I feel really stupid after this morning's revelation.

Walking up to my office from the car, I saw a discarded wrapper from some type of office supply, bearing the Staples logo. And it suddenly clicked why they'd picked that name for their store -- not only are staples an item frequently used in a paper-pushing office, but in another dictionary sense they are the basic necessities of any subset of society.

This place has been in business for 20 years, and I have been pursuing writing for at least as long. How is it that I just now noticed that clever play on words?

It occurs to me that all our baby pictures could be invoking jealousy from our expectant mother friends. After all, who else do you know that got a sono at six weeks? But then again, not taking advantage of the perks of this eighty-hour-a-week job would be like Sed spending all day churning ice cream by hand and then throwing it into the pond.

Her hospital recently got another new piece of technology: the 3D sonogram machine. Since we went home to visit family over the weekend, one of the attendings was good enough to take what can only be described as a metric assload of photos to share.



In most of the images we've taken before, Margarita is facing the camera. It's nice every now and then to get a profile shot. Sed says that the difference between textures of her face and the top of her head means that there's probably some hair coming in. Since I was born with an afro, it wouldn't be surprising.



Here's how you can tell this is my baby: already she's got her umbilical cord in her mouth, having clearly acquired the Moya predisposition to think, "Man, this extra skin is annoying. Maybe I can chew it off."



For most of the shoot, the kid had her hands in this raised position. I still think she's going to play center for Don Flanagan, so this to me is a defensive posture, but her girly mom says it's pre-ballet, her swim-coach grandma calls it a diving pose, and her Isotopes-superfan grandpa sees her leading The Wave.



"All right, enough, people. Get that camera out of my face."

We're walking up Main Street, away from the candy shop and toward Cinderella Castle, as Jiminy Cricket prefaces the upcoming fireworks display. And perhaps I'm a bit too engrossed in my vanilla turtle fudge, but I swear he just said, "Isn't that right, Luke Perry?"

"Did you guys hear that?" I ask my companions. "Did he say Luke Perry?"

"That's sort of inappropriate." Sed and Scott both snicker, clearly having the same vision I am: an inebriated Dylan McKay slump-staggering across the Magic Kingdom, falling into a seat on the bench next to Roy Disney, having his keys taken away by Mickey Mouse (played in this Very Special Episode by Jason Priestley).

It's not until later that I work out what he was saying: not "Luke Perry," not even "Drew Carey," but "Blue Fairy."

No wonder Sed always beats me at Disney Scene It.

So Bill Richardson has finally taken the step we all expected when he first ran for governor.

His timing really couldn't have been worse, though. Not only has the country forgotten all about his work as Secretary of Energy, but he enters the most diverse field of Democrats in about the History of Ever. Being Latino doesn't help your minority bid much when you're going up against a woman and a startlingly good-looking black guy, especially when your name is Bill.

I have mixed feelings about this nomination. Do I want a New Mexican in the White House? Hell yes! And I'm not even speaking to qualifications; this is all regional pride. There's not one of us who wouldn't love to point at someone in a high-ranking position and say, "That guy's from here!" We do the same thing with Brian Urlacher (Chicago Bears), the Shins (indie rockers), and Hank Harris (the Chef Boyardee "Beefy!" guy). Imagine if one of our own was commander-in-chief.

But on the other side of the coin, I don't know what Richardson's qualifications are. He's been a U.S. Representative, a Cabinet member, and a state governor, but I'm not sure what he's actually done. I met the guy when he was campaigning for governor, and for all the life I saw in his eyes he might have been a cyborg. The horse in his tourism commercials is more excited than he is.

I suppose, in this way, we see some echoes of Kerry: a bland, moderate candidate who can appeal to the minorities without alienating the rich white dudes. The horse isn't running, though, I assume, so leave the appearance jokes out of it.

One of Kucha's Christmas presents was the ChuckIt ball launcher. As she is an avid ball player, we find ourselves using this almost every day. While it makes me feel old -- the ChuckIt eliminates the usual bending, throwing from the stretch, shoulder-pulling and hand-dirtying of a game of fetch -- it has undeniably increased my convenience. Now, she actually gets tired before me.

This morning, during our normal game time, I noticed a label tucked into the side of the handle advising me to read the manual before using the toy.

