About a week ago, I was driving down near the Plaza when I noticed I was following an "extreme" car. It was an Escort or something equally NOT extreme, but it was labeled as such on the back. And then I noticed the "x" in "extreme" was bigger than the other letters and yellow, as though the inclusion of the letter "x" made the word EVEN HIPPER.

It was then that it occurred to me that almost anything can be jazzed up by adding an "x" or a "z" to the name. Car manufacturers are well aware of this, especially BMW, a manufacturer so enamored with letters its very name is an acronym.

"E" and "i" kind of got a makeover in the late nineties, with the addition of e-commerce, e-mail, i-control, etc. I mean, "e" used to be silent half the time, for God's sake. When I think of a typed "e," with an old typewriter, especially, the vision practically screams bun-headed librarian. Can there be a more uptight looking letter than a typed "e"? But oh, no, "e" is now the fat kid that went away to summer camp and came back twenty pounds thinner wearing low-riders and a tube top.

But what about the rest of the alphabet? What about the letter "m"? Nobody thinks it is particularly cool. I can't remember the last time marketers fixated on a "b." "T" got some minor fame during space exploration, what with t minus this and that all the time. It's really quite an unfair distribution of fame. The alphabet is really just a little microcosm of modern society, and most of are somewhere in the middle, after "i" but before "x." Sigh.

This past Sunday we baptized the little angel. In to town trooped my mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, his wife and two kids, sister-in-law, her husband and two kids and my parents. No one stayed at our house. Thank you, Jesus.

The little angel did fairly well in church. She thought it was funny when the pastor poured the water into the font. When he walked her around the church to introduce her to the congregation and they started clapping, she looked surprised and popped a big smile for her adoring audience. Clearly, she is destined for the movies.

As she was going through this ceremony, I was thinking of how innocent she is now, and how it can't last. How we're all destined to smoke cigarettes behind the barn or kiss the wrong person in the back seat of their parents' care in high school. We're all just one lost job or bad health situation away from public aid. How I can't protect her from the world; she'll lose that innocence one day. But on Sunday, she was everything that is pure and good about humanity, laughing at the water and transfixed by the candlelight.

Yesterday my beloved and I both had bad days at work. He works in human resources, which is a thankless place to work, in my opinion. I am in the busiest part of the season for my job, after having missed the first busy part while out on maternity leave. And, as I've already mentioned, I really wish I could spend my days with the little angel instead of the mad dogs at the gates of hell. But, I digress.

When I got home, I immediately went upstairs to the do the accounting for my little company, Piper Group, Inc., which up until about a month ago was my primary job. Unfortunately, when I went back to work, they made me work for The Man, so now I have a W-2 just like all the other schmoes and no longer get to say I'm president of my own company for doing the exact same job. I was rather cranky about having to still do the icky accounting when I don't even get my own logo on the business cards. My husband was cranky about something else. So there he is, standing there in the office complaining, when he decides to dramatically throw himself on the plastic-covered futon. Why is the futon covered in plastic? Because Sybil, the vegan 16-year-old cat, has a bit of incontinence when it comes to said futon. Let me repeat: He decides to dramatically throw himself on the plastic-covered futon. That the cat likes to pee on. You get what happened now, don't you? It took a millisecond for the truth of the situation to set in, then my husband leaped back up from the futon, calling upon the great Egyptian cat gods to banish poor Sybil to the seventh level, or at least fifty feet under the pyramid. Sybil knew to at least hide. I couldn't help myself. Tears started pouring down my face. It was the best thing I'd seen all day.

Last night I went biking with my friends S. and B. S. is still sporting her DebbieWear (from Singles), which is what she calls official biking gear, such as padded shorts or special shoes. We are training for the MS-150.

I forgot to tell her my hybrid can be a bit testy. The chain often will leap off its sprockets for no apparent reason, and always at the bottom of a large hill. Last night it was 105 degrees (with the heat index, which I always count) in fair Kansas City, and by the time we made it to the bottom of the large hill in question, we were panting like overdressed poodles. B. had motored ahead of us and was nowhere to be seen when S. lost the chain. Not realizing what had happened, she continued to pedal until the chain was jammed deep within the innards of the bike.

I remembered this chain business and knew all I had to do was pull it out, but pulling out a bike chain covered in grease on a sweaty, 105-degree day is not easy business. As I was pulling, swearing, covering myself with grease, a kindly, young and shirtless stranger approached. "Do you need help?" he asked. Without looking up, I thought he was B. using a fake voice, so I actually just ignored him and kept working. Once I realized he was a kindly, young, shirtless stranger, though, I let him help. S. leaned forward. "I would get my fingers dirty, too, but I don't want to ruin my DebbieGear," she said.

Finally we got the chain out. The shirtless stranger departed. All I could wonder was whether or not he thought S's name was really Debbie, and if he thought she just walked around referring to herself (and her clothing) in the third person.

Well, as you will recall, I was quite anxious on Friday about my adventure in the skies with the little angel. So anxious, in fact, that I forgot some stuff. We arrived at the airport v. early, parking in the sensible miles-away parking lot, and headed to the counter to check All Our Stuff. As we were handing over the pack-n-play, the suitcase for us and the wheelie for the little angel, the ticket counter person commented that we needed to have a birth certificate or shot record for the little angel. Oops. After a few frantic moments, she assured us she would let us on the plane, but that we would have to have such documentation faxed to us in Portland so we could get back on the plane to come home.

Then she asked for my free ticket voucher.

I cradled my head in my hands, realizing that I FORGOT EVERYTHING IMPORTANT. My husband looked pained. He left to try to drive the half-hour home and back in 45 minutes so that we wouldn't miss our plane. Of course we would miss our plane. Of course we had only brought one cell phone between the two of us, because there was no way we would be separated. The ticket agent determined that every flight between Kansas City and Portland, including getting routed through BOSTON, was overbooked. She looked sad for me. "I'm sorry," she said. "You could maybe standby at 8:40 p.m., getting into Portland at 11:30."

I hung my head. She let me use her little counter phone to call my husband and tell him to give it up and come get me. He was about a block from home at the time. She helped me lug all the suitcases off to the side, where I had to change the little angel's diaper on the seats because I couldn't leave ALL OUR STUFF to go change her in private in the bathroom. I fed her. I started to whimper a little. Then I just decided to go ahead and cry.

Then, like some nice bear in a fairy tale, another Southwest ticketing agent came up. "Why are you crying?" he said. I explained the whole story, and he left, only to resurface about fifteen minutes later with boarding passes. He had taken it upon himself to overbook two flights so that we could go to the wedding, restoring my faith in strangers and truly overwhelming me by his kindness.

I called my honey again, but alas, he had NOT gone home to get the ticket, because I told him just to come get me. Now me, I probably would've stopped and gotten it anyway if I were that close, but he's not me. So it turned out that we had to buy the second ticket anyway. But we were going, and that was all I cared about. Three airplanes and one two-hour delay in L.A. later, we arrived in Portland exhausted but relieved. We were there about 30 hours before going through the whole rigamarole again. The little angel woke up every two hours last night. The whole affair cost us about $800. But my cousin B. looked just beautiful in her dress, and the little angel got to meet the entire extended family and all her second cousins. So I guess it was worth it.

I'm going to let my beloved pack next time. And now I believe in big angels.