My Infestation, Let Me Show You It

A couple years ago, shortly before we moved from DC to the Stupid Suburbs, my recently-transplanted-from-California friend sent me a camera phone photo and a hysterical text message.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS FUCK YOU EAST COAST

The picture was of the most hideous insect I had ever seen. Including the time I found a cockroach in my bathtub.

(Although cockroach encounters are almost like a bizarre form of street cred for City People. It reaffirms that yes, I am so hardcore in my desire to Walk To Things (translation: Starbucks) that I am perfectly okay with spending half a million dollars to live in a 800-square-foot hellhole.)

Anyway, this bug was ugly. It was obviously some kind of beetle but the kind of beetle that would eat ladybugs for lunch and then poop out some kind of flesh-eating disease. All over your face. While you slept.

I texted back.

HOLY FUCK KILL IT KILL IT I AM THROWING SHOES FROM HERE.

My phone was silent for a few minutes. And then.

FUCK IT CAN FLY IT CAN FLLLY FUCK

And a few minutes later, she called.

"Cilannnnntrooooo!" she wailed.

"WHAT?"

"Cilantro! I squashed it with Skip's shoe and now the whole room smells like rotten goddamn cilantro."

(Skip is her husband.)

We both got on our computers and started Googling "cilantro smelly rotten egg beetles" and quickly determined that it was a Brown Marmorated Stink Bug. A nuisance bug accidentally introduced to our continent from China, like a plague of mass-produced lead-painted Thomas trains. And we learned that by squishing the sucker inside her house, my friend had essentially broadcasted to every other stink bug in the area that her house was a nice warm place to infest.

"That's stupid," she said. "That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Come to this house, bugs! They have shoes! It smells like death!"

Then she fell oddly silent, and asked if she and her son could come over for awhile.

"Amy," she whispered. "There are like, five more of them on the outside of the screen door. They're just...sitting there."

"Oh my God," I whispered back, for some reason. "Grab your keys and the baby and get out of there. Don't worry about anything else. We have diapers and blankets and you can borrow clothes if you need them. Just GET OUT OF THERE."

When she arrived, I immediately told her about the time I found a cockroach in the tub. To this day I will never understand why she moved back to California.

***

And now we live in the suburbs. And every fall it's the same disgusting thing. Stink bugs all over the outside of the house and window screens, waiting, plotting, inevitably finding their way inside. Mosquitoes, too. They sense their imminent wintery death and go completely berserk in September, biting you through seventeen coats of DEET, making every trip outside to drop wine bottles in the recycling bin an exercise in terror. This year, we have a nest of yellow jackets in the flower bed right outside our front door and Jason found a dried-out snakeskin near our dryer vent. And then there's the fucking CRICKETS. And then! Three days ago I noticed some other giant (HUGE) mysterious beetle-bug-thing on one of our windows, and as I have considerable problem-solving skills, I simply closed the window to trap it, because it just looked entirely too substantial to crush with a tissue. As of right now, the thing is STILL NOT DEAD YET.

It's all so gross, this stupid nature.

This year seems like the worst one yet, though. Almost Hitchcockian. The stink bugs just all simultaneously APPEARED yesterday. I noticed one on the crown molding in the living room...right as I heard the telltale buzzing of another one taking flight behind me behind me don't land on me don't land on me gaaaah. I lowered the window shades and HOLY FUCK, they were everywhere, just sitting there. First-floor windows, second-floor windows. I checked all our screens for points of entry and armed myself with the Shop Vac. 

We have a service contract with a pest control company, and twice a year they come out and spray for termites and check the perimeter and windows and set out little sticky traps to see if we can figure out how the fuck all these bugs are getting in and twice a year the visit ends with a baffled shrug. 

Yesterday, I think I cracked the mystery.

(Oh hey, if you're still reading at this point but are like, itching from head to toe a little bit? You might want to finally cry uncle and bail.)

So ever since the Great Fertilizer Dog Buffet Debacle and subsequent shutting down of the Canine Liver Contingent, we've been diligent composters. Yesterday, however, I left the pile's offerings (bruised section of peach, apple core, lettuce) sit out on the kitchen counter for juuuuust a bit too long, as we've yet to buy a suitable indoor container. I went to toss a banana peel on top and OH MY GOD, a fucking mushroom cloud of fruit flies sprang from its depths. I gagged and grabbed the nearest bowl (Sorry, Dora the Explorer), swept everything into it and bolted outside to deposit it in our composter.

(EXHIBIT 28430290 OF WHY HIPPIES ARE STUPID, DAMN DIRTY)

As soon as I opened the back door, the stink bugs attacked. Five or six of them flew towards the opening at top speed. I shrieked and slammed the door shut. The motion once again disturbed the flock of fruit flies who were following me and my bowl of mush like the Pied Piper, and a stink bug ricocheted off the door frame and landed on my hand. I dropped the bowl and shrieked again, and the bug fell off my hand...and into my shoe.

(Gardening clogs, okay? That I promise I only wear for GARDENING. And picking up dog crap. And fine, maaaaaybe taking Noah out to the school bus sometimes but it's just because they are usually right there by the door and that's just really convenient.)

At this point I probably looked and sounded like I was being attacked by bees. Or sharks. Or hell demons. I kicked off my shoe and sent it sailing across the yard and stood there for another three or four minutes shaking my limbs and hair and clothing while gasping out stuff like "ew ew ew ew ew shit shit shit."

When I stopped to catch my breath and retrieve my shoe and Dora bowl (opting to allow the compost to stay where it fell, providing all kinds of essential nutrients to the wood of the back deck), I made the mistake of surveying the back of our house.

Stink bugs. Everywhere. On the brick, on the windows, on the gutters. I slooooowly reached for the screen door handle and I SWEAR, they all fired up their wings, ready to attack. 

I dashed in as fast as I could, slamming the storm door closed (AND LOCKING THE DEADBOLT, BECUZ I ARE SMARTER THAN THEM BUGS). I walked over to the sink to deposit the bowl...and felt something on my ankles.

Two mosquitoes. I smashed them, leaving smears of blood on top of the already-forming welts.  (FOUR BITES, already. FOUR.)

And that's when I noticed something in my hair. Multiple somethings.

You guys. They rode inside the house IN MY HAIR.

By my count, THREE OF THEM. I have since vacuumed up one, another is MIA (shakes hair shakes hair shakeshair), and I have cornered a third one inside the living room blinds, unable to coax it quiiiiite close enough to where my vacuum can get at it.

No, seriously:

The way we live now.

(And just for the sake of completeness, besides the two mosquitoes that used my ankle as some kind of illegal border crossing van, minutes later I found a third one, BITING MY BABY ON THE FACE. Without thinking, I smacked it off him [AND THUS, HIS FACE], which shocked him so much that he did the whole heartbreaking face-melting-sobbing-real-tears thing, and then STILL woke up this morning with EIGHT gigantic angry red bites on his face and legs. Obviously, the suburbs are dirty, disgusting and absolutely no place to raise children.)

In Lieu Of

This post is sponsored by the American Cancer Society.

I was in the ninth grade. It was early spring, a few weeks before Easter. My mom offered to take me out for lunch, and I, in my infinite gastronomical taste and sense of occasion, chose Taco Bell. We sat at a tiny table by the window. I remember I talked a lot.  I don’t remember what I talked about, but afterward, when we got back into the car, my mom drove out of the parking lot…and then parked the car a few yards away, in a different fast food parking lot.

That’s when we had the conversation I realized my mom had probably intended to have at the restaurant.

“Your dad has cancer.”

***

He had cancer of the larynx, to be exact. The voice box. He’d quit smoking when I was a tiny little asthmatic thing, but the long years of cigarettes and daily high school English lectures had taken a terrible toll. He underwent radiation. I have a weird memory of going with him to a radiation treatment that I think I may have made up. I started writing short stories and essays in earnest around this time. That Easter, my parents gave me a tiny black-and-white kitten. Her name was Sabrina. She cheered us all up, and she was especially fond of sleeping on my dad’s chest and stomach during his naps. He took a lot of naps.

