Best Friends Forever

Thank you for the sweet comments to my last post - she's a cutie, right?! Cysts on brain be damned, the baby looks adorable.

Name poll is over there. We got a little swept away with the primary buzz, so we decided to start a poll of our own. Vote if you're so inclined. We had the world's greatest boy names lined up, but the girl names are a little shadier, so we're happy for input.

E has - I shit you not - created an excel spreadsheet tallying the votes from this website along with votes from our friends/family. That's what the MBA is for, folks.

I've had a head cold since my recovery from New Years Eve, so I've been walking around in a foggy, mucousy stupor for the last week and a half. As much as I loathe a cold, I have a sort of fond affection for this one, because this one introduced me to a new cherished companion.

Theraflu.

I used to flat out refuse to drink that hot, piss-colored, medicinal liquid, no matter the strength of my cold. I never understood how some nasty lemon powder mixed with water was any improvement over the old hot toddy standby.

At the start of head-cold '08, I self medicated with hot toddies. I'd make one large one in the morning and carry it around in a thermos, drinking it all day. After toppling over once from the force of a sneeze, I decided to cut back on the hot toddy regimen.

But then, on night 4 of my cold, the annual Nocturnal Non Stop Coughing Party began. (This happens to me every year: I get a cold, which eventually peters out and leaves me with a month long nocturnal cough that WILL NOT DIE. One night last year I caught E hovering over me with a pillow clutched in her hands and a wild look in her eye, necessitating my transfer to the second bedroom.)

So this year, at the first sign of the annual night-long coughing spasm, I brewed myself a hot steaming cup of Theraflu.

And lo, sleep - sweet, dreamy, didn't-move-once-until-the-alarm-went-off sleep - ensued.

I've had my cup of hot piss every night since. And I like it. Now it's a delicious lemony adventure that I look forward to all day long.

There's even a leftover cozy-warm tingle in my brain during the daytime. So what if it leaves me slightly bereft of reason? So what if I forget the word for "contagious" and instead tell anyone within arm's length not to worry, I'm no longer "infective."

This morning, my colleague with a newborn baby was talking about how the baby won't sleep in his "pack and play," but he really likes the "carrier" and the "moby." At first I blamed my Theraflu-induced dementia for not being able to understand what the shit he was talking about. But then I realized, no, I really don't know what those words mean.

So I asked. He looked at me with a mixture of pity and alarm and asked me when E was due.

I'm in a tender state, Theraflu aside, so his alarmist attitude first irritated me, but then I started to worry. Does a baby need more than a moses basket and a couple dozen diapers? Seriously, what are those things, and will I need them?