REGRETS ONLY
I had a party today, and Mabel and Rupert were not invited.
Wouldn't it be great if people could react that way to getting left off a guest list? By just showing up at the host's door and howling their protest. That would make life so much simpler — if we could just whimper and growl and bark our feelings, instead of keeping it all inside. No worries about how we'll be perceived or about making a bad situation worse. Mabel wasn't nursing hurt feelings in some corner: Oh gosh, why aren't I popular? Did I say something to alienate the hostess last time? Do people hate me? Is my conversation off-putting? Hell no. She was pounding down the door: Hey, Goddamn it, let me in! I fucking want in there! Can't you see how fun and beautiful I am? Open up!
It's a much healthier way to live.
And it would be terrific, too, if an univited guest could be pacified with a pig knuckle, like M and R were. Just open the door and toss out a putrid pork bone, and they're like Woo-hoo! Party in my paws!
M and R weren't invited to my party — the first family party at my house — because (a) I spent all day cleaning yesterday after a week of their getting mud everywhere; and (b) the guest of honor was this little tiny man who's been in the world for only a week, and I didn't want the Terrible Two to mistake him for a chew toy.
Mabel, however, made quick work of the swine bribe, and was back at the door begging to get in. Please! I'll be the life of the party! I swear! Something about the way she was arching her eyebrows made me believe her. So I sponged off her paws and opened the door. Immediately she began to work the room. Here, let me show you a few tricks. Who brought the rye and dill dip? It's out of this world. Hey stranger, you like petting my butt? I like it, too; don't stop!
She goes to this room. She goes to that room. Back to this room. Circulating. Networking. My living room has never had this many people in it, and she greets every single one — except the guest of honor. She totally snubs him. Hardly a person of substance. Obviously a pity invite. Can't even hold his head up high.
But then someone puts the guest of honor in my lap, and Mabel goes bananas. All of a sudden he is someone. She wants to sniff every inch of him. She wants to bat him a little with her paw. She wants to lick his ear. She wants to share my lap with him. Eventually she takes a very keen interest in his diaper area. Sniff, sniff, sniff.
The guest of honor's mother, who is my niece, says: "Did he poop again? He's been poopin' like a goose."
"I don't smell anything," I say.
"Maybe Mabel tooted," my mom offers.
Mabel takes a deep whiff and wrinkles her nose. Then she smells her own butt. Then she takes a deeper whiff of the diaper and looks at me. This guest isn't even house-trained.
Turns out Mabel is right. The little man had pooped like a goose. And when the diaper comes off he screams like a banshee. "He hates being naked," his mother explains, and I think it's unbearably cute how she's had him for just seven days and is already an expert on his likes and dislikes.
As she gets his fleece outfit snapped back up, my aunt marvels: "It's really something how putting his clothes on makes him stop crying."
My sister-in-law elbows me and says: "That's nothing. That's how I always get your brother to stop crying: just put on my clothes."
And there you have it, my first family party. Are you glad you weren't invited?
posted by kc @ 9:30 PM
30 comments
30 Comments:
Aaaaaaaagh! Where to start!
That baby is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and that picture is absolutely fabulous.
And your picture of the dogs is primo. Mabel in the act of howling!
And the nakedness comments about the baby and the brother! Aaaaaagh!
Mabel comparing butt smells! HA!
The f-word so early in a post (paragraph 2 of 16)!
You mom said "TOOTED!" Reminds me of Joyce Gough!
Aaaaaagh!
Awesome. Wish I had been there.
Baby Ashton is divine.
Your steps look great, by the way.
None of us took advantage of not being invited, though. If we had moped around on your porch, we all could have had pig knuckles.
Yes, DW, and had you been persistently charming/annoying (it's a fine line), I might have let you in.
I’m sure that your dogs are much more skilled at that than I am. But I might have tried to at least wrangle a cup of espresso from your snazzy new toy. I can do the sure-is-cold-hanging-around-out-here look really well.
The thought of all of us blog commenters moping around on your porch makes me giggle. We'd make a motley crew.
You great nephew is beautiful. Congratulations.
SH, thanks, but ixnay on the reatgay ephewnay. IT makes me sound too old.
I'm sure sh is sorry, white lady. But I'm sure you make a grand aunt.
