Today B and I slept 'til noon, made oatmeal with blueberries for breakfast, skimmed the paper, cleared off some TiVo, shopped for some new CDs, stopped for some deep-dish pizza for dinner, baked a loaf of homemade bread, finished up a PowerPoint presentation for work, and continued to categorize the music on our iTunes.

Michael and Jolene, on the other hand, had only a slightly more adventurous day, resulting in a late afternoon appearance by Spencer Warren Timmons.

Only three out of the five of us even managed to take baths/showers today. Pssssstt: it wasn't us.

Congratulations to the overachievers on their gorgeous, native, aquarian, hirsute arrival. I can't wait to squeeze him.

I believe there are certain rites of passage when living in Washington, DC. Like your first inauguration. Or the first time you get the bright orange boot put on your car for not paying your MANY outstanding parking tickets. And then there is the one that happened to me today, the first time the FBI knocks on your door to ask you to provide information for a White House staffer background check.

Knocked on my door is really an overstatement, because, let's be honest, our hovel doesn't have a front door. Our hovel also only has six foot/six inch ceilings, with large overhanging beams in some places that reduce that height to just under six feet, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Instead of a knock it was a phone call from my landlord next door asking if I was available to speak with an agent from the FBI regarding one of our upstairs neighbors. We knew that she was hired to work at the White House a few weeks ago and this was apparently part of the routine background check. I agreed and promptly walked upstairs to let him in through THEIR front door.

When he walked up the steps-- in his taupe TRENCH COAT no less, I kid you not-- the first thing he did was flip open his badge. You know, flipped open in that "I'm with the FBI, ma'am" kind of way. I lingered on it for a while, not because I was reading the entire thing-- not that I even remember what it looked like now-- but because I have a cousin who is currently training and testing to be part of the FBI and I know from his experiences that it is rigorous and painful and incredibly demanding for him in a forty-million-sit-ups-and-one-television-for-800-guys-for-eight-months kind of way and I figured that if this guy went through all of that just to EARN this badge then the least I could do is spend a few extra seconds looking at it. Plus, c'mon-- it was so cool!

So he stepped inside the house-- the apartment upstairs actually-- and I realized that he was entirely too tall to be just one person. It was as if there were two people, one hiding under that taupe trench coat with this guy on his shoulders. I showed him the cramped stairwell that leads to our hovel, and he turned to look at me for just an instant with one of those looks like, "You're kidding, right?" but then he forged ahead, lodged himself under the stairs, wedged himself through the door, and popped out into our cramped apartment. Our bedroom, to be exact. His six foot/six inch+ self hunched in our six foot/six inch bedroom until I was able to usher him under the stray ceiling beams and into our living room where he could sit on our normal sofa with his feel on the floor and his knees digging into his chin. I'm only HALF joking.

The interview went fine... extremely short and really uneventful. Had I observed any sort of strange or odd behavior or activities from the upstairs neighbor? Had I ever seen any kind of police activity going on upstairs? Was I friendly with the upstairs neighbor and how would I describe her? Had I had any conflicts with her? What types of friends and acquaintances had I noticed? Like I said, routine. And this woman is actually incredibly genuine and friendly with extremely go-getter, preppy friends, so my answers were about as boring as they could possibly be. No stories to tell about walking upstairs to get the mail and accidentally seeing her and her friends shooting up heroin while watching a sample from her personal snuff film collection-- that was me in MY twenties.

[B would like me to add here that when I say "that was me in MY twenties," I am being ironic because I do not think that any of you will actually believe that I spent my twenties shooting up heroin or watching/collecting snuff films or, heaven forbid, doing both at the same time. But he would like me to ENSURE that you do not believe it by me specifically telling you, DO NOT BELIEVE IT. Because, you know, his MOM reads this. Which by the way, Hello, Jane! Welcome to whirlygirl.]

[And even further proof that I did not actually shoot up heroin in my twenties came in an email from the long-lost Paul Rickter who rightfully corrected my spelling of heroine (the main female character of a story) with heroin (an opium-derived narcotic typically administered intravenously). Because as B says, when you're in your twenties, you don't have the patience to liquify and "cook up" literary characters, you're probably going straight for the opium. Thank you for setting me straight (pun, though it IS the lowest form of humor, intended), Paul. So good to hear from you, even with a correction!]

But then-- and I'm not exactly sure how this happened except that I'm pretty sure this guy asks questions for a living and so he's pretty good at extracting stories whether he's really interested or not-- we started talking about me. How long had I lived here? Do I like living in this neighborhood? What do I do for a living? Do I really work at home (a fact proven by the fact that I was home at 11:15am on a Tuesday wearing a somewhat subtle form of pajamas while showing no signs of illness) and how does one get a job working from home? And for each of these questions I just oozed answers. And I mean long answers about my job as a Federal Government consultant for a company headquartered in Boston and how my fiancé and I were moving there in a few months but he was originally from Texas and how it would be tough for him to adjust to Boston winters, especially with all of the crazy weather they are getting up there right now, and how this apartment is really more of single girl apartment because of its limited headroom and how I was lucky that I fell in love with I guy who was under six feet tall and that we're saving right now so that we can buy a house when we move to Boston and how I love this neighborhood with the gym and the...

Seriously, I could NOT shut up. We spent about two minutes on the woman upstairs and 20 minutes on me. And equal time on him, about how he's intrigued with city architecture and how he grew up in Chicago and how he lives in Herndon, Virginia now but he once lived in and apartment with a low hanging beam that ran the length of the apartment that he had to duck under each and every time and how he wishes that his job gave him more flexibility and how he was a Cubs fan, but of course he was excited about the Red Sox winning the World Series and breaking their curse. There was so much polite and interesting small talk that I was sure that any minute he would take out samples of Amway products from under his taupe trench coat and try to ensnare me into his pyramid scheme.

As we wrapped up and I walked him back upstairs to the front door, he turned with this kind of goofy grin and said, "You're a mover and a shaker." How funny and odd and sweet all at the same time. I suddenly wanted to give him one of my business cards and invite him to grab a drink at Bourbon with me and B some night after work. He was so very endearing, exactly like the giant in Big Fish.

Which is precisely how I described him when I closed the door, ran downstairs, and immediately called B at work to say, "Guess why YOU'RE going to wish YOU stayed home from work today."

So I was right-- the time of my last post was about T-2.5 hours until Bennett David Sonneborn arrived. Todd called on Saturday and he was just a slightly giddier version of the usual Todd-- hovering just over the "that-zipper-purse-thing-is-so-freaking-cool" level. Todd is all about cool and cucumbers. He told me that Bennett was born into an impending blizzard. I told him that he may have to wrap Hayley and Bennett up in the shower curtain this time and drag them home from the hospital, but he said he wouldn't be able to tell Hayley that because she would laugh and then hurt and then be mad at him for making her laugh and hurt. Same old Todd and Hayley.

One of my favorite moments with Todd and Hayley-- one that just perfectly summed up their personalities and their relationship for me in less than 60 seconds-- was probably five or six years ago when Hayley turned to me and said with typical Hayley enthusiasm, "Kristen, Todd likes babies now!" To which Todd responded with a typical Todd sigh and exaggerated eye roll and then corrected, "Puppies, Hayley. I said I like puppies, not babies."

We laughed a few years back when Todd's Subaru Outback came standard with a child protection seat. But then he got married and bought a house and rebuilt a fireplace mantle and rewired the kitchen and provided a home for a mother duck and her silver-dollar-sized ducklings. I tend to believe that it was in the cards all along that eventually, if not exactly then, he would like babies.

Even more than zipper purses.