Crayons Go Up One Drawer Higher

It has been at least fourteen seconds since I last mentioned Jim The Baby Nephew, for which I apologize, as I am well aware that all humanity is wondering what he has pooped on lately.

He’s crawling now, which we’ve all been encouraging, because the last thing we yelled at him to do—sitting up—is old now, and we need a new excuse to forward the theory he is the most intelligent child in the history of the universe.

So Julie and Country The Brother In Law plopped him on one side of the living room, and they held some of his toys hostage on the other, and he figured “Screw it, I'm not going to get one frickin' second to myself until I give the people what they want” and made his way over. And everybody clapped very hard, and gave him kisses, and then we all went: $*(@. Because now he can move around and throw up on things.

I can’t believe he’s still all about the throwing up. You’d think he’d be over this form of self-expression by now. (He’s not reading yet, either, or cooking for himself, or even getting his own beer. We need to get him checked out.)

It’s embarrassing. Sometimes I try to expand Jim’s social circle, and the same thing happens every time:

ME: Jim, can you say hi to Josh The Pilot? Look, Josh, look how cute he is. Isn’t he amazing? Isn’t he a beautiful miracle fashioned directly by God?

JIM: (throws up on the whole entire world)

These are tense moments, introducing a nephew to a potential uncle. The initial pleasantries still went better than when Josh The Pilot tried to hold the child. I admit to administering an awkward handoff; I fumbled the baby when I snapped him, and Josh couldn’t quite get a grip, so I claim full responsibility for the trio-screeching that followed.

Then I obeyed my maternal instincts and ran out of the room to mix a screwdriver, and when I came back Jim was sitting quietly on his play mat, consolidating his bank loans, while Josh sat a safe distance behind him, watching ESPN and gingerly patting the baby’s back as though he were some sort of nuclear device. Unlike me, who tends to solve most childcare emergencies via fiat (“I told him that if he didn’t stop with the crying he’d be hearing from my lawyer. What am I doing wrong here?”)

Pampers melt in a Maytag dryer at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

And He Will Raise Me Up

There is a very good reason why I haven’t posted in a week, and it’s because of all the therapy, which is somewhat necessary after being groped by a seven-foot eagle.

Here on the set of For Some Reason, Things Like This Seem To Happen Only To Me, I was hanging out on the bleachers at a college basketball game, which in and of itself violated Newton’s Fifth Law of Sense given that 1) I am no longer in college and 2) as previously discussed, I hate basketball, although--noblesse oblige-- this took place at an aviation school where the humanities department in the bookstore consists entirely of an FAA manual and the novelization of The Wrath of Khan. They need me, if only to introduce adjectives to their world.

So I’m sitting there, distorting the space-time continuum, when all of a sudden I felt this… presence… on my right hand side. There perched the Eagle, the home team mascot. I wasn’t nearly drunk enough to fully appreciate this, but the Eagle was very intimidating, and also possibly carrying nits, and so I said, “Hello, Eagle,” which the Eagle took as an invitation to totally feel me up.

He managed to mask this by slinging a wing around me, then jumping up on the bleachers to dance around so as to further intimidate the opposition, but my rack is an excellent rack, one with a finely tuned radar system, and we know when we’ve been given a full-fledged preflight check.

“He grabbed my rack,” I informed Josh the Pilot as the Eagle clomped off.

Good boyfriends, when informed that their ladies fair have just been molested by a large ornithological avatar, will immediately rectify the situation with a great deal of self-righteous, if not necessarily correctly aimed, shoving and hurling of beer.

This is how Josh the Pilot handled it:

“He has big wings, okay?” he said.

Well... it's not like I didn't learn anything as an English major. So I jumped the Eagle mid-court at halftime and got in some solid roundhouse kicks, and then I beat up the other team’s mascot just in case he was getting any big ideas. There is a reason why my alma mater’s mascot is a gigantic crepe-paper bell. We demand respect.

contribute to the therapy co-pay fund at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com