Chapter 16 – Pregzilla: The More Things Change…

(Yeah, I know the baby's here. But this was already queued up, so I finished it. )

“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” right? You’ve heard the old adage. Likewise, I’ve noticed that certain deficient elements of Boss’ and Zilla’s character appear as recurrent themes in our stories. Like obliviousness, entitlement, and lack of preparation.

You’ll recall that soon after Zilla and Boss returned from their honeymoon, as Zilla crammed her first and last day of employment with our organization into a single 10-day period, our heroine was feeling increasingly ill. Every few days was punctuated with a trip to an immediate care facility or the local emergency room, depending on the perceived severity of Zilla’s symptoms.


She really WAS feeling puny, I’ll grant her that. First her UTI, which caused intense pelvic pain and later morphed into a mild kidney infection. Then she had a little stomach bug, followed by the steady development of a head cold. On the heels of their return home, she had the notorious ovulation experience, after which the aforementioned cold settled in her chest and created a nasty, lingering cough. And THEN, she began to suffer from some hauntingly familiar (to ME) flu-like symptoms that compounded her misery. I guessed she was pregnant even before she burst through the front door of our office one evening and made a nauseous beeline for the porcelain bowl in the ladies’ room.


Zilla was convinced she would surely die of her mysterious and debilitating ailment. I knew that my pulling her aside and informing her that I suspected she was PREGNANT would probably not end well, so I kept my yap shut. Especially after Zilla’s mass email debacle, and the account password shut-out, and the double-paid bills muddle. Zilla would probably think I was trying to exact some sort of revenge for making a disaster of my nice organized office procedures. Besides, I knew she’d eventually figure out her delicate condition on her own.


After a fair number of unsatisfying clinic and ER visits, Zilla and Boss took matters into their own hands. They completely forsook modern medicine and had enlisted Boss’ favorite alternative homeopathic/naturopathic/herbal guru to guide Zilla through a lemon juice fast, charcoal cleanse and super vitamin bulk-up as a last gasp effort to rid her body of whatever ghastly and insidious germs had invaded her system.


All became strangely quiet on the office front. The desk that Zilla had meticulously sanitized sat empty, its array of undisturbed disinfecting products a tacit reminder that surface underneath was falling victim to the degeneration of time and unsterile air particles, and that her careful efforts had been essentially futile. She never came back to the office as a staff member. We kept her desk empty for a while out of deference to her, but it was for naught. Boss was frequently absent, pressed into service as Zilla’s nurse.


In the meantime, the ever-active Boss and his family had been amassing a list of key associates and acquaintances who had curiously slipped through the cracks of being issued an invitation to the wedding. As the wedding plans had been going forward, there were about a BAZILLION people whom we staff knew Boss would want to witness the ceremony. Since there was no time for formal invitations, they all had to be notified via phone or email, or in person. Boss, being the control-freak micromanager that he is, wanted the honor of making all these notifications PERSONALLY. Boss gets a real charge out of shock value, and he wanted to hear or see the stunned reaction HIMSELF as each listener learned that Boss was getting married in TWO WEEKS to a stranger they’d never laid eyes on.


It quite frankly became somewhat of an uncomfortable situation for our staff in the weeks preceding the wedding. We’d been asked by Boss not to spread the news ourselves, so whenever we’d get a call, we couldn’t make any notifications beyond, “Hey, have you talked to Boss lately? I think you oughta talk to Boss.” There were literally THOUSANDS of people who needed to learn this matrimonial news to prevent hurt feelings, but our hands were tied.


So, do the math. Two weeks and change to prepare for the wedding. Even though Boss talks on the phone several hours per day, he had quite a few details to attend to, plus a time-consuming major event to prepare for which was totally unrelated to the speedily approaching ceremony. When Boss talks on the phone, he typically doesn’t get right to the point, and as a result spends at least 15-20 minutes on each call, sometimes more. So even if he was able to reach 10 or 12 new people per day with the blessed news, he was still going to fall far short of the thousands he had intended. And that’s just what happened.


As near the ceremony as the very afternoon of, Boss was calling me asking, “Did you tell Yoohoo and Yahoo and Yayhoo? How about Skeezix? Could you give them a call and let them know?” Okay Dude, your wedding is in less than two hours. How tacky is that, for your office assistant to extend an emergency telephone wedding invitation to a person who has erroneously harbored the thought that they might be your close buddy? Fine tribute to friendship there, old chum. Yessiree.


