10/17/06

Are we there yet?

Yesterday was my official due date. October the 15th. The day we've been told since week 26 we'd never ever make it to. No, we were told to hope for as many as 34 weeks, and if we were lucky we'd make it all the way to 36. No way in hell we'd go all 40 though, no siree. Nope, not with my sissy cervix. Any day now, they said. For the last month and a half.

So you might imagine we've become a bit impatient, however with no real reason to be. I'm now one day overdue. One. No, wait...at midnight tonight I'll be one day overdue. I'm a half day overdue. *sigh*

So if you have any folksy induction tips that do NOT include castor oil, red raspberry leaf, black cohosh, sex, gin, walking miles and miles, standing on ones head, jumping up and down, visualization, spicy food, more sex, or a hoolahoop (i.e. all the things we've tried or heard horror stories about and therefore will not try); please pass them along.

99.99999% happy

I'm always surprised by one, totally unexpected emotion during the significant events in life. Like when my ex-husband disappeared--literally up and dis-da-fucking-peared--and it became clear he was gone (you know, for good), I knew there'd be emptiness, depression, fear, the 'I'm unattractive and unlovable' combo, the certainty I'd never find love again. But who knew I'd feel so embarrassed. I was unable to look my friends, my family, the grocery store clerk in the eye because of a crushing sense of something not unlike shame. I felt as if I was wearing a big, scarlet letter A (for abandoned) on my forehead. Losing someone I loved enough to marry was brutal and hard, but the embarrassment was crippling. I'm still a little ashamed to this day. You'd think I was Catholic.

This significant event around, the pregnancy I mean, the unexpected emotion is loneliness. I guessed I'd experience emotions that are indescribable to anyone who has not had a person grow inside of them, and I have. I never knew I could love someone so much, on a hunch really...that and a few shared genes and corporeal space. The whole process is indescribably awesome, mind-blowing, life-altering, holy in the truest sense, but, come to find, also cruelly, brutally lonely.

There's the part where unless you already have babies and all your friends have babies, people fuck off like you've got the plague. Couple that with the physical inability to keep up your old lifestyle (particularly if cigarettes and booze and bending over a pool table featured prominently), and your new, freaky primordial urge to focus your attention on things that matter, are 'capital i' important, where you arrive is alone. A lot. Spending the vast majority of your time in your own head.

It's depressing as hell at times, truthfully. And although I'm delighted to be on this adventure, and am equally delighted to see where it will lead, I do, upon occasion, wonder what the fuck I was thinking.

And then I'm all happy again because I discover this, my most dark emotion, has its own theme song.

About a half hour ago a plane crashed into a middle floor of an apartment building on E.72nd street here in New York. As I type officials have not yet discovered or disclosed what kind of plane, other than it was a small aircraft. Fire has engulfed approximately four to six apartments from what I see, and a fuel spill burns on the ground.

Just in: fixed wing airplane. Okay.

All the major newsy outlets have made their 9/11 mentions and comparisons, they claim to assure the public there is no reason to believe this incident is terror related. Because, you see, we are understandably a little jumpy when it comes to planes hitting buildings.

However, hysterical scare-tactic news outlets, you can stop with the shrill, oh my fucking god! 9/11 shit now, okay? Please quit while you’re ahead, quit the guesses, the postulation-as-news, just quit it. A plane hit a building, burning debris crashed to the ground, the building is on fire and people are injured and it’s all very frightening.

That, in itself, is enough. So enough already.

Who's (just come from getting righteously drunk) on First?

Two men approaching, reaching, passing my window.

Man 1: ...so where your friend at?
Man 2: Who?
M1: Your friend. Where he at?
M2: What friend?
M1: Your frie....where are we going?
M2: To my friend's house.
M1: That's what I'm saying, where he live at?
M2: At his HOME, damn!
M1: So we going there, right?
M2: Where?
M1: Where your friend live.
M2: I told you where he live...

It's like that Twilight Zone, but instead of pig faces it's mean people.

G and I have been wondering whether it's us, whether the sudden daily confrontations with immoral, criminal, crazy, and/or just plain evil people is a function of our perception--i.e. the protection mechanism of parents-to-be has kicked in producing a heightened awareness and sensitivity, etc.--or if, in fact, some cosmic force has flung the vast majority of the world's reasonable people to the far corners of obscurity, leaving behind, almost exclusively, the sinister sociopathic asshats. And a few witnesses.

Like us.

Ah, Fall. When a young man's fancy turns to the usual Fall obsession: biscuits and gravy.

I have had the great honor of sampling the man's recipe. I have even successfully imitated, however never duplicated (not even close, Joe), his biscuits and gravy. Believe this: The man knows from biscuits and gravy.

Now this very, very, very pregnant woman--who enjoyed a non-progressive labor TWICE this weekend, I will add--is now, due to the mere mention of said fellow's biscuits and gravy (as the longing for it has been forever implanted in my taste memory), forced to roam the streets of Manhattan in search of any--even the most insulting--version I can find.

Damn you, damn you Titivil*. If I drop this baby at some fucking "We do Southern cookin' better than your great-grand mammy in old Kentucky" chain nightmares in Times Square, it's all your fault.

*oh yeah...Happy Birthday.