Baby Gates

Ronda has completely overwhelmed me with how often she has been posting on this site. Ducks and water and all that. I guess in this new millenium fathers gravitate towards video cameras, mothers to blogging every second of their infants' pre-mobile lives. I imagine as soon as Emma becomes mobile, which is any second now, mom's posts will be more akin to:

"Emma dragging cat into toilet. Cn't typ."

As Ronda noted earlier, I installed gates last week to try to hem in our little prisoner. I've proposed a series of jigsawed fences surrounding the entertainment center, Codename: Guantanamo. We'll see if that flies with the Secretary of Defense. There are a lot of obstacles to overcome here.

First, we've got the Secretary herself... if she can't easily use the gates then all must suffer her wrath twice (once at the bottom of the stairs, once at the top... all you parents know this tune, so sing along! ) every time she goes up the stairs. So the gates must be perfect and easy to use in every way, which goes against the very nature of baby gates.

Secondly, the cats: Chloe the Gorgotha and Lillipoots. Two distinctive problems. One a hog of a cat that craps like a grown man who can barely squeeze through the open stairway and waddle down the stairway sans any gates at all; the other a three legged cripple-cat who has determined her every ill is somehow my fault and will walk up and bite me in the leg at any given moment. So now how do we get these gates to where both of these feline demons my wife has invited to live in my house can traverse the stairs so they can get to their litter box downstairs? I say they're no longer allowed upstairs, but this is apparently up for debate.

Lastly, installing baby gates is a task given to particularly horrible people in hell...and tired fathers. I'm certain there's a dead sea scroll somewhere...lying undiscovered, waiting to be found... that describes how God's Second Punishment to Lucifer Morningstar himself after falling from Heaven was having to install an infinite amount of baby gates on the path from Heaven to Hell, so that the lost and damned might never sneak out of hell via some stairway. Know this, evildoers, and repent! There's still time to see the light before you end up installing baby gates for the rest of eternity. Using those little templates, but finding they're not quite lined up with Hell's infinite stock of Evenflo Superfit Baby Gates' mounting brackets. Oh, hey! Hell has baseboard, handrails, and walls that aren't plum!

Repent!