7-22-01 Su 7:27 AM

I need some coffee. The baby has crawled over to the window. She's sitting on her knees and slobbering all over the glass. She leans back to admire her work and lets out a shriek. Her mother is still in bed. The wife wants a diamond ring like her sister has. I got a message at school Friday that Mrs. Zurn had called. She said her sister, Milly, and her sister's husband, Stu, were in Redondo Beach, and they would pick me up and bring me to Orange County, where the wife was having lunch with friends, because my sister really wanted to see me before she went back to Chicago, and we were going to have a big Pictionary party, and then we could just spend the night since we were going to Cheesecake with Mill and Stu and Rochelle's mom the following night. 

It was payday. There went happy hour. It would mean an hour and more stuck in traffic with the in-laws but what were my options other than to agree? How many people would be snubbed and hold it against me if I said no? A half dozen? A dozen? Whatever. I said I'd go. "Are you sure? You don't have to," says the wife. Yeah, right. "I'm sure it will be fun," I said. I read my horoscope in the newspaper. It said, stay home, read, and write.

Milly got Stu a new jeep, and Stu's going to pay for Milly to go to culinary school; that's how much they love each other. Isn't that cute? After we went through what were my top-five movie dramas, top-five, comedies, five suspense/thrillers, we turned to why don't I get my wife a ring. Milly would be glad to help. Urg. The traffic worsened. I tried to explain that we have a child and one income (they have already declared that they will not have children, thus enabling them to more wholeheartedly devote themselves to themselves) and that we would like to buy a house and a second vehicle, and that if my wife also worked, I could certainly put a nice diamond on her finger, but that we preferred our daughter be raised by her mother and that I didn't want her raised by strangers at a daycare just so my wife could wear what amounted to a vainglorious bauble on her knuckle to compete with other possessors of vainglorious baubles. Milly and Stu hold hands between the seats where her diamond boulder sparkles. Plus, I've already paid for a fucking ring that was a huge waste of thousands of dolalrs.