Clean-up on Aisle Six

A disturbing thing happened last Sunday morning and it has taken until now for me to be able to write about it. I went to Home Depot. I hate this store. I hate this store like Tara Reid hates sobriety. If becoming a family man means frequent trips to Home Depot, the world will become a much darker place.

Sunday morning, 7am. My alarm goes off so I can get out early and beat the crowds.
Sunday morning, 8:30am. I get out of bed. Damn you, snooze button!

I will not bring my little Elizabeth into this world filled with weed-strewn walkways, rusty gate hinges and mulch-less flower beds. So off to the Depot I go.

Home Depot immediately gets off on the wrong foot as I begin pushing my cart and realize the back right wheel is stuck. As I wander the isles, hopelessly looking for my items, my carriage is letting out this horrific squealing noise, similar to the noise I made when Kathy Bates stepped out of the that hot tub naked.

There is no rhyme or reason, as far as I can tell, to the layout of this store. Robert Langdon himself would get lost looking for “liquid nails”, which I wrongly assumed would be in the nail isle, but instead are curiously positioned in the paint department.
And don’t look to the employees for guidance:

“Can you tell me if you have any more of these shower heads?”
“I’m not sure. I’d have to get the ladder and check those boxes up on that shelf.”

(I stand there waiting for this action to occur and he stands there looking at me like, “I gave you my answer. What more do you want?”.) So I say thanks and walk away. Tracy does not get her new shower head.

One thing I am fond of is the self checkout. However, I have three large bags of mulch so I ask the girl sitting close by if I am able to scan these large bags myself. She doesn’t answer me but instead rolls her eyes, gets out of her seat and waddles over to my register to activate some supplementary scanning feature. I was within mere seconds of insulting her by commenting on her laziness and more than ample ass, but instead I choose to just laugh and say thank you.

In the end, as a sign of personal protest against this hideous store, after loading my stockpile into the truck of my car, I flipped the noisy wheel-impaired carriage on its side and, just for good measure, gave it a swift kick. That’ll show em. Hopefully Elizabeth doesn’t receive too many “some assembly required” gifts.

**It is our last vacation for a while this weekend. A visit to see family and some friends. We have scheduled visits with Spike, Go-Go, Dinky & Zippy. And although that sounds like we are going to Fraggle Rock, they are actually real people all living in the New England area. Happy Memorial Day.

A Tale of Two Bellies

I'm embarrassed to show mine :-)

Tra's Anatomy

There are 206 bones in the adult human body. There are 5402 things that can go wrong during a pregnancy. Lots of little things like nosebleeds and varicose veins and lots of not so petty things that we thankfully have not encountered thus far. After the initial war against morning sickness, we have had relatively smooth sailing (knock wood).

The regular visits to our baby doctor have become predictable. Strong heartbeat; ask any questions; see you in a few weeks. Piece of cake.

As previously noted, the amnio came back with banner results. Our follow up with the amnio doctor this week was a mixed bag. Mostly positive information sprinkled with a couple minor seeds of concern. If an ice cream cone represented all that was good, some random jimmies scattered on top of the butter pecan was the bad. We were able to see D’Brickashaw via another ultrasound. The baby’s vitals are all strong and we found out he/she now weighs 15 ounces. We were treated to some great shots of the head, hands and heart, and were able to see him/her moving its mouth. It looked like he was either chewing or singing karaoke.

But when you are told something isn’t exactly as it should be, even the slightest imperfection can send a parent into a whirlpool of worry. First, the nurse told us the baby is in a breech position. She said we should not be concerned and of course, I was. I thought a breech birth meant the baby comes out feet first. And once, while on a whale watch, I saw a double breech, which entailed two whales simultaneously vaulting out of the water. That is the extent of my knowledge of the word breech.

Later, the doctor told us the placenta is over the cervix. He said we should not be concerned and of course I was. I know Tom Cruise wanted to eat some of Katie Holmes’s placenta and I have no idea what a cervix is. That is the extent of my knowledge of those two words.

Once home, we had time to pull out our trusty parenting books and investigate these maladies. Turns out the doctor and nurse were correct. No worries. Babies usually turn themselves around into the proper, opposite of breech, position (I am sure there is a word for it), and the placenta usually knows to get out of the cervix’s way.

Anyone for a bowl of ice cream? Hold the jimmies.

Are we there yet?

I have noticed a drop in the frequency of posts lately. I can attribute this to two things. First, Tracy can stay up later now which has limited my free time in the evenings. More quality time with the wife means less time to wander my halls looking for ways to entertain myself, like tackling a 1000 piece photo-mosaic puzzle of Homer Simpson’s head. That is 32 hours of my life I will never get back.

Second, and probably more importantly, nothing much happens during the middle of a pregnancy. Everyday life becomes routine again. The shock and awe of the initial “we’re pregnant!” discovery has since subsided. The numbness in my head has waned as feeling slowly returns. The overwhelming suspicion that we are not prepared to care for a child has also eased to a certain extent. Meanwhile, the actual due date (September 25th) still seems far enough in the distance that there is no immediate rush to make hospital arrangements, sign up for Lamas class, paint the room, buy diapers, practice reading Fox on Sox, and so on. So you play the waiting game, as these middle weeks lumber forward with all the pace of a Lars von Trier movie.

