and I’m going to visit him tomorrow.

My grandfather is 81 this year. He grew up a dirt-poor farm boy in a nearby Southaaaan state and his daddy said, “You’ll attend college over my dead body.” Stubborn goat people tend to do the exact opposite of what’s expected of them, so my grandfather left the farm, joined the military, flew in WWII, went to college and ended up a Colonel in the Air Force.

He retired from the Air Force after he got his requisite years in and became a million-dollar Merril Lynch salesman. He retired from that after he got his requisite years in and went to a top 20 law school at age 50-something, and I can just imagine how incredibly obnoxious he must have been in class. I’m sure he was a gunner and if you know what a gunner is, you can laugh with me at the image of a cocky fitty year-old man being a law school gunner.

He served as an administrative law judge after law school.

He’s traveled the world and he is the epitome of the self-made man. The problem with self-made men (and women) is that they occasionally leave their families blinking in the wake of their busy and important lives and consequently, my grandfather has had, according to him last week, “strange relationships.”

He was bossy to his wife to the extent that she faded completely into the background and he was cruel to my mother when she and my father were dating. My mother’s parents, as my father says, never had much, but would give you anything they had and were happy and made those around them happy. My grandfather sent my mother’s parents a letter when my parents were dating. Granddad asked my mother’s parents to make my parents stop dating because it was obvious, to him, that my mother just wanted to marry a colonel’s son and she was far beneath my dad’s station in life.

Hunh? I think he misjudged the importance of being a colonel to all people but himself. My mother was deeply wounded by that letter and I never spent much time around my paternal grandparents growing up. I never knew why until after Granddad’s wife, Gram, died. My daughter is her namesake. Somewhere between the 1995 funeral (at which, GET THIS, my grandfather caught up with his childhood sweetheart, only to marry her less than four months later–we were so horrified) and now, I got the story.

My grandparents on both sides didn’t meet until my sister’s wedding in 2001 (happy anniversary, sis!). By that time, Granddad and Granny (my mother’s mother) were the only two left and their meeting was not even a blip on the radar screen because they’re both rather doddering at this stage (ten years ago, there would have been fireworks and flamethrowers). I think Granny fakes it a lot, but there is no doubt that Granddad is fading fast.

He’s in an assisted living center now, with a conservator to care for his estate and to help make decisions for him. My father and I had that done in December of 2002 because he’d taken up with a woman in her 40s who snaked a massive amount of money out of him. He was “in love” with her (he likes to have a woman around to talk at) and she was a con artist. He’s been pretty angry with us, when he remembers what happened, ever since we went to court, but the woman has all but abandoned him now that she can’t write checks to herself anymore. True love? I think not.

He had the center director call me two days ago to tell me that he wants me to visit and he wants my dad to come, too. So, tomorrow, my poor father is driving me and McPantses a state away to visit the old goat, only to turn around and drive home again on Sunday. My dad has no idea what he’s in for: a road trip with a child who hasn’t stopped to draw breath in over two years and his pregnant guttersnipe daughter who will need to either puke or pee every thirty minutes. I was going to go next weekend (need to get out of town on the 7th, after all), but I don’t want to go alone and my sister is meeting us there tomorrow and she’s a nice voice of reason and HEY! there could be shopping.

The old goat’s feeling lonely and like he’s missed out on his family all these years. I’m floored. The center director said that she believes him, too, because he’s been weepy and he thought for a few days about whether or not he should call us and he decided he wants us there.

So, off I go to visit the man who was mean to my mother, who can’t remember that my daughter is named after his beloved wife and who lorded it over my father like the Great Santini until my father left for college. Life’s cruelest revenge to a decent orator who’s been selfish is to rob him of speech, I think, and Granddad has a hard time getting words out now. I feel sorry for him. I probably shouldn’t, but I don’t want him to be alone and scared and old and slipping away, mentally. The privilege of youth, I guess, is that I could just ignore him and stay home tomorrow, but the privilege of family is that you draw together and get in the car and go when you have to, so off I will go.

Did I mention that it’s my 6th wedding anniversary this weekend? My gift to the Husband is that he gets to stay home. He’d choose that over a sex parade, I think. Edited to add: The Husband says he might just sit around all day with a Modern Bride magazine and a box of Biore strips. He already reads the NYT weddings word-for-word to see who he knows… Then he said, “you’re going to put that on the internet, aren’t you?”

Happy anniversary, weird dude.

