Holy moly

13 days between posts. That’s got to change. But … it’s a function of relatively little happening. Critter is growing. Ms is growing. Critter is making Ms’ belly do incredibly creepy things. But it’s mostly about waiting right now.

What dreams may come

So this is weird. Last night I had a dream. A protection dream. That’s … well, ok it is actually unusual, but it’s less unusual than it used to be. Evolution ftw or something. Anyway, in the dream, Ms and I were at the mall. She was looking at shoes, I was looking at ties. A man—a creepy, pale, balding man—walked up to me, placed his hand gently on my forearm, and told me he had herpes. So I freaked out. I swatted at him and started yelling, “Oh my GOD, are you KIDDING ME?! Now I have to go tell my pregnant wife that I’ve been exposed to herpes!” And then I woke up. Strange anxiety. Very...

In reference to the immediately preceding post...

Dreams

During my two brief snippets of sleep last night (I call them “practice”), I had two dreams: 1. A friend came to visit unexpectedly and, as it turned out, our back fence had mysteriously disappeared. Also, we had a third person living in the house. Aha!, you say, but no: the third person living in the house was a friendly 25-year-old woman who had essentially broken into my previous house and befriended my neighbor and hadn’t left since. 2. Ms and I stopped off to visit a friend at an enormous Ikea built on top of a major international airport terminal on a Swedish island “on the way to England.” Our friend was the general manager, and he would torment his employees by taking two bags of ice (?) to the register, asking them to bring three more, and turn deciding to buy only four. I think the symbolism in both is “OH GODS PLEASE LET ME...

Unexpected Pain

This isn’t about the physical pain. Not directly anyway. It’s hard to watch Ms wince and squirm with Critter’s every kick and punch, sure. I wish I could take that away, or some part of it. Share in the experience. Lift the burden. Anything, really.  But I can’t.  It’s a recurring theme, isn’t it? Gestation is exciting! We’re having a baby! It’s magical! But at this point … it’s really not. I’m not growing unexpectedly (much to Ms’ dismay, I appear to be shrinking a bit, which is both good and overdue). I’m not suffering mystifying pains and tweaks and cramps. I’m not dependent on a bizarrely (and hilariously) shaped pillow just to get a little bit of comfort at night. I don’t have something punching me in the bladder. I’m not confronted at every turn by conflicting pregnancy advice. Nobody is finding slots in my calendar to schedule a shower (and, please, don’t).  I mean, I’m not doing nothing. I’m working like I always do, maybe a bit more lately. I clean up animal crap. I try in my limited and unskilled way to do as much as I can around the house. I nuke heating pads. I prepare snacks and try to cook dinner, even if it’s just shells and cheese.  I’m not patting myself on the back here, but I think I’m doing more or less what I’m supposed to be doing.  But here I am wide awake at 1:30 in the morning in a state of something like shock because … I don’t even know how to say it.  A few days ago, we were at the doctor getting an ultrasound. Critter was there, actually looking a bit human (a positive development!). Ms and I had driven separately, because we’d each come from work. After the appointment, she headed back to the office. I headed to a gas station to fill up, and then headed in the same direction she’d gone. I hopped on the Interstate and immediately was caught in horrible, bumper to bumper traffic. Checked the map, and there was an accident several exits ahead.  I texted Ms (don’t worry, I was sitting still): “Fucking traffic.” Ms didn’t respond. And didn’t respond.  I was suddenly overwhelmed with this horrible, clenching fear that she’d been in the accident. I pulled up a traffic camera (still not moving), and right at the accident was a small patch of pixels in the shape of a car the same color as Ms’ car.  It wasn’t. She called me a minute later to let me know she’d gotten off the Interstate and was headed home because of the traffic. I’d never been so relieved to hear my wife’s irritated voice.  That’s where I am right now. My life is almost mundane. It’s busy. I’m doing all the stuff I’m supposed to be doing, but there’s nothing particularly extraordinary about it. And Ms … she’s doing all the things she’s supposed to be doing, a few more things she wants to be doing, and ohbytheway growing a baby, with all the stress and pain that involves.  And I’m on conference calls.  Intellectually I know that’s ok. I’m not the one with the plumbing to grow a baby. There’s no physical way for me to share the hardest part of this process. She’s built for it. Her body is the end result of billions of years of evolution to create this bizarre, inconvenient way of making more of us.  But...

This is the first of many

Tonight the dog ate a roll of tape. Or maybe she didn’t. I mean, she chewed it up, but we have no way of knowing what parts of it are insider her and which aren’t.  Including the metal death saw that actually cuts the tape. Yeah, we didn’t find that bit. So it might be in the dog. We wait, check the dog’s poop for blood, and hope she didn’t actually eat it. How on earth am I supposed to keep a baby alive?  I mean, granted, newborns don’t tend to chew up rolls of tape, right? They don’t have teeth, for goodness sake. But eventually he’ll be mobile. Eventually he’ll have teeth. Eventually he’ll put everything in his mouth, and put his fingers in and on anything he can’t put in his mouth. Cat poop. Rolls of tape. Electrical outlets.  I’m going to kill the baby.  Statistically speaking, we should be ok. Most babies aren’t destroyed by this or that knick knack of modernity. One deep breath and I can remind myself that, yes, we’ll be fine. We don’t have to put the baby in a kevlar bubble until he’s 25. He’ll be fine.  But there’s that moment. It’s like an ice pick right in whatever part of your brain gives you confidence. Oh god, we don’t have any ice picks do...