It's PMS. Period.

Have I mentioned that Lars is a nerveen? Most nervous and consistently agitated person I've ever known. The calm temperament of a hummingbird. A hamster on a wheel. He careens through life in a car with no brakes, barely taking in what is happening around him and screaming his head off all the while.

I don't think the man has taken a deep breath since Y2K threatened to force the world to stop spinning on its axis.

In spite of a license that says he should know a thing or two about how a body works, he maintains a couple of idiotic notions about the mysteries of human biology when the subject is his own children (or even more interestingly, himself).

Years ago when Hil was diagnosed with a kidney problem that related to a birth defect that positioned her ureter in such a way that toxins were pumped back into her kidney instead of being flushed out, Lars and I were alarmed, natch. Her one little kidney had atrophied and was being killed off by the poisons in her urine. One kidney was like a nice, plump Jersey tomato. The other was like a sun dried tomato. Operating at a fraction of its former capacity. Thank God you get two.

So we had the surgery to reposition her ureter, staple it in place and let it function to the best of its ability.

Lars thought it might grow back.

An idiot says, what?

Sure, and so will your head when I hack it off with this kitchen knife to spare the rest of you from it.

He kept asking the surgeon if we could get an ultrasound to see if it had grown at all. I wanted to throw a net over his egg-shaped head and drag him off to have it examined by a team of pathologists. Surely something had gone chemically wrong with his brain.

Now, in spite of all the evidence that Hil was suffering PMS not kidney failure, and all arguments to the contrary, he insisted on calling the doctor rather than wait for nature to right the ship.

He is such a sucker. Such an easy target. He once insisted that the dentist pull two of Hil's baby teeth, which were wobbly and loose, because her secondary teeth had begun to come in and she had two where there once was only one. Of course the dentist saw dollar signs and haddosed her with Novocaine and gone through the entire unnecessary extraction. Twice. And then sent a big fat bill for the life or death dental emergency. One that we'd split 58% to 42% because that is the ratio between our salaries. I wanted to bash Lars in the face with a cast iron skillet and create a new dental emergency.

So this time he called the doc about Hil's twinge in her side and of course the pediatrician feigned shock and horror. Of course she needed to be seen. And of course she needed urinalysis. And of course she needed blood drawn for labs. And of course she needed an ultrasound. And of course it had to be with the specialist they are most comfortable with not the one our insurance will pay for. And of course they'd need to scan both kidneys not just one, just so they can compare them to one another (I am sure Lars insisted. He's still so curious to see if it has grown back. I would not be surprised if also expected it to grow legs.)

In a text to him, two chardonnays into the evening, I objected, saying I am sure it is nothing more than a raging case of teenaged PMS and Hil's propensity for high drama. I resoundingly objected to the diagnostics and told him it was completely unnecessary.

But he went ahead and took a day off to take her to the radiology department at some specialty clinic in some inconvenient place. He asked if I wanted to attend. I told him it was unnecessary and therefor not something I had any burning curiosity about. (It is also painless, so Hil's hand woul dnot need to be held.)

And what do you think happened on the way to the ultrasound?

Wait for it.

Hil got her period. Ta-da!