Instinctively, most of your daily thoughts are consumed by baby planning. If you and your wife are not discussing baby issues, friends and relatives are asking questions or making comments. Although I have noticed that, while friends who already have kids show great interest in our daily goings-on; friends without kids have stopped talking to me almost altogether. A typical kidless friend conversation now goes like this :

Kidless friend – “Hey. How’s it going? How is Tracy feeling?”

Me – “Fine.”

Kidless friend – (after a brief pause while he/she thinks of some other baby question to ask but can’t think of one) “Great! Tell her I said hi.”

On an unrelated note, we did receive our first two pieces of baby furniture. A car seat, if you can call that furniture, from one couple (thank you Paula and Jamie!) and a changing table from my cousin, which looks curiously just like a regular dresser. I was told it is called a “changing table’ because it is flat and you can change the baby on it. As if a standard dresser is pointy on top like Snoopy’s doghouse. The good part about being one of the last people we know to have kids is that everybody already has everything and they seem willing to give it all away. If we could have only convinced one of them to give up one of their kids to us, it would have made things a heck of lot easier. But no such luck.

This week we have two doctor visits. One with our regular OBG Wan-Kenobi doctor and the second is a follow up with Needlebelly. Apparently we are having another Ultrasound and we have been encouraged to invite others along. It’ll be interesting viewing my child up on the monitor to a standing room only audience crammed in the doctor’s office. And so week 21 rolls on.

It's Halftime!

Pregnancy is not a sprint. It is a marathon. You need to pace yourself. A marathon is 26 miles. This weekend marks the halfway point of our pregnancy. In jogging terms, we still have 13 freakin miles to go.

But maybe I am looking at it the wrong way. If a doctor told me I only had 20 weeks to live, that would seem like an infinitesimally short amount of time. I’d barely have enough time to get my travel plans in order. On the other hand, if someone told me I’d be forced to watch Andrew McCarthy movie for the same duration, I’d sooner hang myself.

I guess we just have to be patient. Little D'Brickashaw will be here soon enough.

Surprise!

Late last night I had another horrifying thought. My fear of becoming a parent has been well documented. When I would see other people’s kids, while acknowledging that they are very cute, sweet, adorable and whatever other adjective properly describes children, it still didn’t fill me with any sense of urgency to become a father. But I took some solace in being repeatedly told by everyone that “it’s different when it is your own”.

And last night it occurred to me….what if everyone is wrong?? Everyone has been wrong before. Everyone told me the American Idol was a good show. Come to find out this is not true. Everyone told me I would like the book The DaVinci Code. And I did not. (I mean, it was ok but I can’t see why it would be on the best seller list for 700 weeks) So what if little Charlotte shows up and I am ambivalent towards her presence? I hate when thoughts like this seep in.

Anyway, speaking of Charlotte, we have elected not to find out the sex of the baby. This, to my surprise, has actually aroused anger from some people. One person went so far as to say, “Fine. Then I am not getting you anything for the baby shower”, as if this idle threat would scare me into changing my opinion. My cousin asked for our doctor’s number so she could find out for herself with the stipulation that she promised not to tell us. Um, no.

However, others do applaud this “old school” approach of waiting until it pops out. Where is the fun in knowing ahead of time? That is like seeing a long preview of a movie right before you watch it. Would you have wanted to know that Verbal Kint was actually Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects? I think not.

In the meantime, we are making a list of both male and female names. After watching this weekend’s NFL draft, I have come up with the name if it is a boy. (Although I haven’t cleared it with my wife yet)…. D’Brickashaw Medwid! What a great name. Unfortunately, my Italian grandmother may have a little trouble with that one. Instead of Derek, I think I was referred to as “Ricketts” for the first 10 years of my life. I can only imagine what D’Brickashaw will end up sounding like.

THIS JUST IN...

This evening I received the following phone call:

Caller: “Hello, may I speak to Tracy please?”

Me: “I am sorry. She isn’t home right now. She should be home any minute. Can I take a message?”

Caller: “This is Carol from Dr. Needlebelly’s office. I have the results from the amnio for her.”

Me: “Oh great. We have been looking forward to hearing from you. This is her husband. I will give her the information.”

Caller: “I am sorry. I am not allowed to give you that information. I don’t have the signed authorization to do so.”

Me: “Are you kidding me? You do realize that baby is half mine!”

Caller: “I am very sorry. Does she have a cell phone?”

Me: “Yes, but I don’t want you giving her bad news while she is on the road. I won’t tell anyone that you told me.”

Caller: “I really can’t.”

Me: “I tell you what. If you cough now, I am going to assume it’s bad news. Ok?…..…..You didn’t cough.”

Caller: “Let’s just say you have nothing to nothing to worry.”

Me: “Thank you! Her number is ***-****.”

And shortly after our conversation she called Tracy to inform her that everything is perfect!! I think I speak for both of us when I say, “Whew!”