What have I done the last three nights? Put baby stuff together. Swings, strollers, high chairs, and other assorted knickknacks. There’s nothing like that little fear in the back of your mind that you’ve put the wrong screw in the wrong arm support and 18 months from now it will fail, causing your child to not only fall, but probably pull a bowl of scalding hot oatmeal onto her body, eliciting extreme pain and much shrieking, followed shortly thereafter by a visit from the Division of Family Services. I’m also a little concerned at how easy many of these products are to assemble. When you’re putting something together for a child, I don’t mind a little overkill and six hours of effort if you can guarantee the product will never fall apart and the child can not disassemble it on their own until they master the Phillips screwdriver. That could just be me, however.
Being the geek I am, each time we assemble or purchase something, I speak to my wife’s stomach. “This is what we’re going to wash your little booty in!” as I put a baby bathtub in our cart. “Aren’t you excited to go for walks with daddy soon?” as I put the finishing touches on the stroller. She’s still in her hyper active phase, so each question from me is answered with a kick, shove, or elbow sticking mommy in the lungs. It could just be me but I think she was responding to me rather than just continuing her herky, jerky days.
We’ve whittled the name list down a little tighter and it now features four potential names, none of which I’ll be sharing with you. However, while watching ESPNews, there seemed to be a groundswell of support for the name Coco. If we weren’t concerned that we were dooming her to a life of go-go dancing, I think we’d have a winner.
A funny thing happened at the dentist yesterday: she was hot! In all honesty, I had been tipped to this going in. She was recommended by friends, the male half of which had pulled me aside and told me I would enjoy the experience because she was exceptionally good looking, the female half countered by saying she’s cute but hot is pushing it. I don’t recall if they said anything about her being a good dentist. Turns out she is a fine dentist, and quite attractive to boot. She runs a small practice by herself, which is a little different than my former dentist (who of course I had not visited in nine years). With the old dentist, an assistant took you back, ran the x-rays, examined your teeth, did the full cleaning, flossed, then the Doc came in for a handshake, a 30 second look in your mouth, and assuming there was nothing that required further attention, sent you on your way. Yesterday, however, the doc herself took me back, did the x-rays, cleaned, flossed, and performed the entire exam herself without assistance. I could hear my wife in another room, so I kept waiting the doc to swap places with an assistant. Never happened. She finished up with me, then popped into S’s room for a few moments as her exam wrapped up. Interesting, I’ll leave it at that since, as I said, she seems to be a fine practitioner of the dental arts. After we left, S. and I discussed our visits. “I agree with Mark,” she said, “She is pretty hot.” I paused, searching for the right words. “Well, I think she’s somewhere between what Mark and Julie said. Her face is pretty in a natural way, not like a super model. However, she does have a great rack. Not that I noticed, of course.” Fortunately, the wife was in good humor and I had achieved exactly the right tone and she laughed. Oh, and I have one small cavity after nine years of neglect, so I’ll be back in on July 21 to get a filling.
I hope I wasn’t the only one enjoyed this week’s episode on Newlyweds. The juxtaposition Nick & Jessica inviting cameras into their lives 24/7 with their comments about not liking attention and being unhappy with their lives was delicious.
I had a totally bizarre dream this morning. I was at some kind of speech, not sure if it was political or what, but it was televised. The speech is about to begin and President Gerald Ford comes walking down the aisle and sits down next to me. To put it kindly, the President had been enjoying the hospitality suite. He was toasted. Despite the seemingly formal atmosphere, there were roving drink vendors, and the President slapped me on the arm and informed me that we needed to hoist glasses together. OK, sure, whatever you say, Sir. Despite the fact I’m sitting with the former President of the United States, the drink lady asks for my ID. I’m scrambling to get it out and someone who was working their way through our aisle to an open seat bumps my hands and knocks my ID to the floor. Another passer-by steps on it and kicks it and soon I can’t see where it’s ended up. I fall to my knees and start searching for the ID, meanwhile President Ford is getting pissed because he really needs another drink and I’m holding up matters. This was the final dream before my alarm went off, so it proceeded to stretch out the searching for the ID thing until the alarm started ringing. I hate those dreams; you’ve got some really interesting situation going on, and your mind knows the alarm is about to wake you so it decides to hit repeat and keep you running, searching, swimming, reading, whatever it was you were doing rather than give you some kind of resolution. I’m sure Mr. Ford will be pleased that people are still thinking about him other than those who have him in their death pools.