this song is just six words long.

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8 october 1997

6:44 p.m.

Dear diary, Nothing reinforces birth control mantras like hanging out with a pregnant woman. I met Jen for breakfast at Duke's -- a pool bar down by Kuhio Beach -- for their $10 Sunday buffet. While I couldn't even finish what I grabbed, she put down two huge plates (and what had to be half a dozen kiwi fruits) in twenty minutes. At least one of us got our money's worth. How all-you-can-eat places get by without banning mothers-to-be, I'll never know. She's not big big, but it's unlikely anyone will mistake her pregnancy for merely being ... well, anything else. It's strange to hear "I've gained fifteen pounds" without an accompanying sob. We stopped by her place to pick up some stuff she'd had for me for a while, including a belated birthday present: the new Fleetwood Mac album (well, it was new in August). She also showed me her "baby box," which she's slowly filling with bottles, baby clothes and books. The theme is Paddington Bear. I approve. He's far cooler than Winnie the Pooh, who haunted me in my youth. We went to Sears to look at cribs. Some were practically plastic zoo cages while others converted into bunk beds, benches, toy chests, party coolers and who knows what else. Prices ranged from $200 to $700 -- not including sheets, "bumpers," mobiles and a dozen other things you have to buy just to meet Lithuanian safety standards. It's nice to know I could always sell my car for a mid-range baby crib, which'll prove useful for the whole twenty months it'll be needed. Sheesh. I strongly suggest a store tour to anyone having a hard time keeping their lovers under wraps. Hell, I think the price tags from any maternity section would make great props in a horror flick. She still doesn't know if its a boy or a girl, and I guess knowing isn't a big deal. They want a girl, though. I couldn't say which I'd rather have, but I did share something my mother once said after raising one daughter: "I could've had twenty kids if they were boys." I love the TV Food Network. Now they've got a half-hour show dedicated to cooking... for dogs. A cooking show for cats would make more sense, if you asked me -- they're finicky. Dogs eat their own... output, for cryin' out loud. My mom's cat, Cat, will often reject gourmet seafood just because it was served on the wrong size plate. I don't like dogs, but if I had a dog, I sure wouldn't cook for it. It would eat anything I didn't, like every other dog I've ever known. Someone's gone and written words to the "Hawaii 5-0" theme. The mere idea is disgusting, but the lyrics themselves -- "They're our heroes, Hawaii's 'Bows" being the main chorus -- are simply awful. They should have asked Derek to write it. Derek is a man of many talents. Some of them I can even talk about in polite company. Improv lyrics are among his most unsung (pun intended) creative abilities. He, Sean and the guys at his office might as well start a band, "The Math-Dyslexic Music Musketeers" -- which would be so named because the number of musketeers (or stooges, I suppose) changes every time I see them. When the lot of them start scheming, usually over one too many beers, they come up with bizarre stuff that falls somewhere between Weird "Al" Yankovic and Dana Carvey's famous 'choppin' broccoli' bit. They took the "Ala Moana Boulevard" switch I do with Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do" and turned it into nothing short of a nightmare for the Hawai`i Visitor's Bureau. Sean was crowned king a few weeks ago for a ghastly, X-rated version of the classic song "Venus." Derek's latest project is thankfully less disturbing, and almost clever. See, on the rare days we get to eat lunch together, he picks me up by the College of Business Administration -- a ugly monolith of a building that sits on a street called Maile Way. A popular local Hawaiian song happens to be titled "Maile Lei." One morning when he swung by, the song was on the radio and he was already long, long gone. For the rest of the day, I could only sigh as he tweaked his masterpiece, counting syllables and matching rhymes. Now I can't hear the song for its original lyrics at all. "Drive this way, Maile Way, Drive this way to your des-tination. Bachman Hall, Kuykendall, C-B-A, Hemenway -- Beautiful Maile Way..." Actually, he's only gotten as far as one verse, but the rhymes are tough. He wants it to be all about UH, and Maestro says the chorus must contain only campus building names or it "won't be truly great." The fact that the campus has such creative names for its buildings (i.e. Art Building, Campus Center, etc.) doesn't help any. He probably won't win a Grammy anytime soon. But seeing as how my last boyfriend's claim to fame was the old cherry-stem-in-a-knot thing, Derek's more than good enough for me.