"I've gotta go home and hang out with my rib"

We hate the word "fiance." We also hate "fiancee." And we don't know which is which. The problem with deciding not to use the word "fiance," as the (fiance) and I have done, is people give you tons of shit if you call your fiance "girlfriend." Engaged guy from college who I ran into at a wedding a few months ago: “Oh man, do NOT let her know you don’t call her ‘fiance’! You call her ‘girlfriend’?!? Oh, man.”

I tried to tell him that she knew I didn't use "fiance," and that she agreed that it sounds odd and pretentious and French, but he thought I was lying. He could NOT believe that a woman wouldn't like "fiance"...Hanging out with people you haven't seen in 7 years is strange.

In any case, in search of a solution, I looked up the synonyms for "women". The highlights include "rib" (because clearly the first woman came from a male rib, and we should constantly remind them of this by using "rib" as a pet name for our ladies), and "pigeon" (because pigeons, a.k.a. rats with wings, are...adorable).

Synonyms:	Mrs., babe, bird, bride, broad, chick, chicken, companion, dame, debutante, doll, gal, gentlewoman, girl, girlfriend, inamorata, kitten, lady, lass, love, lover, maid, maiden, mama, mate, matron, miss, mistress, moll, nymph, old lady, paramour, partner, pigeon, rib, she, skirt, spinster, spouse, squaw, sweetheart, tomato, tootsie, virgin, wife
Antonyms:	man

Look Who's Talking Now

These days guys rocking baby slings and pushing SUV strollers don't look nearly as pathetic and loser-like to me as they used to, which means two things: I'm actually excited to have children for the first time in my life, and getting engaged automatically made me old. The concept of having kids still gives me more of an “I just got the iPhone” feeling than a deep, meaningful craving to create new life. But it's a start.

My Lady and I had it out about this about three months in: She wanted to have kids, her presence on earth would be a "waste of space" if she never got them, and so if I wasn't prepared to offer up the baby juice down the road than I might as well peace out. Since I dug her--and since I'm too much of a conformist NOT to have children--I agreed and stuck around.

At the time, I looked at babies and wondered if they were basically adults tripping face on a quarter-bag of mushrooms. Hence, the crying, the freaking out, the bug-eyes and the inordinate interest in shiny objects. You see my point.

I still wonder about the babies-tripping theory, but the difference is now, I'd like hang out with that hallucinating, drooling, diapered fool, and perhaps hallucinate, drool and shit myself right alongside him/her. It's weird. I'd even breast-feed, although I'm not sure if that's possible. Is this change of heart because I proposed? And isn't that the dumbest? After getting engaged, I thought I might feel differently about my old lady, but I don't. Instead, I feel a little differently about everything else.