Red Velvet in a Bowl

Last night I had a dream that Rex was in bed with me.  I used to pull him into bed with me when he was a baby, or should I say a smaller baby, but those days are history (thank god).  In my dream, I had no idea how he got into my bed:  Did my husband put him there as a joke?  Did I?  Or did Rex jump out of his crib?  He's almost capable of it.

Speaking of jumping out, in high school my brother had an amazing fish called Agamemnon. This fish was amazing because he lived a really long time for a fish, like ten years or something, but the most incredible part was that Agamemnon survived multiple, regular suicide attempts.  My parents would often come home (my brother was well into college at that point) to find Agamemnon flopping around on the floor, behind the television or on the bookshelf, having propelled himself up and out of his fishbowl.  

This is even more miraculous because we had two cats.  They were obese and lazy beyond words, but they could probably have gotten a fish laying prone on the floor.  Eventually they got wise to Agamemnon and would wait patiently like Sphinxes, staring up at his bowl, unblinking, for hours.  Jump Motherfucker, jump!  They never got him, but eventually Agamemnon did himself in.  I like to think it was a spectacular, splashy and beautiful death, but most likely he just flopped out.  I think my mom found him stuck to the back of the TV.

Anyway, the whole point here is that I am writing again after a mini-hiatus.  Rex is so big and so active that holding him is like wrangling a chimpanzee.  Feeding him is an Olympic sport requiring all my limbs and brain power to keep him still, or at least latched on.  My wrists have been killing me, so I've been avoiding the keyboard.  But lately I've just been putting Rex on the floor, because like Agamemnon he keeps trying to jump down and out.  Crawling is on the horizon and then Rex will put everything he finds - Polly Pockets, sequins, dog food and other dog items, into his mouth.  I hope he doesn't get H1N1.  If there was a canine flu that people could get, it would be all over our house. It's a good thing we don't own swine.  For a lot of reasons.

Speaking of swine flu, last Sunday night I was convinced Veronica had it for sure.  She had a cold and had been sneezing all day, but it wasn't enough to keep us from going to a barbecue that afternoon.  When we got home, shoehorned Rex into his pajamas and wrestled Veronica into bed, all was quiet until I heard barfing sounds coming from Veronica's room.  Usually when she's sick she moans and groans and says she has to throw up, on and off for hours, whether she has to puke or not.  (Actually, whether she's sick or not.)  But this time sounded like the real thing, so I ran in with the nearest bowl I could find.  Sure enough, blammo! I made it to the bed just in time to catch a huge watery projection of red, nasty, B-movie vomit coming out of my kid.  It was so gross I almost threw up in my mouth, but even worse, I thought she was puking blood!  Sure, it looked like fake blood, but still.  So I screamed for my husband, who came running.  

"I think it's the swine flu," I stage-whispered to him, my eyes growing wide and terrified in the dark.

"Nope," he said. "It was the red velvet cupcake she ate."

Oh.  Well that makes it all better.