After reading the title of this entry, some of you (namely, Art “You are so going to have a baby, you woman, you” Charles, and my mother if she remembers how to find my website) may be flipping out.
Luckily, my husband already knows what I’m going to be writing about and so has (probably) not had a heart attack.
Yesterday I visited a friend. When she opened the door to me, my eye immediately fell upon her hot pink t-shirt. Because I read a lot and love to read, I can’t help but read any text that shows up around me. In moments of dire emergency, I even read the back of the toilet paper package If I’m caught unawares in the bathroom without my regular reading material.
So naturally, I automatically read what was on her shirt.
“Knocked up,” it proclaimed.
Now, with anyone else, this message may seem fairly clear. But I’ve known my friend for some time and she had never expressed any interest in having a child. In fact, she had expressed quite strongly that she was not going to have children. So when I read those words and looked at the picture on the shirt, I came to the same conclusion that any reasonable person would have, given the circumstances.
I decided the shirt must have something to do with golfing.
In my own defense, I had been distracted by the round circles on the shirt. They looked so symmetrical, and I’d gotten so used to seeing one of my bosses practice golf swings with an imaginary club at work that golf balls, in this situation, came more readily to mind than the more obvious interpretation.
So I stepped in the house and didn’t comment on the shirt. I figured that “knocked up,” in the golf context, was just another slang term I didn’t fully comprehend, like “hoochie” and “nookie” and “tossed salad.” With these kinds of terms, I often had to ask Chris to explain them to me, and when he jokingly gave me an incorrect definition, I would later attempt to use these same terms in polite conversation to my detriment.
I stayed the entire afternoon with my friend, and didn’t think about the shirt any further. When her husband came home though, he spoke with his wife briefly, and then walked up to me.
He handed me a photo, with something stuck behind it. “Just wanted to show you this picture of my wife with some dogs,” he said.
“Oh, cute!” I said, admiring the picture. It showed her hugging two dogs, so I assumed he wanted to show me the picture because I liked dogs.
I casually flipped over the picture and looked at the second picture behind it.
It was a small print-out of a large, cavernous area shaded in black, with a little white kidney bean in the center.
Even I knew that this was an ultrasound picture.
I stared disbelievingly for a while, then looked up at the beaming parents-to-be.
“What - ” I began.
“Who - ” I started again.
“Is this yours?” I finally blurted out. Even now, I was more willing to believe that for whatever reason, they were showing me ultrasound pictures of an unknown person’s child rather than that this was their own forthcoming child.
They nodded.
“But how?” I cried out.
The husband nodded knowledgeably. “Well, you see, Jane, this how it works. First the man - ”
“No, not that! I meant - when? How? What happened? I thought you didn’t want kids!” I said. “Was this planned?”
Now that I think of it, that was an incredibly rude thing for me to say. My only excuse is that I was so thunderstruck by the news that all sense of propriety (of which I had very little to begin with) had deserted me.
My friend nodded. “Yep, I got on prenatal vitamins and everything. My biological clock kicked in, big-time,” she explained. “And we discussed it and decided we wanted to have kids, and here we are!”
I sat back in my chair. They were going to be parents. There was going to be a miniature version of them in less than a year.
As is the way of all people, my first consideration was for how this news was going to affect me.
The future didn’t look pretty. Chris and I were going to be old and alone if we stayed childless, while all around us our friends romped in SUVs and minivans with children’s toys taking over their houses. Chris would be forty-five and haunting the local card tournaments like a perv, and I would be an old crone walking my seven chihuahuas around the neighborhood and admonishing children to “stay off my lawn, damnit.”
Even Art would probably procreate, although whether he would find out about his children in person or not until he was served with the paternity suit was questionable.
Though this news meant the end of our list of Fun Childless Couples To Hang Out With, I was happy for our friends. I knew they would be great parents.
Back in their house, I studied the ultrasound picture again. The kidney bean was still there.
“So your shirt really does mean knocked up,” I marveled.
“Yeah,” she said. “I saw you looking at it a few times, but you didn’t say anything.”
