It’s horrible, losing someone you loved.

It’s also horrible, losing someone you hated.

Ray opened the back door and walked into the kitchen. He shook his head. I hugged him hard. True, the tears in his eyes were more abundant than the tears in mine, but still, I was a little damp. I was sad. Truly sad.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He looked at me. “You hated him.”

“But I love you and the girls, and you loved him.”

That is true. Ray loved his little cat. And the girls will be devastated. 

I never weighed him, but Ernie had to be well under 5 pounds, soaking wet. Like the eldest of our 3 (now 2) cats, Izzy, he was a Cornish Rex, tiny (yes, rat-like, you’re not the first to think/say it, here he is on his favorite perch, the stove) and almost hairless. Sort of like the cat in Austin Powers, which is a related breed called a Sphinx.

Ray bought Izzy when we first started dating. I was very allergic to cats, and couldn’t spend much time at Ray’s condo around his original cat, Tigger, a manx mix. Ray’s also got allergies so when he went looking for a cat to keep Tigger company, he did some research and found the Cornish Rex breed. (Because they are almost hairless, Cornish Rexes are supposed to carry fewer allergens. Who knows — ultimately my allergies to all of our cats dissipated, along with my one good excuse for getting rid of them.)

Others may have called her a rat-cat, but Ray fell in love with Izzy, even wrote a short story in which she ruled the world.

Tigger hated Izzy. She hated me. She didn’t like Ernie, who came along on Father’s Day, 10 years ago this Sunday. Tigger wasn’t so crazy about anyone else, either, except Ray. She did give us the ultimate gift by dying of liver cancer just days before Annabelle was born. I don’t know what we would have done otherwise, since by that point Tigger was regularly snapping at young children.

Tigger was gone, leaving her toys, water bowl and cat box to Izzy and Ernie. Izzy’s a mild soul with drippy pink eyes (cat herpes) and a whiny meow. But Ernie (even I have to admit it) had personality. The breeder was horrified at the thought of Ernie going outdoors (risk of sunburn — that’s how little hair he had), but you couldn’t keep him in. He owned our street, strutting down the middle of the blacktop like it was, well, a catwalk.

And Ernie was a hunter, a horror I’d never before experienced, having grown up cat-less. (My parents knew it was true love not because I didn’t care that Ray was a Republican, but because I didn’t care that he was a Cat Person.)

Each spring — but particularly the spring I was pregnant with Annabelle — Ernie brought his prey into the kitchen. Some cats (like LuLu, our youngest) will bring in a live bird and let it go, but not Ernie. Not if he could help it. Ernie regularly left just the beak, feet and feathers as evidence of his meal. (I’ll never get the sound of him crunching down on a bird skull out of my head.)

My anxiety at an all-time high, concerned over all those germs cats (not to mention birds) carry, the pregnant me had a couple of unpleasant run-ins with Ernie (I will say no more, let us not speak ill of the dead, or, frankly, of me) that cemented our relationship, or lack thereof.

Then Annabelle was born, then Sophie, and it got harder and harder for me to hate any of our cats as I watched them develop relationships with the girls, relationships the cat-less me had never had. (And never will have, I stand by that even though I’m happy for AB and Sophes.)

Annabelle carries LuLu from room to room, just like the fictional Olivia the Pig carries her cat. Sophie can’t lift LuLu, but until this morning I regularly found her with an armload of Ernie, the cat blinking patiently as Sophie inevitably lost her grip around his slender waist and he tumbled to the ground.

He always landed on his feet, of course. ‘Til this morning, when the neighbor’s dog literally snapped him in half, breaking his spine and leaving Ray with little choice but to put him to sleep.

“Let’s just wait ’til Annabelle asks where he is,” Ray said this afternoon, when we were discussing what and when to tell the girls. “I figure that’ll take a week.”

I don’t think so.  But for once, I’m keeping my mouth shut.

I’ve long believed that the ability to tell a white lie — and make it stick — is a sign of great intelligence. Yesterday I learned that Sophie’s capable of at least half the equation.

