As I was sorting through my recent pictures for yesterday's upload, I did something I've never done before. Let me explain. I love my camera to bits, and I love taking pictures, but I, like so many of us, find the sorting and displaying tedious. When I make up my mind to share an event, I usually have to spend at least an hour (or at any rate, longer than I want to) evaluating, resizing and naming pictures. So when I do it these days, I do it with a kind of triage mentality and try to swiftly locate the area of greatest need. I don't linger. I barely have time to glance.

Imagine my surprise, then, when after I was done, I rethought, went back and readied more pictures. More! The mind reels. But I was helpless. Helpless in the face of Sammy.

Sammy is Q & Maggie's baby. I'd seen pictures of him on this great Internet of ours, but I hadn't met him until two Sundays ago, when I was invited to a send-off party for the family. Maggie has a job offer in Europe, and as of this writing they are long gone. I had knit a hat for Sammie in the summer, part of my big baby binge knit that encompassed Sabine, Callie, and this guy (who was then known simply as Punchy), but I was slow to co-ordinate the giving of the hat. This didn't particularly bother me, as a) it was summer, and no time for knit hats, and b) I figured I had all the time in the world to mail it to St. Catherine's, where I thought he lived. So I waited.

Then on Boxing Week, trying to upload a knitting pattern for a crocheted Homestar Runner (I know, I'm a nerd, move on), I figured out that my website was broken. When I poked around the webhost, I saw that I had no account. Oh crap! I thought, Q's finally decided to stop letting me freeload off his website! (For those of you who came in later than, oh, ten years ago, Q has been hosting this site for me since 1999. For awhile I paid him. Then I stopped. I figured this was my reward for neglect.)

I panicked! I started a new account, paid for a domain registration, started uploading files. Q messaged me, asking what in the hell was my problem. I slowed down. We exchanged emails. He assured me that he hadn't kicked me off; his account had switched servers awhile ago and this was the first time I had tried to access the site since then. I took a deep breath. And, over the course of a few days when he probably had better things to do, he fixed it for me. I kept my spiff new domain registration (rocketbride.net hurray!), things were back to status quo and he invited me to the send-off party, where I met Sammy.

Pictures don't adequately convey the majesty that is Sammy; in fact, pictures almost entirely fail to do him justice. The only thing that pictures do is remind the fortunate what it's like to hold this little guy as he placidly chews on an educational toy. (Author's note: don't chew on the other side at the same time. That way lies frightened tears.)

Throughout the party, whenever he was free, either Mason and I were holding Sammy. He was like the pinball machine in my cousin's basement, which I gravitated to during long visits every time my other cousins were bored with it. His presence lingered: on Monday morning, during the dull drive to work, Mason and I both spontaneously lamented our current lack of Sammy.

And this is why I went back for more photos. Because everyone needs to see him, if only to wonder what, exactly is the big deal.

Me: Are you ever coming back?

Maggie: Well, for visits, I guess. The plan is to stay until Q pisses off the Swiss.

Me: So, 6 months, then?

Maggie: Yeah. 3-6 months.

(Also, Sabine was there but I didn't get to carry her around as much so the crush wasn't as extreme. Sorry, Sabine. You're also awesome.)

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 1/24/2010 09:26:00 a.m.