Levedy

The Choir Invisible

This VW is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! … 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PASSAT!!

So we bought a car last night. A Honda Pilot. We named it Pontius. We were smart enough to drive Dim’s car to the dealership (rather than mine) so we could negotiate a decent trade-in for the VW sight-unseen. (Or smell un-sniffed, as the case should more properly be.) I caught the salesmen gathered together looking under the hood of the VW, laughing. All of them, that is, except the salesman who brokered our deal.

He looked pissed.

Heh.

So Pontius is the new member of the family, and will be our family car for the next 37 brazillion years until we get our money’s worth out of him.

n.b. - The original Dead Parrot Sketch from Monty Python

Dad, don't read the last paragraph

I’m swell.

Scratch that: I am swelling.

Aside from my ass, my body continues to widen in ways that I find unnerving.

To wit: the nerves in my right hand have decided to go on holiday. I have carpal tunnel that alternately tingles and hurrrrrts. I was trying to button a shirt yesterday and realized that I hadn’t felt this clumsy buttoning since I was three. You take fine motor skills for granted. My right hand would be better used as a doorstop or a paperweight.

My ankles look like they belong to a pink elephant by the end of the day. I find this mildly amusing: my skin is SO white (peanut gallery: “How white is it?”) that the blood that pools in my lower extremities changes my skin to a deep, rosy pink.

My fingers look like ten little sausages. And not the good sausages, either: the weird, pale, British sausages that only a born Briton could stomach.

My nose has gotten wider. Thanks, God. That’s just what I need, an even bigger Irish potato nose.

My tongue is wider, I think. My vowels are all screwed up. (They’re screewed ooop, I guess).

Let’s not even talk about what’s happening to my Girl Twinkies, because my dad reads this, and because I’m a freakin’ lady.

Not much of an update

1) I'm hungry all the time. The nurse is lying. There's no WAY I've only gained ten pounds this pregnancy. I've eaten more than that in girl scout cookies alone.

2) I need someone to hide the salad forks. There's only ONE way to pull weeds in the yard, and it's MY WAY. Can't you people see that? Seriously.

Congratulations, it's a lizard

We got a 4D Ultrasound the other day.* Spanky was being stubborn and mashed her face up against the placenta the entire time. The ultrasound needs liquid in front of her face to get a clear shot, so the placenta-mashing makes the baby look like she cross-bred with a head of broccoli.

In any case, here is my brocco-baby:
Smiling

Sticking Tongue Out

---

*I'm not sure what the 4th "D" is supposed to be. Length, Width, Depth, and, erm, time travel?

Maybe it's an indication of what my nursing bra size will be: DDDD, God help us all.

On Spinal Taps and Silverware

Last night at the hospital’s Childbirth Education class, I exercised a level of restraint that was typical of a lady as reserved, demure, and close-mouthed as you all know I am.

The nurse was explaining the difference between the epidural space in your spine and the spinal space in your spine, and what will happen when each of those therapies- HOLY SHIT THAT’S MY SPINE! I NEED MY SPINE!- is applied to the patient. The nurse calmly explained that the - WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT THE ONLY WAY THE GUY KNOWS HE HASN’T SHISH-KEBABed MY ENTIRE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM IS HIS FISHING FOR AN AIR POCKET IN MY SPINE! - epidural will numb women from the waist down and the spinal will numb women from the nipples down.

Thought: What happens to women like, uh, me, for whom waist-level and nipple-level are ultimately the SAME THING?

But here’s where you should be proud of me. I didn’t say that out loud. Nor did I scream aloud my horrors of the epidural procedure, even when the nurse brought out samples of the epidural needles and tubes and stuff. The “needle” looks like fishing wire, which isn’t that bad, I guess, but the doohickey they use to GET the needle into your - CHRIST ON A CRUTCH! SPINAL COLUMN!- is about the size of a Jack in the Box Straw. That sucker seemed like the diameter of my pinkie. It could unclog shower drains, I think.

I could feel the blood draining from my face as the nurse described the need to poke about the spinal column to find the HAIL MARY FULL OF GRACE right spot to keep the needle and the electric jolt women are likely to feel as the doctor brushes past the PRAY FOR US SINNERS nerves to settle into the proper space. She added that holding still is essential, even though we're contracting, so that the doctor doesn't stick the needle into spinal fluid, resulting in a debilitating spinal headache that will last a few days to a NOW AND AT THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH few weeks.

So after the epidural demonstration, Dimitri noticed the OH FUCK A DUCK WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO? haggard and pale expression on my face, rubbed my arm, and said “What’s the matter, honey?” He received Wife Glare #452: The “You Just Asked The Goddamned Stupidest Question on the Planet” glare.

Poor Dimitri. He tried to calm me down through the rest of the class by trying to be funny while we practiced the breathing techniques. He re-enacted Bill Cosby’s “Push ‘em out, shove ‘em out, wayyyy out!” chant. He received Wife Glare #37: The “You’re Not Helping Matters – Shut Up While You Still Don’t Have a Salad Fork in Your Neck” Glare.