“Moooooooooooooooomy, come in here right now!” Annabelle called from the bathroom. “Sophie put a whole roll of toilet paper in the toilet!”

I’d been wondering when that was going to happen. I’m just glad she didn’t unroll it first. I pulled the wet mass from the toilet bowl and called to Annabelle to please grab a plastic bag from the kitchen.

Then I turned to Sophie, quietly standing nearby, panties still around her ankles.

“SOPHIE! Why did you do that?!”

She didn’t hesitate.

“Accident!”

Nor did I.

“Really? It was an accident? Sophie, are you lying?”

“Yes.”

She DID ‘fess up immediately, so I had trouble keeping a straight face or handing down much of a punishment. And I figured it was an aberration, til this morning, when Sophie grabbed Annabelle’s blanket and called that an accident, too.

Ah, life on Fibber Island. It’s one of my favorite kid songs, by the group “They Might Be Giants,” one of those bands that made music for adults for a long time before cashing it in on kid albums. (To be honest, there’s not a huge difference between TMBG’s adult and kid music. Ditto for “Bare Naked Ladies,” whose first official kid album, “Snacktime,” came out earlier this year.) I was going to buy the MP3 to Fibber Island and post it here, but amazon says that’s a no no. So I’ll just tell you that Fibber Island is on the album “NO!” and you can buy the song (for just 99 cents!) or the album yourself on amazon or, I’m sure, a more appropriate indie location I can’t think of at the moment.

Hey, at least I didn’t try to take a photo of the sopping wet toilet paper roll. OK, that’s a fib. I thought about it, but couldn’t get to the camera phone in time. Just as well. After my sister lost her phone not long ago to pedicure water, that’s all I need — a phone in the toilet.

Sophie has no friends.

There it is, a brutal statement, but true. I was going to write about the cats, but I’m trying, with this blog, to push myself to write about hard stuff.

So today, Sophie. Friendless Sophie. Not lonely Sophie, she’s by no means lonely, or unhappy. She always has someone to play with. Just not the right someone. The default someone.

“Who’d you play with at water play at school today?” I ask.

“Gordon,” she replies, grinning.

Gordon is a sweetie, gentle and kind. A lot of fun. But Gordon has a beard that reaches almost to his waist. He hasn’t been 5 for a long time. He’s the teacher.

One of my goals for Sophie, this summer (along with making sure she can open everything in her lunch box, and that she quits playing secret “hide and seek” at school – scaring the bejeezus out of the staff the day she hid in the teacher’s bathroom for 10 minutes before someone found her) is to get her some friends.

Rather, to get her to make some friends.

She had started, in Janice’s classroom. I have a picture of her on “graduation day” with two of them. For months, when I’d ask her who she played with that day, she’d name a teacher or other adult. Late in the year, she started mentioning girls from the class. But still, her friend skills are barely past the parallel play stage, from what I can tell, and that is supposed to end at 18 months.

Sophie’s done with Janice’s class; this summer she’s at another pre-school full time. During the school year, she split her days between the two. I thought maybe that had kept her from making good friends at either place. This would be the summer of friends, I decided.

But no, I saw right away last week, when I dropped her for her first morning, that it would be harder than that. The kids are nice to Sophie (it would almost be easier if they were mean) but distant. She sat at a craft table with a couple of them when we arrived, and one girl tried to ask her a question. But when she couldn’t understand Sophie’s response, she gave up and turned away. Obviously used to it, Sophie didn’t seem to care at all.

When I was 5, I didn’t have any friends, either. The other day, my mother slipped and actually admitted that she used to try to bribe the little girl from across the street to play with me. Even the teachers didn’t like me, as I recall. I was a neurotic kid in a shag haircut and crazy green octagonal glasses my mom let me pick for myself. I wouldn’t have wanted to be my friend, either.

Sophie’s cute. Her hair is long and smooth, she doesn’t have glasses (yet). And she has all the qualities of a good friend that I lacked (perhaps still lack, but I’m trying): She’s kind, loyal, giving and loves unconditionally. (She doesn’t always share so well, at least, not with her sister, but we’re working on that.)