But the cancer went into remission.

***

Five years later, I was a freshman in college. I was attending a tiny Christian college in the Midwest, 13 hours from home, and absolutely miserable. Not even a full semester had gone by, but I knew I’d made a terrible decision. I had no idea how to fix things or admit that I hated it there without disappointing my parents – especially my dad.

That’s when the phone call came. I was sitting outside in the hallway, the curly phone cord stretched across my tiny cell of a dorm room, when my mom’s words buzzed over the receiver, causing me to slide down the wall to the floor.

“The cancer is back.”

***

I came home and stayed there. My dad had accepted an early retirement package from the school district after his first diagnosis, and been teaching as an adjunct professor at a local community college. I got to attend it for free. I was happy there. I made friends and good grades and landed the lead in the drama production.

I also, inexplicably, like a jackass, took up smoking.

But I quit just a few months later, at the urging of my boyfriend. A tall, dark-haired boy who held my hand for hours in the hospital waiting room, whom my father had eyed warily from his bed as they wheeled him into surgery. He would lose his larynx, and his voice. His voice that I listed to on my old walkman while we waited, a tape he’d made at my request, a recording of his rich voice reading bits of Shakespeare and Bible passages until the rasping, tired soreness of the cancer took over and he had to stop.

***

The tall dark-haired boy and I were married a little over a year later. My dad read I Corinthians 13 at the ceremony in a hoarse whisper, his new voice. A few months after that, my cat Sabrina died of lymphoma.

***

I was pregnant when the next call came. I don’t remember any details like I remember details from the other moments. The grey interior of our Ford Taurus. The slickly painted cement walls of my dorm. The ugly blotchy pastel furniture of the hospital.

I was probably at home, probably wandering aimlessly around the living room like I always do when I’m on the phone. She’d probably told me to sit down, but I’m not sure I listened, since I was so sure it was nothing, so sure there was no question that my parents were fine now and would meet this grandchild. My dad had been cancer-free for years, my mom’s few scattered health scares had a remarkable track record for not being anything really, truly serious.

Until now. She had breast cancer. She needed a mastectomy.

***

Both of my parents are still here, still alive. They’ve met not one, but three new grandchildren since my mom’s diagnosis in 2005. My father has gone on to fight many other health battles, from thyroid cancer to skin cancer to an aortic aneurysm to diabetes to emphysema to congestive heart failure. AND HE IS STILL HERE.

When my grandmother died several years ago – of complications from a fall in the shower, not cancer; in fact cancer has yet to successfully take out a single member of my family – my mother still asked that donations be made to the American Cancer Society in lieu of flowers.

The American Cancer Society asked those of us participating in this sponsored post/awareness campaign to keep our stories of how cancer has affected us mostly positive, to not dwell on the insidious, the unrelenting nature of cancer, of the fear that hangs over your head once the diagnosis is made – fear of every check-up, every late-night phone call.

I could have easily written that entry. Cancer changed the course of my life – cancer was *right there* at every major turning point, nudging and sometimes walloping me in directions I never would have otherwise gone.  I don’t ever want to get cancer. I don’t want my husband or my children to get cancer. I will continue to donate to cancer research to up our odds.

But I know it can be survived, and survived spectacularly. That’s the story I really want to tell, the story I hope came through in my rambling today, the story of a family who kicked cancer’s ass, in lieu of the other way around.

 

Motherbrain

So...if I were to mine my own life for a post topic today, I'd unfortunately be forced to report that Noah is once again home from school with an ear infection.

(Scene: Doctor's Office. Yesterday.)

DOCTOR: (after hearing Noah's cough) Has he been checked out?

AMY: (waves dismissively) Oh, he's fine. Just a cold.

(Scene: Noah's Room. Like, Not Even Eight Hours Later.)

NOAH: (holding his ear and howling in pain)

AMY: Wait. Don't tell me. I think I know this one.

(Seriously. Fuck this noise and this nasal drip. Fuck them DIRECTLY. Noah attended a birthday party on Sunday at one of those little gym-type places, and I made a joke to another mother that I SWEAR, we walk into one and within 48 hours Noah is sick. It was a JOKE! You didn't literally have to whip out the stopwatch, Universe. Christ.)

(I am maybe getting the hang of this, though. Crank up the humidifier in Noah's room, start calling his bookshelf the "library," haul out a Duplo train set and dub it the "imagination center," declare the laundry pile the "tactile center," climb into his bed with baby, laptop and coffee and ta-da! Instant preschool. With way less germs! Except for the ones he's coughed and oozed all over his sheets...in his bed...where I am sitting right now. With the baby. And. Hmm.)

(Please hold! Going to do some laundry real quick.)

Anyway, I cannot even imagine how sick y'all must be of hearing about how sick we all be, so I'm going to break format and tell a story about someone else, simply because I don't know if this individual has her own blog, and the story MUST be told.

Because of a scheduling mix-up, I had no choice but to bring Noah to Ezra's appointment yesterday. (Apparently a 9:45 am appointment on a Wednesday actually means a 1 pm appointment on a Tuesday in Pediatric Office Receptionist Land.) It was raining, Noah was coughing, we got a late start out the door and I ended up breaking all the usual traffic laws to get us there on time. In order to keep things as streamlined as possible, I left the carseat in the car and opted for a sling instead, so I could have two free hands to corrall Noah from the ultra-fun waiting room with the televisions into the boring exam room.

And there, we waited. And waited. Finally the doctor stuck her head in and apologized, because it would be a few more minutes. I was wedged into an armchair with both boys -- Ez on the boob while I read a Charlie Brown book to Noah -- and assured her that we were fine. When Noah tired of the book I had no problem letting him compose a "song," an awesome (AND TOTALLY NOT ANNOYING) activity that involves banging out a rhythym on every available surface in the room to hear the differences in pitch. It's educational! And also, not my house! Have a blast, kid. You just may drown out the screams from the flu shot clinic two rooms down.

I noticed a weird, bemused look on her face right before she closed the door.

When she reappeared, I was reading a medical brochure about ADHD to Noah (he thought the dark-haired little girl on the cover was Dora, and did not seem to notice the difference several pages in), and she apologized again.

She was running late because her last patient was late. Very late. Because she'd been out in the parking lot, panicking. Because she could not get her infant's carseat out of the car.

She didn't want to leave the baby, and since she did not, apparently, have the doctors' office number on her phone, she ended up calling her mother, who drove all the way from God knows where to help her get the carseat unhooked from the base and into the office.

"And so I asked her," the doctor continued, "'Why didn't you just unbuckle the baby and bring him in without the carseat?' And she looked at me and admitted that had never occurred to her."

I stared at her, not knowing whether to bust a gut laughing...or rush out after that poor woman and give her a big hug and let her cry into Noah's snotty tissues that I had mashed into every available pocket. She went on.

"And then I look in here, and you're alone with two kids and one is coughing and the other nursing and you have the smallest diaper bag I've seen all day and no stroller and you're just as relaxed as can be and..."

She trailed off and shook her head. "You're doing SO GREAT."

I flashed back to that morning. How irritated I'd been when I realized that I needed to keep Noah home from school. The TV I'd bribed him with so I could nurse and maybe squeeze in an extra 30 minues of sleep. How my lunch consisted of some microwaved mac and cheese that I frantically shoveled into my mouth while drying at least some of my hair and Ezra howled in protest from a swing. The not-very-nice tone I'd used while mushing Noah's feet into his shoes because we had to go go go right now hurry up, even though I was the one who chose the extra 30 minutes of sleep that was costing us DEARLY, and dear God, thank you for realizing that you can't take the empty wrapping paper tube with us but why do you have to put it down so slllloooooowly, and how can the baby be hungry AGAIN and Noah! Cover your mouth when you cough, pleeeeeeease.