So, I’m fetching McP from school yesterday afternoon and a boy’s mother is there at the same time and the boy tells me that McPantses pulled his pants down on the playground when they were playing.

I didn’t mean to laugh. I didn’t mean to bust out a big horsey guffaw, but I couldn’t help it. It does so much good to tell your child that it’s not nice to do something while you’re laughing. McP and the little boy were both laughing as I told her not to do that anymore and his mom was laughing, too.

I said, “I’m sorry my kid pulled your kid’s pants down on the playground.” She said, “Oh, that’s okay, I’m glad you’re not upset–a lot of moms would get really upset about that.” I said, “Well, he didn’t pull HER pants down, you know.” And we both laughed.

I tried to explain, again, to McPantses that we don’t show our panties to other people, no matter how cute they are and that our underwear is private and that she wouldn’t have liked it if he had pulled down her pants on the playground and she agreed.

But it was still hilarious.

I am a walking hangover these days, which stinks because a hangover without the booze is absolutely no fun. I shouldn’t complain, though, because we had a swell initial doctor’s appointment, complete with a nifty ultrasound where we saw the teeny baby parasite that’s sucking the lifeblood out of me in the same manner that its big sister did four years ago. We saw and heard its lovely heartbeat, too. The early ultrasound was a first for the Husband, and I think he quite enjoyed it.

Go look at Salad Fingers and its creepy sequel for weird good fun. The husband couldn’t stomach the first episode and refused to watch the second one, but I like it when the red water comes. Thanks to my friend Scary Sheri for linking to it.

There have been signs up all over town about a free ballet performance (one yesterday afternoon at the local dancy/gymnastics center and one at the outdoor ampitheater tonight), so we bucked up and took McPantses at 2:30 yesterday. In case you don’t live in the South, you should know that this past weekend was quite possibly the hottest weekend in the history of all time.

We arrived at 2:20 and the place was packed, so we clambered up bleachers at the back of the auditorium and settled in to wait and check the Husband’s watch every 30 seconds until it was time for the curtains to open. McPantses said, “I see feet under the curtain!” and she was oh-so-excited. She loves the ballet and cannot wait to dance on stange in front of people.

But, wait she will, it appears. I picked up the fall schedule on the way in and they don’t offer the “I can dance” class for 3 year-olds at night. They offer it from 1:30 until 2:15 on Mondays, which means I’d have to take a weird lunch hour and fetch McP from daycare and then take her back afterwards, which would test even her good-natured limits. I’m thinking about asking my mother to take her or about hiring someone to take her, but that’s a little too Nanny Diaries for me, so we’ll probably skip it or find a school that’s more accomodating of working parents. The whole thing chaps my ass a bit, particularly since they assured me in February (as I plunked down $80 for three front-row tickets to a Madeline ballet) that they would offer night classes for toddlers in the fall, if not in the summer. I now know why they never called me like they promised they would.

Right before the ballet started, I noticed that a woman of size wearing a tight red tee shirt, khaki shorts and Birkenstocks kept turning around from her folding chair to glare up into the bleachers where we, along with a hundred other sardines, sat. She continued this off and on the entire time we were there and I finally decided she wasn’t at the ballet to enjoy the performance and that she was probably going to whip a sawed-off from ‘neath her fat rolls and pick off the more annoying of the dancers. My 3 year-old knows not to stare. Why doesn’t an adult?

By the time the curtains rose to reveal a part of the ballet company, my ass was sweating profusely and I was feeling trapped in the crowd and ready to pass out or leave. Once the boy ballerina in white tights hit the stage, I forgot my misery and instead, fought to not stare at his parts, outlined and highlighted by the shiny boy ballerina pants, and prayed that McPantses wouldn’t notice or comment about them.

Here’s what I want to know: in John Berendt’s annoying book about Savannah, he encounters a transvestite named Chablis who schools him on hidin’ the candy. Why don’t boy ballerinas hide their candy? Why point it upwards for all the world to see in its Vienna sausage glory? I asked the Husband afterwards and he explained that it would probably hurt to dance that way and that if it grew from the pointed-up position, it’d just go up more, but that if it grew from the tucked under position, it’d end up pointing straight out.

Makes sense to me.

We left after the first half. The last dance we caught was hilarious. They’d pause in the music and three hundred people would fall all over themselves applauding (with delight, I assume, that this hideously boring faux cultural event was pausing for intermission) and the music would start back up again. Each senior member of the company had a time on the stage by herself (or himself) and the music would pause after each dancer left the stage, so between all the spotlight moments and the twenty other pauses, the music must have paused 45 times.

