Oh son of a bitch. Joy is coming today. Grandma has her over for three or four days at a time because the old woman lives in Reno and can never seem to find a hotel room when she visits us. Funny, I thought rich old ladies get all the hotel rooms. My mistake.

Joy is a nose picker. Not in public, mind you, but here in the house I've sat and watched her pick that thing all night like a monkey. She parks herself right down on the couch and gets started around 4:00. She's not rude about it -- she doesn't wipe her findings on the nearest stationary object like my grandson does. Heaven help me that boy has christened every inch of this property with filth of some kind. But Joy just pulls out a tissue, neatly wraps her findings within, and drops it daintily into a waste basket. Only ONE tissue PER FINDING, by the way, which means by the time Jay Leno comes on, the basket is filled to the brim with neatly folded Kleenexes, and I end up taking out the garbage nearly every morning she's with us.

So you know me -- I’ll yell out something like, “Joy! Stop picking your goddamn nose!” But before I get all the way through my sentence Grandma throws somethin at me. Last time she threw my holiday edition of “Cigar Aficionado.” That kind of violence is her answer to everything. --Who’s she trying to protect? The nose picker? I mean, wouldn't you think Joy would catch on, what with magazines soaring across the room and all?

Sometimes, to keep Grandma from noticing, I just quietly walk in front of Joy and stare at her with my finger lodged in my nose. Sometimes I make a face or stick out my tongue to add drama. She pretends to ignore me, but at least it stops her for a while. I think I’m going to start spraying her with a water bottle every time that finger comes up, and see if that don’t inspire a little self control.