Why? It's a long stick with a cup on one end. It even comes pre-packaged with a tennis ball right in the cup, just in case you thought it was some kind of new-fangled pooper scooper. To use it, you flick the handle forward and the ball goes flying across the yard. What more could the manual possibly say?

Fortune cookies have gotten weak. I don't know if the company is afraid of lawsuits or if its Chief Prognostication Officer retired several years ago or what, but these days if you open one up you're more likely to receive advice or information than anything resembling an actual fortune.

So when you get a real prediction -- even coming as this one did at the end of a rushed snack at a Chinese chain -- it stands out. Particularly if it actually applies to a known event and panders to your parental pride.



Honestly, sometimes I wonder why I even bother looking for local restaurants.

Alyssa is in the same stage of pregnancy as Sed, preparing to give birth to Margarita's Internet boyfriend. She finally got a sonogram image (not having constant access to the machines like we do), and fortunately it was not of the genitals. Forgive me my caveman protectorate ideals, but even in jest I can't think about my daughter and boy parts in the same brainwave without wanting to club the offending boy over the head and then scream at him unintelligibly. Wait until she's sixteen and they're knocking on my door.

I discussed this with Sed later that evening, and she agreed that it's never time to think about your children having sex, not unless you want your head to shoot off your shoulders and land in the wastebasket. In fact, we decided to start laying down some ground rules.

So I put my head on Sed's belly and said, "Baby, you can have sex after you're married."

"For three years," Sed added.

"Right. That's how long your mom and I waited."

And then my daughter kicked me in the face.

After reading your comments on the last picture of the baby belly, Sed turned to me and said, "They have a point. Keep on me every week and maybe I'll let you take one every month."

Somehow, the technique loses its punch when she understands its intricacies.

I took this picture almost two weeks ago, by the way. Which means Margarita is very nearly viable should the doctor's worst-case scenario occur and she has to come out. Of course, the doctor is also the mother. Knowledge is power, except when it's stress.

The Doggs brought their own dog when they visited us this weekend. Kael is a toy fox terrier, all of ten months and eleven pounds, and yet he managed to hold his own in wrestling matches with my 85-pound part golden retriever, part greyhound, part great Dane, part Shetland pony, and whatever the hell else you think because we know the shelter was totally wrong with medium-sized German shepherd cross. It's always heartening to watch Kucha get along with another dog, especially given that a few years ago we thought we might have to put her down.

Kucha suffers from That Scary Dog Syndrome. She's a total sweetheart, but because she's so massive people fear her. It didn't help when she jumped up on new people coming into our house -- we knew she just wanted a hug and a kiss, but it didn't reassure our petite friend who almost weighed less than the dog. Even her name is scary -- rarely can I tell it to people without incurring a panicked refrain of "Cujo?"

There was a period when Kucha started biting, barking, acting out. She'd whirl on people who tried to pet her haunches -- got Sed more than once, my brother, his girlfriend. The vet said it could be hip dysplasia, but an X-ray ruled that out. Sed took her to obedience courses, which seemed to help, at least to an extent, but the behavior remained.

The last straw was when she attacked another dog. One quick jaunt to the mailbox gave her just enough time to kick open our screen door and clamp her jaws around the head of a passing border collie. She didn't hurt the other dog, luckily, but it did mean we were going to serious obedience classes, not just the rinky-dink courses they hold at PetSmart.

The first day of class Kucha got muzzled. They made it sound like it wasn't bad -- her fear around other dogs might mark her as a target, they told me, and the muzzle would preclude her biting and showing that fear -- but suddenly, there's That Scary Dog again. Others in the class were grouping us together with the German shepherd who wouldn't sit still and the black Lab that wouldn't stop barking. And I hated it.

It's a stigma that's harder for the master to get over than the dog, because suddenly Kucha was doing great. She came when called, she stayed without straying, she wouldn't even eye a treat without her magic word. It was like she became a whole new dog -- or more exactly, the sweet dog we remembered from a few years before.

There are still times when Kucha barks at another dog. She wouldn't be a dog if there weren't. But when I watched her play with a puppy one-eighth her size without harming it, I thanked all of her trainers again from the bottom of my heart for making it possible.

We still have the muzzle, and we take it on walks, but Kucha hasn't needed it in over a year. With any luck, she won't need it again.