I wish there was an okay way to tell someone “Wow, your newborn infant is actually pretty cute, and this impresses me because normally those just-born pictures that people post online and/or frame are really quite hideous – the kid’s all red-faced and wailing and looks like Ed Asner mid-aneurysm” without:
a) Offending them because this is not their first child and I failed to issue that compliment the first time(s) around because kid 1* really did look like an elderly gentlemen in the throes of a significant medical event, or
b) Being weird because I really, truly, cannot compliment someone without giving an absolutely terrible comparison example (“Your shoes are great, much better than if this was the 1930s and you had a clubfoot and needed special orthopedic footwear – by the way, what the hell is a clubfoot? It sounds like something that happens when your toe gets stepped on when you’re out at a bar and someone plays Lady Gaga on the jukebox.”
*You thought I was going to make a Radiohead reference, didn’t you? Ha. I win.
the sloppy copy 