I recently attended a baby shower of a close friend in Pasadena (actually San Gabriel, where you can clearly see a change in the county you're in by how many Asian restaurants you see adorning the sidewalk , especially since the Chinese have kind of taken over the whole city) and really had a good time meeting new people (the soon-to-be-dad was Hispanic and the mother was Taiwanese, so I got to experience a variety of cultures and talked to a variety of people), but it made me wonder what the baby shower is actually for. It's actually a very old tradition, longer than Christmas, Valentine's Day, or Independence Day and all of these "commerce-stimulating holidays" that I tell MJ about to stimulate certain industries; baby showers do stimulate the baby products business but it's a tradition that dates back to ancient Egypt (and India, and other cultures) to welcome the baby into the world and "shower" the mother with gifts so as to be ready for when the baby comes. I personally find it a much more practical occasion than a bridal shower, or bachelorette party, or bachelor party (just an excuse to go party, with nothing really changing that much after a wedding. After a baby arrives in a family, though, it's like your whole world is turned upside down, and getting a bunch of stuff to get ready for that apocalyptical event seems necessary; also it's the last time you see your friends without holding in your baby in your arms and being free to talk for a long time. And another similarity with weddings, at least for the bride: it's more fun to attend other people's baby showers because you don't have to deal with the stress, in the case of a baby shower the extra weight (literally) of a new baby but also likely the later stages of pregnancy. So yes, count me in for baby showers, although I don't think MJ and would be so excited to have one; the more we go to weddings, the more we realize how inconvenient they are, and how much of a burden they impose on guests sometimes, to go all the way across the country and then upon arriving in the correct city, also have to make one's way to the wedding venue, then make it back home to the airport in time for work on Monday. (Yes, this is what MJ and I just went through for a Sunday night wedding.....Monday was painful, and that stretched to Tuesday). So yes, we wouldn't want to impose on anyone to force them to come to another social event, but I'm generally pro-baby showers, especially when the baby's not out yet and the attentions is not completely on the baby (Yup, when I go visit my friends with kids the conversation inevitably is dominated by their children, understandably but sometimes excessively so). This particular San Gabriel baby shower had a pinata event that went great: for the dad who was pulling the rope on the pinata and making all the kids miss when they swung. The dad was having a great time and told me he's looking forward to doing it to his own kid when she comes of age.
Despite the temperate summer nights, the long days stretching into night, and fantasy baseball playoffs, I still stick by my moniker for the month, "cruel summer." For some reason everything just seems slow this month: my brain is moving slower because there are no new episodes of Jeopardy, my jogging is slowed because it's so humid outside that I'm slow to a crawl, and work days always seem to go super slow. It's the dog days of summer; maybe that's why Green Day came up with that song "Wake Me Up When September Ends."
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