Baby names

These are the names Nora has given to the beloved dolls that she often puts down for naps (face down on the kitchen floor, after gently singing "Twinkle Twinkle" to them) and lovingly feeds and is looking for almost constantly. So, you know, I'd better know which one is which. With the exception of Maggie, she named them all by herself. Um, obviously:

Strawberry-Strawberry

Coffee Baby

Different One

Laughy

Maggie

Laughy, who was given such a name because - you guessed it - she laughs, currently holds the place of honor as constant companion in Nora's crib, which is way, way better, than the period that lasted a couple weeks where she was demanding she sleep with this blow-up Dora the Explorer that I got from a street vendor one time when I was trying to bribe her into walking herself back to the car, rather than have me carry her there. That situation (basically, a plastic balloon in the crib) didn't seem safe. But all's well now as I let the air out of the thing and hid it in the basement. Shhhh. Just keep that between us and we're good. Nora can't read. Yet.

Forecast

Hello from Antarctica Connecticut! So, several years ago J's roommate Grant, J and I were having this funny (funny, as in, we totally didn't mean any harm to anyone or anything, we are nice people) conversation about how meteorologists were sometimes, just by the very nature of what they do, wrong in their weather predictions, and how what if there was like a medieval-type mandate in place that dictated that, should they be incorrect - even once - they be, um, relieved of their duties. Like, as in, the king or president or what have you screaming, "Off with his head!"

I realize that you have to be careful in this day and age and I want to state here, for the record, that I do not want to kill or otherwise hurt any weather people. Not in the slightest.

I'm revisiting this conversation, in fact, because what we were really getting at is just how mad people get at meteorologists when they're wrong. So much madder than you get at anyone else who is making an educated guess about anything. People are all, "What the HELL, man, the rain started at 2 instead of 4? Ruin my life, why don't you?"

And I always think about that when the weather turns out differently than they predicted. I think I'm actually easier on meteorologists since I've been giving their job some real thought. It's not their fault that they're off every once in a while. Plus, the information they give out is immensely helpful. They're good people and I barely ever have negative comments about them because I get the challenges of their job.

But today...today on the 223,473,765th day of snow this year, I couldn't take it. I was standing there in the lobby of the vet's office with Cecilia looking outside at the snow pouring down from the sky, snow that wasn't supposed to start until tonight, and oh yeah, snow landing on top of the snow that fell yesterday, that we weren't even supposed to get, and I looked at the vet tech behind the counter and I said, "Can you even believe this?"

She was like, "Nope. I didn't even think it was supposed to start this early."

And I was like, "It wasn't even supposed to start this early. Oh my God it was not even supposed to start until later, and how about yesterday with that surprise snow? Those guys predicted wrong, they predicted so wrong I just can't TAKE IT ANYMORE!"