Happily ever after

Last night, long after the sleep-through-the-nighter had fought her bedtime with all of her might, my husband and I were fighting our bedtime with laughter and snorts, and though it physically hurts to prolong sleep these days, it's the lullabye I most prefer. The only semester of college we were together and both living on campus, we prolonged sleep almost every night, talking about meal plans and newspaper articles and all the people we knew in common and all the ones we didn't, and it still amazes me how we could spend so much time together and never get sick of each other, even though it's not so amazing because that is the definition of Young Love, but on 90 degree days with no breeze, I sometimes wish I didn't have to share the same room as my husband and why does he always have to turn on the light when I'm CLEARLY DYING FROM HEAT EXHAUSTION HERE.

Next month, I will have been with my husband for eight years uninterrupted and that? Is more than a fourth of my life spent with my husband. I miss our college days, I miss our long distance relationship and all the e-mails and latenight phonecalls, but I am living a happily ever after right now. I hope in ten years, I am still sleep-deprived if it means that I am falling asleep to the sound of my laughing partner laughing hard, five minutes after we both promised that we were going to shut up because, seriously, it's time to go to sleep.

Father's Day is over, so I can say this now

Just in case you ever find yourself to be a new father of a melon-headed infant, with a wife who has not known more than six hours of uninterrupted sleep in four months and fourteen days, TURN YOUR EAR THIS-A-WAY, YOUNG: When you arrive home from Job One, en route to Job Two, possibly to be awakened later by a pager for Job Three, please just take heart in the knowledge that you are appreciated. That even when your wife's eyes, at half-mast, greet you with a lukewarm hello and a repeated request for you to just change this diaper so she doesn't have to, she really is happy to see you, not only because you possess opposing thumbs for the changing of diapers, but because you're her co-captain, even if you're often working to keep the sails from ripping off the mast in the wake of gale winds, and she is squarely stationed on the poop deck 24-7. in her heart, she's so happy to see you, she thinks you're so wonderful and that you excel at being cute almost all the time. And every so often, she'll appreciate you telling her that she is one gorgeous schnitzel on a stick. Or something equally inspiring.

Rest Stop: Somewhere up in NY State

Lovey Loverpants and I had nearly mastered the road trip when Baby Girl hopped on the bus. We pack like champs (tip: why bring a bag when you can put everything in a laundry basket and keep it folded!), prepare our playlists/audio books, plan to eat many sugary treats and have many, many laughs. We have made the trip from Boston to Detroit/Cleveland oh so very many times, more times than Michael Jordan drove the ball to the hole, practically. We have every rest stop along the way pretty well memorized, like, No, Lovey, the TCBY is at the next stop, duh. Ah, rest stops. They're such a nice little slice of Americana, no? Fillin' the tank while you're looking to buy all manner of greasy food which so won't sit well in your stomach, forcing you to stop at the next rest stop to, heh, take care of bidness, know what I mean?

We cruised into one rest stop in upstate NY and immediately Lovey said, "Oh HO! Look at that mullet! We gotta get a picture of that." We beheld mullet man and promptly rifled through our laundry basket for the camera.

We introduced ourselves to Mullet Man and the Statey. Explained we were on a road trip for the first time with our daughter and couldn't we take a picture with these gents?

Mullet Man said, "Oh, wanna get her up in the truck? Get on up there. Be a truck driver."

So we did.