One week after Bastille Day (ce n’est pas Bastille Day), a baby achieved five weeks of breathing. A baby had seen better weeks, what with having the little thing that holds her tongue in her mouth removed and all. Long story, but she did really well, and the people at Children’s Hospital were very nice and simultaneously achieved the desired results while not accidentally killing her. I almost handled the dying for her, because my heart broke wide open from seeing her little head bobbing over the nurse’s shoulder when they took her into the OR. Oh shit, you have no idea.

Clearly her mouth developed improperly because of Something I Did While Pregnant. Did I take a Sudafed? Was it because I came within a few feet of the litterbox? Was it the sushi? See, I am pre-emptively guilt tripping myself. She’s going to have so much more free time as a teenager. Whenever she’ll start with “It’s all your—” I’ll be like “Gotcha covered, kid. See: July 2006, where I walked around with rocks in my shoes as penance.” And she’ll shrug, steal some of my Valium, and leave to go buy a slutty outfit.

We all needed a break on Friday night, so we tempted fate by walking downtown to get ice cream. A baby obligingly fell asleep in the sling, which is great because going somewhere in public with a baby is a bit like handling dynamite. Handling dynamite was covered in a episode of Lost, if you need a refresher. Results were mixed. We made it within a few doors of the ice cream place when a man scurried up to us and said “The guy from Lost in Space is at Gary’s Ice Cream!” We said “Oh,” and he helpfully offered “Not the old guy, the other guy.” Well, whoopee.

So we get in there, and Major Don West is signing photos for a bunch of obese older people in sci-fi themed t-shirts! Wow! He even had a seven-foot-tall replica of The Robot. Why did we leave the house without a camera?

Thus distracted, I made a fatal error when ordering my ice cream. I ordered a scoop of one flavor in a cup, and a scoop of a second flavor, intended to share the cup. But because I didn’t yell “PUT THEM IN THE SAME CUP,” each scoop arrived nestled in its own cup. Mr. H asked them to put the two scoops in the same cup, and panic ensued. The counter person couldn’t process this request, so he brought in the seventeen-year-old manager. “What’s the problem?”

“Um, we want both of these scoops in one cup.”

“What?”

Finally, after we employed hand gestures, switching to two other languages, drawing a crude image on a napkin, and holding Major Don West at knife point, TeenMgr squeezed both single cups into…another cup, single sized. At that point, I ran out screaming and threw the whole dripping mess in the trash.

At least a baby slept all the way home.