But the thing we have in common is that neither of us (certainly not the 5 year old me, anyway) has that elusive something that makes others want to be around us. Annabelle has it. She’s a freaking rock star. All the kids at school know her and she knows them. She doesn’t try; they simply like her and want to be around her. She’s easy going.

I am not easy going. Sophie is, perhaps, too easy going. And she can’t communicate. Me either, in my own way. I remember (too vividly) that by third grade, I was already inciting bullies by speaking down to them. (If you’re out there, Ronnie Sullivan, and you ever did learn to read, f*ck you!)

I’m not counting Sophie out entirely, but for now, she can’t really get another 5 year old to understand her at all. Annabelle does, and so do some of her friends (at least, they can understand her well enough to think she’s cute and want to mother her — not perfect, but I’ll take it) but other kindergarteners tend to ignore her.

It happened last night.  I invited another family over for dinner. It’s the perfect set up — the parents are groovy one-time punk rockers (can you be groovy and punk at the same time? if so, these two are) and the kids are adorable. The older girl is just Annabelle’s age; they’ve been in summer camp together and are in the same grade at the same school. The younger will be in kindergarten with Sophie.

It was a nice night. I picked up pizza and the girls played “Little House in the Big Woods” in Annabelle’s pink and purple battery-operated Barbie Jeep and built a “campfire” (never lit, thankfully) out of pine cones inside a hula hoop.

Sophie had a blast. If you weren’t looking for it, you might not have noticed that she was two steps behind the other girls, all night.

No one was mean to her. Sure she got in the way a few times (they all do, when that stupid Jeep is involved, Annabelle actually got her foot under a tire, at one point. “That didn’t hurt at all!” she marveled. I marveled, too) but the night was uneventful.

And not in a good way, considering my goal. Sophie said big good byes to the parents as they left; the kids were polite, but still not particularly interested. I can’t blame them. She’s just not on the same wavelength. It’s not like the autistic kids I’ve seen, although in some ways, Sophie is in her own world. I was, too. I do maintain that if I’d been born in this century, I would have been diagnosed with at least Asperger’s.

Makes me wonder yet again what Sophie’s world must look like, through the lens of that third 21st chromosone.

I know it will take more than one play date — with those kids, or any kids. The non-hysterical part of me whispers, “Just wait. Let her get to kindergarten. Let her figure it out. She doesn’t have to be friends with everyone, like Annabelle is. She just needs one or two.”

But the neurotic, shagged, green octagonal part of me says, “She’s screwed!”

Last week, at the behest of the occupational therapist, I packed Sophie just three things in her lunch: tiny quiches, baby tomatoes (not the kind with salmonella) and I opened her package of crackers just a bit so she could open it the rest of the way herself.

Mission accomplished. Now if I could just pack her a friend box.

Years ago, I decided that I’d need to be diligent about protecting Sophie from fashion mistakes. I’m not proud of the fact that I won’t let my kid wear overalls or sailor tops, but I won’t. I feel that Sophie has enough challenges and anyhow, overalls remind me of “Of Mice and Men”. (At least, I think that’s why overalls bug me.)

So tonight when she wanted to wear her tee shirt inside out, I hesitated before I let her.

For a while now, on many nights, Sophie’s demanded that she wear her pajama top backward. No harm in that. But tonight we were going out to dinner; no place fancy, but still.

What if someone looked and thought, “Oh, how sad. That kid is too dumb to know her shirt’s on inside out and her mother obviously doesn’t care enough to dress her nicely.”

(I actually pride myself on the opposite — not that the outfits are crazy expensive or dressy, but I do go for a little panache, as much as Target, Old Navy, and the used kid clothing shop on Scottsdale Road will afford me. Hand me downs are the best. Who can resist a tiny girl — special needs or not — in a turquoise leopard print tank dress by Nicole Miller, I ask you?)

