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Mary Worth, 4/16/05

I thought that maybe it would stop when cruel fate and Dr. Brian’s need to earn a living briefly separated them, but apparently Anna’s brain has been completely taken over by the majesty and fullness and wonder of their love and now she can talk of NOTHING ELSE. In panel two, the extreme closeup on her blank face, unlined by any worry or coherent thought, seems to reveal that she’s so in love that her left eye is about to roll back into her head.

The people I really pity in this situation are her poor yoga students. “Let your breath be your teacher. Leave the rest of your day behind and focus on the present … and on the INCREDIBLY TRUSTING BOND OF TRUST YOU HAVE WITH YOUR MOST TRUSTED LOVED ONE. Seriously, mastering a headstand is one thing, but unless you have the OPENNESS and SHARING of a TRUE LOVE TRUSTING RELATIONSHIP, your life is crap. Did I mention that I’m going to have a BABY?”

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Mary Worth, 4/6/05

As one of the New Kids on the Block once so memorably put it: I love love, and I hate hate. But seeing days and days of Brian and Anna mewling and agreeing and assuring each other of their eternal, unconditional love, sitting there in their matching electric blue pants on their hideous turquoise couch — well, it’s enough to begin to make a guy hate love, and, conversely, love hate. If Anna’s unexpected (and I shudder to even type these words) “honeymoon baby” proved that any problem will go away if ignore it long enough, then Dr. Brian’s loving, nurturing, caring response to Anna apparently proves that difficult news is always best shared after it suddenly and magically becomes no longer a problem. All I know is that if this conversation doesn’t make Anna want to hurl, she’s in for a fairly easy pregnancy.

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Methinks that something is not adding up here in the long and winding saga of Anna and her reproductive organs. Let’s review the facts as we know them:

• Anna was convinced of her own infertility.
• Anna is now pregnant and was until today completely unaware that men could be infertile, which means that she never consulted any reasonably competent medical authority about her delicate condition.

Thus, it seems Anna drew her conclusions about her own inability to bring forth progeny the old-fashioned way: by knowing the sweet physical touch of love without either using birth control or giving birth.

But this seems to conflict with another known fact:

• Anna’s first husband “wasn’t interested” in starting a family.

So, we can come up with speculations about the sordid, barren lie that was Anna’s first marriage:

• Anna was not taking birth control and lying about it in an attempt to fill her aching loneliness with a little squaller who would provide her existence with some semblance of meaning.
• Anna’s husband knew about his own manly inadequacies but kept them to himself, so as to keep screeching infants out of his house, mask his own failures, and send his trusting wife into a shame spiral from which she has yet to escape.

It’s also possible that Anna has a pre-first-marriage past that included lots of accidental or on-purpose non-maritally-sanctioned non-birth-controlled sex. It’s also possible that she’s just dumber than a sack of hammers, seeing as she apparently needs a doctor’s help to pee on a stick. I have to admit that I like her groovy polka-dotted shirt, though.