Then I looked back down at Ezra's rolly polly body and over at Noah, who was adorably hamming it up in front of a mirror, raising his arms and announcing that it was time for DA NOAH SHOW YAAY!!!

Maybe not always so great, and definitely not perfect, but eh. Good enough. And I'll take it.

And to that other mother, wherever she is: We've all been there, and we've all eventually figured out how those blasted carseats work, and regained at least some of our problem-solving abilities. 

You're doing great.

Laughing with you, not at you.

Ezra's Birth Story

Preparing for a scheduled c-section is a lot like preparing for a long, cross-country trip. Or maybe a trip to the moon. The days beforehand are a blur of lists and packing and obsessing about the lists and packing. And dusting and laundry and the state of your toenails.

The conflicting information you get from the hospital and your doctor's office feels like the airport keeps changing your departure gate on you. Bloodwork two days before! no, 24 hours! No, the day of the surgery! You need a doctor's note! No, you don't! No food or drink after midnight! Water is okay! No, it's not! Only there's no Expedia confirmation email to cling to, just a nurse whose name you didn't catch on the other end of the phone.

***
I'd gotten the pre-op bloodwork done on Tuesday and was outfitted with an assortment of hospital bracelets. Jason's mother had gone with me -- she was terrified that I was going to faint if I went alone, I was just terrified of getting lost inside the hospital -- and then that night she insisted we go out for one last dinner out, sans child, pre childREN.

For the first time in oh, NINE MONTHS, I was able to enjoy a meal without nausea or heartburn or a never-ending parade of violent food aversions. I ate crab bisque, a gigantic steak and a whole goddamn slice of cheesecake -- order your own, husband -- looking for all the world like an escaped mental patient, what with the hospital bands, giant belly and pathetic attempt to "dress up" in high heels at ninety hundred months pregnant.

***

My surgery was scheduled for 2 pm. We were to arrive at the hospital at noon. I woke up at 6 am.

I wandered down the hall to Noah's room and crawled into bed with him. He was in a sweetly tired good mood -- we sang songs and cuddled and talked about Baby Brother Day. I'd long since given up on trying to wrap my mind around the fact that the baby inside me was just hours away from being born, that he was done and complete and HIMSELF, whoever that was, so I don't imagine that morning's conversation did anything to really help prepare Noah, either.

I didn't realize, though, that it would be the very last time I would ever look at Noah and see a baby, or anything resembling a baby. His round belly and chubby cheeks seemed to vanish that day -- by the time I saw him again 12 hours later he would turn into a long and lean little boy, all arms and legs, shockingly mature-looking and huge.

***

Around 7:30 am I noticed that Jason had forgotten to take one of our recycling bins to the curb the night before. Our bottles and cans and plastic containers were piled high -- by next week we'd be drowning in them, for sure. I heard the trucks revving around the corner and glanced out the window -- our neighbors' bins were still there and upright and full! We could still make it! And so I dashed out through our backyard in my pajamas and slippers, lugging the bin at an awkward angle below and to the side of my massive belly, out to the curb where I dumped it, practically hyperventilating from the effort and the rush of adrenaline that one can only get from very barely getting your trash out in time for collection, knowing that you are now free to go have a baby in peace, because OH THANK GOD THE RECYCLING IS TAKEN CARE OF.

***

We stopped at Panera on the way to the hospital so Jason could eat lunch. He wasn't particularly hungry -- he was trying to prepare himself for the bloody surgery sights ahead, but I insisted he eat something so he wouldn't faint. Again, with the fainting. I woefully watched him eat a salad until my hunger took over and I rebelliously ate a few pea-sized bits of his whole wheat baguette, rationalizing that I certainly hadn't fasted this long before my previous c-section, what with going into labor right after dinner and all, and besides, I've never gotten nauseous from anesthesia before, I'll be fine.

LAY OFF ME, I'M STARVING.

***

There were vending machines in the hospital waiting room. I sat and glared at them, then glared at the book I brought but was entirely too keyed up to read, then watched the Showcase Showdown on The Price Is Right. ("$35,000 for the non-car showcase? Oh my God, what an IDIOT.") Jason called a roofer while we waited, and I laughed at him. ("DRILL BIT! IN OUR FUCKING ROOF!") He retaliated by getting a cup of coffee from the fancy little pod machine nearby.

A nurse appeared and called my name. "Let's get this started!" she said brightly.

***

And so, we got started, in the same room, in the same BED, where I'd started my labor with Noah.

"Oh my God," I said, when the nurse led me to the corner bed in the triage/recovery room. "This is where I labored with my son. There weren't any empty rooms, so I was right here, in this bed."

"Huh, how about that," she said, not nearly as impressed with this as I was.

***

I was hooked up to an IV and monitors and told the general game plan. Two bags of fluid, 30 minutes of baby monitoring, and then basically waiting for my doctor and the anesthesiologist to show up.

At this point, I was still essentially waiting for something to come and derail the whole thing. My doctor getting called to an emergency at another hospital, another mother needing the operating room before me, lost bloodwork, lost luggage, hours of circling the tarmac, SOMETHING.

The minutes ticked by. I asked Jason for the time over and over again. I shifted in the bed, as much as I could without disturbing the monitors, remembering how uncomfortable I'd been last time; how terribly unsuited these beds were for the heft and weight of a full-term pregnant woman being forced to lie on her back. Without the rise and fall of contractions, there was nothing to focus on except the waiting, the boredom.

My impatience immediately turned to panic when my doctor appeared around the curtain, dressed in his surgical scrubs. No, no, no. This isn't right. I should go home. Wait for labor. Wait to make sure he's ready. How terrible we are, joking about ugly hospital hats, getting ready to go slice me in half and yank this poor baby out without any warning. All the fears and worries I'd mashed down over the previous months rose to the surface -- that study I'd read about mothers not bonding with their scheduled c-section babies, the impact of skipping labor on breastfeeding and milk production, hemorrhaging, nicked organs, the invisible army of people judging this choice as unnecessary and wrong and selfish.

Luckily, my mini-anxiety-fest was cut abruptly short by the arrival of the anesthesiologist. My doctor sat down in a chair and cracked jokes with Jason while the nurses removed the monitors and the anesthesiologist asked me a few questions and the whole room seemed downright jovial -- it reminded me, bizarrely enough, of that feeling I used to get backstage before the start of a play, back when I acted in high school and college drama productions. It's a weird batch of nerves and excitement, topped off with the confidence that you've rehearsed and performed your lines a million times before, and that really, this is no big deal.

***

An emergency c-section takes about five minutes. I don't really remember much about it, even though I was just as awake and aware when it was happening. The decision was made and it was like hitting the fast-forward button on the remote.

ShaveScrubsHallwayOperatingRoomTableDrapeFussingPressureBaby. Done.

This time I walked into the operating room, clutching the back of my gown while a nurse wheeled the IV pole. I hopped up onto the table and prepared myself for the spinal -- another irrational source of anxiety, since I'd had an epidural late in the game last time and found it to be just downright FABULOUS, but since I was in such terrible, terrible pain the whole "needle in your spine" thing was not really high on my priority list. This time I was not in pain, not in labor, not really excited about getting jabbed in the back with a huge fucking needle.

My doctor held my hand and put his arm around my shoulders while the needle went in. I don't know why, but I found this little routine gesture to be enormously comforting, and after the slightest stinging sensation, the needle was in.

***

The set-up time for a scheduled c-section is ridiculous, or at least seems that way. It was full of little luxuries that you don't get in an emergency, like an inflatable heated blanket over your arms and chest, endless fine-tuning of your anesthesia, and the somewhat maddening puttering around by nurses and doctors, doing God knows what while you lay naked and spread on the table, listening to conversations about your doctor's ruptured appendix and the multiple misdiagnoses and medical incompetence he encountered before it was discovered.

