Ever wonder what the Fellowship of the Ring would be like were it composed of women instead of men? Here are some thoughts.

1) Everyone in the fellowship would have her own (preferably matching) ring. Could the men not predict that there would be constant fighting with only one?

2) Women would not have let the nine rings be scattered in the first place. Nor would they have let the one true ring fall into the wrong hands. Anyone ever hear of a jewelry box?

3) Women would not be afraid to tell their friends to get their ring resized so they wouldn't have to wear it in a chain around their neck.

4) Women, unlike Frodo, would not shun other people trying to help them bear their burden. "Take it! Take the damn ring!" they'd cry, if it got too heavy.

And,

5) The women's rings would not reflect gruesome scenes of war and dismemberment, but the faces of their friends. They would be mirrors of solidarity.

I hope my friend will wear her plastic ring with pride. I will mine.

It happened with teaching, too. I think that one of the problems I had with teaching is that I acted like my undergraduates were graduate students. Everything had to be complicated, “problematic” (how I miss that word now that I’m not in academia) and, again, deeply profound. But the undergrads didn’t know enough for that. What it needed to be was simple; the basics. I sat in on other professors’ classes and was just sort of in awe of how beautifully simple the material they presented was. I can’t seem to think like that.

I’ve asked myself why this is. My automatic response is to say I don’t know why, but I actually think I do have some clues. Part of it has to do with covering up who I really am. It’s easier to be “finely tuned” and complicated than to be simple and honest. It was easier to work myself into knots about class material than to take a fresh look at the images and say, OK, what is this? What is it saying to me today? I think I was afraid that I wouldn’t come up with anything. And so I tried and tried and tried to cover up that fear of failure.

Deep down inside, I think I’m afraid that I’m so shallow that, left to my own devices, all I’ll really want to talk about is Duran Duran and how my hair’s doing. But I think that’s just a symptom telling me that I haven’t quite outgrown being a gawky, insecure teenager inside. Great. There’s nothing better than an immature thirty-something.

Anyway, what I don’t want to happen is for all this “things must be difficult” crap to find its way into my writing. I can see it already, hovering at the edges, and I’m trying to head it off at the pass. I’m learning that good stories are not built on overwrought, supremely complicated plot structures. They are composed of good characters in simple situations who react to life honestly.

One of my favorite authors right now is Elizabeth Berg. I just read “Durable Goods” and “Joy School,” about a twelve/thirteen year old girl who is trying to cope with losing her mother and with just being an adolescent. The scenes are simple. Katie crawls under her bed and stares at the bedsprings. She goes to a new school and tries to make friends. She talks to her best friend about makeup and boys and hair—and there it is, my much-coveted subject, hair! In other words, this story is not rocket science. What makes it good is the dialogue, the way that Katie responds to things—which is honestly—and the development of the characters.

This worries me a little. What I am frequently *not* good at is honesty and simplicity. I wrack my brain coming up with tortured plot lines and master plans when what I need to do is sit back and say, OK, how would my character respond to this situation? Who *is* my character? What maker her *her*? And let it unfold. I recently found an author’s site where you are shown how to produce a “design document” prior to writing a story. “Good fiction doesn’t just happen,” the author says. The problem is that I’ll design and design and design a story until I’ve knocked whatever life there was right out of it. For me, I think it needs to just happen.

Sigh. This certainly *sounds* like rocket science.

a Kelly girl sent out thirty-seven letters and twenty-four faxes for ONE engineer—-in one morning.

The fun started on Wednesday, when the fax machine began ominously spouting one fax after another, at about two-minute intervals, all from a single office, all addressed to that one engineer in our office. They were liberally sprinkled with phrases like “please advise” and “pursuant to.” I thought it was funny until I realized what it meant. All those letters generated an equal number of letters in response, sent out by yours truly, each beginning, “I am in receipt of your letter of 25 May…” Of course, each letter was also copied to five other people, so that the entire galaxy could witness the refined verbiage of these two professionals. The letters were fanned across my desk in an imaginative pattern when I came in yesterday morning, waiting to be proofed, copied, faxed, mailed and logged.

I imagine my counter-part in that other office, both of us standing at our fax machines like two outlaws in a shoot-out. We are killing each other with pieces of paper and legalese.

