The Key to Her Heart

Number Two dotes on The Boss in a way that seems a bit unmerited at first glance.

To everyone else he is a stoic. He goes about his business with steadiness and care. He eats. He digests. He spews from both ends. His mouth, when not occupied in an aspect of the aforementioned process, is a straight line.

When he sees The Boss, his lips arc. The curve comes closer to a half circle with each moment of attention his superior deigns to send his way. He positively beams.

For the past three months, The Boss has been prone to walking away after one look, or slap, or curt word flung in Number Two's direction. It was as though he'd go away if she ignored him. But now there is idolization in the set of her brother's features, and she thinks she might like him a bit more. Sometimes she leans in for a closer look. Sometimes she starts to coo. She often introduces him with the proud, emphatic point of her finger: "That's my brother. Right there. That's him."

The realm of the sibling is one strange place. Where else can selfishness and even moments of cruelty garner the kind of devotion that a little brother or sister can give to an older counterpart? But as strange as this nascent ass-kissing behavior may seem on its face, it makes more sense as I think about it. And suddenly it's not foreign at all.

Number Two knows on an innate level what people in different kinds of relationships rationalize much later--that the key to some hearts must slide in through an ego lock.

The Supplest Supplication

It's like a prayer, the way his two feet come together beneath knees bent back and to the side. Each pad pushes against its mate--heel to heel, ball to ball. The grip of ten toes is a stunted steeple. I thought he would've lost that fetal bend by now, but he's three months into the fresh air and still feeling for the womb.

It means he's new. He's doubled his birth weight and discovered the difference between day and night, but the proof is in the crook of his legs and in two searching feet. He's still new. I can run my hands over the silken powder of his thigh, which tapers fatly to his knee. I can put my finger into the grip of his toes and laugh when he doesn't let go.

And I do. I sit there, finger-in-foot, for so long that it becomes impossible to tell whether the newborn is holding onto me or I'm holding onto the newborn.

Happy Birthday, Boss

Today marks the third anniversary of The Boss's rise to power as the head of this family. From the moment she was ripped from my gaping abdomen while I laid there unconscious, she's been the one in charge.



The Boss is benevolent. She drops lispy words of encouragement like candy: "I really love you, Mommy" or "You're beautiful." She says "please" and "thank you" and "may I use that when you're done?"



She only breaks down occasionally, though you definitely don't want to be the one called into her office to witness that harangue.



She's a people person, too. She chats with strangers in the supermarket about subjects ranging from her weekend plans to body parts and functions to her upcoming pre-school matriculation. These strangers are usually charmed by her voice and passion. I am always proud. Okay, well, sometimes--in the case of the exclamations on functional anatomy--I admit to being a tad bit embarrassed.



Her thoughts and emotions are vivid. They're right there. She's a magnifying glass that uses sunlight to ignite everything in the line of sight. Without her, I wouldn't notice half of what's around me, and there'd be no fire.



Yesterday I told her that her birthday was also my anniversary. "You made me a mom," I said. "Before that, I was just Binky."



She laughed, like that was so silly. "You're not Binky. You're Mommy Binky." She threw everything into the giggle that followed, the sound coming from her diaphragm and emerging deeper and louder than one would expect from a just-turned-three-year-old. She always laughs like that. "You're not Binky. Nope."



"That's right," I agreed, matching her laugh. I'd defy anyone not to. "That's exactly what I'm trying to tell you."

Better Start Saving for That Booming System Now

An ornery Boss could always be calmed by classical music while traveling in the car. From the first time left the hospital as a family through this very day, a little Bach goes a long way. The opening notes of a concerto can be counted on to stop her wails and keep her on the silent side of satisfied.

Number Two, on the other hand, has no interest in the soft stuff. It's the thump of the bass that lulls him. Today he had been working himself into a tizzy for fifteen minutes when Salt 'n' Pepa's Push It came on the 80s channel of my Sirius Satellite Radio (have they really been around that long?!?!). His shrieks reduced to fits and starts. I turned it up. The crying stopped completely.

