Do the Yak

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Last week's highlight, the colonoscopy, resulted in a completely clean bill of health. It actually had a not-too-bad side, which was the IV mixture of Versed and fentanyl. Completely conscious, but lost all track of time and felt MIGHTY relaxed. I think it may have caused some mild hallucinations as well, because I swear I could hear a faint voice in the background: Welcome to your fun-filled tour of Gutamala! My name is Colin and I'll be your guide today. Today we'll be looking at some architecture dating back to 1961, and we'll also be on the lookout for rare wildlife found only in this particular ecosystem. We should have good viewing since the atmosphere has cleared up considerably after some heavy precipitation the last couple of days. Keep your eyes peeled for life forms such as the extremely rare villous adenoma, sometimes known to laymen as "gut coral." If you do spot one, please don't break off a piece to take home for a souvenir. The tour opera...

Tonight is Sarah's second appearance on stage. The lower groups at her summer camp are putting on "Peter Pan." She didn't seem happy about it this morning. I asked why, thinking she was having stage fright, but hell no. She's bummed because she has to play John and doesn't get to be Peter Pan or Tinkerbelle. I assured this young Leo that she'll have plenty more chances. In case you were wondering, her first appearance was at the age of five days, when Ben and I attended a show by our old theater group. Since we knew everyone, we schmoozed with cast and crew before show time and trundled Sarah in her baby carrier across the dark stage to give her a kind of theatrical baptism, you should pardon the expression. If she was a boy, perhaps we would have waited until she was eight days old. Later, under cover of darkness in the audience, I fed her in what would turn out to the first of many semipublic breast-feedings because it was either that or inflict her scre...

The Hatfields and McCoys are at it again in the Middle East. It's all very complicated, involving an incendiary mix of oil, politics, history, religion and the Great Pumpkin. To test your knowledge of the latest chapter in this centuries-old conflict, here's a short quiz. Who really has the rights to the land currently occupied by the state of Israel? a. The Jews. b. The Palestinians. c. Either Irving Weinblatt or Hassan al-Rashid of Brooklyn N.Y., both of whom have come forward with identical winning lottery tickets, though Pope Clement claims his Aunt Tilly left Israel to him in her will and has documents to prove it. Why do Muslims and Jews hate each other? a. They're very cranky because it's so hot and they keep getting sand in their tighty whities. b. They have religious views with a common ancestor but totally different interpretations of God's wishes because the Torah-Bible-Koran transcribing secretary was out sick for a couple of weeks and they got this...

So I get to have my first-ever colonoscopy this week -- YEAH baby! It's totally no cause for concern (trust me on that or I'll have to reveal more information than even I want to know) but they just have to, you know, cover their asses. I write about it only because the preparations are fascinatingly detailed, sort of like a space shuttle launch. There's a step-by-step list of instructions like a NASA countdown: "At T-minus three days, start eating nothing but ulcer food... at T-minus 36 hours, chug somma this and gnaw on a fewa these ." And this is the LESS embarrassing stuff. Once I get to the hospital, I'll probably have to pass an orange to the next player without using my hands or chin, sing "Shake Your Booty" by K.C. and the Sunshine Band, and perform an interpretive dance wearing only a snapless cotton robe and a miner's helmet. Fortunately, I'm already preparing in my own way. This is an unparalleled opportunity for witty humor and I...

Sometimes you get more than you bargained for. Some of those times you have a choice in the matter, like the ridiculous Iowa woman who took fertility drugs and presto! -- for pregnant with septuplets that eventually stacked up in her like a human pyramid at the circus , but she wouldn't consent to culling any embryos when they realized they were going to have a litter of puppies, because she and her husband met at Bible college, y'see, and it's God's will and all, so she had all seven babies, several with developmental problems, surprise surprise. It's her choice, though I'd sue the doctor for lifetime child support for about six of 'em. This dude didn't do an IVF, which limits the number of embryos you wind up with -- he just said "Let's pump 'er fulla Pergonal, stick in the ol' turkey baster and see whut happens!" Then there's this family in L.A. just the other day that already had two daughters and decided they wanted more, s...

Ben spent the first of three nights in Deep Jersey without being here to read bedtime stories and stuff for the kids last night. He travels overnight so rarely that they have no memory of the last time and are pretty unhappy about the whole thing. Last night Sarah made a drawing of Daddy to keep in bed with her, and then this morning she made one for Becky as well (complete with three accurately depicted discrete brown blobs of hair). Becky was sad last night so she lined up some stuffed animals on Ben's side of our bed and then decided to take Momma Bear into her bed with her. This is a fairly large and worn stuffed bear that Ben had as a kid and which his mother offloaded from his old bedroom a few years back. It normally sits on Ben's dresser, benignly surveying the scene with its eyeless face. Then this morning they came bounding into the bedroom as soon as the clock-radio went off at about 6:45, chirping, "Is it time to call Daddy yet?" So I missed some of my soo...

Ben is off the New Jersey for a couple of days for the funeral of his stepmother's brother (esophageal cancer, age 70 or thereabouts, though he never smoked). The girls made cards for Meema (the grandchildren's name for Ben's stepmother). The sweetness quotient of their cards and pictures has gone way up since they progressed from random scribbled to actual writing and recognizable pictures. I recently bought two huge plastic tubs for their collected artwork, which is getting a lot harder to throw away because it's so damn cute, especially since they go whole hog on Mother's Day, father's Day, birthdays, etc. How can you toss out (or even recycle) something with shaky little letters that spell "I LOVE YOU MOMMY" even though you already have several hundred variations on the theme? On deck in the Circling-the-Drain Derby is Meema's mother, who is only recently become bedridden, which is amazing considering she and her husband are in their mid-90s an...

Here's an interesting analysis of Sen. Joe Lieberman and why he's actually a neoconservative, and how the whole neocon movement is now populated and defined by extremely hawkish assholes with extra Y chromosomes rather than by social issues, so they've lost the support of people like George Will and (gasp!) Pat Buchanan. Here's hoping he loses in the primary to a real Democrat. Otherwise he's basically Connecticut's Zell Miller. On a somewhat happier note is a nice speech by Barack Obama about religion in American politics and how the Dems can't just brush it aside, much as we secular types would like to. Like it or not, we seem to live in a rediculously religious society, and the Dems have to acknwledge this and use it to their advantage rather than ignore it and hope it will go away. An excerpt: If we don't reach out to evangelical Christians and other religious Americans and tell them what we stand for, then the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons and...