Days like this suck all the kind juices right out of me. Sluuuuurrrp. They’re gone. The other evening, our pastor’s kid came to mow our lawn, as he does once a week. His mom or dad has to drive him because he’s only thirteen. That night, I sat on my sofa feeling crabby and inhospitable while the pastor’s wife sat in her van outside our house waiting for Josh to finish mowing. Usually I go out and insist that she come inside, have something to drink, etc. But that night, I just let her sit in her car. The house was a mess, *I* was a mess. I watched out the window as she went to get Josh when he was done, waved, then got in the van and drove off. I couldn’t believe it. She actually saw me sitting on the couch, not inviting her in, and she waved to me.

The point is that I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to feel so sucked dry that I can’t be hospitable or even civilized. Is money for our bleed-us-dry health insurance or credit card debt worth being like this? I don’t think it is.

Can I call a truce or drop out of this war altogether?

It was all worth it, though, just to hear the Distinguished Practitioner in Residence and Third-Year Class Adviser, during his remarks, call the French philosopher Pascal by the first name of Blase, with an accent over the "e" (as in yawn, ho-hum, you certainly are blase about this whole tragedy).

Sometime, life is just delicious.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a response to a post at Smart Christian, who asked for responses to questions that members of his congregation had submitted. One question was, How do we discover God’s will or purpose for our life? I wrote this snippy little response that said, in effect, that I was sick of people whining about what God’s will for them was when the Bible says it clearly over and over: “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (I Thess. 5: 16-18). The Bible does not talk about career paths and the ladder to financial success and what house you should buy. It talks about praying and giving thanks. I basically agree with what I wrote, but I think I could have conveyed it with a lot more gentleness and grace.

When you act without grace, your actions come back and bite you in the ass.

Now I feel like I’m one of those whiny people I complained about. What I want to ask God for is a tailor-made job for my husband, in the perfect place, with the perfect people, with a perfect salary, and so on. As job after job falls through, I want scream, “Well, what is that you want with us, then?”

And I know what He wants. Give thanks continually. Pray. Submit your requests with thanksgiving.

And I know what He’s taught me. I’m pretty close to understanding what it means to say, “you can’t take it with you.” Salvation (even salvation here on earth) is a huge cushion that I know will soften any fall we might take. Money really doesn’t matter, because it’s really OK, because there really is a God that makes it OK.

So how do I pray? Do I give thanks and simulate joy, or do I scream for what I really want, like all those whiny Christians?

Thank goodness Jesus himself introduced paradox into Christianity, because right now I think I’m going to scream *and* give thanks (with a heavy emphasis on the screaming).

It seems to me that there’s a lot we can learn from ANTM. For one thing, we learn that the underdog wins. The last two cycles, it has been the “tough girl” that’s won over the more mainstream candidate (Naima over the blond “girl next door” and Eva over the college-educated dancer; note that “mainstream” is a relative term in the world of modeling). The judges, especially Tyra Banks, like seeing a candidate “evolve” from rough beginnings, self-doubt and bitter toughness into a confident superstar. There’s a meta-narrative going on that’s as much about self-acceptance as it is about winning. There’s a lot of “lesson learning,” in terms of the school of hard knocks, from week to week.

In fact, it’s beginning to seem that candidates have to have had a really rough life in order to succeed on ANTM. They have to have hated themselves or been raised in poverty or have had a bad family situation. They have to overcome. That’s good, that the judges reward overcoming, but it raises a few questions. In particular, what happens to the “good girl” that does consistently well and has less to overcome?

Wednesday night, the judges compared the two finalists,’ Naima’s and Kahlen’s, portfolios. Kahlen’s pictures were consistently rated better. From the beginning, she took outstanding pictures and she kept it up from week to week. She also did well in the final competition (the “final exam,” Tyra called it). The only criticism was that she might have held her neck a bit stiffly on the runway.

Naima, on the other hand, had a “solid” but not stellar portfolio. Some pictures were good, some not so great. Yet the judges, Tyra in particular, felt that she “rocked” on her final exam, both the fashion show and the commercial that all three finalists shot together.

“What do we do?” Tyra asked on Wednesday. Do we choose the candidate that’s had the consistently good performance, or the one that’s had the solid performance but skyrocketed on the finals?

