The joys of preschool

My brother-in-law's grandmother, Rosie, passed away this week on her 100th birthday. Today, there was a large gathering at my sister's mother-in-law's house in Rosie's honor. When we arrived, we followed the squeaky voice of my three-year-old nephew into the living room. He was playing Candy Land with his uncle from the other side of the family.

Only a three-year-old would manage to insist on playing Candy Land with two dice and a dreidl instead of cards. Maybe we should all take a lesson in throwing out the rules from him.

Pools of Sweat (literally!)

I don't really have the attention span for the gym. I can only endure 30 minutes on the elliptical with my iPod in my ears and something interesting on one of the TVs (I read the closed captioning). I usually end up watching something horrible and trashy like "Flavor of Love with Flavor Flav" or "I Love the 80s" or "America's Next Top Model" or "Fox News."

Today, the only elliptical free was way at the back (on a Friday!) so that's where I was stuck. The screens with the truly terrible shows on them (I know I saw Right Said Fred on one screen) were too far away to read the captioning on and the vaguely interesting news programs all had the captioning turned off. I was forced to amuse myself by looking at my fellow exercisers.

I belong to a family sort of gym. The kind of place that has all sorts of activities and classes for the kids and half of the trainers are busy with scrawny teenage boys hoping to make Varsity next fall. This is not a crowd of "the beautiful people." This gym is populated by average people with average lives.

One of my not-so-fabulous-looking fellow exercisers was a man in his late forties or early fifties riding a stationary bike. His T-shirt was soaked through. His face was bright red. His hair stuck to his head at awkward, damp angles.

As I was walking away, headed for the weight machines, I noticed a puddle about half an inch deep on the floor surrounding this guy's bike. It took me a minute to realize that this was a pool of this guy's sweat.

Do you think he mopped up after himself?

Signs you should just go home and crawl back to bed

I got my morning coffee and I was starving so I got a doughnut to go with it. I put the sugar in my coffee and stirred it.

As I was reaching for a lid, I knocked over the entire cup of coffee. Not only did I make a mess and have no coffee, I spilled it right on the doughnut. I had no breakfast either.

The day went downhill from there.

Population explosion

I'm in one of those weird phases where everyone everywhere seems to be having babies. I mean everyone. And this isn't just a product of the wave of everyone getting married, considering that (a) that was four years ago and (b) a lot of these are second babies, or babies late into marriages, things like that.

It started with the husband's friend's wife (the couple that had sworn they didn't want children) who had a little boy in early February. Next was a former coworker who had a little girl a few weeks ago. Another coworker is going out on leave next week in anticipation of the birth of her little girl. Then there's the wife of a friend from grad school and another woman at work.

Today, I even got an email with pictures of a newborn baby girl born to a couple that I didn't even know was expecting.

Why do these things come in waves? Do people sense each other's fertility? Is it contagious? If you miss one wave, are you destined to remain childless until the next one comes along?