I nodded to myself and settled into a much more relaxing car ride. I even made an extra stop on a library book-returning mission I had thought I was going to have to abort when he was in the midst of his hysterics. It was only when I pulled up to the curb next to the book drop-off box that I realized how the situation might seem to others. The car was vibrating with sound, each tiny tremor making the rear view mirror shimmer. "Ooh, baby, baby" shot out the driver's seat when I opened my door. I turned it down, not out of concern for ear drums or moral development, but out of self-consciousness. Then I made the book depsoit and hopped back in the seat, pumping Push It right back up.

As an elderly gentleman emerged from the library, I figured it was a good thing the song was relatively benign retro hip hop and not something from, say, Big Poppa's body of work. Because a good mother would never expose her bass-fiending baby to that, right?

Riiiiight.

Bringing Summer Back

Childhood has an everlasting impact on summertime. When I was young, the season was rendered distinct by vacations and extended visits to my best friend's house and a shallow, plastic pool. There was a year of school and then two and a half months of glorious freedom. I came to associate that lack of structure with heat, pungent grass clippings, and the reverb of motorcycles in the distance.

Now that I don't attend school and don't have a set work week, summer has nothing to interrupt. A day now is like a day last month is like a day five months ago, except that it's hotter and sometimes we go swimming. There are still clothes to wash, bathrooms to clean, articles to write and a baby to feed. I may step outside for brief intervals, but then I escape back into the air conditioning where the smell of grass and the sound of motorcycles can't follow. The season just doesn't pack the punch that it used to. Yet the idea of it can still knock me over.

When I was a child I thought summertime naturally populated itself with friends and beaches and amusement parks and lightning bugs. It turns out my parents were the ones who made a lot of that possible. They packed up the beach provisions; they drove the car filled with screaming ingrates and are-we-there-yets; they left the dishes in the sink to go outside and catch bright bugs in jars.

Now I'm a parent myself and my three year old daughter is making me realize a few things, one of which is this: summer is not going to come to me. I have to go get it and then present it to the kids as if it was always there. It's a little bit surreal, I have to tell you. A little bit hot and hazy. I'm not used to summer requiring work.

We haven't even been the beach yet, and the season is half over. We've eaten dinner out on the deck maybe twice. I haven't even had to crack the lid on the mosquito repellant.

It's time to go be a kid again.

A Different Kind of Funny

I was reading the latest Janet Evanovich book in bed last night when I laughed out loud at a passage. That in itself was not unusual. It's her fourteenth Stephanie Plum by-the-numbers book, and each one leading up to it has elicited in me everything from giggles to guffaws. But there was something about the evening--the July heat, the humidity, the fact that both the children were quiet and sleeping--that reminded me of the first time I'd ever read a Stephanie Plum story. It was five or six years ago. I'd laughed so loud I woke up my parents in their nearby room. My father growled a string of unintelligible obscenities. I just rolled my eyes and went back to the hilarity. I was a college graduate living back at home while searching for a job. I was so selfishly happy.

My memory is fixated on the lightweightness of it all. The thin blanket in a tent over my legs as I perched the book on my knees. The crickets outside a window where tall trees were shadowed a degree darker than the night. The turned-away clock that meant nothing.

Not long after that--a year, maybe two--I was engaged to be married. Our first child came a year after the wedding. Our second arrived two years and nine months after that.

Four years. Just four fast years. Last night I found similarities between my old life and my new one in the evening, the bed, the out-loud laughing and the summer heat; but more than that, I felt differences. Oh-my-freaking-God. I am married. I am a mother. I am beholden to my husband and my babies and a mortgage company.

I am happy. There's no doubt about that. My days have more dimensions than they ever have before. Each moment is heavy with consequence. But selfishly happy I am not. I can't imagine I ever will be again.

The days of lightness are stuck in my head but I can't feel them. There's no mellow flow of air raising goosebumps on my arm. Outside, the grass clippings settle beneath the moon but do not release the cooled-earth scent I used to inhale.

But that's okay. Like the Bible and the Byrds say, there's a season for all of it. And as long as Ms. Evanovich keeps churning out the funny, I'll continue laughing right along.

