EVENTUALLY, THE CRAZY HAS GOT TO COME OUT . . .

Having dinner at Camp Capio on a non-event night is always ... an event. On the one hand, I feel like and am accepted as 'family', so I feel completely at home. On the other hand, I feel like the most intimate of voyeurs, peering into the lives of people who are so like me in some ways, so very unlike me in others.

Take tonight, for example: I pick up a small Thai dinner -- thank God for the end of Lent and the ability to eat pad thai again -- and head over to Camp. M is home from work, upstairs having quality time with CA. C is puttering around downstairs, hauling MJ around like a sack of potatoes. So far, so good -- everything is standard. After settling the Noodles down to be fed their final solid meal of the day by C, M and I dig into our grown-up dinner. But those Noodles sure are entertaining -- far better than television. Between MJ moaning and grumbling for quicker food delivery from jar to his mouth, screwing up his face in horror after sucking on a slice of lime, and CA shaking her head back and forth and cracking herself up in the process, I didn't know if I should swallow my food and laugh or just open my mouth and let it all spew out.

But then the dog got loose and chaos reigned.

The Popstar came trotting up the stairs from her playpen in the basement, as if it were perfectly alright for her to be roaming the house freely with a big ol' marrow bone wedged in her jaws. The thunder and lightning had roused her, and she spent the next few minutes attacking the window panes around the family room trying to get at the lightning, her leash trailing and whipping around behind her like a spastic extended tail. Damn dog didn't even say hi to me. Then M joined CA in the head-shaking, crooning "dori-dori-dori," a common Korean nonsensical phrase used with children who, well, shake their heads incessantly as a form of self-entertainment. MJ's moaning and grumbling got louder; he stopped only to laugh when M sang him the "Horsey" song (which I have been forbidden to repeat in the workplace, lest I get locked out of chambers again) or blew raspberries in his face. And finally, because C just could not bear to be left out of the madness, he joined in the head-shaking.

There I sat, surrounded by a frantic Jack Russell terrier trying to eat lightning, a moaning and increasingly shrieking baby boy with sweet potato souffle mush oozing out of his pursed mouth, a messy rice cereal-covered baby girl shaking her head back and forth and cackling in glee, and two grown adults, shaking their heads and giggling for no apparent good reason. What the ...

I shudder to think what the evening would have been like had we all had wine with dinner ...