I recall having a similar dilemma when I taught undergraduates. There were the students that plodded along, doing consistently well all the time, and then there were the students that either dramatically improved at the end of the semester or that showed occasional flashes of brilliance throughout an otherwise unexceptional performance. How do you grade such students? Do you reward improvement? If you do, you’re going to have to either fudge the grading scale or give a lot more weight to later assignments. If you didn’t decide to give more weight to later assignments *before* the semester begins, you’re screwed, because you’ve already announced the grading scale and you have to stick to it—or secretly fudge it.

That’s essentially what Tyra and the judges did Wednesday evening. They fudged the grading scale. They rewarded the student who came up from behind, even though they made a show of evaluating the entire “semester’s” work. Also note that both Naima and last cycle’s winner, Eva, are more exotic looking than most of the candidates. They stand out without having to do a single thing.

As a professor, I, too, always wanted to reward the Naimas of the world, and I agonized over trying to figure out how to make their final grade reflect their improvement, their flashes of chaotic brilliance.

But where does that leave Kahlen? Where does it leave the good girl that always does well? I myself sometimes had trouble with students like her. Indeed, the problem with rewarding consistent performers is that you sometimes feel as though they aren’t trying very hard. You miss the flashes of brilliance that come out of nowhere.

Yet for most of my life, I was like Kahlen. I was the consistent, reliable and commendable performer. I wasn’t ever exotic (although I was smart); I just plodded along. That part of me thinks it’s grossly unfair that Kahlen lost on Wednesday night.

Now, however, I may be more like Naima, at least in my newly chosen field of writing. In this field, I have little training, a lot of self-doubt and sometimes that bitter toughness that we initially saw in Naima and Eva.

Their success tells me that I can—and will!—come up from behind and sweep the competition away.

I’m ready to leave the good girl behind. Fair or not, it’s the underdog that wins.

"I knew someday I'd go to [sic] far," a middle-aged, fairly handsome man remarked. Next to him, a 100 year old wookie, seated in a co-pilot chair grunted in return. Han Solo, smuggler, pirate, gazed out the front window of his old, beat up ship, which he called, the "falcon."

Han smuggled many unsual things, but this? Smuggle some princess for the empire?

"I don't know, Chewbacca--well, I've already got myself into this mess. Let's get going."

As they neared, many laser shots and rocks were flashing across the galaxy.

---

Back in a dark cave, lit up by radar screens, and flashing buttons, a young, pretty woman with her braided hair coiled on top of her head gazed intently at a flashing screen. An officer approached her.

"Princess, no signs of approaching ships, or any signs of distrubance from the empire. I suppose that pleases you."

"No," Leia replied. "It really worries me. If Darth Vador hasn't done something already I'm afraid he's planning something really big." A call from a nearby watchout post interrupted her thoughts, saying, "There's a ship approaching!"

"Man your stations--oh, never mind--that couldn't be the empire in that dinky little ship--just be on guard."

Han told Chewie to watch the ship, while he went and pretended to be friendly.

Han, expecting a richly dressed lady with a crown and all, stood gaping at Princess Leia, after a guard pointed her out.

"Well, what'ya expect, an evening gown in *here*?"

"You're the princess?" Han asked, unbelievingly.

"What do I have to do, have you kiss my feet?" she answered sarcastically.

"Alright, alright, just sit down and simmer down."

"Are you telling me to shut up?" she asked.

"In a nice way, yes."

"Where did you come from anyway?"

"Maybe it's time you had a talk with your mommy."

"I've had it with you," she turned away, tears stinging her eyes, as she remembered her mother.

"Oh come off it--stop putting me through the third degree. I came to see you," he said.

"Me?"

"Well, not exactly you," he almost slipped! "Just, whoever was here that could help me."

---

Across the empire, Darth Vador sat smugly in his throne.

"So, Solo has gone to get the princess. I'm sure she'll go with him. He'll appeal to her. If he's working for me, maybe she will too.

---

Leia stood gazing out the door, watching Han try to fix his ship.

"That imp," she said under her breath.

"Princess, there's disturbance near. So near, half of our hide out has been blown away," a young officer Perolt shouted.

Suddenly, a loud voice was screaming into an intercom, "EVACUATE!"

Han winced. "What a voice. She could get a job calling hogs (tauntauns)!"

The whole place suddenly was in a turmoil of running people.

"Good luck," Leia was saying to a band of her fighters.

Well, fans, that's it for today. But there's more where that came from. Tune in another time to find out who will cook dinner--Leia or Han?--and what happens when Leia is thrown into Han's arms by a disturbance in the force one too many times. (Notice that I didn't say, "tune in tomorrow"--that's because I don't want to scare you, my readers, away.)