We, meaning the Husband, McPantses and my sweaty ass, escaped happily and as we were driving away, McPantses said, “None of the other cars are leaving and none of the other people are coming out. If it’s over, why are they still there?”

The kid is observant.

Oh, and yes, if you’re wondering, I am, indeed, wearing maternity clothes today even tho’ I’m only 8 weeks so, piss off. I am tired of stuffing myself into my regular khaki pants and feeling like a sausage and I don’t like tight things on my tummy, so right now I look like a fool in clothes that are a bit too big, but damnation, they feel great. My first doctor’s appointment is today and the Husband is (a) considering telling people at work (he hasn’t told anyone yet) and (b) coming along for the show, which is nice. After the ballet yesterday and the OB’s office today he may need a quick infusion of Manly Man to buck up his testosterone.

I think being a first-time parent has a learning curve. You can read every book on the planet and filter through the conflicting advice (spank! don’t spank! CIO! attachment-parent! co-sleep! co-sleeping is the debbil! breast is best! formula is just as good!), but then you’re left with pabulum, a headache and a lot of overpriced books you didn’t much need in the first place.

So, you work through it and do what feels right. It’s awfully hard to break a baby, after all. I think, though, that there are a few things that just sort of fall into the realm of common sense. Just because my mom used bourbon on a cotton ball to relieve my teething pain (and colic and long crying jags … fancy a cocktail right now, anyone?) doesn’t mean that I’m going to pour my daughter two fingers of Knob Creek when a new molar pokes through.

We’re modern parents with bazillions of modern conveniences. Sure, many of us were driven cross-country without carseats and survived just fine. We use carseats today anyway, tho, don’t we? I don’t know about you, but if a couple hundred dollar piece of supersonic* plastic means the difference between life and death for my kid, I’m using it everywhere, including on an airplane.

How about baby monitors?

Did my parents even HAVE a baby monitor 32 years ago? I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask them. I’m leaning towards no.

Baby monitors can detect noise from a good distance away, right? This is fine technology for the parent who wants, let’s say, a shower for the first time in two days while his precious infant sleeps.

Baby monitors are battery-operated or electronic. They’re not smoke detectors or crime preventors and they’re not barriers between baby and harm. They don’t protect anyone from anything. They’re simply noise conduits.

Common sense dictates, then, that you don’t use a baby monitor as a babysitter. You don’t go hang out somewhere else and take the baby monitor along with you when you leave your home.

You certainly don’t set up your monitor in a hotel room after your infant goes to sleep and head downstairs to the hotel lobby for an hour of drinking and magazine-reading.

I can’t fathom the train of thought that would lead someone to reach the conclusion that it’s okay to leave an infant alone in a hotel room.

I think dooce is hysterically funny. I think the way she writes about her daughter is raw and heartfelt and so, so touching. I don’t care if she continues to breastfeed or not and I’m sorry that the decision to wean might come early for her. I think she’s dead wrong and foolish as hell on this one, though.

You cannot leave your infant snoozing in a hotel room.

Ever.

Ever.

If you take your child on vaca with you, you hang with your child and you work around your child’s schedule, unless you’re lucky enough/smart enough to entice someone who loves your child to come along with you and keep an eye on the child while you, hmmmm, head down to the lobby for drinks. That’s all there is to it.

Don’t fuck with your child’s safety. They’re awfully hard to break, but that doesn’t mean you have to ask for it by leaving your common sense at home and trusting a tiny electronic appliance to babysit for you. Really, it boggles the mind.

*I had it in my head that the group who sang “Closing Time,” was Supersonic. Alas, they were merely Semisonic.

For some reason, when pregnant, I have a vicious food cycle. It goes a little something like this: must have Italian food … must have Mexican food … must have Italian food … must have Mexican food…

So, we dine out accordingly and last night, we chowed down on Mexican, which is McPantses’ favorite and mine, too. The Husband can take it or leave it, but he’s indulging my food cravings and in return, I indulge his ceeeeeegar cravings. In our family, we all have our vices. Mine are gluttony, sloth and overspending. His, I guess, are smokin’ and drinkin’.

