the underwear drawer

snips and snails and puppy dog tails

The other night, Joe and I were just lying there, talking about how our days went, when he suddenly said, "I wish we were having a girl."

"You do?" I had had similar fleeting thoughts, though I never said anything about them because I wanted to seem above all the gender fuss. "Why?"

"Because I think it would be easier." Then he went into this whole long story about this patient he saw in Peds Ophtho clinic, a little four year old girl who he just thought was so smart and so pretty and so good that he just decided that he wanted our child to be just like her. You know, all girly.

"Yeah, I know what you mean." I said. "I mean, I don't have boys in my family, so I don't really know, but I'm worried that a boy is going to be all crazed and rowdy and ADD and running around stabbing people with a toy sword. I want our kid to just be..." I tried to think of the word, "...mellow."

"Yeah," said Joe dubiously, "maybe he will be." After which he gave a skeptical glance at his hand on my belly, which was basically absorbing all the karate high-kicks that Cletus was throwing at my abdominal wall in a rush of post-proandial elevated blood glucose. "Really mellow."

"But you know, not all girls are quiet and well behaved."

"Yeah."

"And not all boys are hyperactive and aggressive."

"Yeah."

"And anyway, who knows?" I said comfortingly, "Cletus might be gay."

"That would be fine. Hey, just as long as he's not Republican."

Currently reading: The New York Times review of the Broadway revival of "Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolfe?" Wow, a rare rave, even more rare in the Albee revival category. The casting is so perfect, also--Kathleen Turner as Martha, Bill Irwin (who I saw in another Albee play, "The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?") as George. I wish we could go see it, but fear the tickets are going to be prohibitively expensive and hard to get for all but the most insider-y and connected of theater loyalists. Well, that and celebrities.