***

The anesthesia kicked in and swallowed me up. I disliked it intensely. While the epidural was a blessed relief last time, to go from feeling just fine and dandy to heavily drugged and numb and not quite in control made me uncomfortable -- a reminder of why I was such a big dork in college, someone who thought pot was just a little too intense of a high and who always turned down the chance to try anything stronger.

I thought about those bites of bread a few hours before and regretted them terribly. My nerves were churning and I felt floaty and disconnected and the sensation was weirdly oppressive. Jason was allowed in and he sat next to me, trying and failing to find my hand under the inflatable heater. I stared right at him and gritted my teeth and ordered myself to STOP LOSING YOUR SHIT AND GET A GRIP. RIGHT THIS MINUTE.

I think I admitted to him, in the barest little whisper so no one else would hear, that I was really, really scared.

"Do you feel that, Amy?" my doctor asked. I had no idea what "that" was, so I said no. And with "that," the surgery began.

***
It seemed like it took forever, although the official birth time suggests that I was in the operating room no longer than 24 minutes before Ezra made his appearance. But oh, it felt so much longer. So much tugging and pulling and the absolutely crazy-weird feeling of being cut open -- seriously, feeling every sensation of the scalpel dragging across your skin, except for the sensation of PAIN. My doctor said something about me not having any fat on my body and how I'd managed that, but I wasn't sure how to respond to that since I wasn't entirely sure he was talking to me.

I stared at the ceiling and waited. And waited. Jason occasionally peeked over the drape -- the mere thought of what he was seeing made me feel like throwing up, and I kept closing my eyes and shaking my head, indicating that I didn't want to know.

And then, a cry.

"OH!" I gasped, and let out a shuddery cry of my own.

His first cry came before he was even all the way out, before that official time of birth, leaving no questions about his maturity and readiness to be born. His next cries were louder, indignant little squawks. Jason stood up, anxiously trying to get glances of him, snapping a few illegal photos of him as he was pulled from the carnage (we were told by the hospital not to take photos or video of the actual surgery). He told me he was smaller than Noah.

I kept waiting to hear his weight. I heard someone say something about "eight, nine" and assumed that was it -- that was about right, smaller than Noah, but still big enough to make the c-section a good idea.

I was waiting for justification.

But the "eight, nine" were his APGAR scores, not his weight.

Seven pounds, seven ounces. I was stunned.   

"I could have delivered that?" I said to Jason, half-whispering, half-questioning. But Jason was off taking pictures, getting ready to hold him and bring him back to me.

"He's so little!" Jason said, clearly delighted by this new species of baby we had. An honest-to-God newborn-sized newborn. "But he still looks a lot like Noah."

And then I saw him. He was little, tiny, perfect. Like Noah, but entirely unique and delightfully himself already. I fought to get my arm free from the stupid inflatable thing and succeeded, and touched his round, squishy little face. I slid my fingers under his hat to see his matted downy hair and stroked his rosebud mouth and pulled Jason's arm down so I could kiss him over and over and over.

And it hit me, again, in a palpable, overwhelming rush. Motherhood. Love. Just an explosion of it, pulling me out of my anesthetized fog instantly, forgetting immediately the strange, almost-mechanical circumstances of the birth, the what-ifs and the pros and cons of VBAC and surgery, forgetting that this birth was any different than Noah's birth, that it was any different from ANY birth, because how different could it be, when it has the same wonderfully perfect ending?

My baby, my son, my everything I ever wanted, all over again.

Bait & Tackle

The other day, while getting Noah ready for his nap, I noticed something. Something...odd...and white? What is that? The odd-and-possibly-white thing was on a...how shall I say...very delicate and highly valuable part of his anatomy. A part that I have probably not been allowed contact with since he mastered his hand/eye coordination enough to meet every attempt to clean or examine said part with a tremendous thwack.

THAT'S MINE, LADY. BACK OFF.

So my attempts to determine the origins of the odd white-ish thing were rather futile. I assumed it was a bit of paper, and if you're wondering why "a bit of paper" was the obvious, most-likely answer I can guess right now that you have not changed many diapers in your life, my friend, because sooner or later you will come to expect stray Cheerios and Mr. Potato Head parts falling out all the time. It's not like they have POCKETS, or anything.

Eventually I realized that the...thing....appeared to actually be connected to his...thing. Like, possibly with skin. Like it possibly WAS skin.

I wasn't entirely sure that was possible, but...I DON'T KNOW. I DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS EQUIPMENT. So I opted to go with my default solution for All Things Involving That Thing, which is...Vaseline.

(Shut up. I learned that one from the hospital. It was the closest thing to an instruction manual as we got -- the nurse handed us a small tub of Vaseline and told us to use it "down there" with a super-scientific wave of her hand.)

So I dug out the Vaseline, wrastled the child to the floor and gooped the whole area up. Then I slapped a pull-up on him, sent him to bed and congratulated myself on a job half-assed.

I thought about calling Jason to describe the Odd White Thing -- perhaps, as the owner of a similar set of plumbing, he would know what to do? But then I pictured him sitting there, in a gorgeous pin-striped suit, around a gleaming conference table with a dozen Important Clients, who perhaps have briefcases full of money in front of them, and it's all up to Jason to nail the presentation when suddenly his phone rings and he explains that oh, sorry, he HAS to take this, because his dear sweet wife is pregnant, and instead I get on the phone and start asking him about whether guys occasionally, I don't know, gouge divots in themselves with their fingernails, or something?

(Jason wears flat-front khakis to work most days, and as far as I know he doesn't generally ever get paid in briefcases full of money.)

But I figured maybe I should try to solve this one on my own. Right! To Google! Except...hmm. I wasn't exactly sure how to phrase this one. I didn't want to see...like, PICTURES. Nor did I really want any information whatsoever about all the many OPTIONS for male anatomy injuries and I certainly didn't want to include the word "toddler" in there because that just opens up a whole new cache of worms.  It was just like the time I was convinced the FBI was going to storm my house and take my son away because I was the pervert on BabyCenter.com looking for What To Do When Your Child Seems To Maybe Enjoy A Bit Of Private Time With The Sofa Cushions If You Know What I Mean. I thought about maybe emailing some bloggers who had sons. Or calling my mom.

Mostly I just wanted to hear someone tell me to "Put a little Vaseline on it, he'll be fine."

I ended up going with option B: Doing Nothing At All. I waited until he woke up from his nap and tried to examine it again, with limited success. It LOOKED like it might be a little better. Sort of...pinkish and not so white? I tried to quiz him about the origins of the Thing, which was SO HELPFUL. Apparently, a dinosaur did it.

Noted. How about some more Vaseline?

My phone rang. It was Jason. He was on his way home. I blurted out the whole story, about the odd white thing that now looks kind of pink and I think it might be skin or maybe...a burn? Like...chafing? Shrinkage? Any of this sounding like something run-of-the-mill and normal from your childhood that your mom used to treat with Vaseline on a regular basis?

There was silence. I think he was pulling the car off the highway, just so he could fully wind up and let me have it.

"OH MY GOD DID YOU CALL THE DOCTOR WHY DIDN'T YOU CALL THE DOCTOR WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT PIECES OF FLESH ARE HANGING OFF OUR CHILD'S <REDACTED> AND YOU DIDN'T CALL THE DOCTOR OR TAKE HIM TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM LIKE HOW MUCH SKIN ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE CALL THE DOCTOR OH MY GOD."

"But...I put Vaseline on it? And I think it looks better?"

"YOU THINK."

"He won't really let me look at it. He gets mad."

"HE WEIGHS 31 POUNDS."

"But he's a...thrashy 31 pounds."

"WE ARE TALKING. ABOUT. A VERY IMPORTANT. THING. HERE. YOU DO NOT. FUCK. AROUND. WITH THIS."

"Fine. Hold on. I will go look at it again."

"...."

"Never mind."

"WHAT."

"Never mind. It's nothing."

"WHAT."

"It was part of a fruit sticker."

