June 11, 2000 -- 10:34 PM EST

Party went well. Niece was enthralled with everything, particularly the wading pool her parents gave her.

Her mom was telling us how she had gotten fussy in their car on the way somewhere and they told her "Hush up!" when she started screaming and yelling. Then when her little sister started crying and yelling in her babyseat she leaned over from her own car seat and said, "Hush up!" at her.

Babies are so funny.

Paul's sister looked out the kitchen window into the yard to watch Paul and his brother blowing up that wading pool and gave a little gasp.

"Oh my God! Momma, Paul's thinning out!"

My mother-in-law peers out the window and replies, "We all knew he was receding..."

"I know he was growing a forehead but I never realized he was thinning out on top. With him so tall, how often do I see the top of his head?"

"He ought to get his hair cut shorter. Long hair isn't going to help out at all," my MIL mused and went off to get some birthday cake.

I whispered at my niece, whom I was holding so she could look out the window too. "Can you say, bald?"

She obediently complied. "Bald!"

"Can you say bald Uncle Paul?"

"Bald Paul!" she shouted.

My sister-in-law spat out her drink laughing and my MIL came back. "What are you two making that baby say?!"

Once we got her outside she could barely tear herself away from the pool. She kept running in and out of it even as they were trying to blow up the other parts of it with the shop vac. MIL tried to take her back into the house to put on her bathing suit and she started to wail because she didn't want to leave the big red, yellow, and blue plastic nirvana. She came flying back out in a purple bathing suit and demanded water waving a plastic bucket around.

Babies are so funny!

All these long car drives this week to family stuff gave Paul and me a chance to talk for a long time. Talked about all kinds of things.

We passed a cemetery on the way.

"Cremated," I said.

"Ok," he replied and patted my thigh.

Shorthand meaning, decades from now when one of us goes, the first is to be cremated and held in storage until the other one passes. Then, we are to be mixed and scattered. I want to return to earth, but I also want to be indistinguishable from him.

I don't want to know where I begin and he ends. I like feeling him in my head, so we don't have to talk out loud if we don't feel like it.

I like Paul losing his hair. I like his nose growing longer because of gravity as he ages. I like the wrinkles around his eyes growing deeper and in number, the best. His smiley eyes.

That's what I married a cartoon man for. The smiley eyes.

~Astrophe