When a Mental Health Day Is In Order

If I was Number Two, I'd be filing a harrassment report against The Boss over in HR right about now.

But the little guy just sits there and takes it.

Yesterday one of The Boss's fits sent a television remote whizzing right past his head. The day before that, she threw her bowl of dry cereal at him when he would not stop crying in the backseat of the car. She went over to her nana's house last weekend and was witnessed putting her hand over his nose and mouth.

It's not just Number Two who has a valid case against his superior, though. I myself am studying workplace policies to find out what kind of recourse I have when it comes to The Boss's tantrums.

My frustration came to a head last night when she refused dinner on the grounds that it was--AND I QUOTE--"not tasty." Her hysteria rose quickly. When I told her she needed to eat the food anyway, she began to huff and puff and blow sheets of snot from her nose. I put her in her room. She ran back out, screaming. Somehow she made it back downstairs, all the while yelling in barely coherent tones about her thirst. Something about "milk, not juice." She tore into the living room, where she launched a full cup of watered-down Tropical Blend across the coffee table and six feet of carpet.

I made the mistake of calling The Partner. I don't know why. If I wanted sympathy, I was barking up the wrong tree. If I wanted advice, I'd be better off calling someone with practical experience and a non-Hitlerian approach to child-rearing. He immediately went on the defensive at the sound of my impatience, shouting out a string of commands for me to use on The Boss. In fact, I'd already tried them all (except the ones involving duct tape and rope, obviously). Nothing worked. They were tactics that only proved effective when administered by The Partner himself. The Partner's word has always been law as far as The Boss is concerned. My word is white noise.

As it turns out, knowing that The Partner was on the other line of the phone was enough to send The Boss back up to her room of her own accord. I had just hung up on him--being yelled at from both sides didn't appeal to me--when I heard The Boss's last defiant cry behind the slamming door. And, silence. I was still for a moment as I waited to see if it held.

It did. I slunk into a heap on the kitchen stool. My energy drained from all useful parts and pooled like sewage in my chest. I stared out of the picture window onto a long row of weeds interspersed with roses and tiger lillies.

Then Number Two started to burble. Then he started to cry.

Fever! In The Morning, Fever All Through the Night

Number Two has a fever. Again.

This time it all began with his vaccines, which he received yesterday morning at his two month appointment. Yesterday night, we discovered a 101.4 fever. Visions of a lab coats and needles danced in our heads. To say that the whole family has been traumatized by his last feverish episode and subsequent hospitalization (including spinal tap)--which occured when he was just three weeks old--is putting it mildly. But we pushed past the flashbacks and phoned the on-call doctor.

She suggested we wait a bit to see if the fever went down. It did (somewhat). We retired for the evening, happy to be in our own beds. A steady 100.4 throughout the night afforded us all some rest. When I called the doctor's office upon the resumption of normal business hours, the nurse said such a reaction to vaccines was normal and that we should monitor it and call back later today if symptoms persist.

I would be much more blissful if I was ignorant of the risks of fever in a newborn and the speculative risks of vaccines. Yesterday, before Number Two's temp-rise registered, I was talking to my mother about my qualms relating to the recommended vaccine regimen for infants and toddlers. She just laughed at me. She'd never worried about such things, she said, and everything turned out just fine.

As I humphed on the other end of the phone line, I realized we truly are in a strange place in this day and age. It's hard to strike a balance between knowing too much and not knowing nearly enough.


On a positive note, I found a study stating that children with recurrent fevers in infancy are less likely to develop allergies. So that's good. We've got that going for us.

So Long as Men Can Breathe

The air is so heavy with humidity that you can see it. The Boss calls it "sozzy," which is the word that comes out when she means foggy but can't quite remember the F and the double G.

We were driving through a bucolic stretch of one of Connecticut's more sparsely populated areas on the way to swimming lessons. Green spread to gray underneath the haze. There was the wide swath of farmland to my left, then the treeline behind it, then the sheet of metal sky. It took my breath away and replaced it with wet heat. "This is so beautiful," I said out loud.

"You're so beautiful, too," The Boss piped up from the backseat.

