Just a personal update on things around here. I’m a few days shy of my due date. Don’t usually make it this far. I’ve been in early labor/false labor/stop-and-start labor/end stages emotional purgatory since Friday or Saturday, and have no idea what to expect for the next hour or week. Yay!
This is the first day of a week of school vacation, so it would be great to give birth ASAP, while our schedule is as simple as it gets. The kids are keeping themselves busy, mostly with this kind of thing:
On the plus side, with some judicious marketing and the phrase “for only 76 cents, less than the price of a cup of coffee per day …” this image and a toll free number could turn our fortunes around forever.
It’s too cold to even consider playing outside in the rib-deep mounds of snow in the yard, but we may possibly try this frozen soap bubble thing I’ve had my eye on for a couple of years. If I’m still here with no baby by Wednesday, we may go so far as to try this hideously messy and doomed craft involving glass, glue, and food coloring.
What else? We have a name picked out, the kids are excited, no one has strep throat or pinkeye or measles or fleas, I filed my final freelance work, I went to confession, we got a new car seat (THAT ADJUSTS IN FRONT, WITHOUT THE NEED TO DISASSEMBLE THE WHOLE FRICKIN THING EVERY TIME THE BABY GAINS A POUND) and a new hamster (look, sometimes you just have to cross stuff off the list and not worry about why).
BENNY FEELS THAT THE HAMSTER IS CUTE.
Oh, and a new fleece-lined car seat cover! These things are wonderful. You dress the baby in normal clothes, strap her in, and then stretch this cover over the whole thing. The car seat straps are nice and snug, but baby is nice and warm, without even the need to find a blanket. As a bonus, taking the cover off when you get home is just as satisfying as opening up a baked potato, when you get whooshed in the nose with that delicious hot whiff of . . . well, baby potato.
And I sorted the boots and the mittens, and I put away all the jackets that we won’t be using in the next month or so, because every child I own owns at least fourteen jackets, and they were all always on the floor, and we have a dog who spends most of his life looking for a nest in which to park his hairy butt, so instead of a dining room, we had a hairy dog nest food trap muddy jacket and important papers pit to slosh through.
And I ordered the birthday presents for the (so far) only March birthday we have. And here is the view from my bedroom window right now:
And, my husband. His whole mission, these last months and more, has been to make sure that, when I do have the baby, I will be as calm and rested as possible. At a time when he has been going through a long, drawn-out struggle at work (think “Better make sure the ACLU has my back on this one”) and ridiculous trials with ice dams and the trapped water’s constant search for new ceilings through which to leak (think “Someone talk me out of buying a chainsaw to take up on the roof with me, because this tub of calcium chloride tablets and these pantyhose full of salt and this hammer aren’t doing the trick anymore”), he has been . . . a rock. An anchor. A tireless worker, a tireless comforter. He follows me around picking up my messes (household, financial, and emotional), charging my phone and my camera, gathering up the cups of water I strew around the house, doing all the getting up and driving so I can lounge away the morning, making dinner when he’s home, shopping when I buy a few things and then crap out, staying up until the teenagers come home, calling around to locate the kids that I flaked out about and left stranded, doing all the laundry (DOING ALL THE LAUNDRY), taking my boots off for me, making the bed and putting me in it.Not making me feel bad for any of it. Making me feel like I’m doing a good job just by being here. And these are just the things I’m aware of in my foggy, self-absorbed state.
So, I love him. When we were first dating, my mother remarked that he always looks like he’s inclining toward me to protect me, but that it was sort of a visual trick, because he is so much taller than I am. It’s true that he’s almost a foot taller, but that’s not why he looks like he’s sheltering me.
college graduation, 1997. Didn’t yet know how much reason I had to smile. (photo by Ileana Garcia-Spitz)
Well, that’s what we’re up to! And how are you?
