MEN

So Mark always has various very minor ailments that seem to just completely destroy his daily life. Not to say that they're all insignificant ... they're just minor and somehow turn into these huge ordeals. For instance, he had a bad filling about two years ago and kept complaining that the unevenness of the filling made it awkward when he ate. It made him quite unhappy and he ranted about it incessantly. Sure enough, a few months later he had to have a root canal on the tooth below it because the filling had been scraping into his bottom tooth. Go figure.

Anyway, right now Mark has this blister inside his lower lip. I've had zillions of these in my lifetime, I swear, though none recently so I can't remember what I've done to make them go away. Probably nothing. As a masochist, I probably actually enjoy rubbing my tongue along them. But not Mark. "Gosh, this thing will never go away." "It's all I can think about, this pain, and I can feel it down to my chin." [As an aside, I should point out that I'm like this regarding everything pregnancy-related, and I am a bit of a hypochondriac, but c'mon, be a man!] Here's the point: Last night Mark says to me, "I've even been putting Neosporin on it for days and it's not helping." WHAT? Just to make him feel like a clown, I read him the label: "In case of accidental ingestion, contact poison control immediately." His response: "I didn't ingest it."

Oh my god ... for being such a smart man, he lacks some serious common sense.

It finally happened

I spilled the pee pitcher last night. Thank god it wasn't one of those one-quart evenings but it still wasn't pretty. What woke Mark was my screaming, "Ah, SHIT!" And then my pregnant ass went downstairs to get the cleaning stuff and towels and then got on all fours to clean it up off the carpet. And then lay in bed, listening to Mark snore, for two hours before I could go back to sleep. This is why I have the pee pitcher to begin with: to avoid going downstairs and thus gaining enough consciousness to never return to sleep. But last night totally backfired on me. Still, I'd say my stats are pretty good. To spill but one night in the whole pregnancy (OK, there was one other night in the fall, I think) is pretty good. Right?

I wore my fleece today

And needed it.

Funny British-sounding words

* frustrating (frus-TRATE-ing)
* schedule (SHED-yool)
* Tunisia (too-NIZ-ee-uh)
* orientated
* Jaguar (JAG-yoo-er)
* Renault (REN-oh)
* Nissan (NISS-in)
* bogey (BOW-gee) (as in booger)
* strawberries, blueberries, etc (STRAW-breeze)
* there (THEAH)

On that note, Vaughn is singing the following song: "The incy wincy spidah went up the spout again/Down came the rain and washed the spidah out/Up came the sun and dried up all the rain/And the incy wincy spidah went up the spout again."

Me-Centric

So I assume that a lot of pregnant people, particularly this late in pregnancy, act this way, or at least I'm hoping so ... but I seem to be about the most selfish person on Earth right now. Really. I seem to constantly change the subject to how I feel or when I think the baby is coming or how I think the baby is sitting in my belly or my past breastfeeding experience. Etc. I even had a friend over yesterday who just had a baby two weeks ago and still, I went on about myself. I feel like I've taken an annoying pill.

To anyone who's reading and wondering why I've been such an asshole, I apologize. I try to stop. Really, I do. But it's like an addiction or something. I'm addicted to myself and my problems and my issues. Good Lord.

More on the lingo barrier

Today a woman I know from Vaughn's school told me I looked "neat." Had I not heard that my bump looked neat for the last 3 or so months, I would have been terribly confused. When I told Mark the story, he was still confused, as he's never heard "neat" used in reference to a pregnant woman's stomach. I said it meant that my bump doesn't look very big. Which is funny since I feel ENORMOUS.

Thumb twiddling

Just sitting around, waiting for this baby to pop out. It's maddening. Technically fewer than 3 weeks to go, but Vaughn didn't make it out on time by any means. Grrr ...

CHEER

So I would speculate that cheerleading is a primarily American phenomenon. I mean, I realize there are cheerleaders at some European rugby games, and I know I've seen pictures of them at Australian rugby games, but really, it's an American thang, right? Gotta be. Only in places like Texas, Kentucky, Florida and Louisiana (to name a few), it's like a sport, an exclusive club, a religion. I feel like I know the heart of it inside and out, as I was one of the many girls growing up in a cheerleader-crazed area who DIDN'T try out, ever, and always wished I had been one. So sad. Did Dallas poison me?

Anyway, I was appalled and amused, much like witnessing a train wreck, when I left the playground last night and saw about 12 overweight, 10-year-old British girls, all wearing blue shorts with white CHEER written on their bums, waving around white pom poms and trying to follow the lead of some idiotic (no doubt British) tiny white person flailing her own arms to "Whoomp There It Is." I mean, I know what I'm talking about here. I really do. I may not know much about decorating, gardening or cooking, but I swear, I've got the cheerleading/dance team thing down.

I was even tempted to go over and show them what's what. But I'm so pregnant it would have just been comical. [Hell, even better. I really should have done it then, only I didn't have the video camera.] Even in my size 10/12 (pre-pregnancy, of course) state, I think I could have shown those girls a thing or two, though admittedly it could have been a staircase routine to "Domino" or some sort of streamerless streamer routine. Since they already had the poms, come to think of it, I'm sure I could have come up with a very Susan Mitchell-esque pom routine. Hmm.

So I lost my chance to find my niche here. Oh, heaven forbid.

And yet ... this is my life.

