Monday, August 25, 2008

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.

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