Speaking of fashion, I do have an idea for a tee shirt design. To heck with the “My kid has more chromosones than your kid” tees the DS parents wear. I want to put Sophie in a shirt (right side out, please) that says, “I have Down syndrome. What’s your problem?”

Strike me down. But such a tee would come in handy. I stare at people all day long, wondering if maybe they have it. OK, not constantly, but I’d say it happens every couple of days. I’ll find myself checking out eye shape, the back of the head, the gait, and wonder, “Hmmmm.” The person never has it, in those scenarios.

Which is why I wasn’t so sure the boy we saw tonight had it. We were at a favorite Mediterranean restaurant, a real laid-back, family place where the owners are always hugging customers and exclaiming, “Long time no see!” A couple other groups were seated next to us, and Ray had a better view than I did of a table of three — a man, woman and boy. The boy was probably around 11.

“Hey, did you see the kid with DS over there?” Ray whispered. I looked, and we decided it wasn’t for sure, that maybe he even had mosaicism, a form of DS that’s hard to spell (not sure I nailed it) and milder than the classic version — it doesn’t affect all the cells. It was hard to tell, looking at him.

Halfway through the meal, the boy went to the restroom alone (not bad if he does have DS) and stayed a really long time (not good, either way) then returned to his seat. It was then that he looked over at us and saw Sophie. At first, I thought maybe the boy wasn’t really looking at Sophie; could he have been staring at his reflection in the window, or even noticing that Sophie’s shirt was inside out?

But no, he was looking right at Sophie. And she at him. Sophie and this boy stared at each other, he particularly hard at her, for a long time. “Like he had just seen an alien from his own planet,” Ray said later. We both agreed you could feel the electricity in the air, even though Ray never agrees about things like that.

Then the boy turned back to the table, and that’s all that happened. A while later, the family left. The mom caught Ray’s eye and smiled, even said hi, as she slipped out the door.

Ray said, “Sophie, that boy really liked you!” Sophie beamed.

I said, “Sophie, someday you will fall in love and have a wedding, and I’ll plan it for you.”

Sophie said, “No! I plan it myself!”

But she did say that Ray, Annabelle and I will be invited. I hope she doesn’t want to wear her wedding dress inside out.

In the time it took for me to close Sophie’s car door, open my own and plop behind the wheel, a conversation had begun in the back seat.

“Oh Sophie,” Annabelle was saying, in her sweetest voice. “YOU get to go to water play today! That will be SO MUCH FUN. Not like boring old dance camp, where I have to work so hard and get tired.”

Pause, then a stage whisper. “Hey Mama, turn around,” Annabelle said, winking broadly from behind her hand, careful not to let her sister see.

Annabelle knew that Sophie wanted to come to ballet with her — that Sophie always wants to come to ballet with her. Instead, we dropped Sophie at her perfectly lovely pre-school (in her bathing suit and Crocs, ready for water play) and proceeded across town to dance camp.

“I promise you can come and see me dance at the end of the week!” Annabelle said, hugging her sister good bye. I cringed, hoping that promise would be forgotten.

Even if Sophie wasn’t “special” (as previously stated, I hate that word), the week-long dance camp at my mother’s ballet studio would be out of the question. Sophie’s too young. But she’s not too young to take the regular classes offered at the studio during the school year. Those start at 3. And Sophie’s turned 3 and 4 and now 5, without any mention from my mom that she might soon be enrolled. (Yes, just to clear up any confusion. I will pause right now to confirm that, indeed, my mother is a ballerina. An almost 67-year-old ballerina. Pictured here with Annabelle.)

I’ve stopped taking Sophie along to Annabelle’s class on Saturday mornings. Instead, she goes to swimming lessons with Ray. It’s too much torture, chasing her around the studio, distracting Sophie from her goal, which is to get inside a classroom — to dance. I notice other parents staring, and once in a while, one will ask, “Why isn’t Sophie in class?”

I don’t know the answer to that question. I haven’t wanted to ask it. It’s the fundamental question about what it means to be Sophie, and to have brought her into the world and expect the world to accept her.