Timeline: Baby Shower

Saturday, 2 June, 2007

7:00am -- wake up and start cleaning/preparing for shower at our house

2:30pm -- Patty and James arrive as hosts (well, Patty is really the hostess)

2:32pm -- Mark starts drinking

3:10pm -- guests start arriving

3:30pm -- Mark is on his second double bourbon

5:00pm -- Mark is "happy"

6:00pm -- Mark is drunk

6:30pm -- most guests are gone except for Mark's coworkers and their families (his crew, if you will)

8:00pm -- we move the party inside for the sake of the noise; a venture to the pub is discussed

8:30pm -- Mark opens his fourth beer, chasing the 3 or 4 double bourbons

10:00pm -- everyone leaves; Mark follows me around the house, drunk; he tries to clean a few glass pitchers, scaring the shit out of me

10:30pm -- Mark gets a text that the boyz are at the pub and he takes off, "to be home by 11:30"

11:30pm -- I get a text that he's just ordered another Guinness and will be home later

12:30am -- I text Mark, asking him where he is, and he writes back, "defending the American flag;" at this point I am assuming at least 2 of the 3 total car bombs he will have finished before returning home have been consumed

1:00am -- Mark comes home, or at least to the front door, into which key hole he can't seem to fit his key

1:15am -- Mark sits on the couch silently and falls asleep almost immediately with a glass of water in his hand

1:30am -- I try to get Mark to lie down on the couch but instead he mimes drinking water and taking off his glasses, even though I've taken the water away from him (for fear of the glass breaking) and taken his glasses off many minutes ago

1:45am -- I go upstairs and try to sleep

1:55am -- I fear that Mark might choke on his own vomit so I go back downstairs, deciding to sleep on the floor and make sure my husband doesn't die

2:00am -- I get downstairs to find Mark now sitting on the floor and leaning against the couch

2:01am -- I lie down

2:02am -- Mark starts puking everywhere, all over himself and the carpet and the floor

2:05am -- I bring Mark a bowl and he pukes just as much in the bowl as he had on the floor

2:10am -- I start cleaning up vomit, a process that will last another 30 minutes, all the while crying and mumbling that a pregnant person shouldn't have to clean someone else's vomit when she already feels so nauseous

2:20am -- I get Mark into the shower, who, in his inebriated state, wants to take everything out of his pockets before undressing, as if the most pressing matter wasn't getting his vomitoid shorts and shirts off (yes, readers, he was sitting in his own vomit before I got him up)

2:25am -- I check on Mark, who is now propping himself up with one arm so he won't fall down in the shower

2:30am -- Mark starts dry-heaving and spitting in the bathroom sink ... and Vaughn wakes up and starts screaming

2:35am -- I make the choice to finish with the loud noises before attending to Vaughn, so I take the carpet to the back porch to prevent further fouling of the air around us in the next 24 hours; I have to move the coffee table to do this -- two things a pregnant lady should not be doing

2:45am -- I go into Vaughn's room; turns out she was afraid the Big Bad Wolf was coming to get her ... mind you she's never, EVER woken up in the night and needed our attention since she was about 3 months old, except when horribly, horribly ill; meanwhile Mark is trying to ascend the stairs for what he tells me are two reasons: because Vaughn is sad and because he wants to get in his bed; I tell him, "Absolutely not"

2:50am -- I get in bed and eventually fall asleep

6:30am -- I hear someone stirring downstairs, opening the back door, etc

7:00am -- Mark says to me, "Why is the carpet outside?"

____________________________________________________________

I should have prefaced this whole story with the fact that I got so drunk at a Steep Canyon Rangers show while Mark and I were fake-dating (pre-Vaughn) not quite four years ago that it basically ended our relationship: he thought it was immature to be that drunk; I thought it was stupid that he cared that much. About two weeks later we were broken up. Needless to say, I was quite a bit more understanding about his "fuck-up." I was more scared, tired and anxious about going into labor with a completely useless husband.

Starter friends

How does one rid oneself of starter friends?

Much like I hear about a starter marriage, I have a feeling that in London I have made a few starter friends. These are people I befriended in a time of desperation (and wow, what a long period of desperation that was) and with whom I kept in touch in order not to completely lose my mind as a stay-at-home mom. In retrospect, I can name my starter friends from prior periods in my life: college (Heather, Trisha, for example) and high school (wow, if only I had christened Anna merely a starter friend, what misery I would have been saved down the road); Karrie was such a long-term starter friend you'd think I'd have figured it out before I did. Maybe that's from whence all this anxiety over ridding them from my life stems. Hmm ...

What's really awkward is that for the first time in years, I am picking and dismissing my friends, rather than the tables being turned (whereupon I was often dissed, true). It was hard enough to politely, or eventually just tacitly, get rid of that bigoted, stereotyping German woman. I keep encountering more and more of these situations though. Currently I'm working on phasing out a woman who complains about her two children constantly, even though she has a constant stream of babysitters and maids and launderers in her house. Her husband is such an asshole that I fault her for putting up with him more than I do him for being the ass. There are others whom I'd rather label acquaintances than friends but what do you do? I'll tell you what: you leave the country.

But surely this will happen every time I move, no? I'll need friends, make them quickly and then possibly move on to "better" friends. Is that gross? Is this snobbery? God, I can't tell. All I know is that when people bring me down continually and offer no positive angles to a friendship I try to rid myself of them. And damn I'm good at it ... better than I'd like to be at times, seeing as how I am apt to forget the positive angles offered. It's almost like I need a wing man to help me discern the negative from the only-currently-sad. I'm losing perspective here.

Whoever said that 30 is old or that as you get older life is less fun was an idiot. I am constantly discovering new and sometimes disturbing parts of my personality or behavior that require lots of thought. Life is just beginning really.