named

When I was pregnant with girl child, there was a bit of fun being had by family suggesting names for our first born. I must admit, I'm not the most fun person when pregnant. Having hyperemesis gravidarum tends to destroy the sense of humour.  If you don't know what this is, count yourself lucky.  If you do, or worse, have experienced it, come cry on my shoulder because I know it's just awful.

Given my lack of sense of humour and sensitivity to, well, everything, I decided to stop the harassment suggestions by telling my family that I had already picked out a name.  I learned when I converted from vegetarianism to veganism that if you are perceived as a little bit weird, such as vegetarians are in our hillbilly carnivore loving province, people will pick on you endlessly.  But if they think you are so far around the bend that you may as well represent a different species, such as a vegan, then they will not only fail to pester you about your choices, they will widely skirt any subject even vaguely perceived as touchy.

I have a few theories about why this might be so, but whatever the reason, I decided to not mess around on the subject of names and go straight to the totally-crazy-don't-even-bother-arguing zone and told everyone I was going to name my baby Beaker Norbu.

That shut them up.

It was, of course, a lie.  A useful lie.  When it came time to name the baby, I had a couple nice, normal names picked out and when she arrived The Man and I knew which one was best as soon as we saw her.  (It's not Girl Child either, just so's you know.)

I still laugh over Beaker Norbu, though, especially when I remember the expression on people's faces.  And I think that on some level, it does suit girl child a little bit.  That's why when I ran into this shirt at the thrift store:

I couldn't resist adding a stencil to the back:

What do you think, she could pull it off?