…and for those of you wanting all the lurid details, it went something like this:

I went to bed at 1:00 am this morning. at 2:00 I was awakened to the fact that Gina’s water had broken in the bed. Say, do any of you have any tips on how to get “water” out of a mattress? I’m currently in the market. So off we went to the hospital! (Gina’s edit: she cleaned herself up, but don’t think that that didn’t stop the leakage.) Once there we were informed that Gina had dialated to a 5, which in obstetrics parlance means “your baby will come at 5 minutes past 5.” or something like that, I wasn’t really paying much attention. So we waited around for a few hours, and there’s a reason I go to bed at 1:00 am as there is nothing worth watching on tv, so I stared intently at the contraction monitor. Up and down it went! By 8:00 I was bored, so I went down to the cafeteria to get some breakfast. I had Froot Loops and french toast. Both were mediocre. So around 9:00 the nurses wanted to test Gina’s pushing prowess, instructing her to push as if she were having the biggest bowel movement she could imagine. Now we’re talking. She pushed and pushed, but to no avail. No baby AND no huge BM. The nurses went away, but came back later at 10:00 with more instructions to push, but this time they meant business. For one whole hour she pushed, and I watched…sorta surreal, and certainly better than whatever is on tv at that time of morning. Regis and that overly perky girl for example. So after an hour of this, I figured Gina was getting tired of pushing whatever it was she was pushing for so long, which from my perspective was a bloody patch of hair. But then all the nurses got real serious. They all donned hospital-type gowns and such. the doctor comes running in, from surgery no less, shouting words of birthing encouragement such as “you go girl” and the like. And just like that, the whole head emerged, then little junior came whooshing out in a hale of what I cannot adequately describe to you here. And oh, he is a handsome tyke. 10 fingers, 10 toes, and 2 testicles. Really. I watched them count. The rest is sorta boring. Trying to log onto the hospital’s wireless, that sort of thing. I’m a proud dad. Pictures to come after I get some sleep and access to a non-windows computer. Blech…that’s ickier than afterbirth.

-ed.

character study for Senator Patrick Edwards c. 1957

So after what must have been the mental equivalent of obtaining an advanced degree in quantum neutrino fields, I have finally figured out how to change the header image of this here blog. In the process, my brain thought: hey, why not decorate the newfangled header image with a mostly uneaten Ding Dong. That there’s visual comedy. Gestalt you might say. In my haste to compose the header, I grabbed the box of Ding Dongs that have been in my cupboard for the better part of a year. This particular box of Ding Dongs assured me that the contents therein were edible foodstuffs until February 5 2007. Now, in my youth I had worked in the grocery industry to know that foods are generally edible well after their branded expiration date, and also that the butchers in the meat department routinely used hair spray to “erase” the expiration dates on pre-packaged meats. And these particular butchers also had stacks of pornographic magazines in the back closet, but that’s a story for another day. I was nonetheless confident that these Ding Dongs had enough preservatives to give them a nuclear half-life…and still be Ding Dong-a-licious.Alas, these Ding Dongs are crunchy.In the end, I got a pretty good shot of my mostly-eaten Ding Dong. I hope you enjoy it to the extent that I distinctly did not. And tomorrow…the footer image.-ed.

To my gentile reader: (whoops, that certainly was Freudian.) I mean gentle reader:

As good-looking as I may be, I am at a complete loss as to how this here blog works. As the 70s-era-kitten-in-the-tree-inspirational posters have erstwhile suggested: Hang in there, baby.

-ed.