"..."

"It was white with red letters. The Vaseline must have turned it pink. Anyway, it's gone now."

"..."

"Are you okay?"

"...amen."

"Were you praying?"

"I just...I was just really scared there."

"Wow."

"I'll, uh, see you in a few minutes."

"Okay, I love you!"

"I love you too."

AND...FIN!

The Princess & the Pantyhose (aka Blogher '08)

I lugged about 10 pounds worth of camera and lenses to Blogher, and the only photos I have in my possession to share with y'all are these two, taken with Kristen's iPhone. During our impromptu Floor Party in the pantyhose department at Macy's:

After realizing that I was simply not getting nearly enough attention, I decided to have a dramatic fainting spell en route to the shoe department portion of the Blogher cocktail party. (For anyone who wasn't there and is thinking...Macy's? Shoe department? Cocktail party? What? Yeah, I don't really understand either, and I was both THERE and SOBER.)

The party started out in Handbags, and I started out very horrified by the sight of hummus and various hors d'oeurves plates perilously close to the Marc Jacobs, I was soon distracted by this vague feeling that Oh Shit, I've Possibly Gone And Overdone It, and started meekly asking people if they knew where I could get some water. Various people went on a search mission for me, but returned with the news that champagne appeared to be the only option available. (Pregnant traveling ladies, I highly recommend you get yourself a whole posse of Danas and Catherines and Traceys and and Isabels and a couple Laid-Off and/or Backpacking Dads, who will ignore your protestations that you are FINE, stop FUSSING, and bring you chairs and shake down cocktail waitresses on your behalf.)

And then, while walking through the aisles of pantyhose, I found myself grabbing the nearest elbow and hissing that I needed someone to GET ME ON THE FLOOR, RIGHT NOW, and...I remember spinning, high-kicking, thigh-highed mannequin legs and very cold marble and Catherine rushing off to find water and returning with a little thimble of a Starbucks cup and wailing that it was all they'd give her, and then I laughed so hard I thought I would puke, and that's when I noticed pretty much every conference attendee filing by and staring at me strangely. After awhile a nice group of people joined me on the floor, where we accepted bottles of water and Luna bars from anyone who could scrounge one up for me, like some kind of really fucked-up Nativity scene.

(TANGENT! For anyone who has been to Blogher, you know how you go with a List? That List of bloggers you're just really jazzed about and hoping to meet, and you possibly rehearse what you'll say when you meet them [because OF COURSE you'll recognize them, being so excellent with names and faces already] just so you don't do something lame like SCREAM DIRECTLY INTO THEIR FACE [sorry, Cecily] or otherwise make a fangirl ass out of yourself? It was at this moment, there on the floor of the pantyhose department, that Jenny the Bloggess sat down next to me. All I can say is that I'm very happy I was having some kind of horrific Blood Sugar incident at the time because at least I am not forced to live with very detailed memories of what a spastic dork I was -- it's all lost in a glorious haze of dizzy spells and those weird spots that cloud your vision. Ahh.)

(TANGENT, PART TWO! I missed all the drama, is all I can say about all the drama. I was TRYING to rest up and take care of my delicate little self and missed the keynote.)

THEN the party moved up to Furniture, where I at least got to recline on a sofa while signing books with Cagey and Kristen (the Non-Dramatic Pregnant Lady) and...oh God, everybody else, until I 1) kicked over somebody else's glass of red wine all over the rug, and 2) really really really really really had to pee and had to take an ELEVATOR to another floor and it was like I was back at the airport and once I found the bathroom I was completely baffled by the stall doors (they didn't look like doors! and you couldn't tell if they were occupied unless you hurled your body at them and after slamming myself into the third locked door I turned around and randomly screamed to the heavens and scared a lovely group of young 20-something non-mommybloggers before spotting a slightly open door and peeing for oh, about the entire running time of Juno.

On Sunday my friend Julie (some of you may remember her as Bunny. Met her in Gymboree, bonded over our hatred of everyone else at Gymboree, moved to California in February, broke my heart, is total whore) picked me up at the hotel and whisked me off to her house/decompression chamber, since she knows about my blog but doesn't read my blog, doesn't read ANY blogs and if I dared spend one second trying to rehash some kind of OMG DRAMZZ! moment from the conference she'd...she'd...well, probably just call me an asshole and change the subject. Perfect.

Now I'm home, surrounded by the dozens and dozens of business cards I picked up, marveling at how many new people I met, old friends and whores I reconnected with however briefly, and then there were the people I technically met for the first time who already felt like old friends, in that weird Internet way.  And that's just culled from my memory (haaaaa) and the cards I stashed in my camera bag (well, I had to use that bitch for SOMETHING)...I'm pretty sure I have about a hundred more in my actual suitcase, but opening that one means I would have to do laundry. And...it is not time for laundry yet, I don't think.

Jason and Noah met me at the airport last night, and Noah pointed and screamed (he gets that from me -- he'll be a huge hit at business conferences!) and came barreling at me for a huge hug, and then pulled back and said (for the first time ever), "I love you, Mama."

(That one goes out to all my peeps at the Blogging About Special-Needs Kids panel, who both refrain from playing the Pain Olympics AND are okay with me cornering them at parties to talk about SPD Manifestations in Poop without batting an eye. All we need is a gang sign that somehow incorporates what Miralax dosage we use.)

(Regarding Every Other Photo Of Me Out There: Look, I forgot lipstick, AND I brought sample-sized everything, including foundation, which I guess was a TAD PALE, bordering on TRANSLUCENT REFLECTIVE POSSIBLY UNDEAD. The persistent double-chin, however, I have no excuses for.)

Out Californee Way

My Internet died yesterday morning, very suddenly, but I didn't think it was anything unusual -- I get bumped off our wireless router occasionally and it's never anything some random plug-jiggling or power-cycling won't fix -- but yesterday was different. I couldn't get back on. I power-cycled everything from the router to my laptop to the refrigerator two rooms over and still, no Internet. I sent some frantic emails from my iPhone -- helpless-sounding ones to my husband ("can I like...plug something into the wall? all old school and shit? does the Internet still sometimes work like that?") and profanity-laden ones to everybody else ("MAH LIMBS HAVE BEEN REMOVED! I NEED WIKIPEDIA! ALSO HOW DO YOU SPELL SCHADENFREUDE?")

And then my phone's internet capabilities died in the late afternoon, as if a black cloud of non-connectivity had settled over the entire house, and I was completely lost and unable to find anything to amuse myself with, so I watched the Food Network and attempted to reboot the router once every 3.218 minutes, just in case that suddenly did anything.

Finally I managed to find an actual network cable in our basement and plugged it in and voila! Internet! Provided I didn't move more than two-and-a-half feet away from the router, which is...not near any chairs. I pulled up a chair and sat down and prepared to make up for all the lost hours ("BLOG BLOG BLOG JEZEBEL GOOGLE NEWS FARK BLOG ADDICTIVE FLASH GAME BLOG") but found myself just staring at a blank Typepad page in bafflement. I couldn't write anything. I was stuck. That damn network cable was strangling the flow of ideas and this chair was uncomfortable and not my normal blogging couch and anyway, that's why I never got around to writing a follow-up to Friday's entry and all the awesome comments and responses, because all I could finally think to write was a tantrum about not having Internet, and I felt you deserved more than that.

The Internet mysteriously started working again 30 seconds before Jason got home and has been fine ever since, which: obviously, because how else could you be reading THIS tantrum about now having Internet, i.e. exactly what I just said I could have written yesterday but didn't but MY POINT IS, I'm really not getting much sleep lately.

