The way this was achieved was riveting in itself, but let’s hold our collective horses for a moment. If your fiancé recommended that you enter your wedding hall like some sort of phantasmagoric celestial fireball, your MILDEST reply might be something like,”Oh, honey, wouldn’t that be silly?
Not Zilla. She was enraptured with the idea that her march down the aisle could be so theatrical. So. After the attendants had all made their respective ways to the altar and were turned and waiting for the bride, the sanctuary doors closed. Zilla swished into place behind them, and one of the 7 foot tall nephews crouched behind her, holding Boss’ 25 million candlepower flashlight. (Just so you know, this thing is ridiculously bright. Long before Bridezilla was a blip on the radar, Boss had demonstrated it to Dh and me outside our offices. It’s got “retinal damage” warnings and everything, and I have no idea WHY he bought it except for being able to say he has the biggest flashlight around. Boss is just like that. )
At the appointed moment, the sanctuary doors swung wide as nephew tripped the switch on the flashlight. There stood Bridezilla in the doorway, surrounded by a dazzling flood of blinding candlepower. The effect was potent, and we heard lots of shocked gasps , whether from the sensational display or the retinal damage, we might not ever know until the lawsuits start rolling in.
You might already be aware that when she and Boss returned from their honeymoon, Bridezilla had a position awaiting her at our place of business. I had dismissed Boss’ sister’s skepticism about whether or not she would fit in by chalking up Sis’ doubt to a tad bit of apprehension about the prospect of having to divide her already limited work hours with yet another employee. Now I realize that my perceptive colleague had already comprehended what would take me yet awhile longer to realize. Pregzilla might never have had any intention of working in our office at ALL, but she CERTAINLY wasn’t willing to just morph into the role that Boss wanted her to fill.
No way. I have wondered if her initial attraction to Boss was the straw man she built of him. She moved in circles where there was a lot of buzz about Boss. Boss was doing this, boss was going here. Boss was speaking there, Boss was planning that. Boss knows this person, Boss is good friends with that person. Boss sounded glamorous and exciting. Add to that the fact that there were several young ladies in her acquaintance who had significant crushes on Boss , and I have the impression that Bridezilla may have fallen in love with the IDEA of Boss long before she was introduced to the individual. I’m just saying.
The first week that the newlyweds were back in town, I took a little time off from the office. You know, to let Bridezilla settle in to her new job , with Boss training her , rather than some know-it-all has-been whom she might have, at some misguided time, half-suspected of having romantic designs on her husband. (And, just in case you’ve forgotten, gag. ) I wasn’t feeling unfriendly toward her, in fact, despite the Bridezilla that had emerged during the wedding preparations, I had adopted a pretty compassionate attitude toward this young wife who I knew had not fully realized what she’d just stepped into.
My desk was located just outside the window of Boss’ office. If he ever actually USED his office, which he did only rarely, Boss could stare at the back of my head as I worked at my computer. Not that he ever engaged in that practice, but as a result of the feasibility, I considered that location to be the PERFECT one for his new wife. And an olive branch of peace from me, who didn’t want to even have the INTIMATION that Boss could potentially be staring at the back of my head. I cleared out my drawers, polished up the desk, set up a new computer for her, and even stocked her up with her own array of office tools in her favorite color. I penned a sincere and congenial “Welcome Home” note and made myself scarce for a few days.
When I stopped in mid-week for my paycheck, I didn’t find Bridezilla or Boss. What I DID find was an economy canister of Clorox wipes and two cans of Lysol reposing on my old desk. The desk organizer and file trays I had carefully cleaned and arranged for Zilla were absent. When I carried something to the kitchen later, I found the file trays dumped unceremoniously in the sink, and the desk organizer stuffed in the trash. The office tools I’d set her up with were missing altogether, and I never have set eyes on them again. I’d guess if the computer at her workstation were in any way disposable, it would have departed as well.
Seems Zilla is a germ-o-phobe. Immediately after the announcement of her ovulation, she caught a really nasty cold. Which, to me, just reinforced the reliability of my pregnancy prediction, because in my experience, early pregnancy is often accompanied by a suppressed immune system. To keep the mother’s body from attacking the new baby as a foreign object. Yeah. So I’m thinking, “See, I told you so. She’s knocked up,” while Bride-now-Pregzilla is thinking, “I’ll bet ELLEN is the pathogenic minefield who is responsible for this awful cold. I must destroy everything she’s ever touched.” Or something like that.
Now, to be fair, just a few weeks before, after we had buttoned up our last big community event, which occurred the day after the shower with the impromptu Japanese guests, Boss’ sis wasn’t feeling well. Like really bad. So she stopped by the hospital to get stuff checked out, and it turned out she had MRSA, which is not funny at all. Sis ended up staying in the hospital almost the whole next week and was released practically JUST in time to be able to attend the wedding. So maybe MY microbes weren’t the only bugs Zilla was wigging out about. But, as has been reinforced repeatedly since then, Pregzilla IS a germ-o-phobe, and she’s BIG on decontamination. Scorched earth.
Dh keeps telling me I should pay Pregzilla a visit in her home, which I haven’t done for a few months. Given the delicate circumstances, most recently the scoop that she virtuously ripped up an entire roomful of carpeting in tribute to a kamikaze lamp bulb, I’m not sure I want to risk taxing Boss’ budget (or benefactors) further by inflicting my non-sterile self into their prophylactic abode.
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