Love

Not sure I have one theme tonight, so as reporters sometimes refer to a column with brief vignettes, I'll empty the notebook.....

**I cut Gavin's nails tonight, while he slept. It's the only way I could, and from the combination of negligence, being too tired and forgetting, and his belligerence, they had grown into some weapons which ever other member of the family had felt; some sported scratches.

I don't know, now that I think of it, if we should have gotten some kind of shots, or put him down. Anyway, once he was snoring (or purring, really) I picked up the hand that was closest to me and hacked away. It's nerve-racking, because you can't feel what you're cutting, like when you do your own.

Got that hand done, and figured I'd be happy with that and get the rest later. Carrie asked me to check to make sure I left his closet light on a couple hours later, so I got my chance to finish and sure enough his other hand was available.

Mission accomplished. The family is safer than it was.


**Carrie and I got over the Battlestar Galactica hump we'd been climbing lately. We've had such fun with Blockbuster.com and watching TV series. Deadwood, Rome, Carnivale, Weeds, Dexter, Big Love, Tell Me You Love Me, Sopranos--all great experiences and windows into our murky souls.

Co-workers at my last job highly recommended BG and one of them had the first season, so we bit, and really enjoyed it. We're on the last season now; it had started to lag, we felt, but there was no way we were going to quit this far along. Tonight we saw enough to restore the faith and inject the adrenaline needed for the remaining three episodes.

So say we all. Frackin' skinjobs. Godsdammit.

Wow. Imagine if I was writing about Deadwood.

**Carrie, with the three small ones draped on her for their daily feeding, dropped a piece of chip with hummus on it. I picked it up and stuck it on her right arm, because hummus is sticky. Gavin looked at it and said, "What's happening?" I told him it was a festering sore, and to eat it. So he picked it off her arm and ate it.

If we ever have any infected scabs around here, we might have to rein in the sense of humor.


**I'm very excited to update the iPod today. First off, Carrie showed me how, so I don't have to ask her to do it anymore. Second, I now have most of my favorite Beatles and Elvis songs on there. I'm all for taking chances on music and being Obscure Band guy (Comet Gain, Cat Power, Battles, and Mew also made their Joe's iPod debut) but those two influenced much of what we all know and love and it's damn fine sing-along music.

A year or so ago, I made a video of Maggie (on our youtube channel, vezina11) singing the Beatles' "All My Lovin'," which she knew so well because I would sing it to her at bedtime each night. I started singing it because once you say "Close your eyes" to a child, the rest of the song surfaces, so I went with it.

I found when singing to her in the hospital days after she was born that the lyrics to love songs can work really well with newborns. "Reminiscing" by the Little River Band has always been a schlocky surprise favorite to myself, sort of like "At This Moment" by Can't Think of His Name Right Now.

I sang Reminiscing to her over and over, and who among you parents can argue with words like "I wanna build my world around you," and "I wanna make you understand I'm talking about a lifetime plan," and "On the way back home I promised you'd never be alone."

Fifteen months later, the twins helped us make good on that promise.