the ER really does have to perform a pregnancy test every time

They may have to, but in this neck of the woods they thankfully don't. There were a couple of weeks here or there where they wanted one, but let's just call my kidneys efficient. Could easily tack a few hours onto the front end of each visit, waiting for me to pony up. It's been under 10% of the times they've tested me (and under 50% of the time they've asked about my last period) before what was always going to be narcotics.

Would someone please tell my brain that it's sleepy-time?

I'm watching Anchors Aweigh now. This is a very weird movie.

Is that the one where Gene Kelly dances with Jerry the Mouse?

Yep.

It also has Dean Stockwell, age six or so. He ran away from home to join the Navy.

So. Many. Orphans in literature.

From a narrative point of view you have to get the parents out of the way for the kids to have any agency. It's not anti-parent, it's pro-story. Nobody wants to read about your stinkin' happy childhood.

Back from two days in Sunnyvale where Emmett's tournament team went 4-0. Which sounds more impressive than it was since we were in an 11-and-under tournament and played two 10 y.o. teams (and crushed their wee little spirits with slaughter rule wins).

Emmett made some very nice plays at catcher and he made it all the way to the fourth game before a pitcher got him out. He had a lot of walks and when they threw him strikes he got hits.

To put the capper on the baseball weekend the A's swept the Red Sox (ha ha - I'm very bitter about the invasion of the Red Sox fans at the Coliseum every time the Bloody Hose come to town).

I'm going to ignore Teppy going to the land of Lolcats. She's clearly going through a year of radical reassment and testing (non-Blonde! SinLiving!) and is bound to make some egregious errors in judgment from time to time.

I've heard similar arguments for why P.I's are kind of lonerish, traditionally speaking.(That's not why I killed off my character's dad, though. My dad pisses me off a lot sometimes and he never apologizes. So Fictional! Him eats a service revolver and it's all good.)

erika, you'll like this story.

So one of Emmett's good plays at catcher came on a pop up. High foul pop behind the plate. Emmett goes back on the ball thinking it'll go over the backstop fence, but throws off his mask to see. Ball comes almost straight down parallel to the fence and inches away. It's a tough catch even for a major league catcher because you've got to flick your glove out at the last second to catch it - you can't get under it, and the fence is in the way of your glove.

Emmett makes the catch, and it's a last out of the inning and he gets knuckle bumps from all of his teammates, out by the mound. The batter (who had oddly run it out to first even though the ball was entirely foul) ran back across the field from first to his dugout on the third base side and made a point of pushing through our team at the mound and very pissily called Emmett a "lucky fuck."

Our guys were so flummoxed at this breach in sports etiquette that the only rejoinder they could muster was from Emmett's teammate Ben (a very nice boy) who said, "Don't be a hater!"

We didn't mind kicking that team's ass.

(We'd seen their coach before at previous tournaments and he'd indulged some extremely assholish and unsportsmanlike behavior.)

I just had to unlock 21 bathroom stalls with a broom over the top of the door because some imp (or imps) thought it would be funny to lock them all and crawl out underneath.