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January 25, 2007
The soup it was tomato
Somehow I got on a personal mailing list from our next-door neighbors (the only ones we’ve met here...STILL). The man works in television, the woman is a real estate agent and their house is very Fancy Pantsy, so they are always filming cooking shows and whatnot over there. She’ll send an email to her list saying “Don’t forget to watch us on the Food Network next week, we’re making flambé for fifty!” The other day, I got an email that said their house was being featured on an upcoming HGTV show "What You Get for Your Money" with the topic being: what you can buy for $700,000! I said to my husband that the next time I bump into them, I’m telling them our house is being featured on “What You Can Get for a Plate of Nachos and a Six Pack of Narragansett Beer”. I wonder how hard the film crew had to work to keep our house out of the shots. "Hey Steve, can you zoom in a bit? We're still getting a corner of that shed in the next lot." Whatever, we could have a big fancy, flambé-worthy house too. If we made a lot of money and then, you know. Saved it.
Today I had lunch with the charming owner of this charming shop. To my husband’s annoyance, I had been squealing over how cute her new little store was every time we drove by it (there is a dearth of cute in my area) and then lo! She appeared in my pre-natal yoga class, which I have gone to exactly three times. It was like we were destined to eat soup together.
We discussed how, in our first class, we had a yoga instructor who just sort of disappeared. She was a rather kooky, maybe 50-ish lady, who surveyed the class and announced, “Your vaginas are factories, mine is a playground!” and then chuckled delightedly to herself, which simultaneously impressed me and weirded me out. I don’t know if someone complained or if she decided her body was a wonderland that could not be ignored even for an hour a week or what, but she never showed up to teach again.
Speaking of vaginal playgrounds, I think I am leaving the offices of Dr. Hotshot, Dr. Ear Hairs, Dr.Old and Icky, and Dr. Lone and Therefore Unavailable Female to the gentler, more feminine embrace of a midwifery practice. I realize it is kind of late in the game to be changing things up (um, five weeks to go!?), but I am really not digging on the Creeptastic vibe I get from my current ob-gyn practitioners, and I just got a referral to this heretofore unknown (by me) mystical place of Female Birthing Power, Womb Enchantment and Crotch-Healing Crystals. I think I am up for the change, providing those soul sistas have got epidurals at the ready. My consultation with them is Monday, or should I say “moonday”. We shall see how it goes.
Posted by Max at 07:15 PM | Comments (0)
January 18, 2007
velociraptor
I’ve been thinking it was January 7th for about two weeks now. Imagine my surprise to learn that January is nearly over, taking with it my ability to stay up past ten, walk up a flight of stairs without losing my breath, or eat something without getting heartburn like a flaming sucker punch to the sternum. She is so WIGGLY this one, and dumbly strong for a fetus. It’s like having a super-heated octopus twisting and twisting around inside your torso, and occasionally a lava-covered tentacle shoots up your chest into your throat to wave hello. My husband can’t even bear to watch when she is in full twist’n’writhe mode, claiming it’s like watching Alien without the popcorn.
At least her ability to force limbs between my ribs has meant that I am no longer in denial about her imminent arrival. My niece and sis-in-law came down from Vermont this past weekend to help me wash, fold, sort and organize legions of pink garments and generally get the ball rolling with converting my office to a nursery. Here are a few pictures of the results. I still have a ways to go but at least we have the basics ready, like socks and a few diapers, since I am convinced she could drop out of me at any moment. And by “drop out of me” I mean send me into 40+ hours of labor like her brother did.
This time, though, the Blue Angels (DUDES TURN THE VOLUME UP TO ELEVEN BEFORE YOU CLICK THE LINK! It will totally make for a multi-media experience!) won’t be flying around the hospital. There was something awesome and surreal about having massive contractions with fighter jets screaming past the windows, splitting the air open and sonic booming all over the place. In fact, that sort of sums up my first birth experience right there, if you add a few gallons of blood and a couple of highly disengaged doctors. Maybe this time I could request that lobsters and clams be strewn about the delivery room. Their soft clickings and scrapings would make for a subtler birthing experience while still imparting a local flavor.
I feel like the above is revealing me to be insane. The end.
But wait! In coming up for a name for this post, I found this picture. That's it--dinosaur not octopus! Next month's ultrasound should confirm it.
Posted by Max at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)
January 10, 2007
it's 2007 and so am I
What endearing nickname shall I give to the unborn child who claws at my midsection like a hyperkinetic iguana? Kicky McBurst? Lossy VonSavingsdrainer? I dunno, those just don’t seem catchy enough. At any rate, she is due to arrive here in a matter of weeks. I’ve moved from a state of denial to one of I guess I better buy a bunch of pink crap. She’ll be bunking in my home office for now since our product is launching the week she is due and mama gots to earn her monies. Perhaps I will just line a file drawer with some pink polar fleece. I wonder if she’ll know HTML, she could do a little work when she shows up, that would be helpful. It seems like the kids being born these days should come to the world knowing that stuff, beings how they are sort of from the future and all.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted, so naturally I have a few things to share. First, we’ve been having mild plumbing issues, resulting in an occasional back-up of our toilet. One week it seemed worse than usual, so we called Roto-Rooter to see if they could come snake the pipes. They did, charging us a cool $120 for their service. Not an hour later, the toilet backed up again, so I called them back and they said they would send someone over to take another look. I left my husband to deal with the second plumber and took off to buy some pink crap.
When I came home, I went into the bathroom and was hit by such a foul stench that I actually took a step back. “Jesus God!” I yelled to my husband, “What happened in here?” I imagined they had to open up some pipes or something, releasing long-trapped septic gases into the atmosphere. My husband sauntered in. “Oh, the plumber wanted to see if he could repro the problem, so he used the toilet.” I was smelling plumber poop!! I guess my husband didn’t really consider this out of the ordinary until I started grilling him. How did this “solution” come up? How long did it take? Could he HEAR him in there?! So we paid Roto-Rooter $120 to have a plumber come poop in our toilet. And the frigging thing still has the same problem.
One of the things I love about my husband, in addition to his cavalier attitude toward letting servicefolk poop in our toilet, is his occasional, broad declaration about some random thing. We were driving along the other day and out of nowhere he says “You know, if you were to get hit by a car and were obviously dead in the middle of the road, I’m not the type of husband that would rush out and scoop up your broken body in my arms and hold you until the paramedics came.” While some wives might have been offended, I was merely intrigued. “What would you do, sit on the curb and have a Coke Zero*?” I also wasn’t sure there were ‘types’ of husbands in this particular scenario.
He went on to clarify that he would be too upset to see me all smashed and couldn't handle it, much in the same way he could barely handle having to scoop up our beloved cat’s remains from in front of our house after he was hit by a car this fall. Thankfully, I was out of town for that. He confessed he had to use a cookie sheet because he couldn’t bear to touch/look at our poor kitty. He’s not squeamish at all; it’s just the personal association that does him in. “Of course,” he added, “You would have to be really dead and not just hurt.” I mulled this over. I knew what he was saying was, in its own way, sweet, for I know my husband well. But knowing him well also prompted my next question “Um, honey? What did you do with the cookie sheet…?”
* My husband loves Coke Zero so much that if a can of it were lying smashed and broken in the road, I’m pretty sure he would cradle it in his arms and weep until the recycling truck came.
Posted by Max at 09:24 AM | Comments (1)