A Girl...

Smooth Sailing Ahead

Wouldn't you know it, the one time I shave my legs before a pelvic exam and no one asks me to take my pants off. Boo.

Friday morning I went to what was originally to be my super-exciting first fetal heartbeat appointment but ended up instead sitting fully dressed in a perfectly non-humiliating armchair (read: no stirrups, no paper lining) while Simon and the cute nurse practicioner discussed how totally fine it is to eat sushi while pregnant so long as it's not room temperature and wriggling with maggots. Although I was fine to skip the gyno-frisk in the wake of all the ER hullabaloo of Thursday, and although I'd have of course preferred my $25 copay to have gone toward a healthy heartbeat and a blurry ultrasound photo of our little prawn, I guess toro nigiri isn't too shabby a consolation prize, all things considered--especially uninterrupted toro nigiri, today and forever after, pregnant or not, so long as we all shall live!

[As with many other gestation-related no-nos, however, we'll see how brave I am in the face of certain "risky" behaviors when it actually matters. Like my friend who always told me that a glass of wine now and then was well within the bounds of an acceptable pregnancy diet but then wouldn't even look at a box of cherry cordials once she herself was pregnant, I reserve the right to be uptight about anything and everything later on, when it's my baby we're talking about.]

Sadly, according to the doc, the hot tub will have to stay entirely fetus-free, which is a bummer. Something about bacteria, apparently, which makes me wonder how it is that the crotch mechanic found out we haven't cleaned the spa filter in two months. Curious. I know this isn't a situation in which one can bargain with the Universe (trust me, I've tried), but if it were, you should know that I'd trade pregnant sushi-eating for pregnant hot-tubbing, no contest. The latter is so much cheaper! And right outside my door! And would afford me the luxury of weightlessness in those dark hours of ninth-month girth. Crazy how preparing to have children really makes one analyze her priorities, eh?

Saturday, after a second blood test, we went shopping for some kind of jacket-type thing I could wear over my cocktail dress for Simon's company party that night, and we ended up going on a bit of a spree. Again, it would have been nice to shop with a belly in mind, but the alternative--buying things in consideration of what my postnatal body might look like (think: no bare midriffs; jeans with spandex)--was okay too. If that makes it sound like my m.o. these days is determinedly scrawling a silver lining onto each stubborn dark cloud, that's really not how it is--I haven't fallen into the bottomless depths of babyless despair but merely dropped back down to the rung where I'm simply completely over the moon with happiness that I'm making babies with the coolest guy I know.

And speaking of coolness, Simon and I danced the foxtrot to that "woo hoo" Gwen Stefani song at his company party because (a) the d.j. sucked and (b) if we didn't dance, no one else would haver (save the eight-year-old boy who requested "Material Girl" and then spazzed out all over the deserted parquet). I also followed the lead of two teenage girls and one other hapless spouse-of-employee while the d.j.s played what I think was supposed to be a 2007 version of the Electric Slide but was really more like the Hokey Pokey--"stomp your left foot...stomp your right foot...jump up and down..." Lame. What was not lame, however, was my fancy "Manhattan-style" whiskey sour, pictured below. Yes, I took a digital photo of digital photos. Scanners are so 2001.

(Note: I know the ponytail makes me look like Skeletor, but I didn't know I was going to have my picture taken! Had I known there were going to be photos, I would have worn my hair down! And gotten a tan!)

The photo on the right is obviously (yes?) the "goofy" version. This is the holiday version of the face Simon makes every time we're at an attraction that wraps its covert high-tech security ops within the comforting cloak of "precious family memories." You know what I'm talking about--before you're allowed to see the attraction, you and your loved ones must get your photo taken in front of a green-screened computer rendering of whatever it is you're about five minutes away from seeing with your own eyes and photographing with your own camera. When we were in Chicago, they snapped our photo at the Sears Tower, and because the lady in front of us was by herself and we couldn't stand the thought of her facing the camera all alone, we hopped in beside her and acted like we three were great pals. I was the pal all sweet and smiling and just happy to be there, and Simon was the pal who'd had three martinis and was right in the middle of a joke when the photo was snapped. I like to imagine the woman loved the photo enough to pay $25 for her own copy, but she was probably just scared.

Let's see, what else did we do this weekend? Simon risked life and limb to hang up Christmas lights outside (our roof is ninety-five years old!) while inside I suffered one serious bout of confusion upon discovering that of the three Christmas stockings in our stash of decor, one belongs to Eve and the other two are lovingly adorned with the name "Betsy," one embroidered and the other knitted right into the sock with red yarn. WTF? Hopefully Betsy has been a good little girl this year and Santa will leave us her lots of good loot.

Lastly, the roses are blooming again. I know that sounds like a euphemism from an inspirational poster, but I mean it, the roses are literally blooming again. In our backyard we have one monster of a rosebush--eleven feet high, with thorns like switchblades--and over the weekend it busted out some butter-yellow blooms. Standing underneath or beside the bush, you can't really see the flowers, but, at the risk of being sappy, there's one place where the view is perfect, and that's from the window of the room that is currently the library but will one day be the nursery. Maybe a winter baby will be better than a summer baby after all...