"Do you know what is ridiculous?" my Holbspacker asked me today.
To which I shoved a cinnamon bear in my mouth and waited most patiently for his response.
"Packing . . . with a pregnant woman."
Oh, but he is right! Here he is, filling box after box, his poor hands black with newspaper print and riddled with cardboard paper cuts, while I'm momentarily spaced out by the window contemplating what I want for dinner. In my defense, I cannot help it! I need lots of snack breaks, I can't really lift heavy things, and I don't really bother bending over any more because, tell me, what is the point? Also I am very distracted and emotional over my antlers and my cake plates, which perplexes my Holbser (who just wants to throw everything away) in ways you cannot imagine. (Or maybe you can, what do I even know?) So really, moving is not in my forte for this evening, dear Holbsy, but I would be very good at crying during a chick flick, should you want to see something I can do spectacularly well!
But the good news is, after I've informed my Holbsjunker for the third time that my porcelain birds are definitely being packed, all I have to do is wiggle my pregnant belly around in his face for a while before he starts to laugh and forget that he is irritated to the point of death at my weird collections of sentimental but totally unnecessary things. (Really, antlers?)
And isn't that good news?
(But what will I wiggle at him after the baby is born?)
(Maybe do not answer that.)
And now, here is a New York City post from the past! (My transitions are getting really good, but aren't they though?)
I realized just the other day that I am now at the exact child-bearing age that I pre-determined for myself when I was 13. This age, I reasoned at the time, would be old just enough that I'd have had time to enjoy being young and childless, and a time at which if I had a baby every three and a half years thereafter I would have the amount of children I wanted to have by the time I hit my early 30s, thereby saving my poor body the stress of having children when I was really stinking old. Like, 35. It's strange to think of how in tune with my body I must have been at 13, because lately I have become baby-hungry. My clock is ticking. I am a ticking time bomb. I need a baby.
I see a baby, I want it. I want to cuddle it, I want to change it's diaper, I want to breastfeed it and then I want to eat its fat chubby toes. I keep waking from dreams where I have a baby and I spend all day cooing to it and feeding it and invariably I lose the baby and spend all this time wondering, Hey, don’t I have a baby? And then I usually find the baby in the bathroom.
I've taken to holding Peter Pan like a baby to get a quick fix, rocking him back and forth and singing You Are My Sunshine (his favorite song.) Peter Pan loves this and eats it up and will even put his head lovingly on my shoulder while I sing. He must know that when I do this it is because I am feeling emotionally fragile, and that its best for him in the long run to be the best baby-substitute he can be so that no real live human baby will ever come along and take his place in the family food chain. He's no fool, you guys.
And anyway, all I know is one day I was fine and the next day I was watching some commercial for some something starring some woman with a fat gurgly baby, and suddenly a light switch went on in my brain and my ovaries said Get Me One Of Those! and I nodded in agreement because it is best to agree with one’s internal organs, I have found.
And so, that night, I delivered my ultimatum unto my Holbs. We Will Have Children! Someday! I declared. After a moment of thoughtful reflection, The Holbs agreed to my terms and we shook on it. He asked whether I would spontaneously impregnate due to sheer, overwhelming desire alone, or if this was something we could get around to, you know, "when the timing is right." I checked with my ovaries and they assure me that both options are, in fact, possible.
In the meantime, the puppy looks sleepy. I think I will dust him in baby powder and rock him to sleep.
~originally posted february 08, 2006
Update from The Future:
We started trying for a baby in 2008,
and finally got the party started in 2010.
Who wins the award for patience?
Me, please?
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