Somewhere in the restaurant, which was redolent of fajitas (which never taste as good as they smell and which aren’t worth making your entire being smell like you’ve been set on fire), a baby squalled off and on the entire time we were there. Since the birth of my own occasional squaller in 2000, I’ve been very compassionate when it comes to grumpy babies in public (despite the fact that I’d take my grumpy gal home if she was making everyone miserable–isn’t that just what one does? I can’t eat a meal while my child screams in misery, but that’s just me.).*

This kid had one of those cries that shatters glass and makes you shudder. I guess we’re lucky in that McP was a happy baby (so I got to eat a lot of meals in restaurants when she was a brand new little grubworm, which is good, because of the sloth and gluttony problem) and that her cry is neither loud, squally or ear-splitting (I suspect we might be in for trouble with the second kid installment, but I am holding out fond hopes of another easy, non-squally kid).

After about the fifteenth crying jag, I said to the Husband, “I think the mom must have just birthed that kid right there in the booth.”

The Husband replied, as he clutched at his bosom area, “I think my milk just came in.”

He wins. McP just looked at us both like we were crazy while shoveling cheesey refried beans into her mouth with a ginormous soup spoon. We always ask for a spoon for her and they bring useless ones: either the long-handled tea spoon or the ginormous soup spoon–exactly what toddler hands and toddler mouths can manage well.

McPantses ate most of her dinner and a heck of a lot of cheese dip, too, and rewarded us with late night gas and a tummyache, but we expected it. In return for letting her eat too much (how do you judge too much, anyway? It was the kid’s meal.), I got a second night in a row as the main attraction at a Snuggle Party in her bed, which means that I’ll be ready to hit the sack at about 3:15 this afternoon.

Quick question: how lame is it that my toddler knows most of the words to Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain?” I think it’s cute, but I suspect it’s really just a little strange and a lot annoying. It’s not an ear-splitting baby squall, but it might be annoying to others, nonetheless.

*When I was grossly pregnant with McPantses, I waddled into Barnes and Noble after parking next to two women taking their new babies to the bookstore. Each woman got out of her minivan and proceeded to pack up a stroller travel system dealie for a month in Provence as I walked by and watched, round-eyed in horror at the sheer amount of stuff they thought necessary to bring into a bookstore with their infants. I ended up behind them in line waiting to pay for something (probably an issue of British Homes & Gardens magazine, which is one of my favorite overpriced mag indulgences) and one of their new babies began to cry. I must have made a face at the crying (probably round-eyed in horror again), because the mom (whose baby was so new that the mom still looked pregnant) turned to me with murder in her bloodshot, sleep-deprived eyes and growled, “Just wait!” I think I scooted back to give her more room and stammered something along the lines of “Oh, no, I’m really happy with her tucked right in here” and rubbed my belly. And thus ended the public making of faces at baby squalls.

I’m bored, so here goes.

First, my purse is a huge light pink leather Gap tote from the spring line (because important stores like the Gap have spring lines, you know) that a sales chick over the phone was kind enough to hunt down for me. Really–this thing was sold out all over the nation and she found a return at a Gap in South Carolina. I got lucky–it’s a massive, indestructible pebbled leather bag and it was $60.

*composition notebook covered in a color copy (a la Martha Stewart) of a Roger LeBorde wrapping paper and stuffed full of Very Important Things

*small, plain turquoise blue wallet

*this overpriced palm wallet, my first (and likely only) Kate Spade item in life: so cute I want to eat it with chocolate sauce

*a phone

*as mentioned previously, two moleskine notebooks (small sketch, large weekly calendar)

*small silver mesh bag containing one Avon mark (shut up, it’s good stuff) double-ended lip gloss, one Aveda lip sheer, two Lancome lipsticks (why do Lancome lipsticks smell so incredibly foul and perfumey?) and one tin of Burt’s Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Creme (the Husband swears he saw the Burt’s Bees dude’s doppelganger bicycling downtown last week)

*business cards for my personal biz and my real job

*sample birth announcement I made for someone else

*checkbook in tatty black nylon cover

*unsharpened silver pencil with “@ your library” on it, from National Book Week, for McPantses

*two crayons, Crayola brand, in razzle dazzle rose and yellow orange from where McPantses crosses off items on the grocery list when we’re tooling through the grocery

*house keys, on a silver heart keyring from Tiffany’s that was a lovely gift from my chef friend a few years ago–she gave me the silver ball keyring, but the damn ball kept coming unscrewed and falling off (keys scattered everywhere) and after three replacement silver ball keyrings, I gave up and told customer service to just send me ANY keyring that didn’t have a screwy ball on the end.

