It's Thursday night & Husband's working: HELLO, Mr. Red Stripe!

Tonight I'm just sitting here drinking red stripe and listening to the baby cough in his sleep through the monitor. What's new?

The big news is that we are now minus one wedding ring. Don't worry, it's not my antique engagement ring. It's the one that I gave to Husband. The one with "put it back on" engraved on the inside. The one I spent my hard-earned Delta teaching money on.

It all started with this Tuesday-morning basketball obsession that he has. He makes the trek down south to Williamson County to play ball at this rec center where he gets in for $3 even though he should pay $5 since he is not a Williamson County resident. To avoid this fee, he always pays cash. He's sneaky like that. While he's down there in Suburbia, he does our grocery shopping and picks up the chicken feed at the Co-op. Lovely little ritual.

Well last Tuesday he broke his finger during some ball exchange with a big red-headed fella. The ring was already too tight ("but not in the winter" he says), and of course when you break a finger, it swells. He said he was getting claustrophobic about the ring. I know first-hand that this ring claustrophobia stuff really does happen to people (normal people, I mean) because one time when I was teaching music history at T.L. Weston High School in Greenville, MS, my student Romelda Robinson had a nervous breakdown in the middle of a class on Medieval monophonic Gregorian chanting because her ring wouldn't come off.

So Husband dealt with it for a couple of days but then came home yesterday with the ring in his hand, not on his finger. He said, "I'm really sorry, Kim, but it was getting to me. I was in the shop and I realized I couldn't even turn the ring around anymore and then I looked over and saw the grinder and I just had to do it." He cut most of it off with this thing he calls a "grinder" and then used pliers for the rest. So now I guess I'm expected to get another one ... anyone please feel free to advise on the protocol here.

He says that he wants to get a ring tatooed on his finger. I have already vetoed this idea once, during our engagement, at which time he was convinced that he didn't really need to wear a ring at all. It didn't take long for him to figure out that if he wanted me to change my name, he would be wearing a ring on his left hand. He didn't want to wear a ring. I didn't want to change my name. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what you call compromise. It is the only case of such a glorious accomplishment in the history of my relationship with this man. We are both Aquarians, if that means anything to you.

ION ...

I have been getting better in my nasty little give-the-baby-inappropriate-items-so-he-will-shut-his-mouth syndrome. Today I only gave him one dangerous thing: A Schick Intuition razor. I love Schick Intuition razors. Do y'all know about these beauties? It's a razor with a bar of shaving cream surrounding the blades ... so you don't have to use any foam or gel ... just take the cap off and glide. In my opinion, this is one of the better inventions of the 21st century. It is such a beautiful, beautiful device that it can make even the crunchiest of granola girls want to be slick and hair free. But I have a devil of a time getting the cap off the damn thing, so I figured it would be OK for him to play with it. And indeed, nothing bad happened. He abandoned it after spotting the toilet paper, which he dropped into the toilet. Then he banged the lid down onto his hand. Then I had to get outta the tub and actually take care of him. Can you guess my method of consolation? Yep, breastmilk available in two convenient locations near you.

ION ...

We have just finished painting the top portion of our bedroom (we have a chair rail). We chose a nice medium khaki color last October and have just now gotten around to it. We're hoping to have the bottom half done in a darker khaki by Easter.

Painting is so very therapeutic that I just might paint my entire house in the near future. Husband's boss, the park manager, has recently announced that he hates the color of the outside of our house (bricks painted gray with kelly-green shutters -- I like it) and so it will be painted a tannish-green color pretty soon (I'm hoping to at least choose the shutter color ... suggestions?). But for the inside, I'm thinking bold: mustard and brick for the living room, eggplant in the foyer, and one turqoise wall in the guest bedroom (we have a southwest theme in there).

Lord have mercy, is this ever a boring post! At least it doesn't involve musing about the texture of turtle eggs or a diatribe about the importance of avoiding produce from Mexico. Especially strawberries ... have y'all read about the stuff they put on strawberries?

Let's see, what else boring information can pour forth from my brain?

Right now I'm simultaneously reading Courts of Love by Ellen Gilchrist and Sin Killer by Larry McMurtry. The latter book was a gift from Husband, who says that the main character, Tasmin (the daughter of an English nobleman who brings his entire family to America in the early 19th century to hunt large game), is just like me. Tasmin is hot-tempered and impetuous and she ends up married to a missionary-like thing of a man who has two Indian wives and hardly speaks at all except to call forth the Holy Spirit to scare away hostile Indians. Now what does that say about me? Better yet, what does that say about Husband? He's reading some book about a South American shaman and we just got the most recent National Geographic in the mail. Feature story: Bird Flu H5N1. This is not good news, people ... we have chickens. People in Asia who have chickens are DYING from this awful stuff. I'm convinced it is all related to Americans' obsession with antibacterial products. Doesn't everyone know that that shit breeds supergerms?!?!?! I mean, I'm not innocent. When I was in Spain I got stuck in a really narrow stairwell of a castle with some germy-looking Europeans and I wasn't too shy to spray a little on them when they weren't looking. But come on! Now that I'm older and wiser I avoid that stuff like the plague. The plague. That's not funny at all is it?

Enough of this nonsense. I'm off to eat peas. Purple-hull peas. Mixed in with some butterbeans and a couple stalks of okra. Yum, yum. And then I'm after the Nilla wafers (anytime my parents come they bring a Sam's Club box of Nilla wafers. They're intended for The Goose but I just cannot help myself when there's some hormone-and-antibiotic-free 1% milk in the fridge.