And Now for Something Completely Different...

I just stared at my computer for almost 20 minutes, realizing that it had been a week since I last posted and trying to think about what I could write.

Really, nothing much is going on.

So, I thought, I'll write about that--give you lots of lists of all the Netflix I've been watching, or how I've cried at several holiday episodes this week, or that the St. Jude's Children's Hospital commercials with Jennifer Aniston and Morgan Freeman in them always make me cry. Or how I didn't really leave my bed for two days this week, partly because I've been fighting a cold and partly because I've been watching a steady stream of episodes of Say Yes to the Dress.

Ahem.

Instead, I'm going to tell you about the six hours of work a week I'm actually doing.

When I graduated, all I wanted was for RM to hire me as her personal assistant, and in October, that's precisely what she asked me to do.

Dude, now, I have keys to her apartment. And for those of you who know her, you realize that this is like...having the keys to Oprah's house. (And no, it's not because she's black.)

It's like I get to go to a celebrity's house every week.

Mostly, of course, what I'm doing, is organizing her life. She has piles of paper that haven't been looked at since she moved to Boston in 2001. (True story, she taught her first class on 9/11.) So I have spent the last six weeks, rifling through papers, filing them in corresponding folders and making piles of shit that she has to go through eventually.

Of course, the biggest pile is full of things I have no idea what to do with.

Sometimes, I sit in the office chair, she sits on the couch, and we just go through mail. Marking what is priority, what can be thrown out (four bags full, so far) and what she can't identify. I tease her by saying that if she can't tell what something is in 15 seconds, we're throwing it out.

We talk about men a lot, swap stories of getting catcalled on the street, or tell tales about our respective crazy families.

Last week, we purchased her a large wooden filing cabinet, so these piles of paper could live somewhere, so this week, I'm getting paid to put furniture together. HA! (I'm really good at putting furniture together. All that training with IKEA pieces has paid off.)

The first couple of days I worked with her, I said that we needed to make lists of things we "must do," "should do," and "wanted to do" in the time I'd be helping her out.

Doctors' appointments and important phone calls to be made went on the first list.

Organizing files and books and clothes went on the second.

The third, she had to think about, eventually deciding that things she "wanted to do" are join Facebook and create an online dating profile.

Yes, she is that awesome.