Boy knows the make, model and engine size of every cool car on the highway.

“Oh Mom, look, there’s a Chevy Camaro with a V8.”

He speculates which car could beat which in a race, and has recently discovered YouTube videos that confirm his suspicion that a BMW M5 could beat a Mustang, but not a Corvette.

Last night I was marveling at his automotive knowledge when I overheard this conversation, wherein Boy and Girl were adopting car-sounding nicknames for themselves:

Girl: I’m M6

Boy: I’m H1N1

Girl: That’s the swine flu!

Boy: It is?

Spending a lot of time this Valentine’s Day with my other man — the short one who still sleeps with a sock monkey.

Girl is at a sleepover, and I thought Boy would be begging me to call one of his friends for a visit, but no. He seems happy to have his mom and dad to himself.

I haven’t yelled at him in 24 hours, which is pretty rare. We didn’t fight even when I told him he was going to miss the end of Godzilla because we needed to leave for church. He hasn’t rolled his eyes at me, hasn’t stomped off in a pout. It gives me hope.

I worry that Boy will soon travel to the dark side of the moon — teenagerhood, and that he and I will stop talking. I know the days are coming when he will no longer bury the piano in Lego Star Wars characters, when he will purge Spider-Man from his room. I know he won’t be my other man forever.

So I’m enjoying these days. I gave him Axe body wash, shampoo and cologne for Valentine’s Day. The smell of choice for 9-year-old boys. Now he asks to take a shower. He wants to smell good. For me.

First rule of design: If you can’t make it good, make it red.

This pearl of wisdom was bestowed upon me by a talented art director. Her words rang in my ears today as I put the finishing touches on Boy’s bedroom.

It wasn’t good, but it sure was red.

With a few unexpected days off, I decided to tackle the pit that is Boy’s room. First, I needed to get rid of the city streets wallpaper border that I hung when he was a toddler, to cover up some ballerina teddy bears left by the room’s previous occupant. I had a Spider-Man border to cover up the last cover up. However, Spider-Man was about half as tall as the last border, so what to do with the gap?

Why, paint it red, of course.

They warned me at Home Depot that red doesn’t cover up anything well. Oh peshaw, I thought. How hard could it be?

What they should have told me at Home Depot is that if you paint red on top of anything, it will look like whatever you are trying to cover up has bled all over itself.

So, a light coat of red spread over the truck-and-cars city scene turned into a big ugly traffic accident.

The people at Home Depot did suggest putting down a white primer. Well, I didn’t have any of that, but I did have an old gallon of white paint. It took two coats of that to cover the traffic fatality. Then, two more coats of red so as not to look pink. Wal-lah.

Do you ever get into the middle of the project and think to yourself, “No matter what I do, this is going to look half-assed”? Yeah, it was like that.

But no matter. Boy is happy with his newly painted room, enough so that he helped me haul about half of the toys out of it and he now has a place to play on the floor. He and Girl wanted badly to help me paint, but I kept telling them, sometimes at the top of my lungs, “NO! CAN’T YOU SEE THIS IS RED PAINT?!”

I stored the paint can in the garage, but I don’t know why. As God as my witness, I’ll never paint anything red again.

The swine flu has come to our house. Because I’ve been writing about it for my office, I know that you’re supposed to call it H1N1, but swine is easier to say. Less scary, too. H1N1 sounds a little too Space Odyssey-ish to me.

Boy has a mild fever, coughing, congestion and his asthma is aggravated. No sign of it in Girl yet. I’m wondering if Bob already had it two weeks ago (when he wouldn’t go to the doctor, even when I cast the evilest evil eye I could muster). As for me, I’ve decided I’m just not going to get it. Period. End of story.

Honestly, I’ve been scared shitless that Boy would get swine flu because, in my research for work, I kept reading that asthmatics are high risk. High risk for what, I didn’t exactly know.

So the trip to the pediatrician today was pretty much for my benefit as well. She didn’t even test him for the flu — she knows it when she sees it. It’s rampant in Fort Bend County, the doctor said. And most of the kids have a mild case, like Boy. She expected him to go back to school on Monday. As for Girl, we’re going to cheerleading practice in a few hours — no need to isolate her, the doctor said. If she comes down with a fever over the next few days, we’re to call the doctor for a second bottle of Tamiflu — which is getting hard to come by in liquid form.

So now we bide our time and see what the weekend brings. I’m really hoping that the little ache in my back is just the worry flowing out, and not a sign of swine.