When we walked into the viewing area for a final look at M’s grandmother, many of the uncles and aunts burst out in stifled, gasping chuckles:

Here’s another (unfortunately blurry) photo I couldn’t resist taking:

They’re N’s take on Backstreet Boys glamor shots, these few after-dinner photos:

I was afraid to move, for the decor (but I managed to squeeze in six meatballs, anyway).

We were at a baby shower–of all things!–in a house where no baby should trod, a house cluttered with curio after curio, fairies, ceramic rabbit miniatures, mermaid paintings, fur rugs, live cats that looked like fur rugs, leather chairs, wall draperies over dragon paintings, china tea sets on low stools, plastic-covered oriental rugs, a stringless harp, a sparkly purple cabinet, a glass table mounted on a marble-looking dragon wings pedestal near a marble-looking hearth, and a rumored full-blown sports bar upstairs.

Thankfully, N was absorbed with a celery stick and the muted NASCAR on the TV and wasn’t too unsatisfied with her lap confinement, which allowed us the leisure to overhear that the hostess cleans every Saturday for six hours, and that she’s told her mom and friends to stop giving her trinkets because she’s tired of them.

Our bibelot is of a completely different feather:

When I was a baby my mother used to worry that I was mentally deficient, since I would sit around with a mentally deficient look on my face as if the surrounding activity was just too much for me to absorb sufficiently.

When she recently saw this collage of photos from N’s recent shindig with friends, she was reminded of this, but with hindsight’s reassurance that I had turned out rather brilliant and therefore so would N.

(Click on the photo to enlarge it.)