Yeah, and a great nephew doesn't make you old. I've got two of them. And a great neice. (And for the moment, seven others.)
What's an other? Do you mean grandchildren of your siblings who are neither boys nor girls?
Gah! I misspelled niece! Shouldn't you be making fun of me for THAT?
Hehe, Erin. I knew that misspelling would cause you agony.
So why do we even have “ie” and “ei” both anyway? A high school English teacher made us keep a journal that we were supposed to write in every day. I really couldn’t think of anything that I thought a middle aged English teacher would want to read, so I wrote about the bits of the English language that I thought were silly. I must have done “ie”.
Is the real reason that English is spelled the way it is some kind of conspiracy on the part of English teachers and copy editors and other such shifty characters?
Oh right, like you all would tell me if it was.
One thing I want to tell you right now, Ricky, and that's that periods and commas go inside quotation marks. For today at least.
Hehe.
The other night I was catching the paper off the press and a front-page headline had the word "thief" in it, and it just looked so wrong. I stood there staring at it for several minutes. I know how to spell "thief," for crap's sake, but I was really doubting myself. The same thing happened to me one time with "siege."
One of my entries in that journal was an explanation of which punctuation goes inside quotations and which goes outside. There is exactly one usage that makes logical sense, and, alas, the world does not yet use it. But I impressed my teacher with the argument. I have been using them that way in the expectation that everybody else will soon catch on. I think it will happen soon. In fact, right after Americans realize that pennies are a waste of time—and money—they will realize that their quotation mark usage makes no sense either. After that, it will time to aim the guns at those pesky “ie”s and “ei”s.
If there is a conspiracy of copy editors and English teachers, it's a poorly executed one. Neither profession gets paid enough to justify a good conspiracy.
Excellent point, SH.
It's a failed conspiracy. Only the copy editors who know all the rules are in on it. The conspirators were hoping that they who knew the rules would get paid more, but they didn't realize that the people who run newspapers are so stupid that they can't tell the difference. So now the conspirators are getting paid as little as any old moron who says they can edit.
Wait. I missed a pronoun number agreement in that last sentence. And maybe a case agreement in an earlier sentence? Clearly I'm not a conspirator.
I have trouble with "wierd."
"Weird"?
I don't know. I'm too lazy to look it up.
I think Mabel should come over and chase my lazy cat around.
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One of the clear signs of a conspiracy is that the conspirators deny there is one. So now I’m really suspicious. It is probably not a conspiracy to make more money, but one to cause suffering in the world. After all, not everybody is trying to get rich. Some people are perfectly happy spreading confusion and anxiety.
The way you can tell it's not a conspiracy is that I'm now a former copy editor, and no one has yet to pay me to keep my mouth shut.
Shhh, George. The check's in the mail ...
They don’t have to pay you—they have the pictures.
Well, if there indeed is a conspiracy, I was never a good enough copy editor to be invited to join. Damn. I would have been so good at it, too! I love spreading anxiety and confusion. You conspiracy members missed the boat.
But wait. Now I'm anxious and confused. Maybe it's working after all...
Kc, I’ve been reading two British publications for years, “The New Scientist” and “The Economist”. Since you brought the issue of quotation marks up, that got me looking at how these two fine journals use them. I was pleased to discover that they use them exactly the same way as I do: punctuation from the quoted text is insides the marks, and all other punctuation is outside the marks. Now I’m wondering what other British publications do.
So the British managed to get rid of their stupid coins and get rid of their stupid measurements. And they fixed their quotation marks too. So I think the U.S. is about to punt the penny, go metric, and fix its quotations too. Of course, the country might have to give up its pretensions to global empire as part of the deal, but that is a price worth paying.
Now the problem the British didn’t get around to fixing is their damn spelling. As you know, my spelling is dodgy anyway, so the last thing I need is to be reading all these alternate versions with extra vowels. Still, the do have wonderful little expressions like “dodgy”.
I'm not buying it, dude. You cannot intimidate me by appealing to British authority. I want to see those quotation marks outside the periods. Pronto!
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I just looked at their online offerings. “The New Scientist” keeps most of their content behind a fee wall. “The Economist” might offer the whole issue, but you have to sit through an ad first. I won’t do that on a dial-up. So would you want me to take a picture of a page and e-mail you?
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