To wit: Should Sophie have been taking ballet from the time she was 3, along with her peers, Down syndrome (and the repercussions of a kid who would never have been able to follow along at that age, for crying out loud she was barely WALKING) be damned? Or should I admit to myself that there are some things (and here I have to wonder what else might be included — regular school? a trip to Europe? outdoor rock climbing?) she’s just not up for?

How hard should I push Sophie, and how hard should I push her on the world?

What’s best for all of us?

It’s been several years now, and my mom’s barely mentioned the idea of Sophie taking a regular ballet class.  Once, early on, she did say in a very low key way that maybe Sophie just wasn’t meant to take ballet. I know what she meant. She meant that if I pushed Sophie into class (a class my mom doesn’t teach, she won’t take the kids til they’re 8) and she was disruptive, it would be uncomfortable for her as the owner of the studio. I did understand — I do understand — and I haven’t said anything.

But whenever it comes up with Sophie, I feel sad.

It’s not that I think every kid should take ballet. I certainly didn’t dance, except for a few false starts, despite my mother’s insistence that I was born with my toes pointed and perfect turnout. When Annabelle was born with the same, my mother gently pinned her hopes on her first granddaughter, and (heavy sighs of relief all the way around) Annabelle performed accordingly.

I don’t think my girls should do all the same things, or wear all the same clothes (handmedowns aside) or play with all the same toys. Of course not. And I want Annabelle to have things that her own, that are “special” — there’s that word again. She’s just as special as her sister.

But I hate, already, to be denying Sophie something she so wants to do.

Last spring, for a few weeks, we tried a separate class for three little girls with Down syndrome, including Sophie. Everyone meant well, but it really didn’t work at all, and I couldn’t help but wonder (apologies to Carrie Bradshaw), would Sophie have done better in a class with typical kids? Would they pull her up, or would she drag them down?

I will be asking that question all her life, all my life.

This morning — promises forgotten, thank goodness – Ray dropped Sophie at school for water play, and took Annabelle to the studio for her end-of-dance-camp performance. It was easier that way. For everyone.

It’s either a good thing or a bad thing that I started this blog when I did, on May 21, four days before The New York Times Magazine came out with its cover story, “Post-Blog Confidential” — an unwitting homage to everything I dislike about the blogosphere, including Gawker, which I admit can be irresistably biting and newsy, but which I had to cut myself off from when I realized I was clicking on it several times a day, looking for nasty bits about my employer and then seething but unwilling to post a comment.

I didn’t have a chance to read the piece til last night, when Sophie was taking a bath and therefore confined to a small space. I skimmed Emily Gould’s latest confessions from atop the closed toilet seat.

She’s a better writer than my snarky friends who’d already read the piece had said. (Yes, they do deliver the New York Times in Phoenix, and there are a few people who read it, although most of the people I know are like me — they get the Sunday Times but rarely have a chance to read beyond the front page of the Style section. The last time I really read that paper, I was in college, and therefore didn’t understand much of it. But I looked cool with it spread out before me at the Motley coffee house.)

I’m two weeks in on my own blog thing, and I still haven’t learned to link or size pictures, but here’s the super-arty shot I took of the NYTM cover:

Yeah, if I’d seen that before I committed to my year of blogging, no freaking way would I be on here right now, typing away for no one but myself. (And possibly my mom. Thanks, Mom.) I will never get the hits that chick got because I’m not going to write about my sex life (nor would you want to read about it, I’m an old married lady) and the most titillating thing I have to say on the topic at all is that my greatest hope for Sophie is that she grows up and falls in love and has great sex of her own.  Which will be a challenge not for the obvious reasons but because neither of my girls will ever be allowed to date. (Ha. Tired joke.)

The thing about Emily Gould is that she was ahead of the curve. She has, of course, now slung-shot herself past it, and has probably already joined the advertising firm that hired Ruth Shalit. (There’s a name from the 90s for you. Squint. You’ll remember.)

