Edit: WonderBaby update, below

You know how it goes.

The weekend starts out lovely – say, you and your husband realize that the planets are in such proper alignment that it is finally possible to celebrate your tenth anniversary, a month after the fact – and it’s all going swimmingly – you put on a new dress and go out for dinner and have martinis and oysters and lobster sous vide and multiple glasses of Chateau de Quantin – until later that night when the baby wakes up with a holler and disrupts your boozy sleep and sets you on an insomnia spin until 6 in the morning when she wakes again, all pink-cheeked and warm to the touch and dripping with snot and mad as hell that she has been compromised in her robustness and this continues through the afternoon when you discover that she has a disturbing rash across her abdomen that spreads as you watch and so you call the hospital and are given the distinctly unreassuring advice to just watch her, it *probably* isn’t an emergency but you’ll want to bring in to the doctor first thing tomorrow and do watch her because if anything changes you will want to bring her in yada yada blah and so you spend the rest of the day peering at her belly and monitoring the rash and feeling her forehead and periodically subjecting her to the indignity of the rectal thermometer and generally fretting about whether or not the fact that she is not running means that she is, in WonderBaby terms, lethargic and you make yourself crazy and you know that you’re going to remain crazy and unsettled and anxiously insomniac until you get to the doctor tomorrow.

You cling to the hope that, maybe, if you’re lucky, the hangover will pass before then and that maybe you’ll get some sleep and that you’ll feel strong and capable and in control in the morning.

(Except that, um, you? Lucky? HA.)

Just a few more days in the life of a kick-toy of the gods. You know how it goes.

I’ll be incommunicado until we get some sort of all-clear from the doctor, and I get some sleep. In the meantime, you might consider amusing yourselves, and me – I need a laugh, or at least a weak chortle – by playing WTF: The Guessing Game! with this object:

It is not, I hasten to assure you and very possibly disappoint you, a sex toy. (In any case, you think that I would risk provoking the gods further by waving phalluses about, do you? It’s usually what gets me into trouble in the first place.) But don’t let that stop your imagination from running wild.

Help a girl out. I need a laugh.

********

WonderBaby Update (and secrets of C3P0’s penis revealed!):

So, we’ve been to the doctor, and the doctors don’t know squat. The rash comes and goes – appears and disappears – which makes it seem like hives, except that it doesn’t provoke any itching or discomfort. So they can’t diagnose hives. And the fever was brief and hasn’t returned, so they don’t think that it’s roseola. And WonderBaby now seems healthy, except for the rash that has been coming and going, so they can’t say for certain that it’s viral. Could be a mysterious allergy, could be a mysterious virus. They don’t know. What they do know is that she kicked the asses of two separate doctors – wrenching various medical devices from unsuspecting medical hands and turning the medical tables (‘how’d you like a knobby thing in *your* ear, doc?’) on unsuspecting medical persons – and took off down the hall and that means, apparently, that she is likely in good health. ‘Just keep an eye on her.’ Oh, uh, OKAY.

I expect that I will be stressed for as many days as it takes for her to return to normal. Oh, hey, wait! What the fuck is normal?

Thank god for modern medicine.

And thank you all so much for keeping me laughing through the stress. Now it can be revealed: the strange plastic thingamajig that resembled, apparently, among other things, C3P0’s penis, is in fact this:

Yes, Graham, it is indeed a Banana Bunker. The better way to keep fruit interesting.

Regularly scheduled blogging will resume shortly.