The dingos ate my baby!

No, I'm not having one, guh, whose diary do you think this is?

It is a Sunday night ritual that I have dinner with either Rob, Ed, or both. Tonight it was Ed and we ate at the Hard Times Cafe, where it is possible to get reasonably authentic Texas Chili. Excellent fries can be got at the Hard Times Cafe, and they may be topped with hot pepper vinegar. This is a fantastic thing that I think everybody should experience, even those of you on low-carb diets. (Possibly especially by those of you on low-carb diets.) Ed had a Shiner Bock, I had an iced tea, but not sweet tea. I love sweet tea, but Texas is not really part of the Southern sweet tea hegemony, so I abstained.

After dinner, Ed asked if I wanted to stop off to visit Ben and Bits, and meet the baby; well, why not? They were home--of course they were home, they had a baby a week ago!--and we found a place to park not far from their building, so we went upstairs.

Lorelei is, well, she's a baby. She's very cute, with all the little tiny baby parts, including fingers and toes, ears and eyebrows. At this point I think she looks like her dad, which means that she has a smiley little face. (Ben smiles a lot, which is a good thing.) She does not yet look like Winston Churchill, but she will; all babies look like Winston Churchill.

After a while they asked if I wanted to hold her. I haven't held one that young since my nephew was born. There's a picture of me holding Adam for the first time, and you can see how uncomfortable I am. (I would show you, but that shot was taken in profile, and you know how exacting I am about pictures of myself.) I thought it couldn't be that different than holding a cat, and since "why not" was the theme of the evening, that's what I said. She didn't immediately start screaming, which was pretty cool.

Babies tend to like me because I have glasses and dark eyes, so there's a place for them to focus. I try not to gurgle at them, but I will make faces.

Her parents still call her Peanut, and after a few minutes, Peanut got a little antsy, but she calmed down. I was so proud. Apparently what she was was hungry, so Bits handed me a bottle and I fed her. That was pretty cool.

Basically I treated the baby a little like a small cat, except for the bottle part, and I was fine. This was reassuring. I don't spend much time around kids any more.

It's not that I don't like them, but I don't have any of my own, and the ones in my family are all located far away from me.

Ben and Bits seem to be on the right track for parenthood. In other words, they're not under the mistaken impression that they know everything. (One of our conversational threads was trying to determine where the phrase "The Dingos Ate My Baby" originated. To me, this indicates a healthy respect for the various ironies of parenting.) I think that if I were a parent, I would try to anticipate every possible outcome for every possible situation and have a method ready to deal with it. All of it. Or at least I'd want to. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it's a really good thing that I've never bred.

Another first this evening, I heard Hawaiian music. By this, I don't mean something by Don Ho, I mean... music by a large man wearing a table cloth. I mean a cover version of "Take Me Home, Country Road" with the geographical references changed to reflect the man's island locale.

I mean it scared me. Ben says that in Hawaii, they don't really listen to this stuff; they listen to Classic RAWK. So I'm left wondering who does listen to Hawaiian music?

~~~~~

If you were wondering where I'd been, the obvious answer applies: scenic Fairfax Hospital, Seventh Floor. Where else am I going to be incommunicado for five days? My life hasn't turned interesting and/or mysterious on you all of a sudden.

I'd say that I'm feeling better, but I'm really not. I didn't feel that bad while I was there, but they kept making me stay just one more day. I am the only person I know who is admitted to a hospital for looking pale and throwing up. In addition, I am the only person I know who gets a head CT every time she mentions a headache.

OK, so my life is interesting; it's just not interesting to me.

before - after