I will continue to blog, and I will try to forget that I figured out how to check my “blog stats” on wordpress.

This afternoon I had to call a guy who may or may not have been trying to impersonate a writer at the paper where I work. I found the whole thing somewhat comical. Most of the time, no one in this town would dream of pretending to work at New Times. We’re not so popular and we pride ourselves on it.

Anyhow, I called the guy, and got his voicemail message. I wish I’d taped it. I used to keep a tape recorder hooked up to my phone at work (it’s legal to tape calls within this state, even without telling the person you’re taping — Linda Tripp’s problem was that she lived in Maryland, where it was not legal) but I rarely do that kind of phone interview anymore. I don’t even know where my tape recorder is.

So I can’t tell you exactly what this guy’s message said, but it went something like this, delivered in a hearty, super-annoying, trying-too-hard tone:

Hey there! Thanks for calling, please leave a message for THE GUY’S NAME AND COMPANY. And don’t forget to support a person with Down syndrome for president, since at least that way we’d get some someone loving and hate-free in the White House.

OK, I hate shit like that. Really. If I still said such things, I’d say, “How retarded.”

First, I hate it because as much as I love Sophie, it would be nice to go a full 15 minutes during the day without having to stop and dwell on her challenges.

I never knew the topic of Down syndrome comes up so often in random, everyday life. Or for that matter (and this will confirm how hyper-sensitive I am, I fully admit it) the word Down. The first time this happened was when Sophie was a few days old (must have been weeks, I was driving, post-C-section) and I drove past this enormous sign in Phoenix (I just passed it today, in fact) that said DOWNS Florist.

More to the point is the time I profiled this really odd pop culture enthusiast (for lack of a better description) in town who had done everything from production for South Park to promotions for some truly grotesque, bizarre performance artists. He also had a lot of really smelly parrots.

Sophie was a few months old at the time. This guy popped in a video one day, during the course of an interview, showing off his work, and suddenly there was a film montage of close-ups of people with Down syndrome at the Special Olympics. He just liked the way they looked, he said. (A la Crispin Glover, yet another future topic….)

ANYHOW. I picked a big fight with this kid with the obnoxious message and he of course pulled the, “I’m close to someone with Down syndrome” card and I snottily shot back, “Well, I can guarantee you don’t take care of someone with Down syndrome every day or you would never say something so stupid” and snottily got off the phone. (Ha! I was right. I later heard he has a COUSIN.)

[NOTE: I never said I was a nice person.]

The thing is, in this culture, we’re raised to believe that our kids can be the next President of the United States. Or a doctor or a lawyer or something else equally snobby requiring really expensive degrees. But not our kid with Down syndrome.

Yes, I am quite certain that Sophie will achieve greatness. (Frankly, I think she already has. I’m quite convincd she read the words “Muppets in Space” tonight.) But she will not (and for this I do thank someone up there) be President of the United States — the worst job in the universe, as far as I’m concerned. Can you imagine what kind of FREAK you’d have to be to imagine you could lead the Free World? (Yes, you can, you’ve been watching way too much cable news.)

So no, I don’t want her to be president. I’m not even sure I want her to be Prom Queen.

But I certainly don’t need to be reminded of my daughter’s challenges in the middle of the workday, from some loser who thinks it’s cute to trivialize the developmentally disabled to make his anti-war point.

Yes, I’m cranky. I’m also cranky about the presidential election in general and the fact that John McCain — Arizona’s not-so-favorite son, the politician I covered not quite to death in the 90s and stupidly left for political roadkill in the 00s — is in it. (More on him later, unless I can avoid it.)

For a moment tonight I even thought that maybe that voicemail guy was right, that sweet Sophie WOULD be better than mean McCain. Then Sophie, who had been cuddling against me on the couch, suddenly punched me in the boob and yelled, “Pretend fight!” — cracking herself up and making my point. 

At least, one of my points. I’ve lost track.

