This weekend was a sad one as Raegan and I lost two of our dearest friends, Dan and Audra, to that most insidious of enemies — the baby. We drove up to Portland, ME in the hopes of possibly finding a place to live, only to find our once happy-go-lucky hippy friends turned into mindless zombies.

Their house is in the middle of nowhere, up in beautiful Gray, Maine. But sadly, Raegan and I are both allergic to Betty, their dog, as well as to the miscellaneous unidentified life forms growing in their nineteenth-century erstwhile tavern (which for the majority of the population are harmless, but which have our own immune systems conspiring against us, instantly packing our sinuses full of mucus to stave off further invasion).

So we set up camp in their driveway. Soon, it got too hot to sleep so we opened the back hatch and put up the mosquito screen. The breeze was Devine. But the noise was from hell. Suddenly, it seemed as though the house had been designed in Bugs Bunny fashion, with the Interstate wrapping around it on either side. Then I remembered I had packed earplugs somewhere, and got up to locate them, trying my best not to wake Raegan. But she was already awake, sleep being impossible, and immediately asked what I was up to. The idea of earplugs naturally excited her. But I found only one pair. So I did the gentlemenly thing: I split them between us. This, it turns out, is a bad thing to do. The other ear goes instantly into superhearing mode, completely negating the effectiveness of the plugged ear. By 4 am it was getting chilly. But not being prepared for temperature drops, all we had between us was a blanket the size of a wet-nap. As I'm sure you've already guessed, we never actually achieved any level of sleep that night but only brief entrances into fairyland between passing Harleys.

The only member of the family who seems to have retained any measure of personal free will is the baby, herself (Naomi). Naomi has even changed the very tenor of her parents' voices: Audra refuses to raise her voice before Naomi, fearing the consequences (and who can blame her). No longer can D & A go about their lives as they once had, enjoying the pleasures of friendship & home. They must at every moment conform their lives to accomodate this new life, returning to the house at least twelve times a day to attend to some new infantile whim.