“I didn’t know it was serious,” I said. I went into the golfing explanation, but as I looked more carefully at her t-shirt, I suddenly realized that the two spheres that I had mistaken for golf balls were actually -
“Hey!” I exclaimed. “That’s a pregnant lady on your shirt!”
by Louise Rennison
ONE LINE SUMMARY: In the continuing adventures of Georgia Nicolson, Georgia visits America and considers her boy choices.
Georgia has another funny escapade, although I didn’t quite enjoy this as much as the previous books. I don’t know if I’m just aging out of them (keeping up with the British slang alone is a big undertaking) or if the books are suffering in quality.
by Jon Katz
ONE LINE SUMMARY: This general training book on dogs relies heavily on the author’s own experience.
I found a few useful tips in this book and enjoyed reading it. However, it’s best not to approach this as a training book but more of a general “things you should know before getting a dog” book. This would have helped me a lot if it had been around when I got my first dogs.
The box of cereal depicting lush and yummy fruit in the cereal does not actually include the fruit. If the picture shows dried-up, nasty-looking shriveled fruit, then the cereal probably does include the fruit.
If the government wants my money so badly, they really should do a better job of explaining how much money I need to send them.
by Dave Barry
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Dave Barry explains real estate, wills, and general oddities in the financial world.
I laughed out loud in a few spots, but this group of essays seems strangely disorganized and random. My favorite Dave Barry book remains Dave Barry Slept Here.
by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Slider captures the killer from the last book, investigates the death of a lovely young woman, and then learns something about the killer from the last book.
The mystery in this book is far more interesting than the last one, although Slider’s fascination with the victim is unexplained.
by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Bill Slider investigates the death of a man found in a park swing.
I was not very interested in this book. Joanna barely shows up, which you would think would allow the mystery plot to advance, but I kept losing track of what was going on and who was accused of what. There are so many deaths tangentially connected to the main killer that the main killer barely makes an appearance.
by Lisa Yee
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Stanford Wong has to take summer school and endure tutoring by local genius Millicent Min.
I enjoyed this a lot more than the author’s first book, Millicent Min, Girl Genius which was more stilted. Surprisingly, though, Millicent Min makes a better impression in her cameo appearance in Stanford Wong Flunks Big-time than in her own feature novel, and Stanford is also a very likeable character.
I’d like to read more about Stanford.
This morning I lost Paco.
Admittedly, things could have been worse. He could have been injured, traumatized, or even permanently lost. Instead, all that happened was that I freaked out and I was fifteen minutes late for work because that’s how long it took me to find him.
As is our usual practice, Chris let the dogs outside for their morning business. In the past, he’s also been responsible for feeding them since my morning time is taken up with trying to get myself vertical.
But lately I’ve taken over feeding the dogs because I’ve developed a highly refined system of feeding so complicated that Chris has given up trying to follow my protocol. This system is known by its code word, CHAOS.
CHAOS came about because of our little princess, Miss de Mina (say it fast). Mina has always been a very picky eater and now that she’s nearly ten years old, she’s started having difficulty chewing. She won’t eat any hard treats anymore, and she’s decided she no longer wants to eat breakfast. Because she only weighs 5 pounds, we (okay, I) worry about her getting hypoglycemic, so I try to make sure she eats two meals a day with a snack in the afternoon.
Pre-CHAOS, we had already started giving the dogs canned food in the morning instead of leaving out their kibble all day. At first Mina was thrilled, and any type of canned food was a novelty. A year or so later, she has rejected the following brands of canned/raw food: Innova, Wellness, Canidae, Artemis, Spot’s Stew, Solid Gold, Chicken Soup for The Dog Lover’s Soul*, Steve’s Real Food, Oma’s Pride, and Newman’s Own Organic.
