Cantankerous Coochie Snorcher

Men (or women, for that matter) who are uncomfortable with the discussion of the idiosyncracies of the female body might want to stop reading right here.

Let's just say that this cartoon looks mighty good to me today. A nice warm breeze would feel very comforting about now.

Even after working in ob/gyn for 12 years, I still had to look up the kind of approach to take when your body is becoming a one-woman bread-making factory, or at least producing the leavening agent.

If I were wearing jeans, you'd think I had just come in off of a multi-hour horseback ride.

Goin' Commando helps. Soothing medications help.

"Don't scratch" they are quick to tell you, but it's kind of hard when it feels like you're sitting in a very active ants' nest. But it helps when there are so many dogs sitting on your lap that you can't reach your nether regions. You start wishing you could act like the dog and drag your body along the pile of a rug. Now I know why they look so happy doing it.

It's significantly better than it was a few days ago, but it's still occupying too much of my attention. I'm hoping that improvement will continue. There are far more pleasant things to think about.

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Each year as this time approaches, I am torn between "writing something" and not "writing something." But this year seems kind of significant.

It's ten years since Paul died and yet it seems like only yesterday.

We were at my mother's for Easter and I sat there looking at Ned's profile, realizing that it was man's profile (I should hope so, since he's nearly 42!) and the hair on the side of his head is almost white.

Paul is permanently stuck at 30. He will never have wrinkles, never have grey in his hair, never develop all of those nagging symptoms that plague us as we get older.

But by the same token, he never knew Brianna. Never got to see Tom balancing his daughter on his hand. He never even got to see Tom married.

He never joined in the joy of watching Jeri and Phil get married either. How that would have tickled him, since he'd been Phil's friend for so many years.

I watch the music videos that Ned is creating now and think back over the hundreds of videos that Ned and Paul made together through the years. Ned has taken all that experience and run with it and I'm so proud of him. But what fun Paul missed out on. He missed the whole digital age.

I heard today that the nephew of a Facebook friend just died, at age 23. We just went to Michael's funeral last week, age 43.

I'm tired of beautiful young people dying. When you've lost a young person you love, you find that you carry each and every one of the other young people in your heart and it just intensifies the pain when the next person dies, when you watch another family struggling to get through another memorial service.

I suppose we'll be going out for dinner tomorrow night. We've kind of gotten into that habit over the years. And then we'll put Paul aside for another year and gear up for the 13th anniversary of David's death next month.