Every Day, I Hate Her a Little More

Ethel is, as I'm sure you will all be shocked to learn, single. She lives in a condo, where she apparently spends a lot of time worrying about what her neighbors do and calling the Condo Association to complain. She also has an elderly mother who she spends at least an hour a day on the phone with, discussing medications, her problems with the neighbors, and her diet, mostly.
But today, she called her mother for the sole purpose of reminding her that it was exactly one year ago today that Rich died, and boy, is she glad that jerk got what was coming to him. She thought maybe her mother would like to "mark the day".

In an utterly unrelated conversation, she lamented the fact that she's unlikely to meet someone now, at her age. Myrtle consoled her, "Well now that you're losing all that weight, you never know."

Now, they do spend a large portion of every day discussing how many "points" different food items have in them. However, no matter how much weight Ethel loses, it won't change her hideous personality. Who would want to be with a edging-out-of-middle-aged woman who finds the death of another person to be cause for celebration? Now, lest you think that perhaps Ethel is justified in her hatred of the late Rich-- perhaps he has committed some horrible crime, raped or murdered someone she loves-- it comes out in the course of the multiple retellings that are de rigeur for her that Rich has drawn her ire because he divorced her sister and married another woman.