"I'm so beautiful?" I startled slightly, the soft sentiment somehow sharp in my ears.

"Yes, you are so beautiful," she assured me. "You are."

I hadn't expected that. Me, in comparison to a summer's day. Not sweaty, fast and frazzled, but beautiful. My lips were buoyed by a slow grin as I lifted my gaze to the rear view mirror, where The Boss's big blue eyes met mine.

I melted into the compliment from my backseat bard.

Bookstore Breakdown

We left Borders Books in a frenzy, the front desk sales associate leaping over the counter to push open the door for us. "Breakdown," he yelled to the customer just coming in through the other side of the entryway. "Hold the door!"

The Boss was hanging in half over my arm, her face to her legs as she spewed snot and tears on her kneecaps. I clutched her discarded shoes with three fingers of one hand as I used the other hand to steer Number Two's bulky stroller through the exit. The Boss was bucking and screaming; Number Two was discordant in his seat in front of us as I pushed him into the doorjamb and then pulled back with a jerk. I'm not sure if I croaked out a "thank you" to the startled people holding the doors.

When we crossed over into daylight, the sun barely registered with me. It should've been a thunderstorm as far as I was concerned. Maybe the crack-boom of static electricity would've drowned out the tantrum. I heaved a sigh and then hoisted The Boss off of me and onto the sidewalk so we could walk the rest of the way to the car. She crumpled to the beige concrete. She wailed. About what? Who knows. Who cares. She had ceased making sense somewhere back in the children's section, at about the time I told her we had to leave.

In front of Borders, from the ground, I pulled her to me again, her stomach pressing into my forearm while the sun bounced off a pink skorted behind that was pointed toward the heavens as if in supplication. I made our way across the parking lot. She kicked me and thrashed against the handles of the stroller. She screamed. Number Two screamed. We reached the car.

It took me ten minutes to get The Boss buckled into her seat. At one point I put my elbows on the roof of the car and leaned into the whiteness, my chin in my palms. She screamed below. Two twenty-somethings in sleeveless black frills and short white skirts flounced by, luxuriating in not being me.

The Boss found offense in everything during the drive home. On the the three occasions we passed a lake or a pond, she railed against them: "I don't like water! I said, I DON'T LIKE WATER!" I could barely make sense of the tirade as her saliva threatened to drown out her words.

Snoop Dogg came on the radio then with "My Medicine," his countrified ode to illegal pharm. I turned it up. The twangy beat and the cadence of Snoop's voice settled over us like a jacked up lullaby. Number Two liked it. In the rear view mirror, I saw The Boss was sticking to her guns. Her face blazed red with the force of anger.

The more dedicated, the more medicated, Snoop crooned. Can you feel me?

More Than an American Footnote

So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of.

I don't want to go around describing myself as a 'groundbreaker' or a 'difference-maker' because I'm not and I wasn't. But I contributed to people who were saying things that weren't supposed to be said.

- George Carlin

Last night I dreamed that the president was assassinated. When I woke up, it turned out George Carlin was the one who died.

To me, there are few personalities as interesting and important as those found in the footnotes of American legal history as they pertain to the first amendment. Larry Flynt. Howard Stern. George Carlin. They're interesting (love 'em or hate 'em) because of the things they say. They are important because they said them. Each one made an indelible mark on freedom of speech by constantly pushing the envelope containing the letter of the law.

If George Carlin's legacy was humor, it would've been enough. But he leaves even more. By putting those seven dirty words to the test, he showed that each one was worth fighting for, and that none of them can be taken for granted.

There's a lot to be said for that.


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A Cold June in New England

I am very much a product of my New England upbringing. That is to say, I'm cold--like a November pilgrim alone in her one-room shanty mushing corn into meal. I don't tend to enthuse much with strangers. I'm slightly more animated with acquaintances. It's only with good friends (and preferably a few glasses of wine) that I begin to act like I give a good goddamn about those around me--at which point it becomes clear I'm no puritan.