He’s trying. He really is. I love him dearly, but when I go into labor, I think someone’s going to need to come to the house and hide the salad forks.

Here Kitty, Kitty

Does it make me a bad person if I realize that the onesies that I have for the baby would just fit Ruby so long as I didn't snap the crotch up all the way (so she'll have room for her tail)?

Am I a bad cat mom for thinking that I can ambush Ruby and shove her in a newborn onesie long enough to take a picture?

More evidence that this blog is the paragon of highbrow reading

Sorry for the posting delay. I keep trying to think of non-baby related things to post about, but it’s exceptionally difficult.

Last night was my sister-in-law’s opera. She played the part of Pamina in The Magic Flute. Sophie, Dim, and I went to dinner at an Italian restaurant called Strings before the show. Seated at the back of the restaurant was a crowd of NASCAR buffs. And their hookers.

These women had to have been bought and paid for. I can’t imagine how a guy looking something like this can be escorted by a woman who looks like this. Only in Vegas. And only on a NASCAR race weekend.

As we were packing up to leave, I kept my eye on one of the ladies of the evening who was also getting up to leave. She was gorgeous. I could have grated Romano cheese on her abs. She had a diamond thing glued in her belly button that sparkled in the light and the whole thing said “Envy me! You’ll never have such a beautiful navel!”

I was debating my own navel, as well as the merits of making lemonade from lemons, and considered calling the Goodyear people to offer them my services at the racetrack this weekend. I waddled into the restroom, and quickly realized I was followed by the gorgeous lady.

Whoa. Gorgeous ladies have to pee? But I pee, too. Does that mean I share something with her species? Naaaaah. She sits in the stall next to me and, to my secret joy, lets out the biggest ball of gas I have heard in a long time (and I’m married to a MAN.) That beast must have been chewing the inside of her stomach for DAYS.

It was truly beautiful. We all have flaws, I guess. No matter how drop-dead (*from herpes*) gorgeous this escort was, she can’t digest massive amounts of carbohydrates any better than I can.

And my flaw? I pee with gassy hookers.

UPDATE FOR THE MENFOLK: After reading this post, Dimitri did not understand my sense of schadenfreude towards the hooker. See, guys, in ladies' public restrooms, farting loudly is a BIG TIME FAUX PAS. You simply cannot fart. The mere thought of a stranger knowing that you have body functions other than urine is terrifically embarrassing, and women (and I know women. I'm a women.) will go to great, sometimes gymnastic, lengths to avoid anything other than #1 in a public loo.

On the way to hell in four tiny handbaskets

I spent the entire morning at the phlebotomist’s office to take a three hour blood test. It was clearly the seventh circle of hell for me. Regular readers know that I don't do well in these situations. Here are a few places that I would rather have been:

-Stuck inside the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland
-A clown convention
-Junior High

I had to take a three hour glucose tolerance test to check for gestational diabetes. It is a test that, if I fail, my doctor can do nothing for me and there’s little I can do. Gestational diabetes doesn’t hurt the baby at all (in fact, babies of GD mothers tend to be fat and happy at birth – to the tune of ten or eleven pounds) and is not a reliable indicator of developing diabetes after pregnancy for either the mother or the baby.

So after fasting, I go to the doctor's office and drink this stanky-sugary-ass dextrose solution and then sit still. For. Three. Hours. They take my blood at the beginning and once an hour, four times total.

I had already taken the one-hour version of this test, and got a 133, below the 140 threshold that a lot of OBs use to screen for GD. My doctor is the overly cautious type, and set her threshold at 130, which required me to take the three hour version of the test.

I asked the phlebotomist what would happen if I broke down and dared to eat a stick of gum or a Rolaid or purse lint or something. She said that she had a SIX HOUR version of this test that she could force me to take instead. I quickly promised not to eat until the test was done. Just to be sure, I didn’t even LOOK at the fresh pack of Extra Cool Green Apple Gum in my purse. I can resist anything but temptation, right?

Three hours later, I had been poked in my poor arm so much that it really hurt to draw blood. Each draw was progressively more painful. My veins just weren’t having any of this. I felt like a week-old mylar balloon: still floating mid-air, but clearly fighting a losing battle with gravity. I was starving and weak to the point that I would have chewed my arm out of a trap to get out of there.

I don't remember the drive to Carl's Jr., but that burger was my lifeline back to lucidity. The chocolate shake was her (pointing to my uterus) idea, though. I would have opted for a tofu and lawn clipping health shake, were it up to me.

I would have refused the test, but that would make me a BAD MOTHER and I’d much rather wait until Spanky’s 12 and hear it from her directly when I refuse to let her walk out of the house in a mini skirt and bikini top.

I will remind her of this day the first time she comes home from school with a B.