A Baby, Names, and Ugly Dogs
I've recovered enough that my wife rose earlier than she ever has to begin one of her marathon 12-hour drives to Florida, and now she is probably already somewhere in North Carolina, tooling comfortably along in her mother's 2002 Cadillac. Meanwhile I'm not fully up to snuff, and for one thing my head has been whirling a lot, but I can make it alone for another two weeks. Fortunately it's been warm for February, and if that keeps up, hauling in the firewood shouldn't be too much of a strain, though I have determined that the individual logs have gotten twice as heavy.
Not knowing the exact nature of my malady, I think I will wait another two or three days before meeting my biggest social obligation of the moment, which is to visit a scene presided over by A., a very vibrant young lady who lives just up the road with her mother and other members of her family. A. is the proud mother of a newborn, her first, delivered on the 3rd, I believe, and she has announced that illness is no excuse for my failure so far to check out her and her people as they do the NewBorn Baby bit.
I guess my absence has been a little unexpected, especially since A.s mother, S., has said more than once that I helped raise A., which is nice, though it's a conclusion that I can't see at all. Also, during the last week of A.'s pregnancy I showed up at their house twice, to remind A. that she was running a bit late of the promised due date, which eventually extended to eight days.
After they finally decided to slip a little something special into A's I-V, she finally had the right contractions and delivered in about an hour -- a healthy boy, and an unusually large one at that, at 8 pounds 11 ounces and 22 and an half inches long -- the size of a baby more than two weeks old, S. claimed, and she ought to know, because she had four herself, all of whom, due to the vastness of the United States, I have seen more of and know better than I do all but two members of my own family.
I haven't bothered to ask A. about her mother's contention that I "helped" raise her, but it is obvious that she is quite fond of me, to the point that while she was dithering over what to use for her baby's middle name, she floated the idea of "Carlito." But both her mother and I frowned on that notion, and eventually she settled on "Caesar," even though, if I'm correct, the father, D., wasn't born in Ancient Rome either but somewhere in Mexico City instead. A very easy-going person, he seems to have left the name-giving entirely up to A., which I guess, her dynamism being what it is, was easy to do, And meanwhile his own first name oddly sounds like it is straight out of New Hampshire instead of from South of the Border.
With the exception of one other family, E. and I are the closest neighborhood friends of this rather rambunctious N. family, but we both have to steel ourselves for visiting them, because their premises are shared, inside and out, by a small troupe of extremely large and extremely noisy, snarling, drooling beasts called English mastiffs. S. assures me that this breed is actually rare and the dogs are valuable, and she raises them to make money. But because I see so much of them, they seem absolutely commonplace to me, and a little too in your face for comfort. They sound and look as if they could chomp off one of my arms in an instant.
We are told that with lions being rare in China, especially of the sort that court ladies and empresses could use to keep their laps warm and engaged, if there is such a kind, Pekinese dogs came about because they most resembled the Chinese Imperial family's concept of lions. But it's easy to think that the English came closer to real lions by developing mastiffs, because that is exactly what S.'s animals remind me of, a herd of young lionesses slinking about, with their longitudinal muscles leisurely rippling along their shoulders in exactly the same manner.
But the N. family is twisted anyway, and that is shown by A.'s and S.'s definite preference for the ugliest dogs imaginable, namely Shar-pays (I refuse to look up the correct spelling), and those mastiffs, and now A.'s favorite animal is a mixed breed conglomeration with the suitably unlovely name of "Diesel," who looks like a demon conjured up from a bad LSD trip, and I'm surprised that it doesn't have horns. (A., a animal lover almost beyond belief, went on to bestow on her perfectly innocent cat the name "Stinky Tuna.")
But E., who did visit A. as soon as she got home from the hospital, informed me that A. has a beautiful baby.
Not knowing the exact nature of my malady, I think I will wait another two or three days before meeting my biggest social obligation of the moment, which is to visit a scene presided over by A., a very vibrant young lady who lives just up the road with her mother and other members of her family. A. is the proud mother of a newborn, her first, delivered on the 3rd, I believe, and she has announced that illness is no excuse for my failure so far to check out her and her people as they do the NewBorn Baby bit.
I guess my absence has been a little unexpected, especially since A.s mother, S., has said more than once that I helped raise A., which is nice, though it's a conclusion that I can't see at all. Also, during the last week of A.'s pregnancy I showed up at their house twice, to remind A. that she was running a bit late of the promised due date, which eventually extended to eight days.
After they finally decided to slip a little something special into A's I-V, she finally had the right contractions and delivered in about an hour -- a healthy boy, and an unusually large one at that, at 8 pounds 11 ounces and 22 and an half inches long -- the size of a baby more than two weeks old, S. claimed, and she ought to know, because she had four herself, all of whom, due to the vastness of the United States, I have seen more of and know better than I do all but two members of my own family.
I haven't bothered to ask A. about her mother's contention that I "helped" raise her, but it is obvious that she is quite fond of me, to the point that while she was dithering over what to use for her baby's middle name, she floated the idea of "Carlito." But both her mother and I frowned on that notion, and eventually she settled on "Caesar," even though, if I'm correct, the father, D., wasn't born in Ancient Rome either but somewhere in Mexico City instead. A very easy-going person, he seems to have left the name-giving entirely up to A., which I guess, her dynamism being what it is, was easy to do, And meanwhile his own first name oddly sounds like it is straight out of New Hampshire instead of from South of the Border.
With the exception of one other family, E. and I are the closest neighborhood friends of this rather rambunctious N. family, but we both have to steel ourselves for visiting them, because their premises are shared, inside and out, by a small troupe of extremely large and extremely noisy, snarling, drooling beasts called English mastiffs. S. assures me that this breed is actually rare and the dogs are valuable, and she raises them to make money. But because I see so much of them, they seem absolutely commonplace to me, and a little too in your face for comfort. They sound and look as if they could chomp off one of my arms in an instant.
We are told that with lions being rare in China, especially of the sort that court ladies and empresses could use to keep their laps warm and engaged, if there is such a kind, Pekinese dogs came about because they most resembled the Chinese Imperial family's concept of lions. But it's easy to think that the English came closer to real lions by developing mastiffs, because that is exactly what S.'s animals remind me of, a herd of young lionesses slinking about, with their longitudinal muscles leisurely rippling along their shoulders in exactly the same manner.
But the N. family is twisted anyway, and that is shown by A.'s and S.'s definite preference for the ugliest dogs imaginable, namely Shar-pays (I refuse to look up the correct spelling), and those mastiffs, and now A.'s favorite animal is a mixed breed conglomeration with the suitably unlovely name of "Diesel," who looks like a demon conjured up from a bad LSD trip, and I'm surprised that it doesn't have horns. (A., a animal lover almost beyond belief, went on to bestow on her perfectly innocent cat the name "Stinky Tuna.")
But E., who did visit A. as soon as she got home from the hospital, informed me that A. has a beautiful baby.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 9:52 AM
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