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His hands are yellow due to chalk, not jaundice. His incisors are sortof vampiric thanks to my genetic contribution. Sorry about that, kid.

Most of the time, I can’t believe I have kids. Then I see photos like the one above and gladly believe it, mainly so I have someone else to blame for how heavy I’ve gotten. If I’m honest, some of that weight was gained one slice of pizza at a time. Either way, it was worth every pound. I love them so much. This gig is hard sometimes, but the pay offs are massive.  Thanks to Andy for making Mother’s Day a good time.

I like how Julian looks when he runs around the house in the morning, wearing his pajamas. I can’t remember what it feels like to be two and have nothing to do all day but play, but I can imagine it best when I see Julian dashing around in his pajamas.

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The bath and planter boxes out back are almost ready for planting in. No thanks to me.

I enjoyed it. Enough to stick “BE EXCELLENT TO EACH OTHER” on a wall in our house, spelled out in vinyl letters. Toss up between whether that’ll be in Comic Sans or some sort of cursive. So so cute.

“Complete Stop”, oil on canvas, 2008
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America needs to get with her own programme and back federal/state governments out of marriages. Civil unions serve the same purpose, so far as the government needs to be concerned, so civil unions across the board, marriage/sealing/welding ceremonies for those who want them, from institutions who’ll administer them. All legally recognised unions get equal treatment from the state (tax, hospital visitation, the works) and the religious ones get to continue defining ‘marriage’ by however their particular denomination defines it, without being tools.
Look at me, solving problems left, right, and centre. POW, POW, POW.

Use this tool to calculate which suburb you’d like to settle in so you can a) have easy access to the city restaurants and stuff b) not get covered in radioactive fall out if your local city gets nuked

And this one to figure out where you’d pop out, if you were to dig through the earth from your current location.

I joined the gym last week.

MOAR! ⪢

Last night we got talking about that working holiday in Corsavy. Andy’s been reading some Hemingway lately, inspiring some vague dreams about all sorts of adventures, none of which are doable right now because babies don’t work hard enough to go on working holidays and they don’t sit still long enough to people-watch from sidewalk cafes. I’m glad we have a couple adventures to reminisce about. Should hold us over until we can have a couple more.

Andy got white coated good and proper on Friday. I know it was good and proper because I did the coating. Surprisingly they don’t require you to be a doctor to bestow the mantle of student doctoryness on someone.

Typical of Andy, he didn’t originally care to go to the ceremony but I’m glad he relented and went. The mayor addressed them, the dean of the school made some good points about the relevance of oral care, and then one of the big paediatric dental tycoons who graduated from Andy’s school boomed the student’s names from the podium so they could go onstage and receive their white coats. I shouldn’t omit that there was a performance by an a capella group comprising dental students, called “The Impressions”. Clever, that. They sang an original song penned by a dental professor, the lyrics of which simultaneously acknowledged the achievements of dental students while making dentistry jokes. In case all that wasn’t enough, it also had a key change. Take that, music.

Before I ramble on any more, here are photos of Andy in his white coat. Loading the dishwasher. Apparently getting white coated doesn’t get you out of dishes.

MOAR! ⪢

Here’s my boy, looking good. Robin’s not bad either. Wah-wah. I’ll be here all night.

Robin’s three weeks old now, which means I’ve had three weeks of juggling two sprogs and he’s had three weeks of learning that a bowel movement isn’t necessarily something he needs to cry about.

Something about having two kids (hint: it’s the having two kids part) has morphed ‘free time’ from being a scarcity, into an abstract concept. I’m only able to write this blog post because I got a time-turner last Christmas. Not really. But I am writing this while feeding Robin and encouraging Julian as he makes a tower from his blocks. That all sounds rather idyllic, so by means of injecting reality into the scene I should note that by 9am this morning I’d already sent a text to Andy declaring the day a total failure, partially because Julian was screaming in the designated you-can’t-emerge-from-this-until-you-stop-throwing-stuff zone, Robin was hollering because Julian’s screams probably hurt his ears as much as they hurt mine, Moses was on the mantlepiece swatting at glass picture frames, and I, with barf on my shirt and someone’s toast crumbs in my hair, was on my knees trying to clean up spilled milk. And no, I wasn’t crying over it, I was gritting my teeth and counting to a number I forgot due to nursing-brain fog.

Nursing brain fog is no joke. I forgot how bad it was. I feel like an idiot at least 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time, I’m sleeping, and while I may still be an idiot in my sleep, I’m only semi-aware of my idiocy so I’m not counting it. I did have a dream the other night in which a divorced couple I know reunited to form a band called THE CROSS AND FIRE, a name chosen to represent the weight of their religious passion and it’s conflict with their desired lifestyle. Before things start sounding metaphorical I should mention that I spent most of their gig wondering if I’d paid the water bill and left early to pick up some milk before going home to repair a shirt that had a busted seam. THIS IS THE LIFE I CHOSE. Relax; I meant that sincerely and sardonically all at the same time.

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