We liked the theme of forgiveness and reconciliation. Even though not all of us were thrilled with Lamott's constant harping on Bush (not that we like Bush--we just didn't always like the constant harping), we did appreciate the way she moved toward at least a good effort at loving and forgiving him by the end of the book, witness chapter seventeen, "loving your president, day 2" and even the last chapter, where Lamott writes that she "started to believe in George Bush" (even though she then concludes that "believing in George Bush was so ludicrous that believing in God seems almost rational"). Bush seemed to play the role of front man in the book--someone to take the fall for much of Lamott's frustration, but also someone who illustrates the need and capacity for forgiveness. That's not an entirely bad role to play. It is, in effect, very generous of Lamott, who clearly does not like the guy, to assign him this role.

We also liked the way that things are not always "all wrapped up" in Lamott's book. For example, when she wrote about her ski trip with her friend, Sue, who was dying of cancer, the effect was, "well, here is an account of the last time we spent together." It was not melodramatic; there was no frantic attempt to make things better than they were for Sue. The chapter ends simply, with Lamott eating the scones that sue baked the last morning of their trip. "They were gone by the time we arrived home." Well, OK, I guess there's some symbolism in that sentence. But the upshot of it is that Lamott doesn't beat a dead horse. She lets the bad stuff be bad, and she tries to find where God is in it. Sometimes she fails.

Previously in our book group, we'd read Lauren Winner's "Girl Meets God," Winner's memoir of her conversion from Judaism to Christianity. Since both Winner and Lamott deal with spiritual issues and have a somewhat confessional tone (in Winner's book, we hear all about her boyfriend troubles, her jealousy, and her sex life [ugh]), I asked the group how Winner compares to Lamott.

Basically, we felt that Lamott is not as self-concsious, in a navel-gazing way, as Winner. Also, whereas Winner seems to want us to know all about her, Lamott is always asking, "Where is God in this situation in which I happen to find myself?" The difference in emphasis between self and God is striking.

Along the same lines, Lamott tends to take her situation and universalize it so that it appeals to many people. How many readers are going to relate to Winner's torturous conversion tale and upscale, book-lined New York apartment? The themes in Lamott's stories come out more clearly, and they are ones that we all face: how to forgive, what to do in the face of death, trying to get by one day at a time.

One of the women in the book group, T., was even inspired by Lamott to make muffins for a prickly woman at her church. Lamott is always pleading that sometimes all we can do is to be kind to ourselves and others, and, well, T. just took her up on this. Lamott consistently moves from reflection or sometimes even whining to action--sending a card to the president, starting a Sunday School, taking a walk. Winner often never seems to move beyond the whining phase.

Of course, we all agreed that Lamott's ability to turn a phrase is without parallel. She describes things in such unusual ways that it makes you think about it differently, for example, her description of a Catholic church (in a previous book, I think) as a "religious bus station." Her essays are often brief because her descriptions are exactly on the mark; endless explanations are not necessary (unlike this entry, for example!).

And I have to tell you the end to yesterday evening. After this wonderful discussion, T. (she of the muffins) drove me home. On the way, it came out that both of us had had squabbles (well, OK, fights) with our husbands that day or the night before, and that both fights were about finances. After T. pulled in to my driveway, we continued talking for a minute and then she asked me if she could pray for both our families. Which she did, right there in the van.

It was a Lamott kind of moment. Sometimes you feel helpless in the face of it all, and all you can do is pray.

What struck me is the way I immediately warmed to this topic. My stance relaxed, I leaned jauntily on the copy machine, and I got downright chatty. I told her where I went, and that before this place I'd gone to another place that was just way too expensive. I also didn't like the way that at this other place you had to call at least two weeks in advance to be able to get an appointment--I never know what my hair is going to be doing, so I just can't give them that much lead time.

Anyway, this was all undoubtedly more than my co-worker needed to know. But I love talking about my hair--its current state, its evolution, my goals for it. I think this has to do with acceptance of myself. It's a way of saying that I worry about myself and my self-image, and do you really think that I'm OK? It also put me and my co-worker on a more even playing field. She's always been a little prickly, and talking hair made her seem more human.

Sometimes, the things I love talking about worry me. I have a Ph.D. in art history, but it's not art, generally, that I like talking about. It's dumb little things. Just ask my best friend what happens when you get me started on Duran Duran--especially if you say something bad about them or if they're not included on a show about top music videos of the eighties (this actually happened--I can't imagine what moron put this show together).

