How can you tell someone who is the grandmother to your very own child and mother to your boyfriend to back the fuck off? She's driving me crazy. She wants us to write down EVERY DAY of Ossie's life and also to have pictures of every move he makes, every damned move we all make in proximity to him, every person in my family and everything that they have done since Ossie has been born. It's insane. Take Christmas at their house. The players: me and Jeff and Ossie and Jeff's sister and her family and Jeff's parents. We sit there for hours while every single gift is photographed being opened and oohed and ahhed over and when all is said and done (and I am crying great bloody tears of boredom), Jeff's dad sums it all up: "I think we got some good pictures." I almost yelped. Except everyone was busy nodding in agreement, so then I just hid my giggles behind Ossie's cuteness. One thing good about the kid--you can always blame your unsporting behavior on him.

They were just visiting us here and being insane with the picture taking (Jeff finally turned the camera on them and got some really funny trying-to-make-baby-smile-for-the-camera shots) and picture printing. Jeff's mom printed out about 100 pictures of Ossie's first couple of months (I think this boy has more pictures of him at 3 months than I have of my entire childhood) and just this morning! She wrote a long email to us about all the pictures she's missing! For the book! That's for Ossie! Oh my fucking god.

I'm irritated. I'm irritated because he's our baby and we do go out of our way to get her plenty of pictures (even though I don't believe in this mad picture taking on PRINCIPLE) and we made up a huge list of fictional events and put them on her annoying calendar (the one upon which we are to write every single move the kid makes which I absolutely refuse to do. ON PRINCIPLE) and still! Not enough! I am irritated because she expects us (me!) to want to document every damned thing just like she does. If she's not there to take the pictures? The moment doesn't exist. That's what I really hate. Like I'm denying Ossie his memories if I don't include pictures in this book of, say, my brother's wedding. I really hate that idea on every conceivable level. Not least of which is that, I don't know, my family will have those pictures for Ossie to look at if he ever wants to see them (which I don't know why he would because they are just of a some boring wedding that happened when he was 2 weeks old).

I hate this thing, this taking pictures and making movies of every thing. I want there to be some mystery in my boy's childhood, some strange unexpected memories or moments that he'll have to wonder about, that there won't be pictures of. So yep. I'm drawing a line in the sand. That's it. No more pictures, lady. That's right. Yeah. Whatever, GRANDMA.

I know. I won't say a word and next month I'll be back here stewing in my own juices about this. Again. Grouse grouse grouse.