In a complete reversal of life as I know it, us Lovin girls are completely outnumbered.
I am using this time to conduct some good, solid research. After all, in something stupid like sixteen weeks I am going to be outnumbered, myself.
(Sixteen weeks?!)
***
We all pile in the car--the pregnant lady, her husband, and a fifteen-year-old crammed in the back seat--and it is all boy elbows and boy knees and boy voices conversing about boy topics. I make my first observation:
Boys are startlingly smelly.
***
I accompany my dad to Costco to pick up some manly-type items. Chips, cheese, and condiments. In the car on the way there we listen to my dad's latest Dean Koontz book on tape, some something about Frankenstein, clones, and Montana. I listen intently, hoping to crack the mind of the male species.
When we get there we stand at the entrance to the Costco, my dad visually assessing the situation.
"Okay. The chips are in that corner, the cheese is over here, and the condiments are there. Cheese first. Let's go."
In less than two minutes we've swarmed the joint like a SWAT team. We have the cheese, we have the chips, and we are just tossing a giant barrel of mayonnaise into the cart. Faster than I can think How could anybody eat that much mayo?, we are tag-teaming the self checkout and halfway to the car. No lingering by the flowers, no free samples in the deli, no wandering through the bakery and asking, "Can you think of any reason we'd need this Boston Cream Pie?" (This is how our last Costco trip went, a Costco trip dominated by women, of course.)
Observation:
Boys are efficient, not at all tempted by carbohydrates.
***
I find The Holbs upstairs playing Mario Kart. Mario Kart is a thing which I will never truly understand, but Blake and my Holbsracer clock hours on that game whenever we come in town. Deciding this was the perfect exercise to get into the mind of a boy, I ask if I can play.
"Hang on," says my Holbsykong. "I have to finish this tournament so I can get a prize!"
"A prize?" I ask.
"Yeah, a prize. That's what Blake told me." His eyes are completely glued to the screen.
"What kind of prize?" I ask. I get the feeling if I don't continue to make noise he will stop noticing that I'm here all together.
"Uhhhh..." The Holbs can't remember.
"Blake, what kind of prize?" I ask my brother, realizing my Holbsy is totally lost to me.
Blake is sitting at the computer, playing some shoot 'em up game while wearing a headset and occasionally shouting things like We need scouts! and Soviet Union. I love that! He pulls a headphone off of his ear and shouts at me, "HUH?" His desk is covered in spare wires and mystery USB plugs and parts and pieces of who even knows what.
"What am I going to win again?" The Holbs asks, his face a mask of focus and determination while his look-alike Mii in a red tracksuit shouts things like Go go go! and Yeah!
"Oh, a new character," Blake says, never peeling his eyes from his computer screen.
This all sounds highly anticlimactic to me, but The Holbs says, "Yeahh, a new character!" as though he is deeply satisfied.
Observation:
I don't even know.
***
This afternoon my mother and I had lunch with my new best friend, Kjrsten. We eat mini waffle-and-fried-chicken sandwiches on long skinny plates, we toddle down cobble-stone streets in our high heels, we duck into a funky NW Portland shop to coo over jewelry and flag bunting and turquoise dressers.
Once back in my car I open my phone to communicate with my manlier half.
"I'm coming home, are you ready to spend some time with me?" is how my text goes.
"Yessireebob!" he texts back.
"We'll do whatever you want to do, you pick!" I text generously.
"Let's play board games! Or we could go see a movie? Your dad doesn't want to see Eclipse!"
Then he texts me again,
"No more texts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Observation:
Boys prefer in-person conversations. Sometimes they do want to see Eclipse, and sometimes they don't.
***
Lately Peter Pan is stuck to me like a love-starved teenager. Barnaby MacDuff is off acting like he owns the place, too busy conquering all of the rooms and closet spaces to pay me any attention, but Peter Pan follows me aimlessly about the house, and as soon as I'm stationary he sits primly on my foot, his ears cocked in nervous directions. Something is up with him, I am telling you. (It is as if he is thinking there is something up with me?) When it is time for a potty break The Holbs has to drag Peter away from me. The minute they are back in the house the Pan is glued to my side, and Barney is off inspecting the upstairs bedrooms.
Observation:
Boys love their mamas. (And terrorizing the furniture.)
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