So I don't really feel like I'm at my sharpest or wittiest these days, and I've been struggling to come up with a response to Melissa's comment:

But also, this really scares me. I'm a lawyer, fiance is a lawyer, we both work long hours, and no way we can work these hours once we decide to have kids. It's clear I'll be the one to cut back the most (although he'll frankly have to as well, because seriously, we were both up until 4am working last night). Anyway, your comments about staying home and its effect on your opinion of yourself scare me. Your comments about feeling like you're always working to meet deadlines but yet you feel like a drain on the finances scare me. Comments about it not occurring to him to put the kid to bed or brush the babies teeth scare me. And the 345 comments agreeing with you scare me. I don't want to resent myself. Or my husband. I don't want to feel like I can't go to as many happy hours as him b/c what I do isn't as important. But I look at you and everyone else and it seems like it's simply inevitable? Scary.

Dude, I know, right? It IS scary. It scared the ever-loving shit out of me three, four, five years ago. It scared the shit out of me Thursday night, while I sat at Chipotle alone, both relishing the damn LUXURY of sitting alone while also feeling a tad terrified at my aloneness -- what if Jason and I ever had a really big fight? What if there was ever a fight where I wasn't sure of an inevitable resolution and calm apology from both sides? What if he cheated? What if he left me? What would I do? I mean, screw the heartbreak and all that shit, what would I do? How would I pay bills, rent, car payments?

(I would like to remind everyone that I got myself into this state all because he DIDN'T BRING HOME A BURRITO LIKE I WANTED. Menfolk, please take note of Exhibit A of the Female Mind and FEED US ACCORDINGLY.)

I'm just gonna take a deep breath and toss this out there now: our marriage almost ended once. Years and years ago, long before Noah. We got through it, obviously, but...it was bad. Awful. We never talk about it and yet I know neither of us will forget it, and we both blame ourselves for letting things get to that point. We got married young. We grew up and apart. We settled into a day-to-day roommate rut before we were out of our mid-20s. We were always working late, he was always in meetings and too busy to talk, then we got home and watched TV and went to bed and then woke up the next day to jockey silently for the shower and he'd go back to work and meetings and I would go back to work where a married guy friend lavished me with email and IM attention all day and we would go out for lunch and listen to my stories and make me laugh and whatever, we were FRIENDS and he was MARRIED and SO NOT MY TYPE, ANYWAY. Then Jason would IM me during the day to remind me to pick up the dry-cleaning.

Sigh.

No, I didn't cheat on Jason or have any type of physical affair, thank GOD, but the betrayal was still there. I didn't really want the other man who was sending me text messages on my phone, but...I liked the text messages. I liked feeling like I was interesting and new and someone you looked forward to seeing in the evenings, regardless of whether or not I remembered to bring home the dry-cleaning. Those are all hard requests to articulate -- sort of like Emily's story about her husband bringing home flowers after she asked for flowers but that's not really the point because...uh...I want you to want to bring me flowers. Or something like that.  It felt easier at the time to just disengage from my marriage than to save it.

When the situation finally became officially Ugly and Ultimatum-Like, Jason looked me in the eyes and grabbed my hands and told me that I was worth fighting for.

And I was shocked, because never in my life have I felt like such a bad, worthless person.

And all that happened when we didn't have children, when I worked and showered everyday and got promotions and bonuses and plenty of sleep.

I guess I'm telling this story just to say...it's ALWAYS SCARY. None of us want our relationships to fall apart or be anything different than they are on the glowy day of the proposal or wedding or when you first collapse on a mattress on the floor of your first home, surrounded by paint cans and champagne glasses and dreams of coming home to candlelit dinners and one day gently laying your newborn in a crib in the spare bedroom.

Jason and I talked a lot about what happened on Thursday. I plagiarized y'all copiously -- I hope you don't mind -- using Kara's stomach flu analogy to explain my rocky relationship with food and Starbuck's assurance that we are simply in the most financially draining time of our life, no way around it, but it's not forever. I connected the dots between his 3 pm "oh I'm going to happy hour, won't be late" email with the fact that a girl's night out for me gets planned a month in advance if at all, and that his recent suggestion that we just go "a couple months" without a second car after the lease is up was just salt in my already-isolated, never-leave-the-house, its-not-like-YOU-have-anywhere-to-be wound. It was a good talk, one that we needed to have, all very calm and therapeutic and we baked a batch of chocolate-chip cookies while we talked. 

At some point, however, the self-mockery many of you gently chastised me for on Friday reared its ugly head and I jokingly said something like, "I promise I won't ALWAYS be this much of a drain!"

This made him put down the spatula and step away from the stove in shock. He looked me in the eyes and grabbed my hands and told me I wasn't a drain, he has never thought that, not once.

So yes,it's scary. You put your faith in the other person to not cheat on you or hurt you. You let them make the mortgage payments while you pursue a law degree or a writing career or stay home and raise the children. You trust them to celebrate your successes and to always be on your side and to never hurt your feelings in public. To forgive you when you mess up. To put up with you even when you're driving each other ABSOLUTELY CRAZY ABOUT <UNRELATED TOPIC>. And to remember that you are worth it, worth talking to, worth fighting for.

And likewise, you promise to remember that they're worth it all too, and to take a deep breath sometimes and just let yourself get a little speechless over the loveliness of your imperfect, frustrating, wouldn't-change-it-for-a-billion-dollars life.

Night of the Meatloaf

Last night, I sat alone in a corner booth of a fast-food burrito joint, with black mascara streaks all over my face.

It was awesome, as you can probably imagine.

Jason sent me an email in the afternoon to tell me there was a work happy hour he had to go to, but he wouldn't be too late.

I sent him an email reminding him that, in typical end-of-the-week fashion, we had no food in the house, so could he pick something up before he came home? Burritos from Chipotle would be good, I suggested.

Mmmm, Chipotle, I thought, after hitting send. Chipotle would be very, VERY good.

And so I waited. I fed Noah his dinner, lamented the lack of ANYTHING ELSE EDIBLE in the house, at least anything edible that wouldn't 1) turn my stomach or 2) spoil my appetite for the sure-to-be delicious burrito that would arrive any second now, and then I spent an hour engaged in a completely pointless and circular argument with Noah about exactly what potty-related business was worthy of an M&M, and no, you don't get one for just sitting there, and stared at the clock.

7 pm.

7:30.

God, I was hungry.

At 8 pm Jason came home. That would be...late, in my mind. I struggled to hoist myself off the bathroom floor and almost blacked out. My blood sugar was crashing through the floor but thank God there was something to eat in this damn place now.

When I got downstairs, Jason was putting groceries away. He'd gone grocery shopping. There was no Chipotle. I asked him what he'd gotten for dinner and he gestured towards the packages of raw meat on the counter. Raw meat that would all need to be cooked.

And never mind the fact that I am eating almost exclusively vegetarian these days, because meat -- the look, texture, taste of all of it, including fish and poultry -- makes my still-delicate stomach flip-flop. I will eat it, usually when we go to some food event that Jason signs us up for, but these nights invariably end with me dry-heaving in a restaurant bathroom. If I am not expressly in the mood for it, I might as well be choking down grubs on Survivor.

Last night, something about the sight of all that raw meat just made me lose. My. Mind.

"IT'S EIGHT O'CLOCK!" I railed. "EIGHT! AND NOW I'M SUPPOSED TO COOK? I TOLD YOU TO BRING SOMETHING HOME! YOU TOLD ME YOU WOULDN'T BE LATE! I'M ABOUT TO PASS OUT AND YOU BRING HOME MEATLOAF MIX? THAT TAKES OVER AN HOUR!"

I stormed around the kitchen, coursing with hunger and hormones. Jason shrugged and told me to uh, get over it, he didn't pick up Chipotle, too fucking bad. Here, have some pita chips, or some cheese. I reminded him that dairy has also been particularly unkind to my digestive tract as well. As for the pita chips, well...I just didn't want any damn pita chips.

"What is your PROBLEM today?" he asked, referring to an email I'd sent him earlier about something completely unrelated, in which I declared that he was Officially Driving Me Crazy About <Unrelated Topic>, Oh My God.

It was your typical male-female fight. He saw the literal issue at hand, which was not a big deal. He went to the grocery store, so just pick something else and eat it.

