Proverbs 20, Verse 16
"It is risky to make loans to strangers!"
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CHIPPED WISDOM:
Those babies are getting big.
My wife, who's a Speech-Language Pathologist and who consequently knows about these things, keeps a list of all their words. She has 57. He has 46.
"Two-word combinations should be arriving.... NOW" she told me as we were re-assembling the kitchen together tonight. Every day, somehow, the kitchen gets disassembled. Like a puzzle. Or an autopsied cadaver. Every night, we put it back together. It's rather tiresome.
I suppose if, one night, we simply collapsed in each other's arms in a torrent of sexual profundity, or, more likely, if we just plain collapsed in each other's arms and neglected to re-assemble the kitchen, it would start out the next day pre-disassembled, and maybe that would be better.
Certainly less futile.
So, anyway, those babies are getting big. Did I mention that already? Sorry. I'm a bit absent-minded, and, by this time of day, my brain has yet to be re-assembled. That happens while I'm sleeping. When I sleep. If. It never gets put back exactly the same way but, somehow, each morning, pieces are reasonably where they're supposed to be. I take precautions to fill holes. People call this "compensation". I used to compensate for those holes in my brain by writing myself notes on little slips of paper that I'd put in the pocket of the trousers I knew I was going to wear to work the next morning. Sometimes the notes to myself weren't very nice. Here's an example from a few years back:
"Dear Asshole,
Don't forget to call the painter to get estimate for upstairs. He's a fag and so are you.
Love,
Asshole"
You believe I used to run self esteem groups? AND THEY PAID ME FOR IT?!
Since I got a smartphone, I fill the holes in my brain with little reminders that make the phone go DOING and BONG and BOO-BEEP at me until I do what it says. It's rather like the stupid fucking noise your car makes when you don't put your seatbelt on. Not like anybody doesn't put their seatbelt on anymore. Except my father. What an asshole.
Where was I?
Right. The babies. They're big. Or, getting there.
At some point, they will be sleeping in something other than a crib. They will be cribless. Riblets. They will be in spiderwebs. Hammocks. Hamhocks.
BEDS
Clearly, I am not equipped, emotionally or financially, to handle this.
Renovations will have to take place. Massive ones. Think, facial reconstructive surgery for Nazis fleeing to Buenos Aires to avoid the Mossad.
They're gonna have to move heaven and hell to prep this fucking house for these kids and their big boy/big girl beds.
Not only that, we're going to have to take out a loan.
This wouldn't bother most people. It bothers me. I don't like loans. Taking them out or repaying them or having anything to do with them really. I've never given a loan. I've paid bills and I've bought things and I've given to charity. But I've never paid a woman to lick my peen and I've never bought a ferris wheel ticket and I've never taken out a loan for anything other than a car or school. School gets auto-debited so I don't have to think about it even though it's gonna happen every month till my teeth turn gray and my hair gets pulled and the stupid car I own outright because I wrote a big boy check to the dealer AND
the office is going to be his room, or hers. The room I'm typing in right now is gonna be hers. Or his.
I'm going to the basement. This is what happens to parents. They get relegated. Delegated. Obfuscated. Obliterated.
No, that's what happens to parents' checkbooks.
Oh, God, I'm scared. Hold me. My phone is going boop bop beep and my wallet is sweating and the nightmares are starting and they've never really stopped and I had bags under my eyes in my second grade picture and is it any wonder that sometimes at work I sit frozen at my desk and stare into my laptop screen in absolute terror and I feel like there's hands clutching at my throat or maybe I just wish there were and it's all going but I don't know where and fear is a beautiful thing because it keeps you moving and falling and stirring and pulsing and beds.
Beds.
They're going to sleep in beds.
Cuddled.
Snuzzled.
Schmuggled.
Love.
I can do this.
No.
Okay.
They have words.
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