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2001-08-26 | 12:12 p.m.

I feel so silly. Just now I went to the Onion, then did something else and forgot where I was and when I looked at the screen again, I read the headline "Bush Vows To Wipe Out Prescription-Drug Addiction Among Seniors," and went "WHAT?! I can't believe it! He is so ridiculous!" etc. Then I thought, Duh, I'm at the Onion.

Yesterday was the long-awaited birthday party. It seemed to go off fairly well, though I ended up asking other mothers to help prepare the food because we used up all our prep time trying to clean house, which made me feel lame and inadequate. It bothers me that I didn't really get to talk to my friends as much as I would have liked, and I didn't get to make sure that everyone was enjoying themselves, and I worry that someone will have a bad opinion of me because I had the kids play a game that involved losing control of lots of helium-filled balloons. Also it was very hot and there were many shiny foreheads around, about which I feel slightly remorseful. For not having more fans or something, I mean. (I do have a window air-conditioning unit, but it seems completely ineffective and we had kids going in and out all day, to get to the jump house.)

Kidwise, it was all right. A few kids were churlish or shy, but most of them warmed up to things, and the birthday girls seemed happy throughout and reasonably well-behaved (though I did hear one secondhand report of Felony growling at a small child who wanted a second piece of cake).

Best of all, for me, was that my friend Mike drove three hours to come and spent the night. After everybody else left, we went out to the jump house and played. Just Mike, Duff, me, our kids, and my nephew Rojo. I was surprised by how much fun we had in there. Especially Mike, who had never been in one before and did somersaults under our concerned tutelage after she told us she didn't know how. (She also told me she had only played jacks once in her whole life. I said, "Are you sure you had a childhood?") She seemed extremely proud of herself, and did many somersaults after that, just for the fun of it.

She had left her husband Scott behind to attend a funeral and it was interesting to think about the contrast of her doing somersaults in a jump house and him being somber at a funeral. Apparently they played Dixieland music at the funeral, which muddies the contrast a bit, though the dead guy was just 49, which sort of tips the mood back toward the sad and depressing. I'd love to tell you the story of how the fellow died, but it's so unusual I'm worried I might betray Mike's confidence if I did.

I also told her I had an online diary and that in it, I call her "Mike." She screwed up her face and said "Mike?!" I told her if she really hates it, she can change it to something else, as long as it is also believably a woman's name that you would ordinarily associate with a man. But I like Mike.

We were sitting around the table talking when my sister turned up at the door. She was excited and warned us to lock the doors because there was a manhunt going on in our neighborhood. As soon as she said it, I realized that I had been listening to helicopters circling for some time without comprehending that they were up there looking for someone (as I normally would). Diane left quickly, without ever coming inside, and with us calling after her, "Go home!" Mike got very uncomfortable. She has been living in a sleepy town for a couple of years now and has lost her taste for urban absurdity. But she relaxed after a while. We made cold sandwiches, ate cupcakes, drank some Essencia and advised Duff in a game of online Scrabble, which he won by a mile.

Scrabble and Mike and connected in my mind because I can remember her saying, when we were quite young: "I want to marry a man who's smarter than me, but whom I can still beat in Scrabble."

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