I think I might still be a teen inside. Hair and music videos. Geez.

On the other hand, maybe it's these little things that make us human. Or maybe I just want to go back to a simpler (?) time of life when it really was all about hair. I remember that before going into band practice in middle school, I'd lean over and then violently flip my head back in order to add volume to my hair. Do you remember this, M.?

Well, this is certainly not one of the more inspired posts I've ever written, but our minds can't always be trained on things exalted, can they? Sometimes, you just want to have a good hair day, and that's as good as it gets.

“Well,” he said. He tented his fingers and gazed upward, undoubtedly searching for an answer that, while true, would also keep me from running out of the room screaming.

“The thing is, I don’t think of my clients in terms of favorites,” he finally said.

I stared at him in disbelief. Oh, c’mon, I thought to myself. Everyone plays favorites. As a former teacher, I know this is true. When I looked out over a sea of faces in my classroom, there was always one or maybe two that elicited my affection more than the rest. Maybe it’s because I myself have favorites that I always want to be the favorite. It’s hard for me to be one of many and still feel that I have value as a person. (Thank goodness I'm not a Borg.)

It’s not only my therapist I harass about this. I also want to be God’s favorite. I your God am a jealous God, God says.

Well, I want to respond, I am a jealous child.

When I see a church van with a John 3:16 sticker on the window and a bunch of happy teens in the back, I shake my head. How could God so love the entire world? That concept’s way too abstract for me to wrap my mind around. What interests me is whether or not God loves *me.*

I *so* do not want this to be true. I don’t want to be so selfish and insecure that I begrudge God’s loving his world.

So I repent.

And I try to find new ways of understanding the depth of God’s love for his children—me and all his children.

In my reading, I recently came across this gem from Marilyn Robinson’s "Gilead:" “Augustine says the Lord loves each of us as an only child.” From the way my heart jumped within me, I knew I’d found something big. I tracked down the reference, which is from Augustine’s "Confessions." Before his conversion to Christianity, when Augustine was held captive to all kinds of vice and heresy, Augustine’s mother, Marcia, wept for his soul night and day. God comforted his mother in a vision about which Augustine says this: “Whence came this vision unless it was that thy ears were inclined toward her heart? O thou Omnipotent Good, thou carest for every one of us as if thou didst care for him only…!” God’s tenderness towards Marcia was so great that it was as though she were the only person in existence, the only person on earth that God had to minister to.

I saw that I had been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, “Am I your favorite?” the better question is, “How much do you love me?”

And God’s answer is, I love you as though you were the only child that I had to love.

Being God’s only child means that I can approach him without jockeying for attention. It means that God’s lap is always free; it’s never occupied with another child. It means that God’s focus is trained fully on me; he’s never distracted by other kids tugging at his robe. Don’t get me wrong; those other kids are still there. But they’re his only children, too. They can make their own arrangements, and I don’t have to worry about them (nor they about me). Being God’s only child means that I’m the apple of his eye. How much richer an image than the anxiety-filled quest of being God’s favorite!

Do you have a need that’s similar to mine? Maybe you’re one of nine kids and never quite got enough attention when you were small. Maybe you always felt overlooked growing up because you weren’t the smartest or the prettiest or the most popular. Maybe you even feel that way now.

To you, God says, “You are my one and only. You are the apple of my eye.”

God’s heart is big enough to encompass all our hurts and weaknesses, even those that seem petty or selfish. I rest in God’s lap today, knowing it’s the right size to hold me and me alone—along with those millions of others that are God’s only children, too.

I'm at work, and I just listened to a conversation among three engineers about how they take their wives and kids to the place that shall not be named (typing it twice was enough). "They wear clothes and everything," one of them (not of our office, thankfully) pointed out when I nearly vomited in disgust. And I think you know who "they" refers to.

The kicker was when our office manager (a woman, who should know better) came in and noted that she has taken her adolescent son's sports team to the place that shall not be named. "They like the wings," she said.

Here's to raising the next generation.

(I think some purging is now in order. Perhaps I'll just throw out my keyboard, maybe my entire computer, and, heck, might as well burn my desk while we're at it. Think the office would mind?)

Recently I discovered the real reason that the Atkins Diet sucks. It sucks because life, Real Life, is all about bread.