When I was gestating my children, no stranger ever touched my stomach. I've heard many stories about such liberties being taken with pregnant women, but I never had to worry about it. Nobody whose name or face was unrecognizable to me would dare mention my condition, let alone feel around for it. It's like I wear a big sign flickering "UNAPPROACHABLE" in neon letters.

I belong to a mom's group where many of the members are transplants. Some are from the midwest, some from the west, others from further north. They are all very nice and quick to make friends so that, before long, it seems like they've always been here. That's well and good for them, but when they end up with all kinds of fun plans with all kinds of different people and I'm sitting at home with the family members who have no choice but to put up with me, it leaves me lamenting my roots and my subconscious determination not to weed them.

It's very hard for me to foster new friendships. I don't dig into people's pasts or predilections because I don't want to pry. I don't like asking for favors and thus it doesn't occur to me to offer them. I generally won't censor myself. I hate talking on the phone. All this comes together in an uneasy hospitality. I host play dates and visits from acquaintances, but it's usually only the friends I've had a long time who end up staying.

I don't know if I could change if I tried. I don't know where to start trying. How I've accumulated any friends at all is a mystery to me.

Some of the newest members to my mom's group are from England. They're supposed to be pretty reserved, right? Like, across the pond is where this region's particular brand of stuffiness was born. Maybe their True Englander status will be a good match to my New Englander status.

Although, if they really are like me, we'll never get to know each other well enough to find out.

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Realizing There's No Net

The thing about Number Two is that I know exactly how fleeting his infancy will be. I didn't have that awareness with The Boss. I guess I thought she'd be tiny forever. Certainly there was bliss in that ignorance, but what remains is a lack of memory for the details.

The rub of it is this: now that I understand the quickness, I've become so preoccupied with it that I still cannot enjoy the moment, what with all my fear for the remembering. I feel pressure to record everything, but this "everything" is so expansive that I don't know where to begin. Sometimes I don't. I get caught up in trivialities that are less daunting. Volunteer projects. Playdates. Yesterday I filled out a page and a half of Number Two's baby book and considered the effort a success.


But behind those everyday moments, my son still snuffles like a horse. He looks at everything with widening eyes that are, of course, turning hazel like his father's. His feet have outgrown all socks sized 0-3 months, even though that classification still fits the rest of his lean frame. More often than not, he smells stinky-sweet from a diaper that needs changing. He's often attached to my breast, hanging vertical, while I chase after something his sister needs--a drink, a snack, a pair of underwear pulled back up, a channel changed on the TV. Sometimes he looks so incredibly cute. Other times the plate of his forehead threatens to take over, and I can only hope that this kid has an unusually large brain. Like his father.


And that's the line. Between living and remembering. Right now I'm walking it like a tightrope, which is exciting if not a bit nauseating. Falling off is not an option; the only choice is getting used to the callouses where the wire bisects each bare foot.


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Blue

I found out about San Diego Momma's PROMPTuesday via Slouching Mom. I've enjoyed reading SM's responses to the creative writing exercises and, this week, I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Go to SDM's site to read the prompt, and keep reading here to find my response. It's fiction.

***

The sky is midnight blue. Light leaks through the house’s picture window and it is blue, too, but more frenetic and kind of dazzling. I stand on the sidewalk, directly opposite the curtained panes. Azure shadows flicker on the colorless palette of grass. I wonder what she is watching on TV.

The trees have skeletal hands that bleed leaves. They are caught by the wind in cold eddies around my feet. The temperature doesn’t touch me as I imagine so much broken glass and its affect on the eerie color scheme pervading this late hour. Opening curtains, white light bathing pale skin, blue turning to black as Letterman deadpans onscreen.

No, not tonight.

It’s not real, me standing here now. Behind the curtains she is reclining on her faux suede sofa, underneath a down throw because she’s always cold, as she watches the flat screen with indifferent lethargy. Maybe a clock ticks, so ubiquitous that she no longer hears it. Maybe the heat kicks on, pumping hard to warm her cold blood. Maybe her phone rings.

Finally I feel it, the chill against my ear as I wait.

A Connoisseur is Born

Evidently he prefers Sam Adams.

