Penelope

If, twenty years ago, you had asked Penelope about her marriage dreams, she would have said, “Silly Goose! I will have a string of tumultuous long-term love affairs. In my old age, I will retire to a cabana and remember them all fondly.”

Those plans were scuttled the night she met her husband, who finagled her phone number under the pretense of signing the “guest book” at his townhouse.

Penelope was the voice of the nonparent in her last joint blog endeavor. When she wrote the final post, she had no idea that she was in fact, with child. Four pregnancy tests and a Google Search for “false positive pregnancy test” later, Penelope warmed to the idea of a three-person family. And now that her daughter Wren is here, she wouldn’t have it any other way.

But still.

Penelope was trained to consider and evaluate. In fact, her analytical abilities earned her a Ph.D. And despite her ever-growing delight in marriage and children, she always finds complexities and complications in the cheeriest scenarios. In Now Pronounce, she intends to dissect the heteronormative model family she and her beloved husband Monty have constructed; which, in so many words, means she intends to bitch.