2-Year Old Daughter caught a bout of the croup. Croup is a common but unpleasant childhood ailment. It causes her to cough in a way that makes her sound like a large, angry dog. If you closed your eyes, you wouldn’t think it was a dainty 2-year old girl at all. The remedy for coup is a steroid shot. For three solid days after she got her dose, she was a screaming, raging, violent, unpleasant, red-faced demon. She tried to give 6-Year Old Daughter a good hard shove down the steps! My 2-year old had ‘roid rage. Really! I think they might have overdosed her. The silver lining is that she has bulked up nicely, has a thick neck and can lift the sofa to retrieve a ball that has rolled underneath it.

I just finished a really fun collection of essays in a book with the charming title Things I’ve Learned from Women Who’ve Dumped Me. I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more if the essays hadn’t hit so close to home. The chapters are called “Lessons” and there are 43 of them, which is a strange coincidence because I have been dumped exactly 43 times. Women might learn a thing or two from this book. Men won’t feel so singularly abused.

I was compelled to read it because of the tantalizing list of essays in the table of contents. Included in this book are priceless gems such as Girls Don’t Make Passes at Boys with Fat Asses by Andy Richter, The Heart is a Choking Hazard by Stephen Colbert, Don’t Come on Your Cat by Neil Pollack, Nine Years is the Exact Right Amount of Time to be in a Bad Relationship by Bob Odenkirk and You Too Will Get Crushed by Ben Karlin.

Also included is an essay titled Sometimes You Find a Lost Love, Sometimes You Don’t by Nebraska’s own Senator Bob Kerrey. How the hell did a story by an ex-Senator from the Great Plains wind up in a collection of essays by America’s most popular and cutting edge humorists? Is he funny? The story is about how Senator Kerrey’s friend was lucky enough to find his lost love while the good Senator was never able to find his. Apparently, Nebraska is a hotbed of ships passing in the night and missed opportunities. Do you ever wonder what goes on out in places like Nebraska? Boy howdy, I sure do.