It's Friday night and Husband's asleep: HELLO, Mr. Pinot G!

This morning I was reading Babytalk magazine, which I get each month because I filled out a whole bunch of GET THIS FREE cards at the pediatrician's office one time. This month's issue had two things that I MUST share. The first is a "how to prepare for nursing" spoof. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Gently rub your nipples with sandpaper.
• At bedtime, set your alarm clock to go off every two hours. Each time it rings, spend 20 minutes sitting in a rocking chair with your nipples clamped in a pair of chip clips.
• Draw branching ilnes all over your chest with a blue-green marker, then stand in front of your bathroom mirror and sing "I Feel Pretty."
• Fit the hose of a vacuum cleaner over one breast and set on "medium pile." Turn off vacuum when nipple is three inches long. Switch.
• Obtain "CAUTION" tape from your local police station, then wrap firmly around your chest. When your spouse asks about it, say, "Get used to it."
• Record your mother proclaiming, "Just give the baby some cereal like God intended, and he'll sleep right through the night." Play in an endless loop at 1 a.m., 3 a.m., and 5 a.m.
• Slather your breasts with peanut butter, top with birdseed, and stand very still in your backyard.
  

And my personal favorite:

• Suckle a wolverine.
  

I love it. Why can't I think of funny stuff like that and make money getting it published in magazines? Hmph.

The other great thing I read was about germy strangers trying to touch your baby. The advice was to say, "Oh, you might not want to touch him, he's got a little cold," rather than something like, "Keep your viral paws off my baby." So today while The Goose and I were out for our morning hike (he was in the backpack carrier), we happened upon one such germy individual and I tried the advice. Here's the conversation that followed:

Happily Hiking Female Virus Carrier (heretoafter HHFVC): Oh, look at him. Hi little fella ... oh, you wanna shake my hand?

Kim: Oh, you might not want to touch him, he's got a little cold.

HHFVC: Oh, don't worry about it. I don't get sick. I do energy work.

Kim: Oh. Well. Ummm.

(uncomfortable silence)

HHFVC: Yeah, my nine-year-old son gets those throwing-up-on-the-living-room-floor viruses and I take care of him and I never get sick because of my energy and frequencies.

Kim: Oh. Well. Ummm.

HHFVC: Do you know what I'm talking about?

Kim: Ummm. Well.

(uncomfortable silence)

Kim: I guess not.

HHFVC: I work with the energy fields in my body to allay sickness and disease. I never get sick. I just tap into a frequency and channel energy into the part of me that is diseased, and the energy frees my blockages and cures me.

Kim: Oh. Well. Ummm.

(uncomfortable silence)

Kim: Do you do that to your son when he's got the throw-up viruses?

HHFVC: I don't have to ... he has the energy too. I gave it to him.

Kim: Oh. Well. Ummm, so why does he get sick then?

HHFVC: Do you want to try it?

Kim: Oh. Well. Ummm, I'm not sick.

HHFVC: It doesn't matter. But I don't want to scare you. I mean, what's your background?

(Writer's note: How the hell was I supposed to answer this question? I thought of several options, since I had plenty of time to think, since uncomfortable silences were starting to get more and more comfortable. I considered, "Well, I grew up Baptist but then went to a Methodist college and now I read a lot about Taoism (but don't tell my parents) and do yoga." What would YOU have said? I asked Husband this same question and he answered, "Kim, I wouldn't have made it that far into the conversation.")

Kim: Well, ummm ... I do yoga?

HHFVC: Oh, OK, so your energy fields are probably open a little already. Hold out your hand.

(Kim holds out hand. HHFVC puts one hand above and one hand below (hovering above my hands) and begins moving them in a circular pattern.)

HHFVC: Can you feel that?

Kim: Oh. Well. Ummm.

(uncomfortable silence)

Kim: Yes?

HHFVC: See ... that's what it's like. I do workshops. Here's my card. Have a great hike.

Lord God in Heaven! How do I manage to get into these conversations with crazies? Every crazy in the city limits will eventually find me, I'm sure of it. It does make for good stories, but I just hope I don't catch some disgusting virus from them.

Later today, I turned The Goose loose in the backyard with his push cart (looks like this:)
and freed the chickens from their coop. I fed them some leftover capellini pomodora (sp?) and then sat there drinking wine and watching him chase them around and cackling sadistically each time he got close to a tailfeather bump. Then he fell over and I had to go attend to him and one of the chickens ran up to me (everytime you move from a stationary position, they think you're bringing scraps to dump into the yard for them to feast on). I wasn't really paying attention to the chicken because I was trying to upright The Goose when all of a sudden that blasted chicken pecked my left ring toe and drew blood.

Prior to this event, I have never been unkind to animals, even when dogs play bite or cats claw gashes into my arms. I've never lashed out. But today I lost all control and I kicked that damn chicken across the yard.

Now before you get all uppity and start calling the Humane Society, please go to your nearest library or bookstore and read the article on bird flu from the latest issue of National Geographic. This article explains how some Thai people suck the wounds of their prize fighting cocks and thus get infected with the virus and then pass it on to other humans and then people die and then one day one of them is going to get on a plane and bring it over here to us. Or either some infected bird will stow away on a ship or a plane and will infect the U.S. wild bird population, which will, in turn infect free-range poultry like our girls and then PECK, Kim gets pecked (and it draws blood!) and then BAM, Kim gets bird flu. However, it probably won't matter because by that time I will have already contracted Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (Mad Cow Disease) and will be gnawing on my own fingers somewhere in a middle Tennessee mental hospital.

So that's why I kicked that stupid chicken. She had poop caked on her tailfeathers anyway and the blow knocked it loose, so she should be happy that I helped her out. And if anyone of those bitches goes anywhere near my Goose then I will ring their necks like Renee Zellweger's character, Ruby, in Cold Mountain. Don't think I won't. Don't think I can't. Even if I couldn't, there's a loaded .22 in the closet upstairs.

Have a good weekend.