Last Friday, I left the little angel in the loving care of her baseball-watching father and went out with the girls, wearing heels for the first time since my fifth month of pregnancy.

After dinner, a rooftop beer garden and four glasses of wine, I inhaled deeply the sweet scent of early summer, forgetting that the little angel had spent the previous afternoon at the qualifying rounds for the Fussy Baby Olypiad. After my girlfriend ordered a round of blue shots named after Mike Sweeney, a Bible-banging KC Royals baseball player, I forgot the little angel existed at all. I laughed. I slurred my words. I fell off my very sassy heels on the way to the bathroom. I smoked cigarettes with no concern for my own or anyone else's health.

And then, a few minutes after the witching hour, I remembered I am a mommy. Suddenly the dancers seemed preteenish, the balding hotties at the bar pathetic, the lead singer of the band ludicrous. What was I doing here with these madmen? Where was my baby? Fortunately for me, my girlfriends were very understanding and immediately charioted me home to my very own little palace, complete with signature balding hottie and miniature lead singer. Ah, bliss.

I have to take the little angel to the D-O-C to get her two-month vaccinations today. Two days ago the Parents as Teachers lady came by (she had been fighting for me with the other lady two blocks down the street - apparently they must get funding based on how many recruits they can find in a three-block radius) and reminded me how important it is to America that I get my baby vaccinated, despite the pain and eight pages of scary warning materials the D-O-C gave me in the hospital.

So this shot thing seems to be a source of controversy. Apparently, babies can die from them, but we must vaccinate anyway for The Greater Good of America.

Really, I do understand and I have ever intention of vaccinating the little angel. I don't intend to freeload immunity off the rest of the world's little angels who have already dutifully howled in pain (forget the sugar-water-laced pacifiers, it's going to hurt). But I am annoyed that this is yet another "choice" that comes with modern parenting. You can "choose" whether or not to get an epidural, to have an amnio when your triple-test comes back "your baby might have Down's Syndrome," to take the triple-test at all, to vaccinate, to send your child to daycare with other infected children when you have a mortgage to pay...these things don't always really feel like choices. I mean, what else are you going to do? Yet, the guilt.

So today I stare at my little angel as I type, and she is dancing to the Bare Naked Ladies and experimenting with new squealing sounds she just learned to make, and I hope to God that the shots are not painful and don't have any ill effects. Go, baby, go.

Billy Graham just fixed my shower. No, not the one on television (Billy, not the shower), but his name is honest-to-God Bill Graham. It says so right there on his plumber's shirt.

Billy came when we called the home warranty people for the fifth time this calendar year. While I was pregnant, we lost the dishwasher, the microwave, the hot-water heater and a very important part of the furnace. Somehow our 84-year-old house KNEW the little angel was coming and wanted to prepare us for how little control we would have over the rest of our lives. We had to call Billy because the shower spouted a geyser yesterday just as my sister and her boyfriend were preparing to return to their native Chicago. Billy came, looked at the shower, and told me that (like everything else in This Old House), the part is uncommon, hard to find, at the bottom of a well, you name it. Billy exited stage right to go in search of a "stem." This was our exit conversation:

Billy: "Thank goodness that I didn't have to use the blow torch." WHAT??

Me: "What will happen if you can't find the stem?"

Billy: "Well, you just won't have hot water then." Grinned down at the little angel, who blows through eight or nine bottles every 24 hours.

Me: "Um, I need to clean the bottles." HATING HATING HATING.

Billy: "Just boil the water. I'll be right back."

At this moment, the little angel started crying. She was hungry, and her mother, Laura Ingalls, hadn't had time to boil water to wash a bottle in the creek yet. Yes, idiot, hot water IS important.

Billy Graham just fixed my shower. No, not the one on television (Billy, not the shower), but his name is honest-to-God Bill Graham. It says so right there on his plumber's shirt.

Billy came when we called the home warranty people for the fifth time this calendar year. While I was pregnant, we lost the dishwasher, the microwave, the hot-water heater and a very important part of the furnace. Somehow our 84-year-old house KNEW the little angel was coming and wanted to prepare us for how little control we would have over the rest of our lives. We had to call Billy because the shower spouted a geyser yesterday just as my sister and her boyfriend were preparing to return to their native Chicago. Billy came, looked at the shower, and told me that (like everything else in This Old House), the part is uncommon, hard to find, at the bottom of a well, you name it. Billy exited stage right to go in search of a "stem." This was our exit conversation:

Billy: "Thank goodness that I didn't have to use the blow torch." WHAT??

Me: "What will happen if you can't find the stem?"

Billy: "Well, you just won't have hot water then." Grinned down at the little angel, who blows through eight or nine bottles every 24 hours.

Me: "Um, I need to clean the bottles." HATING HATING HATING.

Billy: "Just boil the water. I'll be right back."

At this moment, the little angel started crying. She was hungry, and her mother, Laura Ingalls, hadn't had time to boil water to wash a bottle in the creek yet. Yes, idiot, hot water IS important.

My cat, Sybil, has sensitive skin. From time to time, she breaks out in an unattractive rash around her ears or collar-line. Recently we had to take her to the V-E-T to have these bumps checked, because they looked quite annoying and painful.

After chastising me for the 43rd time to get my cat's teeth cleaned (a $150 procedure which involves sedation - no thanks, she can have tartar), the V-E-T informed me that Sybil's bumps were actually infected and would require a cortizone shot and twice-a-day, icky, pink, liquid antibiotic to be administered, of course, by me, since my husband gets to run off all day to that la-la land we like to call a "job."