I was reminded today of a bittersweet (now I just recall it as sweet) moment right after Sophie was born, also involving voicemail. My dear friend Rob, who lives across the country and hadn’t yet heard that Sophie had DS, called to leave a message congratulating us on Sophie’s arrival and explaining that the baby gift was in the mail.

“I found the perfect gift!” he said, between giggles. “A baby tee shirt that says, ‘Smarter than President Bush’.”

I dreaded calling Rob back, to tell him.

This just in: Stupid flies live longer, according to a study by some Swiss scientists.

I’ll just say the politically incorrect thing: When you have a kid with Down syndrome, stories like that are of great interest.

I clicked on the Yahoo headline link just as Ray and Sophie were walking into the kitchen.

Ray read over my shoulder. (He’s the Science Guy in our house.)

“That’s stupid,” he said.

“That’s stupid!” Sophie repeated. She walked over to the TV and put on a Sesame Street video.

I still haven’t figured out how to do links and make it look all nice and fancy, but I cut and pasted the here:

Stupid flies live longer: study

It doesn’t pay to be smart and ignorance really is bliss if you want a long life — at least if you’re a fly, according to new research by a Swiss university. Scientists Tadeusz Kawecki and Joep Burger at the University of Lausanne said Wednesday they had discovered a “negative correlation between an improvement in a fly’s mental capacity and its longevity”. As part of their research project, the results of which are published in the journal Evolution, they divided into two a group of flies from the Basel region of northwestern Switzerland. One half was left in a natural state while the other had its intelligence boosted by Pavlovian methods, such as associating smell and taste with particular food or experiences. Over 30 to 40 generations, these methods led to flies which clearly learned better and remembered things for longer. The flipside was that the flies left in their natural state lived longer on average than their “cleverer” counterparts, with a lifespan of 80-85 days rather than the normal 50-60.. “In other terms, the more the fly becomes intelligent, the shorter its lifespan,” the scientists said. This is most probably because the increase in neural activity weakens the fly’s life-support systems, they speculated. “This would explain why flies, like most other animals, have hardly developed their neural capacities,” they said.

Our newish sitter, Julie, was standing at the stove making herself some banana pancakes last night, when Annabelle marched into the room and farted just about the loudest, juiciest fart I’ve ever heard. (At least, the loudest/juiciest I’ve ever heard come out of Annabelle.)

I held my breath for a minute. You know, not everyone’s into farts. Julie’s in nursing school, so I figured it could go either way.

She turned around, totally unphased, to check out Annabelle and the telltale yellow plastic disc beneath her butt.

“Oh, Annabelle, what did you eat today?” she asked.

And we all cracked up.

Phew. Bullet dodged. And thank goodness. Because really, this life is not worth living without a good fart joke once in a while. Or several times a day.

In the past year, I’ve learned that whoopee cushions are de rigeur in the 7 year old’s birthday goodie bag. I’ve also learned not to trust Oriental Trading Company’s low end version. (Why am I surprised? They cost like 6 cents each.)

My favorite model is available at Walgreens (but not my own Walgreens, we’ve bought them out) for about $4, and it’s turbo. Self-inflating – really! — which is good, because for a long time, Sophie did not understand the concept of having to actually inflate the whoopee cushion. She thought you blew it up by blowing ON it, and the funniest thing I’ve ever seen related to a whoopee cushion was my 4 year old racing around the house, blowing noisily AT the cushion, then shoving it under her butt and practically making herself pass out, she laughed so loud. (We checked; the doctor says that’s okay with her heart condition.)

Sophie wandered into the kitchen and took part in the festivities for a while. And I wondered what Julie thought of that. The thing is, I know full well that when you have a developmentally disabled kid, it’s probably not a good idea to teach her that farts are funny. Sophie has no self-filter. I’ve already learned that the hard way.

When she was 5, Annabelle knew it was NOT cool to suddenly yell out, “Mommy, you farted!” in the Nordstrom kid shoe department. (I swear, I didn’t. Not that time, anyway.) Not Sophie. She’s a regular Sarah Silverman — she will not be edited.

