All's well that ends with you still getting a bunch of presents, it seems. Jackson's taken the dissolution of the Santa Claus myth really well so far, because now he doesn't have to worry about transmitting his intentions to some rarely-available middle man, he can just come to me directly and say, "Can you just put a bunch of magic tricks and pranks in my stocking? Actually, that's all I want for Christmas, magic tricks. Can I you do that? Thanks."

The other thing that's come out of all this sudden growing up he's doing is that I've realized that my habit of wearing only tiny stud earrings, which I started doing when the odds seemed to be in favor of finding blood running down my neck and a pretty, dangly hoop in one of Jackson's baby fists, the other day I realized, Oh, right, he's seven, I can probably wear real earrings again. So I opened up the drawer where all my earring neglect has been happening and I found a bunch of kooky, heavy earrings (cats hugging cannonballs; James Joyce and Nora Barnacle) that I mostly don't want to wear anymore. There are like five pairs worth keeping at this point, but what do I do with the rest? Ebay? Put them in a baggie and toss them in with the next load of old Disneyland t-shirts on its way to Salvation Army? Give used earrings as birthday presents to people I want to gross out just a little?

What else. We finally FINALLY got Cookie spayed, no more bleeding on the Home Depot wall-to-wall, thank god. Her stitches are awful, it's like Frankenstein down there, you don't even want to see. I was going to take a picture and then I thought, I'm pretty much the only person interested in my dog's incision, I need to put the camera down. It's all about training your baser impulses, I guess. Don't post photos of your dog's stitches, don't leave angry comments on people's blogs telling them how stupid and boring they are. Rein it in a little, for the common good.

So all in all it was a long-ass summer. I lost uncountable games of Connect Four; battled horrible, drippy Danish guys in incomprehensible games of Chaotic; and generally lost all sense of personal space. For a constant companion and running buddy, you can't ask for a more sympathetic and interesting (admittedly, Nickelodeon-based) conversationalist than Jackson, but holy mother of Pokemon am I ready for second grade to start next week.