Outrageous!

Sue: I know it's not my turn, but I need to vent. Today's NYT Home section features the gorgeous house and artisanal farm of successful wine merchant Neal Rosenthal. The article explains that moons ago, Mr. Rosenthal married his high-school sweetheart and worked as a corporate lawyer. Ten days after his sweetheart gave birth to their baby girl, he took his new legal secretary out to lunch at an Argentine-style restaurant.

"So romantic, wicker chairs, big fans," he recalls. "I went to lunch and I fell in love."

The writer comments that it must have been wrenching to fall in love so soon after the birth of his child. Oh no, he replies. "It was exciting."

End of marriage, onto the new.

It might have been nice had Rosenthal taken his wife -- you remember, the one who only ten days earlier suffered labor pains and was now housebound with their newborn? -- to a romantic lunch for two. But it's not "exciting" to be with a woman who is sleep-deprived and has leaky breasts and pregnancy pounds to lose. Lord knows that falling in love is a bigger rush than changing diapers.

The article details the heirloom tomatoes that he and his second wife organically raise, their egg-laying chickens and $23,000 refrigerator, but makes no mention of a subsequent child. At the risk of taking a leap, I submit that Mr. Rosenthal felt severely miffed when wife number-one's attention centered on his baby daughter instead of on the biggest baby of all: him.