So I know I never should have given her a whoopee cushion, shouldn’t have taught her the word (a word, by the way, not used in households in the previous generation of this family — my mother called it “foof,”  my father’s never referred to the activity, and, get this, Ray’s family called farts “piggies”), and certainly never should have giggled when she did it herself or cracked up at the cute way she says, “I fahted,” with all the pomp of British aristocracy.

I’ve only been to a small handful of official Down syndrome events, but one really sticks in my mind. It was a “Buddy Walk,” and the teenage son of the prominent leader of that particular group (we actually have FACTIONS of DS support groups in Phoenix, a future topic, I promise) got onstage and started disco dancing to the loud music playing, and making obscene gestures. Nothing TOO obscene, just pretending to slap a butt (you know, like the dice rolling scene in “Knocked Up”) and it was then I realized — with way too much clarity, for 7 in the morning, that the stuff that’s cute on your kid with Down syndrome is not so cute on your teen with Down syndrome.

OK, so I’ve got 8 years to undo the mess I’ve made. But I’m not hiding the whoopee cushion, not yet, anyway.

I really got crazy this morning (after my night at the grocery store) and stopped by the bank to deposit a check for a truly hellish freelance assignment I took so I could pay off a credit card I never should have signed up for. I’m sort of scared of the ATM (have you noticed how they now post a sign that says “cover your pin number when you enter it”? how are you supposed to do that? and I don’t want to know why, Ray says it has to to do with gypsies. I do LOVE gypsies and also stories about people who are discovered to have their own twin somewhere in their body, but that’s for another day) so I actually parked and walked into the bank, but the line was too long so I went to the ATM.

But this is not about that. This about how, as I took the the corner to turn into the bank, my heart leapt up into my mouth. I heard a baby cry from the back seat, and not just any baby’s cry — this was a tortured baby, calling for its Mama in a pitiful voice.

My babies haven’t really been babies in years — even considering Sophie’s development and the fact that she insists on being called Baby most of the time, either that or Puppy or Kitty or PuppyKitty — so I don’t know why I got scared. (Particularly since this was, oh, the dozenth time I’ve heard that cry in the past few days as I’ve taken a sharp corner.) Well, yes, I do know why I got scared.

I’m terrified I’ll forget one of my kids in the car.

Don’t say you’ve never thought about it. That reminds me of an old story my mom tells, about her her dermatologist once said to her, “Look, there are two kinds of people. Pickers and liars.” I love that line. Love it.

I haven’t done the research to be sure, but I’d be willing to bet that Phoenix is the capital of “let your kid bake to death in a hot car”. It just happened this week, someone spotted a baby left in a car. I know it’s tempting, leaving your kid while you run into Walgreen’s, but first, if I may be so crass, that’s super-white trash. And second, in Phoenix, you’ll kill your kid. That baby lived, but only because someone saw it and tattled.

The saddest part is that the baked baby stories don’t get much play in the media. It’s the baked police dog stories that everyone goes for. (Again, a discussion for another day.)

Back to the sound from the back of my car. It’s a doll, I’m sure you figured that out already. Here’s what it looked like, when I opened the door to take a look:

Ray bought this little sweetheart (I want to learn how to link sound to this thing, only so you can hear the CREEEEPY baby sounds) at Fiesta Mall (that’s a tidbit for the locals) last week. Sophie picked it out. It goes with her, oh, I don’t know, 500 other baby dolls. But none are quite like this one. (The packaging’s long gone, so I can’t warn you off the brand name, but a friend did mention she saw a big row of them at Target last week — you sweep your hand over them and they all moan and cry and whine, “Mama Mama Mama”.)

She wound up on the floor of my car, where everything winds up. What I need to do is take her the f#*% out of my car (I have to rate this blog PG, since I gave the URL to my mother in law yesterday) and pitch her in a basket in the playroom, so she can haunt me late at night when I get up for a benadryl.

Or maybe (to quote my dear friend DHSS, who once wrote a memorable piece about guinea pigs), you’d like her?