When Jupiter Aligns with Mars

Friday night: the kiddo and pregnant wife were in town for his high school reunion, and we met them for dinner at a local steakhouse. Naturally, we were about ten minutes late. They, for some ungodly reason -- knowing that we are often often often late -- were thirty minutes early.

While waiting for Robert to get home from work, I got dressed in my favorite summer dress -- multi-orange-hued tropical flowers on a black background -- and I'd even shaved my legs! (Not on my list of 50 Favorite Things to Do.) I fixed my hair -- which is Intense Red Copper again -- and selected sandals to show off my tootsies -- which are Vould You Like a Lick-entstein? (don't you love OPI color names??) -- and sat down to do my makeup.

My makeup table is an oak rolltop desk, and it's got anything you could possibly need to do a fabulous makeup job (except running water). It's stocked with an eye-popping array of Bobbi Brown (and the occasional other-brand freebie that Saks gives when I'm being particularly generous). But it's not that easy to manage a fabulous makeup job every time. I can give the reason in one or maybe two words (depending on whether it's a compound word or really just two words).

Eye liner.

It smudges. It goes on too thick. It goes on uneven. It smears and leaves little dark shadows where you clean it up. If you get one eye done nicely, then it's inevitable that you'll do the other eye too thick and have to go back and forth trying to even them up without winding up looking a ghoulie of the night.

Bobbi Brown has the coolest eyeliner -- it's a creamy gel and it gives you a fair shot at getting it on where it's acceptable. I have it in sepia. black plum, espresso and cobalt blue, and I love it.

Friday night -- are you listening closely? -- Friday night my eyeliner was PERFECT. Best I've ever had. Better than even the girls at the Bobbi counter have ever done. Thin, even, smooth lines that one corner to the other. On both eyes. PERFECT.

After dinner, DIL pulled out the ultrasound pictures of grandbaby. Okay, I admit, I really, really wanted a girl. I felt a moment's disappointment when I found out it was a boy. I asked if there was any chance the radiologist had read it wrong. Uh, no, proud papa said. "Trust me."

He wasn't kidding. There's a shot of said child, showing no modesty at all, with his legs splayed and the clearest view imaginable in utero of his, ah, appendage. He is definitely a he.

I thought back to the ultrasound of the kiddo days before he was born, when I couldn't find anything on the screen that remotely resembled a human, then looked at grandbaby's pix. The face is sooo clearly a face -- eyes, little nose, mouth, ears, chin. You can see his arms and hands, his legs and feet, his weenie, his itty bitty testicles. Amazing pictures.

Three months, roughly, until the big day. I can hardly wait! Rachel8:19 AM