cooties are not carbon based.

Did you smell Gabe? asks Olivia. He smells good today. I mean, he smells like a boy, but he smells good.

So I go, briefly, into the Chamber of Secrets aka the computer room, and take a whiff. Yes, I conclude. A nice, pleasant masculine aroma. Not the stink that so often occurs after a long day at school under the couple of extra jacket layers the kid always insists on wearing.

Gabe is not impressed one way or the other by having his sister and mother come in to give him the sniff test. But I am gratified, as I hope that one day other people (or person) will want him to live with them, and it is satisfying to know that he can potentially smell attractive.

I cannot yet attest to whether or not he has cooties. Personally, I most certainly do, and I have no doubt that it’s a congenital condition and, as far as I know, not contagious. Yet I have spawned 3 cooties-negative daughters and I hope that once Gabe outgrows his 15 year old boy troll phase that he too will not be the sort of person who sends out my almost palpable “go thither” vibe

Luckily, some cooties-negative folk are immune to the repellant magnetic field we cootie-positives emit, and I know that because I married one. But as my buddy continues his slow fade, I’m confronting, after 20+ years, the ridiculous fact that the cooties are still there. You would think that all that childrearing and middle-age would have eradicated the cooties, but it has not. Hence, I conclude that it is a life-long, incurable condition, and that it is my problem to work around.

Or perhaps most people are like Hydrogen, Oxygen, or even Carbon, and rather inclined to form bonds, whereas I’m Neon, and relatively non-reactive. When I do, it can be quite spectacular, but in the meantime, we neons float around wondering how it is that O and H have such an easy time making connections.

Well that’s easy. They don’t have cooties. And we wish Gabe smelled good all the time.

house too big

Fredfred the Varfolator is expressing her most irate opinion to Zoe, the little westie who lives next door and has the nerve to sniff around her own back yard.

This morning I hustled Jeff and Gabe both out the door at 7am. It was not simple or pretty, but both seemed to be more or less dressed and washed. We dropped Gabe off for carpool, then hit the Breakfast Shoppe where the eggs, homefries, and toast were fine but the coffee was tepid. Consequently, after a quick homeward detour to collect the following items which Bill had requested, last minute, that Jeff bring: sunglasses, poncho, sunscreen, we got airport hot coffee, and now I am quite clear about that. I like my coffee hot.

Now it is 2 days later and I’m feeling the way the house would feel almost empty, except for Gabe popping out of the computer room intermittently to boil pasta or peppermint tea. It is emptyish, and I don’t like it too much, but Jeff’s return on Wednesday will not quite fill it with what’s missing, and that’s the empty-houseliness problem. That it’s not easily correctable. How about a smaller house? An urban house? A beach house? No, no, not now. The fundamental tokens are positioned on their fundamental gameboard squares, and the available moves are scarce and of limited value.

But, in the meantime, I am procrastinating my way out of working on the book like a three-toed sloth and I’m not even sure I’m climbing in the right direction. So, I must now force myself to write at least one sentence. Which is what I’m going to do. Now.

off script

Not sure why I’d have even a vestigial notion that there is a script anyway, but I have had a nagging little sense of anxiety in my shoe that “the script” calls for something more mainstream than my current choices.

But nevermind. If someone asks what I do, I might just say, “I’ve gone off-script. Hard to give a one-word answer to that question.” No doubt he/she will be very sorry to have asked, and that will save me the trouble of having to explain further. (But if I did explain further it would be something like this: “I write, and try to appreciate life. How about you?”)

big stink, little stink

Jeff has just come home from exercise class, and gone upstairs to change clothes. He appears in the kitchen, shirtless, in his skivvies. "Look at me! I'm a decorated veteran!" he says, proudly displaying 2 ECG patches, their grab-tabs pointed downward on his chest like ribbons.

"Wow," I say..."that was when, Monday? Which means you haven't had a shower since Sunday?"

Jeff is taking a shower now. It's amazing though, that I hadn't even noticed. Especially compared to the amount of stink generated by a 15 year old boy (who showered that morning,) after a day at school. I guess we can call that a positive aspect of aging.

aargh, and just aargh.

I’m not sure why I’m feeling so half-crazy about having effectively put the kibosh on Jeff’s career as a driver. Because I didn’t exactly sort of mean to do that, exactly. (As Olivia used to say at around age 4: “I wasn’t gonna mean to.”)

But since I, with more or less honest intent, let slip to the insurance company our situation, by way of trying to extract an explanation of the insurance implications in a theoretical context...well, les jeux sont faits.

And if I could flutter up above my particular family situation and make a judgment as a perfectly impartial consultant, I think I would have had to recommend to myself the exact course of action I took. In fact, I would not have even advised the flimsy attempt to be theoretical about it.

I do think Jeff’s condition has had a markedly bizarre effect on his driving which he, for the most part, seems unaware of. But who wants to keep putting the screws on? Not I. It’s just my job. I don’t think the roads of Maryland (or anywhere else) need an unnecessary erratic element in the mix.

A form will come soon, requesting some sort of medical person’s aye or nay, and if it didn’t come soon, it would have come in September when Jeff’s license comes up for renewal.

But I wasn’t gonna mean to.