I am not making this up

Yesterday I had the sublime good fortune of driving home directly behind a pickup truck outfitted with fake police flashers, a "peeing Calvin" decal, and truck nuts. Red, to match the truck.

It had a vanity plate too, reading (brace yourself) YEHAW.

God bless America.

Stuck in the Middle with You

It's so hard to talk about having children without fear of upsetting, offending, or annoying someone.

I just learned that my colleague has been privately grappling with infertility for something like three years. She's never mentioned it to me (I heard it through that infamous grapevine that is female-on-female office gossip), so I don't feel comfortable approaching her about it. Apparently her heart is broken. And I think of all the times I brought my daughter by her office to wave hello. No wonder she never left her desk to come to the door.

So, as a new parent you learn to be really upbeat and broadcast your good fortune for having had children, because nothing's more irritating to someone struggling with infertility than hearing a parent kvetch. But your Pollyanna persona takes you right into nonparent-by-choice territory, where the natives are waiting for you and your maternal merriment to hurry up and leave so they can complain about how every damn parent wants to recruit more, and isn't it pathetic to have The Wiggles in your car CD player, and can't people choose not to be parents and not be viewed as heartless Scrooges for doing so?

Of course, both sides are right. It's a nightmare for people who desperately want children to learn, slowly and excruciatingly, that they can't do it biologically. And it's frustrating for people who choose not to have kids to have their choice (which was almost my choice, incidentally, and I would have been fine with it) and the capacity of their hearts doubted by everyone around them.

In the middle are those of us who decided to have kids, then had them, and really, really, desperately want to be allowed to bitch about the hard parts and sing about the good parts, without worry of hurting someone else. This, I think, is why parents end up hanging out with other parents: not just because of the obvious (we're on the same military schedule), but because we can express our true feelings without fear of hitting a very raw nerve. Er, that is, until the subject of discipline (or feeding, or potty-training, or school choice, or sex education, or or or) comes up. Hmm.

Anyway, today I'm leaning toward grateful <grin>, for my little Flea, and of course my big G:

Just the Three of Us

My daughter is almost 15 months old, and until this picture was taken at a Kentucky Derby party we attended this past weekend, we had in our sizable collection NOT A SINGLE picture of the three of us together. Isn't that crazy? All we had were pictures of her, with the occasional snapshot of one of us with her, taken of course by the other one. But NEVER the three of us at once. Amazing. It makes me think, dang, when she grows up, will she think of herself as the Girl in the Bubble, living all alone with no loving grownups? For some reason I just thought of that Seinfeld episode where Moors is misspelled 'Moops' on the Trivial Pursuit card, and the boy in the bubble wants to strangle George over it. Anyway, it's clear we need to get crack-a-lackin' on the group pics. This omission is just one more verse in the I'm-a-bad-parent litany (sigh). (While I'm confessing: I don't have a baby book. This, and my daughter's blog, is it. Please, blogger, when you are outmoded by some future technology, don't suddenly purge our memories without giving us an option to save them first.)

Workin' at the...

I CANNOT pass a Dress Barn without humming the tune to Spinal Tap's "Sex Farm."

Working on a sex farm
Trying to raise some hard love
Getting out my pitch fork
And poking your hay

Scratching in your henhouse
Sniffing at your feedbag
Slipping out your back door
Leaving my spray

Sex farm woman
I'm gonna mow you down
Sex farm woman
I'll rake and hoe you down
Sex farm woman
Don't you see my silo rising high, high high high?

Working on a sex farm
Hosing down your barn door
Bothering your livestock
They know what I need

Working up a hot sweat
Crouching in your pea patch
Plowing through your beanfield
Planting my seed

Sex farm woman
I'll be your hired hand
Sex farm woman
I'll let my offer stand
Sex farm woman
Don't you hear my tractor rumbling by, by by by?

Working on a sex farm
Trying to raise some hard love
Getting out my pitch fork
And poking your hay

Passing a Dress Barn Woman, the chain's plus-size outlet, is even worse, as its name echoes the song's chorus: "Sex farm woman... I'm gonna mow you down..."

Needless to say, I saw one yesterday. Damn song's going to be in my head for the next week.