Straight No Chaser

Grim Is a Troublemaker

and how.

1. "describe to me the ideal funeral for yourself."

cemeteries take up too much precious land space. i want to be cremated and have my ashes scattered in rock creek park, at the end closest to the kennedy center. so, closed casket, or however they do that. and i want everyone i know to be there, and is there any way for them not to be sad?

i guess if it's ideal. anyway, nobody is sad, and there are ferns and ficuses and greenery all around, and my mom is there (because ideally, she would have outlived me) as is the rest of my family, and chad and my husband are greeting people with warm smiles and handshakes, not because everyone is happy i'm dead but because they're all excited to have the opportunity to share a celebration of my life. my son makes all the arrangements with the funeral director, and my daughter gives a reading of my favorite poem. everyone says something nice about me and i smile down from heaven.

2. "what do you think ernie would say if he knew the truth about us?"

you mean that we got married in vegas over the summer but that you brought me back to school to finish getting my degree, and that i am currently five months pregnant and anxious to start our new lives together, living solely for your bimonthly van trips to atlanta, throughout each of which we spend the weekend drowning our long-distance sorrows in tequila and playing background calypso music to simulate sex on the beach?

don't know what he'd say. definitely nothing good. sugarlump.

3. "would you [if someday something horrible happens, like me getting back together with stacy (who txt'd me for the first time ever yesterday) and losing my lust for life and foolishly asking stacy to fly off to vegas for an impromptu wedding, though i knew the whole time i was not in love with her but i just wanted to end things and get on with my life of sitting on a couch eating potato chips with a greasy remote in my hand, and the only thing that would stop me from going through with such a foolish notion would be if you agree to] marry me?"

i am truly sorry, but i will not marry a smoker.

aside from that...

well. marry you to save you from stacy and potato chips? what brighter future could i imagine???

(this of course undermines the whole "we're already married" thing established in the last answer, but i think it's safe to say this is the least honest i've been overall, question-answering-wise, since this whole exercise began. thank you for the laugh.)