Circumambulating the world, one blog at a time: May 2008

My older brother's dog Khaya (kai-yuh) passed away last night. She was a beautiful dog I always loved seeing, even though those times were too few and too far between. This dog was muscular, fast, and full of energy, a very happy dog. But what I like about her most was her calmness, her calming effect even. For all her energy, she loved to snuggle. She was no poodle, no lap dog, yet she'd climb right up in your lap and lay down and go to sleep, happy to lay there if it made you happy, which for me, it always did. This was a 60 something pound wiry dog mind you, but she was always comfortable.

I loved to lay down on the floor up against her, in her element, in her doggy world, sprawl out with her in the middle of the floor and watch the humans biped around, busy busy humans. Its amazing how dogs can fill a special niche in our lives, fill up a special compartment of our hearts, fit in a special place in the family. So now when I snuggle with some other random dog I meet, I'll think of Khaya, and the memories will fill those same places, and I'll smile.

Before I let everyone know I have a blog, I figured there should be something on my blog, besides a two line poem about not blogging yet and a Youtube video insert (no matter how cool it is) - see below. So here goes.

Baby names. Did I just say that? Yeah, um, if you didn't know, and I'm sure you do, my wife Laura is pregnant, 5 months, its a girl. She was kicking like crazy last night keeping Laura awake for all hours and through Laura's discomfit, me awake for all hours, the joy begins:) Of course, the first question is 'boy/girl'? The second question "do you have a name?". The real answer? We think we do. Are we sharing it? Nope, at least not yet. The reasons.

Well, people, like you, have opinions. This creates two problems. First, you may offer your opinion which may annoy us, insult us, or otherwise cause us to question our choice. Or, you may offer your opinion, however false it may be, in support, thereby strengthening what could turn out to be a mistake. Like say we choose something like Amethyst (we're not) and you say "omagosh! I just LOVE that name!" when really you despise it and have 7.2 reasons for doing so, none of which you share with us, and we, based on your fauxpinion, do in fact name our daughter Amethyst and ruin her life (just an example people, if you or your children or anyone you know is named Amethyst chill). The second problem is, we're just not sure we care about your opinion in the first place, and, if this is the case, what is the point of telling you in advance of the birth? Before the birth you can offer an opinion and maybe not have much impact(see previous comments). But if you come into the recovery room and say "you named her what?" with a look of horror on your face, well, we may have a problem.

But there's another angle. On one hand, we think we have good taste, we think we have a good name, but we're rookies at this, we've only named pets before, and this has just a skosh more gravity, so maybe others' opinions are warranted. We've come up with what we think is a good strategy. Laura and I (this isn't settled yet, we may need something notarized first, we're checking) will "drop" the name to one person each, not family, not close friends, and gauge the reaction, prefacing the "drop" (name dropping is saying you know someone or met someone you deem important to transfer that deemed importance onto you, Google it if you're confused) with an actual request for honesty with a further pre-preface of granting the person immunity from offense so they can actually offer an honest opinion without fear of reprimand. We then will regroup, share the responses, and......................

what? what will we do? We'll still no doubt think we have good taste and a good name. If the persons offered negative opinions we can simply discount them by saying we didn't care about their opinions in the first place, or claim, that despite the preface and pre-preface they offered a fauxpinion (faux = fake so fauxpinion = fake opinion, yeah, I think I just made that up *head nodding*) and so it doesn't count. In either case, if we don't care (either about their opinion or fauxpinion), then why did we go through this process in the first place!

I told someone the other day that sometimes the shortest distance between two points isn't a straight line, its a circle. And that's what we have here people, a circle, and its not the Disney circle of life with Simba and friends, its the Baby Name Decision Vortex and you're caught in it.

Stayed tuned, we may name drop our baby name tomorrow.