Good morning! I have two words for you, which are WOO and HOO, respectively. The Ducks won again last night. Despite my serious business face this morning, I am fairly jazzed. This is good news for me.

(Note to self: Must stop, while watching hockey, yelling STICK IT IN! and PUT IT IN NOW! with the windows open. God knows what the neighbors are thinking.)

The good news for you? You won’t have to hear me blather about hockey again until Saturday night at the earliest.

Sam, who will celebrate his sixth birthday on the fifth of July, has two girlfriends. His original lady love is Katrina, whom he has known since they were infants together in day care; there are photographs of the two of them kissing at the age of about 18 months. They have been making marriage plans since they were three.

Although Sam steadfastly maintains that Katrina is his only girlfriend, there is a little redhead named Kathrine in his kindergarten class and they pay a lot of attention to each other. This involves lots of insults and chasing, but sometimes hugs and the passing of notes.

We are planning Sam’s birthday party, and for the first time he will be inviting both his old friends from day care and all the kids from his kindergarten class. And he is a little bit freaking out. Both my girlfriends are going to be there, he said. They will FIGHT over me!

I told him he’d better get used to it. With his looks, I think the girls will always be fighting over him.

STANLEY CUP FINALS, GAME 1:

ANAHEIM DUCKS 3
OTTAWA SENATORS 2

ANAHEIM LEADS SERIES 1-0

(Disclaimer: I’m sorry about making with the hockey again, but the Ducks played an awesome fucking game last night, and really this is the only good news I have right now. So there.)

None of my kids have pet names, as a rule; oh, Samuel is Sam and Matthew is Matt, but Julia is Boolie. Sam bestowed the name on her when she was quite small, but I have a feeling that even someday when she’s a neurosurgeon or Supreme Court justice, she will come home to visit and we will address her as Boolie.

The photo doesn’t do her justice, of course. She is usually in much better focus. She has lately taken up the pacifier, which she calls a “deedee” and which I allow her to have, because who wants to get into a battle of wills with Boolie? Not me, because I will lose. She is wearing a hat knitted for her at birth by my friend Kristy, which she loves so much that she has forced it onto her head repeatedly and thus stretched it big enough to fit her.

See that birthmark between her eyebrows, which she’s had since birth? Suri, the daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, has a very similar birthmark. Surely this is a sign that my Boolie is destined for greatness. I refuse to believe it means she’s destined for Scientology.

I realized on my way to work this morning that I was going 80 mph on the freeway and failing to signal my lane changes because my left hand was on the steering wheel and my right hand was clutching my cup of Starbucks.

Just like everyone else on the fucking road.

People, I’ve gone over to the dark side. I’m a Southern Californian, like it or not.

Anaheim Ducks 4
Detroit Red Wings 3

FINAL

ANAHEIM WINS WESTERN CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP

People, I almost had a fucking aneurysm. Detroit came back from a 3-goal deficit and almost forced the fucker into overtime. I was actually praying to God, like so: “Please, please let Anaheim win. I know it isn’t really important in the grand scheme of things, and I’m sorry for asking, but please just let them play strong and pull this out.”

We are going to the finals. Dana: of course I’m rooting for Anaheim, but if they lose, at least I can be happy for you. Besides, when’s the last time the Cup came north of the border where it belongs?

Nice one, God.

I may be a Baby Boomer and therefore solidly within the Viagra generation, but I am SO clueless sometimes. This morning I got a spam mail from “Viagra” with the subject line: Don’t let ED affect your sex!

And the first thing that popped into my mind was Who the fuck is Ed, and how would he be affecting my sex?

My son Sam, nearing the end of kindergarten, can now read simple books and is perfecting his writing skills. His practice is diligent, although distinctly male in nature.

Hey Mom, how do you spell “butt”? he asks. So I tell him.

The next thing I know, he has filled a page with pictures of butts, with the words BIG BUTT carefully printed beneath. He figures out how to spell poop, and soon another page is filled with appropriately captioned drawings of piles of turds and people sitting on toilets. He writes the word ass and giggles insanely when I verify that yes, he’s spelled it correctly. But don’t write that word at school, I caution.

There are all sorts of ways for a kid to get motivated to learn to read and write. Sam, who is all boy, has found his motivation. Finally, he grows tired of writing and goes off to play with his NHL action figures.

I ask what he’s playing, and he holds up two figures. Wayne Gretzky is playing against Mark Assy-ass, he tells me. (This is the name he and Matt devised when they couldn’t remember Mark Messier.) For Sam, it’s all butts and asses as far as the eye can see.

So now there is the thing about the hockey.

I’ve been an NHL fan for nearly 30 years, but these days I’m a fair-weather fan, meaning that I don’t start watching games until the playoffs, which begin in April. Hockey may be a winter sport, but for me, since having the kids, it’s a late spring/early summer kind of thing; it’s hard to make the time to watch a three-hour game.

The Anaheim Ducks, Orange County’s local team, are playing in the Western Conference finals against the Detroit Red Wings; the winner of this series will advance to the Stanley Cup Finals against Ottawa from the East. Of course, I’m rooting for the Ducks. (I’m not only a fair-weather fan but a terrible whore as well; last year I helped cheer the Carolina Hurricanes, my intended future hometown team, to the championship. This year the ‘Canes didn’t even make the playoffs, and I’ve effectively forgotten them. Brind’Amour? Rod WHO? Give me some J-S Giguere, bring on the Teemu Selanne. Such a whore.)

I’ve been holding off blogging about hockey, because who cares? Not most Americans. People from Detroit care about hockey, though, and that’s what must have been all the more upsetting about the Red Wings’ overtime loss at home this afternoon. Can you imagine? An original six team losing to a Southern California franchise, a former Disney enterprise — talk about a “Mickey Mouse” team! Yet the Ducks lead the series 3 games to 2, and Detroit will come to Anaheim on Tuesday night facing possible elimination.

Bring it on, Red Wings. I’m starting to think maybe we can take you. And I’m counting on the Western Conference champion, be it Anaheim or Detroit, to take the Cup this year. Y’all hear?

So then there was the bit where I wound up in the emergency room all day with Julia.

Fortunately for my sanity, it wasn’t an entirely unprecedented event; she has RSV, which landed Matt in Children’s Hospital for five days in early 2004. When we woke up at 4 a.m. to discover her breathing was labored and her fever had shot up into the stratosphere, we recognized the signs; we knew what was wrong. I knew I had to get her to the doctor, and I knew we would be lucky if she wasn’t hospitalized by the end of the day.

As it transpired, she bounced back pretty well. She suffered a day of indignities, not the least of which was her first experience with having her temperature taken rectally, which she did not appreciate at all. But after some Tylenol and Motrin and a couple of breathing treatments, she was oxygenating adequately for them to release her home. I have never been so grateful to be at home with my family as I was last night.

She is tugging at my sleeve now (and leaning on my mouse arm, and knocking things over and making a general commotion to get my attention). This means she is feeling better. The good thing about having four kids is that you’ve pretty much seen it all; I was hardly even terrified at all. And now back to my baby girl before she tears the very walls down to get my attention.