*car key on electronic car unlocky/horn honky thing (never had one of those before)

*three pennies

*yellow plastic knitting gauge ruler

*two plastic tortiseshell-patterned barettes

*movie stub: Farenheit 9/11

*two electronic keys to get into the building

*two pieces Eclipse gum, spearmint: it’s like mouthwash in gum form

*five pens, including one of these in brown (who knew these came in brown? I ordered a dozen brown and a dozen lime green because that’s the kind of greedy, covetous nerd that I am when it comes to schoolish supplies.); three uniball micro deluxe pens (two black, one blue) and a Sheaffer cheapie fountain pen w/blue-black ink in it (don’t you know I have every color of ink that exists for these pens, and when Sheaffer discontinued this pen and came out w/a modern, kiddie version of it, I called the co and bought as many of the old kind in fine and medium nib that they’d let me have)…

*receipt for a lunch I horked up last week (tore that up and threw it away)

*return label for a pair of maternity pants that don’t fit (too big? too small? I’ll never tell because in addition to being greedy, I am also vain.)

I need to consolidate all the wallet action into one place. I bought the palm wallet with the notion that it would hold my cards and crap, and it does, but it’s stuffed so full that the palm gets turned on when I zip the wallet closed, so I kept all the wallet items where they were and the palm’s hanging by itself in the dark, zippered moss-green leather cave.

Hmmm, I usually have a glue stick in my purse so that I can add more Very Important Things to the composition notebook. I’ll have to grab one from the desk drawer at home. I sometimes have a sketch book and watercolor pencils in there, too, but not today.

Why so much junk, you say? I am easily bored and very fearful of being stuck somewhere for hours on end (like, say, work or traffic) with nothing to do. When I go to to the doctor on Monday (first appointment), I will augment the above with a book, a bottle of water and knitting. With the addition of a passport, a camera and spare knickers, I could leave the country on a moment’s notice with the contents of the Biggest Purse Ever. So THERE.

My little sister (she’ll be 29 this year) and I are the only two people on the face of the planet, I think, who know where the phrase “What in the SAAAAA-AM HEEEEEIIIILLLL are YEW DOIN’?” originated. We still say it to each other all the time, along with some strange words we invented in childhood that I’ll keep to myself right now.

Do you know who said “What in the samhill are yew doin’?” Tell me, because if you do, we have a lot to talk about. I’ve always loved the name Calpurnia.

We just got a huge glut of channels added to our cable service, which means that I can get very old Martha Stewart episodes on the Style channel and every once in a while, I’ll flip over to Martha doing something freaky outside at a workbench with an oddly shaped knife (just now, the Husband said, is that a shank and will she need it in the clink?) and I’ll wonder what in the bloody hell she’s doing and why wrapping twine around a portion of bamboo she just notched with a three-sided knife is necessary for anything.

Finally, why does someone with a bevy of yard people need to create tiny structures with bamboo, green twine and pantyhose?

So, McPantses has, on the white butcher paper-covered coffee table in the den, every art supply known to man (I’ve no idea where she gets her affinity for art supplies), including a pair of little kid scissors with flourescent pink handles.

And, off she wanders, scissors in hand, to the bathroom.

“I’m just going to look in the mirror,” she calls nonchalantly over her shoulder.

The back of the door has a full-length mirror on it.

“What are you doing with those scissors?” says the Husband, from his vantage point on our bed, where he’s catching the 4-hole playoff of the British Open.

“Well,” she says, “I’m not cutting my hair.”

And she trudges back into the den.

And I add to the list of things we don’t take into the bathroom with us: baby dolls, stuffed animals, the cat, the dogs, food (after walking in on the child sitting on the potty with a cup of cheerios in her lap, stuffing her face while tooting up a storm).

“No scissors in the bathroom. Did you cut your hair with those scissors?”

“No.”

“Have you EVER cut your hair with those scissors?” There is a piece at the very front that’s a bit shorter, but I thought it was wispy bangs growing out.

Says McPantses: “Well, I’m NOT cutting my hair, mother.”

Says I: “If you ever cut your hair with those scissors, they are going in the trash immediately and you will never play with scissors at home ever again, EVER.”

McPantses, with a mildly dejected and thoroughly thoughtful look on her face goes back to cutting her Hilights magazine (gotta love that Goofus and Gallant) into tiny floaty bits. She takes all the bits and makes collages (”It’s ARTIST WORK, MOTHER!”) with glitter glue, yarn, white glue, cheerios, crayons and whatever else will stick in the glue.

And there you have it. The scissors kid. I bet she’ll cut the baby’s hair and I bet it’ll take me a week to figure out she even did it.