Saturday

Bryan and I are sitting in our cozy basement on the couch that swallows you whole, at opposite ends, each with our own Mac Book. The kids are napping, he is working, I am reading blogs. We enjoy this kind of togetherness, particularly when we flirt via IM.

Because Bryan inherited the Background Noise gene from every member of his immediate family, the tv must be on. There is no exception to this rule. At night, if I go to bed first (which only happens when I have pneumonia, by the way), I hide the remote control from him so he can’t turn on the tv when he comes to bed. This inevitably backfires on me, because he huffs and puffs around the room in exaggerated frustration looking for the remote, which then wakes me up and we have a fight about the tv.

It’s an addiction, really. He needs intervention. For him, falling asleep without the tv is like Thomas pooping in the toilet: NEVER GONNA HAPPEN.

Actually watching what’s on tv is not required, only that it is on and creating noise. This is a problem for me, because I have this crazy notion that the tv is for watching, so I watch it, and get sucked in. Bryan? He does not watch, but if I move one finger toward the power switch he threatens to hide the vodka.

So because the tv must be on, we are, for some reason, watching the Kentucky Derby coverage on NBC, which starts with the red carpet star walk. I’m too lazy to find links, plus I’m typing this while Thomas jumps on my left arm, but watching these red carpet interviews is extremely painful. Somehow Hugh Heffner is compared to a retired horse who is put out to stud. This was in response to the interviewer’s observation that horses are retired after four years, yet Hugh is 83 – how do you keep going?

From there the coverage moved into a fashion critique of jockey uniforms. And then there was the human interest story on one of the jockeys and his hearing impared son.

Are you seeing what I’m seeing? NBC Sports is reaching out to chicks. I mean, why else would we watch the Kentucky Derby, right? We must be lured by fashion and emotion, because the competitive spirit is just not in us.

At some point Thomas wanders downstairs with a stinky butt, and I send him back up to find a new pull-up and a package of wipes. He is very indignant that I suggest he miss the “news” coverage of sun hats worn by Derby fans, so I promise to pause the DVR while he’s gone.

An hour into the coverage of a horse race, we are finally shown some actual horses. I twitter this. Then as I’m watching the horses and their riders being loaded into the starting gates, I refresh my twitter and read this from Lee LeFever:

#20 Big Brown wins the Kentucky Derby

I’m totally amazed by Lee’s ability to see into the future until I remember we had paused the DVR for what we now know is about 2 minutes. What a strange Back to the Future moment that was before I remembered.

Ruthie woke up just as the race was about to begin, and because we recently watched The Black Stallion she was very excited to see an actual race.

Our Saturday afternoon was wrapped up perfectly as Ruthie announced she had to poop. A note to all who are yet to raise children: five year olds announce everything they are about to do, including pooping, and, thankfully, anything they are not permitted to do, as in “I’M GONNA SLAM THE DOOR RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I WANT CANDY AND YOU WON’T GIVE IT TO ME!”