From the beginning, the promises of life held out to us by our Creator have been promises of bread. We're used to hearing about the promised land overflowing with milk and honey. But just before Moses died, he blessed the Israelites and said this:

"Jacob's spring is secure in a land of grain and wine, where the heavens drop dew (Deut. 33:28)."

Grain and wine. Moses not only meant that God was leading them to a fruitful land. Grain and wine also refers to the ultimate salvation offered in the body and blood of Jesus.

Jesus himself is the Bread of Life. During the Last Supper, he took bread and told the disciples that it was his body, broken for them. We remember his death when we eat bread during the celebration of communion. We also remember his death when we share a meal together, an act commonly referred to as "breaking bread together."

Some of us do, anyway. A friend of ours, a truly zany guy and a wonderful Christian, doesn't eat bread. Of all his bizarro and mostly endearing habits, this is truly the most annoying. When we got out to eat with him, he orders things that come with bread, like burgers and fish sandwiches, and either asks for them without the bread or pushes the buns aside. Then he reaches into his bag and pulls out his bottle of lo-carb ketchup, which he carries with him everywhere. (Meg Ryan's high-maintenance character in "When Harry Met Sally" has nothing on this guy.)

Our friend, "Roberto," is in his forties and is very thin. There is no real reason for him to be quite so maniacal about following the Atkins Diet.

Roberto also talks about disliking having to eat bread during the celebration of communion. "Even that little, tiny crumb that you can barely feel on your tongue?" I ask. "You can't be too careful," he says. He's kidding, but only kind of. This is where I think he's going too far.

Some people, like my friend C., don't like to chew the body of Christ. They prefer a paper-thin wafer that melts on your tongue. Like absorbing the body of Christ, C. says. I myself prefer to chew a little, just to know that Jesus is there. But to each her own.

It's another thing entirely, however, to be so preoccupied with carb counting that it affects your attitude toward communion.

I read recently that there are roughly 500 references to bread in the Bible. Some are stories: the loaves and fishes, for example. Some are metaphors: beware the leaven of the Pharisees. Bread was a major dietary staple in biblical times, and it has many wonderful qualities. It keeps for several days. In the form of grain, it can be stored for a long time to ward against times of want. It is of the earth. Of course, if he'd wanted to, Jesus could have picked another food when referring to himself. Why not fish, for example? Or he could have picked a food that was less common, in order to set himself apart from the norm. But he picked bread, and in so doing, he invested bread with meaning and nourishment above and beyond its material substance.

Anne Lamott recognizes this in her newest book, "Plan B." She says:

"I went by the cafe and asked the aunties [her thighs] what they might like for a snack--bread pudding or fruit salad. They wanted half a sandwich, a lot of bread pudding, and one small whole-wheat bun. I think they would have ordered a bread beverage if they could--beer, with hops and barley, or in the interest of sobriety, a raisin-bread frappe. Bread is as spiritual as human life gets. Rumi wrote, 'Be a well-baked loaf.' Loaves are made to be eaten, to be buttered, and shared. Rumi is saying to be of service, to be delicious and give life. The aunties know things."

The aunties--and I, and hopefully all of us--want the real thing. We want the promised land of grain and wine, and we know that a "land of lo-carb bars and diet soda" just isn't going to do it.

Can a real Christian follow the Atkins Diet?

--Out of the Grey

In honor of Mattias and the days when he was just a little tyke, I thought I'd share with you the song that has become affecionately known as "Mattias' Song." This song was written by Mattias' mother shortly after his birth. I can testify that it was the only thing that would calm him down on many an occasion. The words are sung to "If you like pina colodas..."

"If you like nursing at midnight,
And walks in a sling.
If you like baby giraffes,
And bright beads on a string."

"Well I'm Baby Mattias,
And I love all these things.
If you wanna hook up,
Just give me a quick ring."

(verses 2 and 3 were added after a trip to the grocery store, where two-month old Mattias flirted with every female in sight)

"I hang out at the grocery,
Flirt with the girls in the line.
I tell them my name is 'Tias,
And they tell me I'm fine."

"And my mama buys milk tea,
Because I like to eat.
First one side then the other,
And my joy is complete."

"Well, I'm Baby Mattias,
And I'm cute and I'm sweet.
Just give me a quick ring,
And maybe we'll meet."

Happy Birthday, Mattias! We love you!!!