The Post I Don't Screw Up Any More

Times change, old truths skate heartbreakingly and maddeningly close to less true, you get caught in a landslide, &c. One of the few constants I rely on is:

Yes, she really grew up to say that. There are witnesses and shit.  

Planet is a mind-blowing constant, to be sure. While, as I hope I've conveyed, I actually do love my children, despite one of them being the life's joy and labor that is Bam and the other being a parasite lodged in my central nervous system so deeply that Picard and Riker may never blast it out, Planet still holds her title righteously. Her family line is as my own, and grounds me maybe more deeply, given that my family line is best remembered for running at each other with scissors in one hand and Ba'al knows what in the other (scotch, guilt, recriminations, blue crabs, and more scissors are all well-established historical traditions there).

25. Fucking. Years. Old. She was the first baby whose scrunched-up little face I looked at while thinking, "What the fuck is the big deal? Are all babies this scrunched-up and freaky looking? Christ, I hope she gets over that."

She did, of course. Our Planet is a beautiful and bright and kind young woman, a newly frocked teacher (like her mama and her grandparents before her), and in a development that I will intellectually accept in the nick of time, an incipient bride (it took me a little while, because I vowed--25 years ago today, of course--to sit vigil on this kid's doorstep with a shotgun to keep her from the depredations of boys, a step that ultimately proved unnecessary).

Happy Birthday, beloved Planet, Best Kid Evar. Yes, I'm working on it, I promise. Soon.

Late addendum: I queued this post a few days ago, and it's still queued to go in a couple of hours, because as Ba'al is my witness, I'm never screwing up this post again. In the interim, it has developed that we are scheduled to get between 4 and 9,324 inches of snow between now (about 10 PM on the 20th) and the end of Planet's birthday. The 21st of freaking March. South of the Mason-Dixon line. While I'm annoyed that I will be shut in with my wife and the aforementioned children all day, I can't begrudge that Planet gets a day off for her birthday. Because as I may have mentioned, our baby girl is a for-reals teacher. Teacher.