In Flew Enza

The Bird Flu has been confirmed in Romania. As you can imagine, there is much buzz over this in our household. We have replaced the water in our birdbath with Dayquil. I have taken to obscene quantities of virus-fighting alcohol (emphasis mine). And perhaps, most dishearteningly, we no longer allow the children to take their winged forms.

But we still have moments of levity, as is touching during times of crisis. For example, I pointed out that Alex seemed to be breaking out, and she said, “Da, and breasts are keeling me. Intelleegent design, my ass. Whoever created voman eez moron.”

“Oooh! Acne! Painful breasts! Are you nauseated?”

“Da! I threw up a leetle…”

“OOOH! OOOH! I bet you’re preg…”

And before I could finish my sentence something far deadlier than the Bird Flu overtook me. The Vrath of Voman, Scorned.

Don’t get me wrong. We love our children. In a perfect world, we would make babies every day. And that perfect world would involve no weight gain, acne or achy breasts. People would instead lay eggs. And if that happened, then each of the following would also occur:

* Television sitcoms would include scenes of women stuck alone in elevators with a slowly cracking 40 pound egg.
* Pre-birth car seats would look like giant Easter baskets, padded with fake green plastic grass.
* Instead of instructing wife to ‘push’ during labor, husband would simply advise, ‘get cracking.’
* After birth, parents would take pieces of egg shell home to store on the mantel.
* Roe v. Wade would be ironically named.
* That saying, ‘he came out of his shell’ would finally make some sense. And yet, at the same time, would be completely redundant.

But it’s not a perfect world. Alex doesn’t want to be pregnant. And the Bird Flu has been confirmed in Romania.