I saw hours-long abandonment and a refusal to listen to me or take my pregnant needs seriously, even if to him they sound trivial. No matter how many times I've told him about the meat thing and the food cravings thing and the food aversions thing, I still get the sense that he thinks I'm just trying to be difficult. And gee, you know what? I'd like to go to happy hour with adults some time too! But I don't! Because that would inconvenience YOUUUUU and make you leave work early and WE ALL KNOW how much more important YOUR JOB is and I paced and stewed and composed eloquent tirades in my head about why this is about SO MUCH MORE than burritos and going grocery shopping when it's already late and not calling to find out if there was something I needed or wanted at the store and I never ask him for more than a glass of water while he's already up...but instead of saying any of these things I grabbed my car keys and diaper bag and told him I needed to get out of the house for a little bit, just like every hysterical pregnant lady in every movie who grabs her purse and announces she's going home to her mother.

What can I say? I was really, REALLY hungry.

I got in the car and started driving. Within a few minutes I was crying, even though I didn't know why. Well, I did. Narrowing it down to a single reason was what I couldn't do.

I have no idea if this is true for other stay-at-home-moms or women who altered their careers after having children, but even the most innocuous, run-of-the-mill argument can sometimes really drive home the power disparity of our household, and how financially dependent I am on Jason, how the majority of my contributions don't get assigned an hourly rate, and how this has changed our relationship and my opinion of myself in ways I didn't expect.

Money is tight right now. Not "we can't pay the electric bill" tight, but tight. I don't think I can afford to go to Blogher (AGAIN), our savings have never been lower and the list of unavoidable boring expenses looms large in the distance. The deck needs refinishing, the screen door is busted, the car lease is up and preschool deposits are due. A couple months of not watching out for every dollar or properly spacing big expenditures stupidly got us here in the first place; a lack of advertising checks and a huge tax payment have made it hard to climb out of the hole. We'll be fine, of course, but it's uncomfortable. There will be no vacations or anniversary plans or push presents or spoiling of the new baby. Next year looks like it will better. But as for right now, it's not a financial situation either of us enjoy or are really used to.

And it's during times like this that I am painfully aware of how little I contribute to our overall budget, despite feeling tied to the computer for hours a day, deadlines day after day after day, with no sick days or vacation time or retirement account, all so I can watch Noah grow up over the ridge of my laptop screen. But then I did insist on a bi-monthly housecleaning service, which is both an incredible help and an incredible guilt-raiser, especially when one of the cleaners mentioned that she went into labor with her last child while vacuuming a client's house.

Oh, the angst of the modern woman, balance, having it all, the topics of a million self-help books and feminist arguments -- all too much to ponder during a single car ride to the Chipotle down the street.

I knew I was being ridiculous, that I was letting myself blow something small out of proportion just to cover for the zillion other tiny anxieties currently keeping me up at night, along with my pregnant bladder. I felt stupid, so I turned my head away from the other cars at stoplights, just in case anyone was able to see me and my blubbering.

I pulled into one of those expectant mother parking spaces and took a deep breath. See? How nice! This is just what I needed. A guy on a cell phone held the door for me and I ordered my vegetarian burrito with hot salsa and sat down to a leisurely meal.

There was no high chair to juggle, no one demanding bits of my tortilla. The burrito tasted every bit as delicious as I'd hoped, and I sat there for awhile after I finished it, picking stray bits of rice off the foil wrapper and wondering what I could possibly say to Jason when I got back home. Do I just admit that I was acting crazy? Do I just blame pregnancy and be done with it? Do I try to maybe mention that I could use a little bit of extra sensitivity right now? Do I really feel like a night of talking about my pregnant little feeeeeeeelings and that just because everything is magnified times a zillion it doesn't mean I shouldn't ever get taken seriously, even if it really is just a request for a vegetarian burrito that gets answered with prepackaged meatloaf mix?

I thought about killing more time by wandering the aisles of CVS, but decided the evening didn't need to get any more melodramatic or Britney-esque. I got back in the car and that's when realized I'd neglected to check my makeup before and that's probably why I got some weird looks in the restaurant.

I got home around 9:30. I walked in and immediately saw Noah in the living room, wide awake and still dressed. He was watching Cars.

I felt my brain slowly make the switch to FLIP YOUR SHIT again (what, am I REALLY the only one who pays attention to bedtime? must I ALWAYS be the non-fun parent? does no one else here REALIZE what it's like to be trapped all day with a off-his-schedule toddler who is NOT gonna just sleep in tomorrow morning to make up for the lack of sleep?) but NO, I was not to let this night get the better of me again. I wordlessly walked upstairs and filled the bathtub.

I climbed in, along with a three-year-old bath ballistic from LUSH (ever wondered if those things expire? yes. they do, and sigh.) and laid there for awhile in the disappointingly tepid water. (Add hot water heater repairs to the list, and sigh.) I surveyed my fat belly and stretch marks -- I'm getting new ones already, ugly purple ones across my stomach and down my thighs, nothing like the spiderweb of thin white ones  -- that I didn't even get until 38 weeks -- from last time. After 10 minutes I drained the water because I didn't want to look at myself anymore.

Around 10 o'clock I heard Jason put Noah to bed. GAH GAH GAH, my head chanted, as I resisted the urge to remind him to brush our child's teeth. I turned on the TV in our bedroom to watch Lost.

Jason finally came in and asked if I was feeling better. I wasn't, but I shrugged and said I guessed so. I was too exhausted to explain any of it. He wouldn't understand. Hell, I barely understood.

He sat down on the bed and gingerly rubbed my leg and told me to get some sleep. I blurted out that I missed Julie, my friend who moved to California back in February, and started to cry. I could tell he was valiantly and desperately trying to find any connection between this and the thing about burritos. He told me to get some sleep again and retreated downstairs.

I tried to sleep, but the burrito gave me terrible heartburn.

***
It's 2 pm right now. Noah went down early for a nap, and I'm unshowered and still in my pajamas. It has just  occurred to me that I forgot to eat lunch. Minutes ago, Jason came home early.

He brought me flowers and chocolate ice cream.

The Cider Fridge Rules

Camera status: saved! A dry micro-shammy thing that was probably purchased off an infomercial many moons ago, back when I used to stumble home from bars and watch infomercials 'til morning -- damn, what a wild, crazy diamond I was back then -- lifted the crayon off the screen in about two minutes flat. The viewfinder was a tad more difficult, since Noah managed to really mash the crayon in there, but with a little help from a revolutionary new product (order now and get DOUBLE YOUR ORDER!) called a Q-tip, I was able to clean that up as well.

I possibly should have tried this, or you know, ANYTHING AT ALL before turning to the Internet, but...well, problem-solving is not my forte. I am not an Everyday Household Products As Practical Solutions Viking. I prefer to 1) panic, and 2) leave the problem for someone else to solve, lest I grab the Goof Off and allow it to leak into some tiny yet highly-sensitive electronic crevice and have the whole camera blow up in my hands like the Death Star, faster than you can bullseye a womprat.

Case in point: the rising levels of apple cider in our basement.

OK, so let me back up and explain that Jason and I operate our household firmly on a "smelt it/dealt it" system. You use the last of something, be it toilet paper or soap or whatever = you replace or refill it, right then and there. You toss a paper towel into the trash and it slides off the towering mound of garbage that's a good three inches past the brim of the can = put your shoes on; it's your turn to take it outside.

It's a fair system, but easily manipulated. Mostly by me. I will happily wander off to toss my paper towels into the powder room wastebasket for days on end if I suspect the kitchen trash is getting especially full and/or smelly. I will never admit that I actually don't understand how the under-the-sink soap-dispenser works and will wash my hands with dish detergent instead, I will then dry my hands on the ass of my jeans rather than retrieve a fresh hand towel from the dryer, and when confronted with a leaking gallon of apple cider in the basement refrigerator door I will just straight up ignore that shit until someone else figures out how to sponge up the three inches' worth of apple cider that has pooled into the shelf because seriously, that seems like it's going to take a LOT of paper towels.