Sybil was pensive on the ride home, no doubt nursing her shot wound and planning her counterattack. Sure enough, within three hours of arriving back at her rat hole, she had peed on the futon. We countered with a non-response, understanding her pain. The next day, she effortlessly switched gears and began waiting until after I had stuffed her with pink stuff and returned downstairs to feed the little angel before puking in not one, not two but three gridded areas of the carpeting. Mind you, over half my house has oh-so-easy-to-clean hard-wood floors. This exercise has been repeated with the EXACT SAME GRID AREAS PUKED UPON for the past two days. Today as I approached Grid Area One, I saw her sitting on the sink smirking, with her little kitty eyes saying: "Bring It, Mommy. I was here first."

My cat, Sybil, has sensitive skin. From time to time, she breaks out in an unattractive rash around her ears or collar-line. Recently we had to take her to the V-E-T to have these bumps checked, because they looked quite annoying and painful.

After chastising me for the 43rd time to get my cat's teeth cleaned (a $150 procedure which involves sedation - no thanks, she can have tartar), the V-E-T informed me that Sybil's bumps were actually infected and would require a cortizone shot and twice-a-day, icky, pink, liquid antibiotic to be administered, of course, by me, since my husband gets to run off all day to that la-la land we like to call a "job."

Sybil was pensive on the ride home, no doubt nursing her shot wound and planning her counterattack. Sure enough, within three hours of arriving back at her rat hole, she had peed on the futon. We countered with a non-response, understanding her pain. The next day, she effortlessly switched gears and began waiting until after I had stuffed her with pink stuff and returned downstairs to feed the little angel before puking in not one, not two but three gridded areas of the carpeting. Mind you, over half my house has oh-so-easy-to-clean hard-wood floors. This exercise has been repeated with the EXACT SAME GRID AREAS PUKED UPON for the past two days. Today as I approached Grid Area One, I saw her sitting on the sink smirking, with her little kitty eyes saying: "Bring It, Mommy. I was here first."

Apparently, more than one thing in life can be faked.

My little angel awoke this morning at five for her usual bottle of Liquid Sleep. I prepared it groggily, but I know I made the right amount. We sat in the rocker, I popped in the bottle and tried to go back to sleep (this is impossible sitting upright with a wiggling twelve-pounder in your lap). After about ten minutes passed, I peered down through the fishy-nightlight glow to see the little angel sucking away. Satisfied, I tried head rolls to work out the cramp in my neck from perpetually cocking my head to the left during feedings to see if the bubbles in the bottle are going down her little throat.

Ten more minutes. Strangely, the level in the bottle didn't seem to be changing. I pulled it out and checked the rain-gauge on the bottle. Sure enough, she hadn't eaten a drop in twenty minutes. NOT A DROP. I popped it back in her mouth. She smiled, batting her newly-grown red eyelashes at me. Through the corners of her smile, I saw she was just bobbing the nipple up and down, NOT ACTUALLY SUCKING.

So it just goes to show, people will fake anything to be held.

I once thought I could understand my daughter's eating schedule. For a while, it was every two hours, then every two and a half, then we tried Enfamil (or "liquid sleep," as my husband calls it), and it became every three or four. Then she clicked over the six-week milestone and it became "whenever the baby damn well wants to eat."

I try to be cool about it. Today baby and I went to visit my friend J. and her son, who is three weeks younger than my little angel. J. runs marathons, so she was eager to start walking again at roughly a month after giving birth to a seven-pounder. I gamely accepted, even though on my best days I couldn't have kept up with her nine months' pregnant. Thank goodness she hasn't been cleared for heavy exercise yet. So we got to the mile-and-a-half mark on the trail and turned around, chatting happily about new-mommy topics, when the little angel decided she was hungry, even though she just ate Liquid Sleep two hours before. She started whimpering, which I tried to disguise by throwing shut the extra canopy on her stroller. The noise grew, could not be contained. Soon she was hitting her Whitney Houston octaves. She. Was. Hungry. Now. Screaming with hunger, in fact. A passerby on a golf cart gave us a sidelong view, obviously convinced I was sticking my baby with pins under the cover of a jogging stroller. J. was understanding, but probably concerned the pins might reach over to her stroller and stick her son, too. Can a baby scream for a mile and a half?

Yes, she can.

Last night, my husband, my cat (Sybil) and my seven-week-old daughter sought refuge from "tornadic" storms (I have never heard this word until last night - is "tornadic" a word? Or did my local newscasters make this up?) in our Silence-of-the-Lambs basement. When I was growing up, we had a finished basement. Though cricket-filled, it was at least nice and carpeted with painted walls and no fears of bodies buried under the cracked concrete. This was an entirely new experience, though now at least they make battery-powered televisions so you can watch the over-excited meteorologists instead of listening to news radio.

Apparently, between the Kansas and Missouri sides of Kansas City (where we live), over 90 tornadoes were cited yesterday and 90 on Sunday. We of the Midwest take pride in our tornadoes, but this was ridiculous. And now that I have a babe, I had to pursuade my energetic husband to get off the front porch and down to the basement because what the hell am I going to do if he ends up with his little red shoes sticking out from under the neighbor's house?

Speaking of neighbors, ours are pirates. On one side we have a little blue-haired skate punk with a half-pipe in the backyard and a two-years-younger sidekick. Both of them are apparently allowed to pull Ollies until midnight on a school night, because I now collapse into my bed at 9 p.m. after a day of baby-caring to hear the clunk-clunk of missed jumps and flung curse-words from the mouths of preteens. On the other side, we have a large, bald man who keeps 50 tires in his backyard at all times and a washing machine in the front. The Environmental Protection Agency told him to get rid of the tires, so he conveniently now stores them on his truck, the mobile bastion of blight. Still, what can you do when you have bills to pay and don't want to live five light-years from all the fun stuff downtown?