even though i'm by far the best mother i know, i'm reluctant to admit it because it it creates certain implications and leads conversations i'd like to avoid. parents are always trying to recreate my success and always failing. daily, i am bombarded with questions about what i feed lily, who makes her clothes, how i got her talking at six months, it goes on and on! and they look at me with such horror when i tell them lily doesn't eat baby formula, she eats nothing but jaeger schnitzel! excellence does not come from a can, my mother used to tell me while sipping her bottle of miller high life.

that's where it all started. i used to suspect that my mother's rampant alcoholism prevented me from becoming all i could be in utero, but now i know better. i was born with a healthy blood:petrus ratio in these veins and it's been my life's work to maintain that, although the bordeaux had to be downgraded, slightly. while i was destined to be a withered wino, lily has greater things in store for her; when i was pregnant, the only thing i could eat was wild venison. i couldn't keep anything farmed down. this was the first time i had to make the decision whether i wanted her to be great or happy, as usually the two get along as well as me and my driver. i chose great when i saw her, when they put her on my stomach right after she was just born. even through the bloody visocse, it was obvious she was pretty. she'll no doubt be able to flirt with doctors and get vicodin prescrptions if she wants to dumb herself down a little bit. but i'll leave that choice to her.

none of this came naturally to me. i lost my shit the first time i had to throw away a j.mendel leather jacket because it got drenched in baby puke. i reckened with it by realizing that while such jackets will come and go, my only daughter's youth is fleeting. her infancy is nearly gone and soon she'll be stealing my pearls and pizza rolls. the jacket may have cost me a fortune but the memory she'll have of it will be worth so much more!

time to upgrade to a 35 cm.