Sep
18
September 18, 2007
LET’S START WITH A LINK
I have never played Dungeons & Dragons, but this page is possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen. “Let’s play a game. You’re looking at the unholy union of a shark and a squid. Can you guess what they called it? If you said “Squark” you are correct. Sigh.” Haaaaaa! Ah, good times.
AND NOW ONWARD TO THE BLOG
Contractors have started painting the kitchen and addition, and while the last thing I want to do is complain about forward movement on this whole endless, months-behind-schedule remodel, I was a little unhappy when we got home after work yesterday and they were still at it, with nothing between us and the chokingly thick fumes other than a flimsy plastic dropcloth attached from ceiling to floor (which featured—I really shouldn’t tell you this but I can’t help myself—a disturbingly vaginal-shaped opening about at chest level, which gently opened and closed its . . . uh, labia . . . with the drafts, like some creepy scene from Videodrome).
Hanging out in a house positively reeking of fresh paint (it had dissipated somewhat by late evening, but not so much that you couldn’t still taste the fumes coating your tonsils) with a 2 year old, while pregnant, seems kind of, oh, I don’t know, like maybe I want my kids to have low test scores. And maybe in our unborn child’s case, an extra limb or two. Growing out of its head.
I can’t do much but open windows and hope the walls are finished soon and we can move on to a less toxic stage, but all the open doors (contractors have the worst habit of leaving the front door wide open all day long, what the hell is that? I mean, other than convenient access to the front yard where they stand and smoke, letting Eau de Camel Filters Hard Pack come wafting inside) and windows are paving way for some extremely unwelcome visitors, namely the Tegenaria duellica; formerly known as T. gigantea. I’m talking about these big bastards (warning! Unpleasant image at the other end of that link! Proceed with caution, fellow arachnophobes!), and their ongoing presence both outside (but frighteningly close to) and inside our house is FREAKING ME RIGHT THE HELL OUT.
One came skittering directly towards the couch I was sitting on the other night, and I don’t think I’ve ever come so close to peeing my own pants from sheer terror. It was sixty or seventy feet tall and its fangs glistened in the moonlight, at least that’s how I remember it. I couldn’t even cowboy up to get rid of it myself, I had to race outside (I accomplished this by levitating straight off the sofa and flying through the air, because you better believe my feet were not going to touch the ground anywhere near that thing) and squeak frantically at JB to come inside and jesus, BRING THE SKILSAW.
I should clarify for posterity that JB feels my comment on the (unpleasant) spider photo that claimed that he took the picture by “quickly lunging the camera at the beast and snapping wildly” is incorrect. “You and I are remembering that differently,” he told me, and I suppose it’s possible that we are. For instance, I remember a man nervously poking at a spider with a metal rake, then positioning the camera as far from his own body as he could in order to snap the photo, allowing for about .003 seconds to do so. I may have forgotten the part where he manfully strode up, unleashed a mighty battle cry, then used his enormous penis to trigger the shutter. If so, mea culpa.
ENOUGH ABOUT PAINT AND SPIDERS
Man, I am suddenly DYING to know if Riley’s going to have a brother or sister. I’ve felt fairly zen about this until this week, and now I just feel like my brain is tuned to some obsessive binary channel of BOY? GIRL? BOY? GIRL? all the time. Until my ultrasound, which is next week thank GOD, got any interesting gender-predicting wives’ tails for me to try out?
Sep
17
September 17, 2007
I can’t remember if maternity wear waistbands get easier to deal with later in pregnancy or even worse. I mean, is there ever a gestational stage when you aren’t hitching at your pants in order to stop them from 1) choke-holding your belly like a starving anaconda or 2) sliding incrementally down to the very bottom of your ass crack?
I’m also on a Great Bra Quest, since my entire chest region seems to have drastically altered its topography. There’s the new cup size to contend with, but there’s also this problem where my belly seems to start curving outward at the top of my ribcage, so most styles featuring underwire (to hold the aforementioned cups O’ hooter) burrow directly into my flesh, regardless of the band size. I bought a wire-free bra, but during a trial run of wearing it the results were . . . unfortunate. Let’s just say my cups runneth over, and gravity had its way with me.
My favorite time of day is in the early evening, when I rip off the mostly-presentable clothes I wore during the day and I vigorously scratch my unencumbered, gasping-for-breath thorax before sliding into my slovenly home uniform: baggy Old Navy yoga pants (rolled under my belly), a maternity t-shirt, and something called a “sleeping bra” that provides virtually no support but at least keeps my anatomy from bouncing around and randomly smacking into things, like my face.
Pregnancy is so sexy. Especially on the extra-gassy days.
Oddly, Riley seems to be experiencing some clothing challenges too. He’s shot up in height and narrowed out (whither toddler potbelly? Gone, baby, gone) and none of his damn pants will stay up. They all fit in length but they slither downwards whenever he moves, exposing a wide swath of diaper and eventually transforming him into the World’s Tiniest Gangsta Wannabe. I’m not sure what to do about this, other than spreading peanut butter on virtually everything he eats. Suspenders seem like the best option for humorous purposes—plus, convenient handles!—but I suppose a belt would be less emotionally traumatic.
Until we’ve made it through our respective Awkward Body Shape stages, I think both the boy and I need muumuus. Hey, I think there might be a hot business idea there! Come on, if someone’s buying this stuff (hork), surely they’ll go for the the Mommy & Me Matching Muumuu.
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