You may have noticed I've been fidgeting with my layout a lot. It might be a little disorienting on your end, but it couldn't be helped. It's just me feeling all addle-pated and unable to string two coherent thoughts together. In times like this, when the keyboard is useless, it's best just to lean forward, chin in hand, and click-click-click through the hexadecimal permutations until my brain recalibrates to 33 RPM.
(That's a reference to the dominant music format of my youth, when my most crucial daily decision was whether to get up in the morning. My subconscious is running overtime.)
We had a birthday party over the weekend, and it came off just fine--ten kids, pizza, music, and heaps of chocolate cupcakes. The real comedy was in the preparation, which took place in a kitchen still recuperating from corrective surgery. Picture a lovely, big-bellied mama making frosting, a daddy ferreting through all the displaced detritus looking for Things Mama Needs, and a child aggressively slaloming through all the boxes on his trike. That sound you may have heard was my diastolic spiking.
Then came Sunday morning, and Sesame Street. Elmo was rending the peaceful early hour with another grating rendition of Jingle Bells in B Minor for Toy Piano, and it occurred to me: I need to make my peace with this. I can't stand to watch Elmo, but he's here to stay and it does no good to rant about it (especially since others have done so more eloquently). Besides, Robert seems genuinely entertained. These conflicting feelings aren't going to be resolved, I thought, so I might as well embrace them and move on.
That's when Robert looked at me and said, "Daddy, I hate this show. But I like watching it."
