Greetings from the surface of the sun

When Kitty and I were planning how our baby was going to turn out, we obviously picked what we thought were our own best qualities to pass along to him. Kitty would provide the brains, the compassion and the looks while I would provide the body odor, the lack of patience and the enduring love of completely meaningless trivia. Unfortunately, it does not appear to have worked out according to our plans.

The boy got his first taste of summer this weekend and I think we can now safely say that he's got his daddy's tolerance for the heat. The tolerance of an elderly snowflake. He started crying around 5 pm Saturday evening and is still going strong as I type this. Ever since the Great Seattle Freon Collapse of 1965, houses in Seattle have lacked air conditioning. Instead, like a city under siege, the entire population migrates into the basement to wait out anything over 80 degrees. Kitty and the boy slept down there last night while I sweated it out upstairs. Today, to try and fight off the heat so we could all sleep together like normal surface dwellers, I covered our westward facing bedroom window with an emergency blanket. Nothing says "class" like an emergency blanket hanging in your window. Ask everyone that happened in/over/around West Seattle today. They're sure to have seen ours shining like a beacon of refinement and taste.

Of course, it's tough to pin his displeasure entirely on the 90 degree heat when it happened to coincide with his first head cold too. At least we think it was a cold, based on the amount of nostril taffy I pulled out of his face with that little nose vacuum, even though it was mostly cleared up by today. It could also be his formula, since we recently made a switch from the entirely disgusting hypoallergenic Enfamil to the slightly less disgusting organic milk-based junk. Or it could be bites from the fleas that Tango and Cash have introduced to our ever expanding family. The cats have obviously been feeling lonely and neglected and needed some more friends. I'm pretty sure I pulled one of their friends out of the Ninja's nose on Sunday.

Whatever the cause, it hasn't been a pleasant introduction to summer. I can only hope that this doesn't mean that the boy ends up with the rest of my worthless traits. I don't think the world needs another skinny, Beverly Hills 90210-loving, Journey fan with a penchant for pink shirts.

I'd kinda like this kid to have friends.