Precious Preciousness

My husband and I have a good life -- a house in the suburbs, 2 newish cars, and we're celebrating the birth of our second child. So I should be happy, right? The problem is my dear husband's infernal nicknaming of our children. I don't know where it came from -- he always stayed within the bounds of normalcy with my name when we were dating. Now and then, he'd venture into acceptable terms of endearment like "Honey" or "Sweetie" or "Sugar Pie". And he left our friends' names alone, occasionally referring to "Alice" as "Malice", but that was okay because she's pretty much a b****.

Then came Zachary, our two-year-old. For a while there, Doug was branding him with a new name every day: "Z", "Z-man", "Z-dog", "Zach-O", "Zachinator", "Zachanary von Holstrom". It was as if he would spend all day at work thinking up what he would call his newborn son that evening. He has finally pretty much settled on "Hachary", which makes no sense whatsoever. And "Zachary" was his choice from the beginning! So why does he feel the need to corrupt it?

And now we have a new little one, a new lab animal for him to conduct his base experiments on. Only this one's a girl. And I got to name her. And I don't want him trampling all over her precious preciousness. I guess if he called her, "Precious Preciousness," that would be okay, but I just know he's going to make a mockery out of her. I seriously can't take it. I'm seriously going to leave him. I know that goes against convention, since he's a great guy in every other respect, but if he messes with Sulfur, he's going to find himself on the street renaming pebbles and broken glass...

Doug sounds like a big jerk. I can't imagine him toying with a beautiful name like "Sulfur", but if he does, that's surely a crossed line that requires action on your part. I usually promote reconciliation until it's no longer viable, but I think we both know where this is heading...

posted by Lawrence A. Fing @ 12:00 PM