Poor Jake. 

He was gazing out the window yesterday, looking longingly over at the Fenway, which has been all lit up for the past couple of days for the Winter Classic, and he turns and says:

"What are people going to call this year?"



I looked at him quizzically (I just got some new glasses that make me look generally more quizzical, I think — so I didn't have to do much).

"I mean, 'oh-ten' just doesn't sound right."

"Yeah," I commiserated.

"But just 'ten' doesn't sound right either."

I didn't know quite what to say to console him.  But then I had a thought.

"Maybe," I ventured, "they'll call it twenty-ten!"

He gave me a look like, ehhhhh — wrong answer.

He's probably right.  Three whole syllables. It's a lot.  But somehow I still have enough faith in human intellect (I know, I know!) to trust that "oh-ten" will not gain wide currency in the coming year.  People still chant "USA! USA! USA!" when they could just chant "US! US! US!" They even seem to prefer the unabridged version, so maybe there's hope.  We just have to make it cool and fun!  Maybe if we chanted "Twenty-Ten! USA!  Twenty-Ten! USA!  Twenty-Ten! USA! " whenever we got a chance.

I dunno.  Things with Jake have calmed down a bit.  I mean, whaddya gonna do?  Truth is he's fairly well-behaved.  A big worry — turns out he doesn't really have his buddies over much (something straight guys apparently refer to as a "sausage fest").  If he did, they'd have to hang out in his boudoir to watch the game, which seems like it would end up as some kind of hot Sean Cody amateur straight-on-straight-man-sex scenario.  I mean, their dicks are right here, and his bed's right there.  That's awkward.  And it's why they have to make the commercial breaks of big games interesting.  Otherwise, things could get really hot— er, I mean: weird. 

Speaking of scenarios.  Jake's dashing older brother Ryan dropped in to walk Oscar the other day before returning to the Orient, where he has some mysterious business.  How can I describe Ryan?  Sort of like Jake, in 3-D.  Or — picture some hard-boiled hero in a 1940s Hollywood movie version of Dashiell Hammett.  There's something suave but intriguingly smarmy under the surface.

Jake was out, and twilight was upon us, and we were standing in the kitchen, and he was eating a clementine, picking the seeds off his tongue with his fingers and setting them inside the peel on the kitchen counter.  And talking about his mysterious business in Shanghai all the while.

And I was mesmerized.

I was at the supermarket by the ball park yesterday.  I've been going to Whole Foods since I moved to the Fenway, because it's right around the corner and they have the cutest clerks per capita of any grocery store I know of.  And they're friendly, too. 

But I'd just been to my new gym in the Fenway (the BSC there has a very busy sauna, by the way, scenariowise), which is more or less across the street, and I needed to pick up some cleaning supplies, since I'm the lady of the house now.

So I went to the old Star Market — now a Shaw's — on Boylston.  It's like going back in time to my early childhood, right down to the music.  It's all Dion Warwick and "Do You Know the Way to San Jose."  So I lingered in the aisles awhile just waiting to hear the next golden oldie and checking out all the new Kleenex Expression boxes. 

When I went to check out, the self-serve stations were taken, and an androgynous clerk with bo derek braids and a sad, sad smile called me over.

"How are you today?" I asked, unloading my basket.

He heaved a sigh. 

"Tired."

"Out late last night?" I joked.

"At my other job," he said, forlornly scanning my Soft Scrub. "I get off of that one and hardly have time to rest before I have to come back here."

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said. 

I mean, what do you say?  It sucks to have to have two jobs.  I almost gave him my card and suggested he come in for a consult to see if one of our vocational programs would suit him.  Our kids leave with mad skills, and the potential to make mad money, too.  I had the whole spiel on the tip of my tongue, when he sighed a huge sigh again.

"I'm just waiting for someone to come sweep me off my feet!"

Well, I can't help you there.  For that, you'll need a cosmetologist.  For starters.

I didn't say that, of course.  I commiserated. 

"We should start a club," I said.

I then wished him luck in oh-ten, and left it at that.