OK, so let me back up some more. I did not buy the apple cider. I did not put the apple cider in the door of the basement refrigerator. I don't know why we had a gallon of apple cider in the door of the basement refrigerator and why it had sat there unused for six solid months. Thus, I ignored it. Jason likes to buy odd ingredients for recipes he finds online that he will never actually cook, but I am usually forbidden from finding an alternative use for them because NOOOO I WAS GONNA MAKE THAT TOMORROW I MEAN IT THIS TIME I SWEAR, even though I know he'll come home tomorrow and order a pizza instead.

(10 years of marriage this August, folks. We really should hit the how-to self-help circuit, since I'm sure we could be a real inspiration to dozens.)

Sooooo, our fridge tends to be littered with stray stalks of lemongrass and four distinct kinds of kale and smelly cheeses and the last time I looked closely in the freezer I spotted something that still seemed to have its head and neck and possibly an eyeball. Thus, I IGNORE THINGS. YOU CANNOT BLAME ME TOO MUCH.

And I ignored the cider at first. And then one day, about two months ago, when I opened the door to retrieve some bottled water, I realized that it was leaking. The rogue liquid was contained by a mercifully solid plastic shelf, but it was enough to pose a bit of a logistical problem, at least to me. Should I bail the shelf out, like with a cup? Would I need some sort of bucket? And what happened if I picked up the actual container of cider, only to discover that the shelf itself was stemming a total gush of the contents and it went everywhere? I have a lot of important piles of dirty laundry in that immediate area!

So I came up with my stop-gap solution: close the fridge door and go back upstairs, and then hope that Jason needed a bottle of water soon.

But then a problem arose -- Jason made trips to the basement fridge and said nothing about the cider, and the cider problem remained solidly un-taken-care-of. So I assumed we'd moved on to Phase Two of Operation Smelt It/Dealt It, which is a two-way battle of wills to see who can ignore a problem the longest. I tend to win these battles, especially when they are about clutter or dog poop or general squalor.

(I tend to lose the battles that involve insects inside the house and anything that requires the use of a power tool, because those are things JASON IS SUPPOSED TO DO FOR ME, AM GIRL, and he gets a tremendous kick out of watching me slowly wig out, yellow-wallpaper style, over a crooked curtain rod or OMFG THAT SPIDER OVER THERE DO SOMETHING DOOOOOO SOMETHING.)

(10 years! I believe the traditional gift is tin!)

Ahem. So. Cider. Rising. Leaking. Three inches of liquid slowly turned to four, and then last weekend I opened the door and a small amount of cider splashed up and over the side of the shelf and dripped on the floor, narrowly missing my pile of sweaters that have been waiting for the Dryel bag since...hmm...some of them are kind of cropped so I'm gonna have to guess mid-2004-ish.

I went upstairs and announced to Jason that I was Crying Uncle, it was time to break down and do something about the cider.

"What cider?" he asked.

I stared at him. "Please. You are not saying that you simply have not NOTICED the rising levels of apple cider in the refrigerator door? That has been there for TWO MONTHS?"

He stared back. "So...you're saying that there has been some kind of leaking liquid in our fridge for two months, and you've...just...IGNORED it?"

"I...uh...I thought you were ignoring it too. Isn't that the rule?"

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? WHAT RULE? JESUS CHRIST." And then he stormed down the basement steps while I stammered excuses about not knowing what to do and I figured he would because he's the engineer and I didn't know what towels to use because what if I used his good shop towels and the shelf/pressure/dam theory I had and I kind of thought maybe I could vacuum it up but that's probably not good for the vacuum, right? Right? Baby? You love me, baby, right?

Jason opened the refrigerator and looked at the cider. He gently picked up the half-empty container and swiftly placed it in the utility sink. Which is about two feet away from the refrigerator.

"OH!" I said.

And then he gently detached the entire shelf from the door and dumped the contents down the drain.

"OHHH!" I said again.

He rinsed the shelf out and snapped it back into place. He stared at me for a few seconds while I pulled a Lucille Ball face and sensed the years of feminist progress washing down that utility sink drain, and then he kissed me very sweetly and went back upstairs without another word.

The scene of my dark shame. Somebody should really carry that out to the recycle bin, don't you think?

A Story That I Will Never Ever Tell Anyone, Except Perhaps the Entire Internet

I just left a comment on a friend's blog -- seriously, like five minutes ago -- and the comment involved one of Those Stories. Those Stories are the stories that are too embarrassing to tell on my own blog. Obviously, I don't have many of Those Stories, because I don't have much shame. It's been well-established that I am a thumping idiot who regularly assaults the very idea of human dignity, so why hold back further evidence to the blog's thesis? That's just not how I do things around here. I am way scientific.

Occasionally I meet people and realize that wow, it IS kind of awkward when I'm all, "So what's your dog's name?" and they're all, "I remember the time your dog jumped into your toilet! That was hilarious!" But I usually get over that, and chances are even if you DON'T read my blog you've heard the toilet dog story, because I like to tell that one at fancy dinner parties.

But! Anyway! My point is, at one time in my life I had standards and would not stoop to completely humiliating myself just for the sake of a blog entry, and 1) that time is past, having ended sometime around the whole "pooping on the delivery table", and 2) I had a really, really boring weekend.

So. Flashback! I'm about 30-odd weeks pregnant with Noah. I am sitting innocently in my office, tapping away on my computer for totally-for-sure work-related reasons, when a coworker stops by to chat. She says something funny. Not like, HAW HAW HAW stop-I-can't-breathe funny, but funny.

And I laugh.

And I pee my pants.

And I don't mean a little achoo! related leakage. I mean the absolute worst-case scenario of breathtaking incontinence. It's soaking my clothes and my chair and I can feel it running down my legs and pantyhose and oh my God, it's making a SOUND as it's dripping onto the plastic mat under my desk.

So I did the only thing I could think to do, given the circumstances. I kept talking to my friend as if nothing had happened at all. Only LOUDER, just to drown out the suspicious drippy noises.

About 10 minutes later she left and I dove at the door and slammed it shut, and then spun around to confront the horror. What to do what to do what to do?

SO YOU'VE GONE AND PEED YOURSELF AT WORK:

1) Crank up the air-conditioning unit, sit on it.

2) Attempt to formulate plan.

3) Survey contents of office in terms of absorbency. Tissues? Useless. Secret stash of horded restaurant napkins? Yes! 300 back issues of various financial newsletters? MacGuyver says HELL YES.

4) Paper the damn floor like you're preparing for the damn PuppyBowl.

5) When ass is sufficiently chilled and dry-ish from sitting on the air conditioner, strip off pantyhose, shove in purse, and poke head out of office and make a mad dash for the office kitchen.

     5a) If kitchen is occupied, sit down in nearest chair and pretend to contemplate nearest Chinese takeout menu with GREAT INTEREST.

     5b) If kitchen is vacant, make a beeline for the storage cabinet and grab several rolls of paper towels.

6) Dash back to office. Weep, for yes, this is what your life has come to.

7) Re-paper the floor and create an ample paper-towel cushion for chair.

8) Oh, you have to pee again? OF COURSE YOU DO. Maybe someone will give you an M&M if you make it to the potty like a big girl this time!

9) The next day, smuggle in sponge, scrub brush, antibacterial spray, Woolite and bottle of Febreze to work in your purse.

10) Stash extra paper towels in bottom desk drawer for remainder of pregnancy.

Whew. That felt good to finally confess. I feel like I really helped some people today. Good work. And I'm one step closer to that lucrative banner campaign from Depends.

However, to any of my former coworkers: Uh, no! That's totally not my chair you're using now. I...uh, heard they got rid of it. Yes. They sent it upstate to live on a farm. With the other chairs and the puppies.