Why I should never be left alone with anyone under the age of eighteen.

Sigh. So, okay. Here’s what happened.

Yesterday, shortly after dinner. Henry was in dreamy, reflective mode, standing up on the window seat in our living room, gazing at the cars and flotsam. This is a narrow seat that he’s never left alone on, as he could immediately slip and fall, causing grave injury to his person. (Note the foreshadowing! NOTE IT!)

Anyway, I was of course sitting right there, right next to him, my legs stretched out across the seat as he pressed his body against the window. He was absentmindedly kissing the window and he was being so cute and so unusually still that I grabbed the camera off the coffee table and started taking pictures. Of course, while clicking away, I let go of him. And then. Then. He looked at the camera, grinned, shouted “Boom!” which is his way of saying, “Watch me comically throw myself down!” and—boom—he threw himself down. Only his butt landed on nothing--remember how I said how narrow the seat was? Remember?—because his butt was headed straight for the floor, but before his butt could reach its destination, his poor little skull cracked against the brutal coffee table edge, and OH MY GOD WHO TOLD ME I COULD HAVE A KID?

For a millisecond he lay there, staring up at me like, why am I down here, wasn’t I up there? and in that millisecond I thought, he’s not making a sound, he’s a vegetable, his brain has been pureed and then he started wailing, and I scooped him up and tried to comfort him as only an idiot-mother can, and I tried to figure out what to do and I couldn’t remember a damn thing, including my husband’s cell phone number, and all I could do was babble idiot words of idiot comfort to my poor trusting child. Miraculously, after ten minutes of unadulterated weeping he wiped his eyes and asked to read a book, so of course we did, me quizzing him on the name of every animal on every page, as if he might have lost the giraffe-identifying lobe of his brain.

So, in the end, everything was fine, Henry’s fine, we’re fine, tra la la. There’s not even a bump on his head. Everything’s fine, except I’M NOT FINE, I’m a total wreck still. I’m having flashbacks of the feeling of his little legs landing on my legs and then slipping away from me, stupid me with my stupid camera; I’m still watching him slip off me and I’m not reaching forward and dropping the goddamn camera and I hate myself. And the worst part is, I have a picture of that big grin he had on his face, the joyful get-a-load-of-this grin he gave me, one second before he discovered that his mother sucks.

On an unrelated topic, while searching the web for a good brain chart to link to, I found the kitty paintings of a schizophrenic artist. First the kitties are weird and THEN THEY’RE SO MUCH WEIRDER. Go see. I don’t know, though—I think the psycho kitties are less frightening than the “normal period” kitties. What does that say about me?

It’s shameless plug time!

There’s an unspeakably cool indie-rock record store opening in Williamsburg, and if you live in New York or the surrounding tri-state area, you will undoubtedly want to visit it and stuff your pockets full of shiny pretty CDs. (After paying for them, of course.) Sound Fix will be opening April 29th, and its proprietor is none other than my brother. Sound Fix will be featuring live acts as well: on opening night, the lyrical and wondrous Mountain Goats will be playing. So! Hie thee hence to 110 Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg—if not on the 29th, then soon, and frequently.

Okay, I’m done.

Clarification, or: down, blog-guests! Down!

Dear finslippy readers:

I have received several outraged emails and comments in response to our vet's thoughts regarding the high costs of medical expenses vs. one's love of one's pet.

Listen. Listen. I'm touched that you're all up in arms over my vet--it warms the cockles of my heart, truly. If I knew where those cockles were, I would poke them, and they would be all toasty, and I would say, ah, thank you, readers. But the thing is, when I quoted my vet, I was using a little device we in the Writing Biz like to call Making Shit Up. Otherwise known as Making Boring Shit Funnier.

If I had written what she had actually said, which was (before we had asked about price), "You know, these tests can really add up, so I'll get you all the prices and you can think about it," what fun would that have been? Instead, I visited the Unreliable Narrator who lives in a dank cubby within my brain, and she was muttering, "I know that friggin' vet really thinks we're cheap assholes who'd rather abandon our dog in Prospect Park than pay for one more test," and I decided to use her interpretation of the conversation, and--here we are.

However, she did just call us to say that the x-rays revealed no kidney stones BUT it showed an "abnormally small liver," whatever that indicates (isn't that good? I mean, considering how much he drinks) so now she wants some blood tests, and she kept saying, "You know, Charlie is six," as if we might as well start building his coffin today--get out the planks! where did I put those nails?--and I hate our vet a little now, so go ahead, badmouth her some more.

It's not about sex--it's about power.

Charlie the dog is having issues with his wang. His dinger. His, as one of my friends vividly described it, “little lipstick.” A few times a day, he’ll leap up, spin wildly about trying to get at his penis, lick it as much as he’s able, and then his hindquarters will thrust away at nothing, while he looks at us as if to say, “Can you [hump] please tell me [hump] just what in tarnation [hump hump] is going on [hump hump humpity]?”

At first we found this hilarious (look at our doggie, humping the air! He thinks he’s people! Humpy people!), then kind of annoying (okay, enough displaying the glistening, unsheathed member to friends and family) then we considered that the licking might indicate a problem. So off to the vet we went, and Charlie was diagnosed with a UTI, and we felt kind of terrible—we were chortling at our dog’s humpiness when all the while he was suffering the kind of pain that we happen to know is not at all chortle-inspiring.

But he’s still doing it, and there is no more UTI. So now we think he’s just figured out a fun new hobby, and wouldn’t you do this, if you could? Wouldn’t you? But the vet is demanding more tests, ultrasounds and blood tests and probably there will be probing, there's always probing, and Charlie does not like probing. We asked, won’t these tests be expensive? And the vet replied, “Only if you don’t love your dog enough,” and we’re supposed to call back but we haven’t.

And now, an unrelated humping-dog story.

Many years ago, when I was the editor of a silly web magazine that no one read (remember those?), my staff and I went to our art director M.’s apartment for the sole purpose of filming her miniature white poodle humping a pillow. For whatever reason, this (female, spayed) poodle had developed an affection for one particular pillow, and she liked to hump it as it slid across M.’s hardwood floors. We decided this would be an amusing addition to a faux-porn edition of the site. The movie, of course, would be entitled “Doin’ it Doggie-Style.” I got paid for this.

While we were there, M.’s sister L. related the story of how they had adopted the dog after its previous owner died of AIDS. L. (who is perhaps not the smartest person I’ve ever met, although definitely the most stoned at any given time) told us all, with not a hint of shame, how she had actually asked a vet if she and her sister could contract AIDS from the dog.

“And you know what the vet told me?” L. said breathlessly, as if she were about to share a fascinating bit of lore. “He told me that this was the stupidest question anyone had ever asked him.” With that she sat back in her chair and beamed, as her little poodle humped its way past her feet.