bent over some sensitive financial documents. She got cozy by plopping herself in between us, which seemed odd then, and seems even ODDER now. (In hindsight, I believe she was vexed that I might have a “thing” for my boss. Which is wrong on so many levels. And, furthermore, gag! )

So, anyway, Pre-betrothalzilla’s sitting there after having totally disrupted our pretty dang important meeting. We can’t continue with her in the room, because we have been discussing confidential material. But Boss is visibly flattered that she’s there, and doesn’t ask her to wait elsewhere. Closed-door meeting over, and he unaccountably launches into an absurd mock INTERVIEW of this chickiepoo, like it's all been prearranged. And that’s when she reveals that she can type 80 words per minute. Remarkable. And it also comes to light that she knows absolutely NOTHING about anything else that could be even remotely useful in our business. But certainly she’s “WILLING TO LEARN,” which causes Boss to nearly melt out of his chair. I can tell he thinks she’s the perfect solution for – well, you name it, every workplace struggle-- past, present or future.

Now, I’m no office skills expert, but I think you have to do some sort of routine implementation to maintain that 80 wpm pace. You know, use it or lose it? Pregzilla has worked in retail for the last few years, in sales, and not as an administrative assistant. She doesn’t own a computer, doesn’t even have access to a keyboard. And not to be sour grapes, but no one at work has ever asked ME how fast I can type. I’m no slouch, but since I’m not husband-hunting, and since I don’t advertise the wpm thing EVERY time I open my mouth, it must not count. (But I kid you not, the first time she met our new vice president a couple weeks ago, the 80 wpm public notice came out of her mouth in the first breath. WHY?????) As near as I can figure, when I take into account all the data entry she’s done for our business in the nearly eight months since the nuptials, she must have logged a whopping 1.2 minutes. False advertising, if you ask me. We should sue.

So after the announcement, Boss’ whole family, with whom I’m well acquainted, is struggling to get their minds around this impending doom. I mean wedding. Boss mentions that it won’t be a long engagement. It’s early fall, so we’re thinking a Christmas wedding might be in the works, a little over two months away, and I’m hopeful that it will be long enough for either of them to realize, if need be, that this is a MAJOR error in judgment.

You might be wondering about Bzilla’s family. I do know that her parents were positively beside themselves, as you might imagine, at the very thought of their GenX princess marrying this peculiar Baby Boomer, who was doubtlessly in the throes of mid-life crisis. I don’t know exactly what transpired among them, but Bzill’s dad did NOT accompany her down the aisle, and whenever her folks were mentioned, there were snappish comments by Bridezilla, and sighing and head-shaking by Boss, so I got the inkling it wasn’t a subject up for discussion.

In a couple of days, Boss shared the wedding date with his siblings and the office staff. Probably should have mentioned this date to the BRIDE first, particularly given the fact that the date is merely one and a half WEEKS away. I believe I have mentioned that Boss is accustomed to making his own decisions and working on his own timetable? He also claimed spiritual motivation for such an expedient ceremony. But I have always had some degree of confidence that the big rush wasn’t so much the fire of the Spirit as it was the fire in his pants. Again, I’m just saying.

At any rate, Boss has got the whole thing planned down to the sheet music before Bridezilla ever gets a chance to put her foot down. Another thing you learn quickly about Boss: not a lot of people are willing to stand up to him, including Bzilla, at least at first. As for me, I pick my battles, but I ain’t skeered. I finally sat Boss down and told him exactly what I thought about the whole mess – well, not about the fire-in-the-pants thing, but at least about the date of the wedding. Come to think of it, I believe I actually DID ask, “Where’s the fire?” although I really didn't want to KNOW, despite my theory. What I communicated was that Bzilla had probably always had at least SOME dreams of her wedding being a certain way, and that if he rushed it SO quickly, he’d cheat her out of the experience, not to mention it would look cheap and chintzy in front of the tons of people who would attend. It worked faintly, and he postponed it. A week. Hey, it was something, right?

Oh, and one caveat about the planning – while boss often plans to the nth degree, he often fails to put those plans into motion. So, surprise!!! With 4 days left until the wedding, he and Bzilla go to pick out the wedding dress, maid of honor gown and tuxes. At T-3 days, he helps his bride move all her worldly goods to his residence and discovers, for the first time, that she comes with a free cat. The happy couple decides to print invitations, but scrap the idea with two days to go because #1- no time to mail, and #2-the wedding location falls through at the last moment. On the morning before the wedding, they still aren’t sure of the venue, but get the go-ahead in time for Bridezilla to throw a tantrum about the decorations. The tuxes arrive via UPS on Friday afternoon, however another package has leaked in the truck and the whole shipping box is sopping. The suits are dry, nonetheless. Boss’ sister tries, on the night before the wedding, to print out a program for the ceremony, but runs out of both printer ink and time. Trust me, it was just as well. She didn’t have time to get anyone to proofread her creation. Wedding planners and English teachers have nightmares about programs like that. The “Maid of Onher” wouldn’t have appreciated it either.