I am so outnumbered

So I'm about to have my third daughter any minute now. Well, technically my wife is going to be the one having her, which works out pretty well for me, but the point is still the same: That Steve Guy is getting to be severely outnumbered in the 'ol hacienda. The count will be 1 wife, 3 daughters, one female rabbit and one extremely smart female dog against me, one male cat, and one male dog that is sporting the approximate intellectual capacity of quartz. A special note on those two dogs, the female (Savannah) is so "alpha" and the male dog (Patch) is so "not alpha" that I actually saw her humping him once. That story is 100% true. So as you can see, I'm working with a pretty short deck when it comes to male camaraderie around the homestead. To make matters worse, the other two males in the household are now starting to defect. Again, true story: I looked out the window into the back yard just the other afternoon and saw Patch, the "male" dog, squatting to pee. I kid you not. He saw me catch him too, the defector, and I swear to you he shrugged. It was mostly with his eyes, but I saw it. "Et tu, Patch"? So clearly the dog has cached it in, and it was just down to me and Barney, the male cat. Notice I say "was". Barney the cat is in serious danger of turning his man card in as well, as I witnessed him just last evening... this is hard to say... running... from the rabbit. This is not a big rabbit. In fact, it's downright small. It also has the approximate texture of your typical Elvis painting (velvet, for those of you not from Tennessee), and is the only rabbit I know that will hop in your lap and start licking you. On a scale from one to intimidating, it clearly rates as "primary character from a childrens story book". Barney tried to act like a cat at first, getting excited and stalking the rabbit, but was immediately put off his game when the rabbit spotted him and ran towards him like a long lost lover off the cover of one of those books my mother used to read. Since then the cat has had no idea what to do with the rabbit and has mostly stayed out of it's way. That in itself is understandable. It's when I see Barney doing the "fast walk" all over the house, looking jittery, with the rabbit hopping along behind and sniffing his heels that the cat starts to lose points. I had hoped that they would get along with each other and play together, or at minimum tolerate each other. Having the cat run from the cute and fuzzy bunny wasn't really a consideration. So there it is. I'm starting to feel very, very alone in guy land. Once the baby is born I think I'm going to call a guys only meeting, just me, Barney and Patch. We'll discuss restoring a little, just a little, testosterone to the house. Wish me luck. Maybe I should bring some Zima.

Crazy Driving

True Story:

We're driving home from my wifes grandparents today. I'm typically a very "aware" driver in that I try to pay attention to what's happening in a 360 degree radius around the car, as well as far ahead of us. Because of this, I was not particularly caught off guard when, as we drove along in the left lane of the highway, two cars in the right lane suddenly decided to hit their brakes and swing across our lane and into the left turn lane beside us. I was also completely aware of the car zooming in on our right (also known as "my wife's side") from the merge lane there. I did a quick set of mental calculations (insert joke about mental abilities here), figured out that at everyones current speed I could just drive straight through on my original vector, and did just that. At no point was any car closer to us than the standard highway manual would approve. We neither swerved nor braked. If you're eyes had been closed you would have never known that we had had a moderately close encounter with a group of standard issue highway morons. It was smooth as silk, and if I may say so, by the book. Several seconds later my wife gave her carefully considered and insightful assessment of the entire episode with the following sentence:

"You drive like a maniac."

I briefly attempted to argue that I had not, in fact, been in any way, shape, or form responsible for the driving of the other three motorists, but my wife, wielding her 9th month of pregnancy like an iron mace, crushed my flimsy arguments and cast them into the soundless realms of "Husbands who know when to shut up".

On a side note, I think it's best we avoid restaurants while she is still pregnant, lest I accidentally cook a bad meal while we are there.

Gas Giants

It's official. The three most massive objects in the solar system are now the Sun, Jupiter, and my wife... and like Jupiter, my wife can now be officially classified as a gas giant. Those of you who have never experienced pregnancy are now thinking "How could he write something like that about his pregnant wife?!?! What a jerk." The rest of you, those who have experienced pregnancy, are thinking "Ahh... she's into the last two weeks then. Good for her". In the spirit of fairness, according to the "gas output" barometer of pregnancy, I've been in my ninth month since before my wife and I met, so I can't exactly complain. In fact, to be totally honest, it's been a little bit liberating. The new rule in the house, at least until the baby moves out of the majority of my wifes torso and into a baby crib, is "do what you got to do." I think I'm winning.

I'm Back

Well, I got totally blindsided with some really, really bad news a couple of weeks ago, so I've been completely out of my game. I don't think I'm going to talk about the news, but I am going to start back working, blogging, and getting back into the normal swing of things as much as I can. To that effect, here is a picture I sketched out a month or so ago of a waiter Mark and I saw downtown. The sketch is only a minor exaggeration at most. Mark and I both refrained from saying anything funny after he appeared for fear that the top of his head would slide off if he smiled any bigger.