mallorys_camera | Why We'll Never Get Our Own TLC Special

When Ben gets back from dropping the Number 2 son off at school, he tells me, “Robin is very concerned about Chastity Bono.”

“And why is that, pray tell?”

“Well. He’s worried. If Chastity goes ahead with that sex change operation, it’ll break Cher’s heart.”

“Hey! Reassure him. Tell him he’s seriously underestimating Cher. Tell him Cher is down with gender reassignment. Tell him Cher seriously considered lopping off Greg Allman’s nuts once.”

“Oh, I think it’ll mean more coming from Mommy,” says Ben.

“Who he should be worried about is Owen Wilson,” I say. “I mean, if Owen Wilson doesn’t think life is worth living, there’s really no hope for the rest of us.”

In other news, the Little Store has had the most fabulous month – will confiding that to paper jinx the last few days? God I hope not – and I seem to be catching a cold. Collapsed around 9pm last night. Woke up around 1am in a fever sweat and was forced to watch a TV show about this family with sixteen kids in order to fall back to sleep again. Except it didn’t work – as a bromide, I mean – since the family was so fascinating in its twisted way.

“If I can’t remember a name, I just ask: who are you?” says congenial “Spud” Heppner, the resident sperm donor.

The show incidentally is on TLC. TLC stands for “The Learning Channel.” What exactly is one supposed to learn from a show about a family with sixteen children? I wonder as I stagger to the bathroom for the last ditch insomnia remedy, Tylenol PM. That birth control is a good thing? That the mud people will never succeed in their evil agenda to drive the white race into the bowels of the earth so long as there are noble breeders in Minnesota willing to sacrifice their cervixes?

My last thought as I drifted off to sleep: how can those people live with themselves? Don’t they know about that family in Arkansas with seventeen kids?

So this morning I wake up and immediately hunt down the Heppners’ website. And guess what! They’re in the process of adopting a seventeenth child!

“I knew they wouldn’t let those nasty Duggars one-up them,” I told Ben. “It’s a Minnesota pride thing.”

“Oh, come on. Adoption doesn’t count! I mean, come on. If it did, the Learning Channel would be doing specials on Mia Farrow.”

“Adoption does too count!” I say indignantly. “And anyway the Duggars cheated! They had three sets of twins! That means only thirteen pregnancies.”

“Fourteen. And that’s not cheating! She had the damn babies, didn’t she?”

“Is too cheating!”

“Is not cheating.”

“Is too cheating!”

Eventually we agreed to disagree.