Bottom line, although the attendance was quite remarkable for a slap-dash affair, it wasn’t even CLOSE to what MIGHT have been the turnout if there had been time for a REAL engagement period that included LEGITIMATE wedding planning. Of course, lack of invited guests created one other lamentable result: a shortage of wedding gifts. Now, the table at the venue was piled high, don’t get me wrong. But Boss didn’t turn nearly the cash profit he was expecting on the wedding. He seemed rather bewildered when he told me that he and Zilla basically broke even on their honeymoon. That’s presumably not ALL they broke , but I go off the point.


Our usual customary business at the office valiantly carried on. A little less than one month after the wedding, our newly resurrected email list got a heartfelt summons to an “evening of celebration.” At the top of the newsletter was a brief agenda of the evening’s festivities, which were to include food, music and a discussion of upcoming events and opportunities for giving in support of them.


I had heard a little discussion about a party, but had no idea the newsletter was being sent, or even that a firm date had been set, until the email surreptitiously showed up in my inbox at home. I’d been home for a couple of days with a sick child.


There was an odd title at the top of the email. I recognized it as what was to be the evening’s “theme”. Unveiled, Restored, United. Nobody ever DID figure out exactly what that meant, by the way, and it wasn’t explained at the event. I’m sure Boss intended to enlighten us, but he got off on a tangent that night, and the audience was left hanging…


Anyway, as I scrolled to the bottom half of that email page, I was appalled, and wondered WHO had been given the go-ahead to send this dispatch. There was a HUGE wedding picture of Zilla splayed over Boss’ shoulder with the caption: “Please also join us in celebrating the marriage of (Boss and Bridezilla). We look forward to sharing the evening with you. God Bless!” I knew that Boss’ family had shared his bafflement that there wasn’t a bigger monetary take on the wedding day, so I guessed that one of them had volunteered to help with the event email and slid in the part about celebrating the marriage without the knowledge of the newlyweds, who would surely be aghast at the implication that they were having a second reception in the same locale where their wedding had taken place a few weeks prior.


Turned out I was TOTALLY off base. The couple had indeed cooked this up THEMSELVES. Boss and Zilla had been collectively thinking of a way to allow all those inadvertently uniformed potential wedding guests a second chance to demonstrate, in a tangible way, their delight about the union. Cha-ching. Their consensus was that this little email addendum was a very polished and subtle way to suggest that it wasn’t too late to endow their new household with a wedding gift. In addition to our elist, copies of this invitation were posted on the doors of our corporate offices, and horror of horrors, a press release was even sent to the local paper. To prove that the event was a BIG deal, it had an RSVP deadline.


As I said, I was appalled by the boorishness. Obviously others were as well. By the evening of the event, two weeks later, I think there were only about 30 RSVPs instead of the hundreds Boss expected. A large chunk of those coming were Boss’ family members, with the remainder being made up of a smattering of supporters and other folks whose curiosity had gotten the best of them , along with some of my family, and a few stragglers. There are ALWAYS a few stragglers.


By the night of the affair, I had come down with the same virus that had afflicted my kids a couple of weeks earlier, so sadly I couldn’t go. DH had to keep me up to speed via text message that night.


A GIFT TABLE set up in the banquet room. With a money basket. Gag. Both nearly empty. Gag. Stouffer’s lasagnas, bagged salad, bread sticks and brownies on the menu. Gag. The standard pizza-alternative meal that everyone in our organization hates, but that no one dares to disparage, because Boss thinks it’s glorious. There was a little Kum-bay-yah-esque group singing, followed with a set by a ROCKING band and then some kind of disjointed inspirational address delivered by Boss. Even DH, who knows Boss well, was surprised at his total lack of focus. The expository texts from DH were comical. Boss’ train of thought had utterly jumped the tracks. At the very end of the evening, DH sent one last message: “(Boss) just made an announcement. His bride is with child.” Oh, boy. Here we go.

Monday at the office, I congratulated Boss in person. “Were you surprised?” he prodded.

“I already knew, actually.” I was immediately sorry I said that, for he seemed a little deflated.

“When did you find out?” He must have thought one of his siblings let the secret slip.

“Oh, about two weeks ago.”

Obviously puzzled, Boss exclaimed, “Two WEEKS; but Zilla and I just found out a couple of days ago!”

“I know,” I said, as I shrugged, smiled compassionately, turned on my heel and walked out of his office.