The Unveiling

Welcome to the new and improved 24/7, courtesy of:



Shannon was a pleasure to deal with. She whipped out the design and helped me install it to my Blogger account in the span of one day. The final product is her telepathic rendering of my vision. It had to be telepathy, because I'm pretty sure I didn't make any sense when I tried to put into words the look I was going for. But no matter. Shannon can read your mind over email. That's how good she is.

But if you thought the new design is the only thing being unveiled today, you underestimated my desire to kill two birds with one title. Today, I lift the curtain on the New Guy's Name!

Before you make any assumptions about the winning name based on the fact that I created a poll and asked you all to vote in it, you have to know a couple things about me. One is that I don't generally go with the most popular choice in any given situation. The second is that I often disregard my gut instinct, only to return to it after a completely useless detour. What I'm trying to tell you is that the name I will use to refer to my new son from this point on is not the one that received the most votes in the poll (though it did come in a close second, which helped validate my decision). In fact, it's the very one I used when I first announced his fetal existence almost a year ago.

He will be Number Two.

At some point in my post-partum haze I decided the name was too condescending and juvenile. The Partner sometimes likes to say I've lost my sense of humor, and I've got to admit that for those first few weeks after having a baby, I really didn't appreciate sarcastic bowel movement euphemisms used in reference to my son. My exact words were: "the name denotes a second class status that I don't want to bestow upon my little guy."

I've since gotten over that. No words exist that can describe how close he is to my heart. So why not accept that fact, and have a little fun with the words we do have?

If Number Two is going to flourish in his new position, he needs to realize that if he doesn't do his own self-deprecating, someone else will always be there to deprecate for him.

Backseat Drivers

The Boss does not take kindly to it when Topher* shatters her "ignore him and he'll go away" mindset with his newborn wail. The scene most often unfolds in the car, where seatbelts, five point harnesses, and the fact that I am driving separate me indefinitely from the two prisoners in the backseat. The acceleration in my sporty little v-6 has nothing on The Boss, whose mental deterioration can go from 0-60 in five seconds whenever she hears him cry.

"Mommy, he needs you! HE NEEDS YOU!" Her scream is a rain of spit as she joins in with him--all red-faced, wet and puffy--until their joint clamor builds to a crescendo that will one day either make me drive off the road or wish that I had. Either kid crying alone is tolerable to a hardened mother like myself, but the two of them together in hysterics is an invitation for me to let loose right along with them.

I don't know what it is about Topher's baby yelps that tears his sister up. She won't acknowledge his existence in any other circumstance. He is six weeks old and I still haven't been able to get a picture of the two of them touching. Is it the idea of his discomfort that upsets her? Or are her ears, which have become so accustomed to the quietude of being an only child, just that sensitive to her brother's new noise?

I don't know. I ask her, but she's too frenzied to be coherent. She couldn't tell me anyway. That's actually what she says when she doesn't know the answer to something: "I can't tell you, mom." Her tone is almost always frustrated when she says it.

Since there's not much I can do from the front, I push all the questions and uncertainty into the backseat with my two screaming offspring. I try to drown them out with classical music and the loud exhale of the air conditioner, which is now blasting to counteract the humidity.

And we drive each other crazy, all the way home.


*The polls are still open. Vote on the baby's new blog pseudonym in the box on my sidebar if you haven't already.


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On Yams and Strippers

In honor of the bachelor party The Partner is currently attending, I am re-posting a She Said/He Said written upon his return from a previous weekend of debauchery. It's two years old, but it is still relevant today. Frighteningly so.

***

SHE SAID: My husband came home from the Vegas bachelor party determined to put up a strong front. We went to a Memorial Day party on Monday; he went to work and then to play pool on Tuesday; and it wasn't until Wednesday that he finally called in sick to the office. Or, more accurately, he emailed his employers that he would work from home "in between naps." I ran to the nearest Internet portal and looked up the incubation period for the ten most common STDs.