Now, CHAOS reigns. CHAOS Stage One involved me boiling chicken and rice in one pot for twenty minutes, and serving it as breakfast for the dogs. Stage Two required that I boil the chicken while running some raw vegetables through a food processor, and combining the two later. The most recent stage involves jumping up in the morning, carefully measuring out some dehydrated raw dog food from The Honest Kitchen, boiling just the right amount of water in the microwave for not too long and not too short a time, adding the water to the dehydrated stuff, getting dressed and brushing my teeth during the ten minutes required to rehydrate, mixing the rehydrated food with pieces of boiled chicken in it, and finally serving the whole thing to the dogs. Oh, yeah, and we also have to measure out 1/16th of a capsule of glucosamine chondroitin into 2 of the 3 dog bowls for Mina and Paco’s joint issues.
Now you see why Christopher does not attempt to understand CHAOS.
All of this is to explain why, when I got up late this morning, I had to forego the CHAOS feeding. My feeling is, if I don’t have time to brush my hair, I don’t have ten minutes to rehydrate dog food. Since I get home around 2:30 every day, I figured I would just feed the dogs when I got back from work.
I was still afraid of hypoglycemia, so I gave the dogs treats to tide them over until I got home. Or at least, that’s what would have happened in a normal dog household. In our household, what happened was that Flacko ate his treats, and then he ate the treats that Mina refused to eat, and then he tried to eat my hand that was holding the treat meant for Paco, only I couldn’t find Paco.
“Paco!” I yelled. “Treat!”
Flacko danced around my feet. He certainly knew what “treat” meant. Even Mina rushed up hopefully, thinking that I had a New and Improved, More Easily Chewed Treat.
But there was no Paco.
I went upstairs to the dog room. I’d last seen Paco earlier this morning, as he was clambering into the papasan chair. I didn’t see him anywhere, but I checked under every blanket on every bed, and lifted up the various crates, houses, and pup tent to see if there was a fat Paco hiding somewhere. I even lifted the corner of the futon, because once I’d seen Paco suddenly and mysteriously appear between the futon and his crate.
No Paco.
I went downstairs, continuing to call for Paco. I looked under the blankets on the couches in the living room, checked the bed by the windowsill, and looked at the four beds on the floor. Then I went to the family room, and checked under both blankets on the couch there, and under my knitted blanket on the dog bed beside Chris’s computer.
Still no Paco. You can see where this is going, can’t you?
I went all the way down into the basement, just in case Paco had somehow followed Chris in there this morning when Chris got a drink from the basement refrigerator to bring to work. By now I had realized a few things. Paco was missing, and our house had too many floors and too many dog beds.
“Paco?” I called. I listened hard. There was no pitter-patter of tiny feet.
I opened the door to the garage, where just yesterday I had accidentally locked in Mina for a few minutes.
“Paco, come!” I said.
Paco was nowhere to be seen, but Flacko was becoming agitated. Paco, Flacko, it all sounded the same to him, and if I had a treat for Paco, maybe that was supposed to really be for Flacko.
I went back upstairs. Although I was pretty sure Paco was somewhere in the house, I was starting to sweat from nervousness. My heart was pounding, and I wondered if I should call Chris. I didn’t, though, because even I could tell that it was ridiculous for me to call Chris to tell him that I had lost a dog from inside the house.
Just in case Paco had somehow disappeared outside, I opened the door to the deck and called out “Paco!” Usually when I opened this door, the dogs could hear me and came running to be let outside. But today only Mina and Flacko ran past me to check if the grass had changed during the twenty minutes since they’d last peed on it.
I didn’t see Paco inside or outside, so I called Mina and Flacko back inside.
I felt pretty sure that Paco was somehow still in his room. I checked his bedroom again, including the futon, but still couldn’t find him. I walked outside and sat on the stairs just outside his door. I couldn’t see into the room, but I could see the entrance.
Quietly, calmly, and assertively, I called out, “Paco, it’s time to go outside.”
Paco suddenly appeared in the doorway of his room, as if I hadn’t just spent fifteen minutes calling him. I gave him a treat and a pat, and then got up to wash my hands.
When I turned back, I caught him standing between the futon and his crate. He wagged his tail. Apparently he was waiting for me to leave the room, so that we could play another round of the Looking for Paco game.
*Apparently she thought the name was stupid, too.