Whaddayacallit?

Last Thursday, one of the sunshiniest people I know got her tonsils removed. Gabby, my eight- year old stepdaughter --

--wait. Is that the right word, if I'm not married to her father, but rather, actively choosing instead to have a life-partnership sans fluffy white dress, bad hair and overlong ceremony?

Call it my subtle protest against the people who are against gay marriage.

Call it my even-more subtle way of flipping the bird at "the man."

Call it living in delicious, wrongful sin-- if sin can be delicious while you're busy conscientiously building a life and family for six kids, two dogs and a cat in the process. (I believe it can.)

HERE'S MY ISSUE (well, an issue) : What are the names for things if you have no ring? What do I call wonderful Gabby, if in fact my Parter In Crime (hence, PIC) and I are not formally tied?

Okay and ANOTHER issue: A car loan, three bank accounts and our lease pretty much effing TIE us, I would think. So why can we not be considered domestic partners? (My office won't consider us as such until we've been one-full year in our current living arrangement. DETAILS.)

And then PIC himself. I am a WOMAN. A thirty-seven year old WOMAN. Children have passed through the hallowed halls of my birth canal. Further, PIC is a MAN. A man who "discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn!" I REFUSE TO CALL HIM MY BOYFRIEND.

...ahem.

That said... I want a relationship word for the three monkeys I coparent, whom I happen to care about greatly and-- dare I say it-- LOVE and for whom I have similar dreams and hopes and desires as my biological monkeys: that they grow into happy, functioning adults.

My three whaddayacallems.