HE SAID: My wife doesn't trust me worth a darn. She is still convinced I got some at my bachelor party. I probably should have. At least then, I'd have the bragging rights to go along with the blame. Believe it or not, a bachelor party can be fun without the swapping of bodily fluids. Other wholesome activities include watching strippers, gambling, drinking until you puke on a stripper, trashing hotel rooms, and discussing Tolstoy with strippers who are just doing it to pay for college.

SHE SAID: He forgot "burying your face in a stripper's cleavage at 20 bucks a pop." I would be interested to know how many lap dances it took to secure his party's place in the VIP lounge. Not that I would take his initial offer at face value. I know how it goes. It's like me with my iced coffee addiction. If he comes home from work and asks me if I went to Dunkin Donuts that day, I'll give him an honest yes or no answer. But if it's Friday and he poses the How many times did you go to Dunkin Donuts this week? question, I'm not above fudging the numbers.

HE SAID: Good thing I get the credit card statements. Her "lies" can only deceive me for so long. Here's an interesting tidbit about strippers. The girls in Vegas can make upwards of $200k/year for putting a knee in your lap. This one girl in particular wasn't even really hot yet she lives in San Francisco and commutes to Vegas. I guess the lack of health care and retirement benefits could be an issue, but regardless, that's not a bad gig. Here's my addition to the bachelor party stories: There was one girl whose gimmick was "talking dirty." Not talking dirty as most people know it. Instead, she went up to guys with lines like, "Who's going to let me pee on them next?" or grabbing a guy from behind and whispering, "I want to shove a yam up your ass." Maybe it works for some dudes, but she didn't exactly have me throwing money at her. At the very least, choose a vegetable that people will recognize. A yam? Seriously.

SHE SAID: It's impossible to get a straight answer out of him. Why regurgitate the truth when you can be lighthearted about legumes? Fortunately for him (though I don't know if it's fortunate or unfortunate for me) I like laughter almost as much as I hate deception. When he's really going good, I can be sidetracked indefinitely. I'm sure he loves this about me. What he doesn't relish so much is another personality quirk that plays into this discussion. I often say inappropriate things. And my timing? It's not so good. So my husband has the valid fear that, were he to divulge any secrets from the bachelor party, it would come back to bite him over champagne and chicken Francaise at the wedding of the man whose bachelorhood was so ceremoniously discontinued at the Las Vegas weekend in question.

HE SAID: See? She's already blabbing about this all over the internet. His fiancée is going to read this and wonder what sort of stories Binky might be referring to. I should have never have even admitted to going to Vegas. Fortunately, by now, most of my friends have learned to expect a scene whenever she's involved. Like the time at a dinner party when she brought up the anal sex escapades of the host and his high school girlfriend. In front of that guy's current fiancée. Yeah, that went over really well with the significant other. I'm surprised we still get invited anywhere.

SHE SAID: Go stick a yam up your ass

Cast Your Vote - Name the New Guy

The blog lines are now open! Head over to my sidebar (below the fold) to cast your vote in the Name the New Guy contest.

Thank you to everyone who submitted a name in Round One. The field has been whittled down to five finalists. Go vote now! Don't let your favorite business-world-inspired bloggy pseudonym go home.


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The Boss Grows Into Her Role

The Boss at 4 days old

When I wasn't looking--maybe it was while I was busy transitioning Topher from womb to delivery room--The Boss turned solid and grew long legs.

She's been a baby her whole life. That's only two years and ten months, but it's what I'm accustomed to. She started out small--a round repository of fat cells beneath pale skin--and grew so stealthily that I failed to notice when muscle moved in and her face colored with the blush of ideas. Until her brother came along in comparison, I couldn't see how much she'd grown.

The other day, I was folding a mass of laundry that had been piling up in the wake of Topher's arrival and subsequent hospitalization. After stacking romper after romper, onesie after onesie, I pulled a pair of The Boss's pants from the bin. The jean material seemed voluminous. I looked at the tag. They were 2T, a size that I knew--conceptually, anyway--was actually a bit too small for her. Emotionally, I still didn't get it. As I put them aside to be packed away with all the other outfits-turned-artifacts, I puzzled over the discrepancy.

When did she grow into them?

And just when did she grow out?

The Boss 4 days ago

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