I'm glad you're feeling better, Raq.

My classes start back up today after two weeks off. I just printed up all of the course material, and now I have to think of something to say in my introduction that I haven't already said six times.

Well, fuckity, in a nibbled-by-ducks way. Just had an exhausting early morning wrestling with Matilda, who was wheezy and congested and finally screaming with misery; after much maneuvering, I managed to snot-suck appallingly enormous wads of phlegm and mucus out of both nostrils, Matilda shrieking the entire time, with a betrayed expression and tears rolling down her cheeks. After the removal of the last of the goo, she looked startled, then beamed, then collapsed and is now sleeping a peaceful, non-wheezy, non-labored sleep for the first time in two days.

I also just composed a long, thoughtful response to my dad's latest manipulative self-absorbed email about the baptism -- and lost it, timed out by my work email's server. No saved draft, no nothing. Man, I'm two ticks away from waiting for David's dad to get here, then bundling her into Bev's dress and dunking her in the kitchen sink. Grr, and also argh.

{{{{{JZ}}}}}

JZ, I love you very much, but if you dunk her, she'll end up Protestant, like me, and that never ends well.

Well, my own church does say I can dunk her myself in case of emergency. I don't know whether "So as not to bite a hole in my own cheek holding my tongue" counts as an emergency, but I'm just about willing to chance it.

Well, my own church does say I can dunk her myself in case of emergency. I don't know whether "So as not to bite a hole in my own cheek holding my tongue" counts as an emergency, but I'm just about willing to chance it.

I'd say incipient mutilation of lovely JZ cheeks is an emergency. NO BITING! YAY DUNKING!

You mean that after the wedding being All About Him, now the baptism is too? Thank God you aren't Jewish. He'd probably insist on being a major player in the bris.

And female circumsicion is such a divisive topic.

I found out way after the fact that my MiL had given Ben an "emergency" RC baptism, by herself, at home, when we hadn't had him baptized yet. I didn't know whether to feel sad or touched or incredibly angry.

Bingo, Betsy. We want something small and private -- aside from the fact that his entire side of the family isn't Catholic anyhow, there's the fact of David's dad, who is sweet, loving, big-hearted, and very ill, making what will probably be his last long journey in this life to be present at the baptism (he won't even see it, since he has gone blind in the two years since our wedding).

All I want out of the baptism weekend (aside from, you know, the actual baptism) is a safe, loving, relatively quiet space for David's dad to spend time cuddling his grandchildren, having to share them with as few people as possible, getting his fill of his youngest grandbaby and spending time with David and Emmett without a big social whirl and bustle.

My dad was all bent out of shape initially because, when Little League tryouts were rescheduled to that Sunday, we moved the baptism from Sunday to Saturday. This is a DISASTER for my dad because he's going to a Sheriffs Association function that night, and he's already spent a nonrefundable $400 on his ticket. Now that the baptism will be happening in the morning and not interfering with his social calendar, he's further bent out of shape that I don't want to invite his immediate family or to hold a big huge brunch for all of them afterwards (we're having David's folks and the godparents over for scrambled eggs and sweet rolls, which is what we can afford). He keeps insisting that even with his immediate family it'll still be small. Um, no. It'll be an additional 16 people, 19 if we include the three additional extended family members who are the only ones Hec and I feel really close to anyway. 30-35 people, NOT SMALL.

But he can't let it go. He, the grandparent who lives 20 minutes away and sees her regularly, can't concede anything to the grandparent who's traveling from halfway across the country, and he won't respect that David and Emmett and Matilda are *my* immediate family.

Why must I be this way? His family EXPECTS it. This is what Greek culture IS ALL ABOUT. They won't UNDERSTAND. He knows, just knows, that in years to come I'll look back on this and suffer TERRIBLE REGRET that I didn't do it differently.

In the above 5 sentences, there are approximately 60 layers of @@ that I can't even go into for fear of boring everyone here to death. But now I totally want to do a Family Obligations Guilt-Wielding Cage Match between him and P-C's mom.