Are you Buck? No. I’m Wendy, his wife. This is me:
What’s up with that baseball cap? It’s the Virgin de Guadalupe holding Jesus. I have several religious baseball caps. El Paso’s the best place to get them. My next one will be a black baby Jesus baseball cap.
Are you religious? No, I’m just a collector. I used to collect world globes from old school classrooms but they were big and it got too unwieldy, so I gave them all away. I think Bob has one.
What is your blog about? Mostly it’s about Buck; life with Buck, Buck’s life, etc. This is Buck:
And I suppose you’ll tell me Buck collects bathrobes. He does. He has several bathrobes: his morning robe (pictured), his work robe, his painting and carpentry robe, his just-took-a-shower robe, his dinner robe, his watching TV and eating ice cream robe . . .Sometimes he switches up the categories, though, just to keep people guessing.
Why are you blogging about Buck? Because I really wanted to blog about something, and lacking a topic that was interesting, I sought the advice of a family friend, Grog. Grog suggested I blog about politics, but I’m not a pundit, so then he said, “Why don’t you blog about Buck?” And it was a great idea, because Buck is intensely interesting and when it comes to Buck, I am a pundit.
Does Grog collect baseball caps? I think so. But not religious ones.
What does Buck think about this blog? Nothing, really. When I told him about it he just shrugged his shoulders and continued cleaning under his fingernails with a Bic pen. That’s one of the cool things about Buck, he doesn’t really care what I do as long as I’m not committing a crime. Buck is tough on crime and hardened criminals (he doesn’t like criminals and, in certain cases, thinks they should be euthanized like a bad rat).
A bad rat? Yes, that’s an expression in our family. We’ve had a lot of pet rats, which I’ll blog about at some point. Here’s a photo of Buck with our all-time favorite, Good Rat Emily.
Only one of our rats was truly bad, and kinda dangerous. It was blind and had a nasty disposition. We’d read in a rat book that there’s nothing you can do about a bad rat and you should just have it put down. However, we did not put it down. Big mistake. We kept it for its entire life, which was roughly five years, and it turned out to be a decision we regretted daily. Nobody could get near the thing except for Buck, which put a lot of pressure on him to be home from work at a certain time each night to feed it so it wouldn’t go berserk and hurt somebody. Buck was a natural-born Rat Whisperer, and he hated that responsibility. But nobody else could go near the thing, it was that vicious. When Jon heard about this rat he said, “Ewww! Are you fucking crazy? Bring that thing in here,” meaning his vet office, because he is also of the “Bad Rat school of thought”. But still we did nothing. Five long years we lived with that thing. It was our last rat.
Nice. Does Buck read this blog? Probably.
What do you do besides blog about Buck? Well, living in El Paso I’m always on the lookout for snakes, because I hate them, so that keeps me pretty busy. I also watch a lot of movies and reality TV, and I talk to celebrities on the telephone and then write about them. I also knit. In between all that, I copy edit a magazine. Buck is the editor of that magazine.
Buck’s your boss? Yes, he’s my boss and also the person I go to when I can’t get the top off the pickle jar.
You’re the copy editor. What’s that about? It’s about proof reading the work of other writers, looking for typos or spelling mistakes, and correcting them before the article goes to print. Where I work there’s only one of me, so I try to read everything extra carefully, knowing I don’t have the safety net of a second reader. I owe it to our writers to make sure they haven’t used “too” where they meant to use “to” etc., because the Grammar Police are always watching.
Is that a cool job? Not really, not if you’re a writer yourself. The biggest drawback to the job is that you can’t copy edit your own work very accurately, because you know what it’s supposed to say, and your brain tends to read it that way even if it’s wrong. So, sometimes my own articles will appear in print with a typo or the wrong “your” or whatever, and then I just want to die. When that happens people like to jump all over me, schadenfreude, y’know? (Buck hates it when I use that word. And I use it constantly because it’s usually appropriate to whatever I’m talking about.) Some writers I copy edit assume that I think I’m perfect (and I’m so obviously not); they don’t understand it’s my job to make them look perfect so they don’t have to endure the embarrassment that I sometimes have to. They just think I get off on correcting them. It’s a weird situation.
Do you copy edit Buck’s stuff? Yes. I copy edit him and he edits me, so it works out fine. Most of the time. Sometimes we’re both writing on deadline and there just isn’t time to go over each other’s work, and that’s when we run into trouble. Embarrassing in-print kind of trouble.
That sucks. Yep, pretty much.
So is anyone copy editing this blog? No. So if you find a mistake, just fuck off. And I mean that in the nicest, kindest, smilingest way possible.
I happened to be surfing along and came upon your website blog. Simply amazing…this is the kind of writing I have been searching for to read for a very long time. Not since the first time I read a penthouse letter at the age of 14 have I been so enthralled with one’s writing. You must not stop. Please I beg of you to continue. Stephen King-most influetial writer of the century- if only those in power could have a sampled just a taste of your words they would have stripped that title from Mr. King and placed that award on the mantle of the fireplace in your livingroom/bedroom. I look forward, no, I live to be able to read more from you. Please…entertain the thought and have pity on the less talented writers of this era and bestow us with the greatness of your writing and its witty content.
Yeah!! We found you! Our last email from you was actually from Stella (your Chiahaua) to Max (our 17-lb cat)….. and they turned out to be quite interesting writers, wouldn’t you say?
Anyway, this blog is fabulous and I can’t wait for more! How are the Harleys?? Do you sell Harleys in any special bathrobe?
I was just given a new silk bathrobe from Vietnam! We miss you and can’t wait to meet Wendy!
Actually, Nancy, you’ve met me many times over the past 20 years. And here I thought I was unforgettable . . .
i once knew a bucky i remember the robes he wore were lent to him by an admirer he referred to as my a’moore it was a plain black one with a naughty rope to hold it in place what was wrong with me
Are you talking about Buck and the priest?
Wendy,
I think your blog is a great idea.
Bucky has to be one of the most interesting high inertia people I’ve ever met.
I notice that Grog suggested politics as the core of your blog. I think you choice is better but perhaps you could read the headline from the paper to Buck and have him guess what the story says. Then you can guess.
By the way, you have “tags” across the header of your blog which includes “Wives”. I clicked on that one and was a bit surprised when I clicked through to “Shy wife from Portugal “ ./
AS to wives: An associate (female) once said to me … “All women are different, all wives are the same.”
Have you yet noticed that most of Buck’s friends have single syllable names with four letters ?
Thanks K.G., I’m so happy you found my blog. And you’re absolutely right about Buck’s friends, they do have single syllable names and I didn’t realize it till you pointed it out. Here’s a few: Bob, Grog, Jon, Sue, Tom, Frank, Joe, Mark, Ed, Don, Jim, and there are way more, so I’ll be blogging about this in the future. Thanks for the suggestion! – Wendy
And oh, hey, K.G., thanks for cluing me on the tags. I’m new at this, and I really appreciate the heads up. Now I just have to figure out how to remove those tags –
hey i was looking close at the picture of buck in the kitchen,that made me think of the british anthropologist who was chasing the ascent of man from eve to ummmmmm yup buck. noticing bucks profile, it occured to me that a wonderful old neighbor of bucks, a gentleman appreciative of cheap bourbon and who always had a great story to relate to open eared kids, had to tuck his hands in his back pockets to hold up his pants.he also had no ass. could buck have a different lineage than his siblings?
rumor has it ,writer in the desert tried to get buck on dancing with the stars,but max nixed it true or false