Month: December 2003

Some people wonder why a benevolent God would allow good people to suffer. There are only three possible answers: 1) There is no God. 2) There are no good people. 3) God has a plan, but the plan really sucks. All right, actually there’s a fourth, but if you know it, you won’t sleep anymore. Like me.

For anyone interested, Kathleen has put together a photo page from Caroline’s snowbound birthday party (see previous entry).

http://homepage.mac.com/kathodavid/PhotoAlbum7.html

…and so we’ll be at Philcon this weekend, December 12-14. Peter’s a Special Guest of the convention, I’m a not-so-special one. Hope to see you all there.

We had a nice first birthday party planned Saturday for Caroline, right up until the snow started to hit. At that point we started calling anyone coming from outside the immediate area (including my parents and siblings) and told them to stay home. Good thing we did, considering the horrific conditions on the road.

However, with pretty much every other event in the area being canceled or just plain inaccessible, we had a nice turnout from the neighbors. And naturally Caroline wasn’t remotely disappointed, because people say “Happy Birthday” to her and she just says smiles and says “Ma.” (She has three words in her vocabulary: “Ma,” “Mama,” and “Mamamamama.” The first two are directed to Kathleen if Kath is hodling her; the third is what she shouts when she wants Kath to come back into the room. If I’m holding her and say, “Say Dada,” she smiles and then hits me in the face. So I’m taking a different approach and trying to teach her to identify me as “Not the mama.”)

So folks came and Caroline got her own piece of cake which she obligingly smeared all over her face, thus permitting adorable pictures that we can trot out to show her prom date some years hence. That’s part of a parent’s job: Coming up with new and interesting ways to make their children wish they had someone else for parents.

PAD

If you take several cats to the groomers and have them bathed, when they come home they will not recognize each other because their scents are different. They will hiss and snarl and treat each other like strangers until their natural scents come through. Wouldn’t it be interesting if human beings were the same way? That every time you came out of the shower, people you live with would recoil and say things like, “Who are you?! What are you doing in my husband’s bathrobe?!” and hiss at you and attack you. And the only way you could convince them to back off was to whiz on the carpet and have them smell it so they’d know it’s you.

I think that would be interesting.

PAD

Caroline Helen David, the Cutest Baby in the World (TM) was born during a hellacious snow storm on December 5, 2002.

It is exactly one year later, she’s one year older, and we’re about to embark on a three day snow storm.

Coincidence?

PAD