Henry and John, but really, for the time being, Henry, have a new computer through which he receives regular doses of Lego Star Wars. Lego Star Wars, like alcohol, is a drug that relaxes one’s inhibitions, without providing any additional insight, or even a profound but imaginary sense of insight. There are some deleterious effects on coherence, although less than you would think, and it is also, sadly, addictive. Still, as Henry’s current major inhibition is a reluctance to tell his mother and father any information about his life, and as Lego Star Wars significantly reduces that inhibition, I have been administering Lego Star Wars to him in judicious amounts. The questions I ask are not nefarious! I observe certain boundaries. And there is something nice, I think, about talking about math problems, and what happened on recess, and, gingerly, cautiously, whence he received his information about something recently referred to as “sexy moves,” while Henry blasts droids apart. Why did you do that? I asked him recently, after he killed a droid in a non-combat situation, i.e., for fun, and he said, The game doesn’t care.

Now that I have a dog I have to talk to my dog. I talk to my dog the way people talk to their dogs. It feels strange. One thing I’m focused on is that I don't want to say I'm her Mommy. That seems weird to me. So I tried using other referents for myself besides Mommy. Instead of, Mommy doesn’t want you to do that I said, Your female owner doesn’t want you to do that. Female to differentiate myself from David, her male owner. He is trying so hard to have a good relationship with the dog, and I didn’t want to sabotage it. You see how crazy it gets, right away. Anyway, I said, Your female owner doesn’t want you to do that and then it sounded so strange that I thought I needed to explain things to the dog, so I tried to explain my discomfort, to the dog, about being called her Mommy and then I just tried to walk a while without saying anything, which also seemed strange, and then I took her for too long a walk so I had to end it by carrying her home in my arms. I was worried about her.

She’s very beautiful. I think she’s very smart.

Mom called from Rome to ask about the dog and in passing noted that her dog is my dog’s uncle, which sounded fine until I figured out that this was because he is my brother. According to my Mom. So do you think that I don’t want to say that I’m the dog’s Mommy because I’m acting out some kind of Freudian drama? I don’t think so. I think I’m just being a jackass. I think it’s like the time I went to a small town in France for a wedding and there was some old tradition in the town having to do with cows and weddings that had, over time, become a tradition in which a plastic inflatable cow was brought onto the dance floor and people had to dance with it. I fled the dance floor but one American woman, trapped, danced the hell out of that cow. Sometimes committing oneself to idiocy is the only honorable thing to do.