The following is Shirley Ujest’s response to an email I sent to her a few days ago. It’s just too wonderful to keep to myself.
(Thanks for letting me share, SU.)
[quote]
Hey Chris,
Yeah, about six weeks left, thanks for asking.
It’s funny, with the first pregnancy, I knew exactly what week I was, basically down to the minute of conception. This time around, when someone asks me how far along I am I say, “Somewhere between 30-90 weeks pregnant.” It is amazing how many people, males and never-gestated females, don’t even bat an eye with the ‘90’ number. I could say I’m 67 weeks along in this pregnancy and the answer would be, “And when is the baby due?” Try it the next time. It’s a hoot that only you and your OB will chuckle at.
I’ve never obsessed about due dates, that is an exercize in futility and Lord knows, I get enough exercize from jumping to conclusion. ( Feel free to quote me on that.) I just tell everyone that the baby is due in February, and they are happy with that. Believe me, there is little to no fanfare in the second time around. It’s like, " Oh you are pregnant again? Was it an accident or did you intentionally decide to ruin your waistline for the rest of your life?" My response usually is, " I decided to have sex with my husband and since it
is such a rare occasion, he had to make every shot count."
Until this past week ( she’s dropping and I can’t seem to get really comfortable), I really haven’t felt pregnant. Except for the problem of sleeping on my stomach and my boobs starting to resemble the women featured in National Geographic, and the mood swings, weight gain and hunger…)
Actually, I have felt fine ( other than having that 4 week sickness called “The Cold That Won’t Go Away and I can’t drown my sorrows in Nyquil like I’ve done my whole life.”) The best revenge in life, I have discovered ( feel free to quote me on this as well) is to never whine about your problems. Whether you are pregnant, have a toddler or a husband who (like all husbands)is an idiot some of the time. When your friends/coworkers get on the wagon of
complaint regarding hot button female topics (read: bitch incessantly) and it eventually come around to you, just smile and say, " I feel fine. My son is great and my husband never leaves the seat up." It drives them nuts.
As for names: yes we have a name picked out, although I think because the first time around, before we knew we were having a boy, we decided on Carsten about five minutes, it just seemed to be “the name”. ( I cannot imagine my parents decided that Joan was “the name” for me. What probably went through their head was, " It’s a name that she will be tortured with for about 80
years, yeah, we like that." Anyways, “Carsten” was perfect for us and our
little tax deduction. If we were having a girl, we were screwed.
Naming a girl is so much harder. I had my heart set on another boy, really. 2 boys, one room and one wardrobe budget. No paying for a wedding in the future. No getting her a Norplant implant when she starts preschool. A girl throws a wrench into the entire scheme of my lifetime of thinking. It was a huge slap in the face with a dead fish of Reality: What I wanted and what really
happens. You’d think after a life time of pragmatic thinking ( which is against the grain of everyone I’ve ever met, ergo, I am constantly let down by the genuine day to day stupidity in others) that I would be use to disappointment. Aw hell, I’ve got 9 months or 600 weeks of gestating to pout
and when she comes out healthy ( with the help of an epidural, I pray.) I will have forgotten my selfishness by reasons of sleep deprivation.
In my life time of posessing a uterus and it’s assorted bells and whistles, I have studied the female speicies to better understand myself.( Having grown up in a primarily boy enviroment, the only female I had regular contact with is my Mom, and we all know MOM’s are female until they have kids. Then they are Mom’s and genderless. Men who become Dad’s become Sexless.) This exploration, it seems, is grand and noble effort which has left me more confused than ever. Women/girls, I’ve decided after years of research, are basically evil. Sure, we don’t start wars, develop bombs or panty hose, but we pepper our conversations with such verbal hand grenades as, " Does this outfit make my butt look big?" that make any sane man which for hand to hand combat rather
than ever attempt to answer without offense. No man would ever say this. Why do we do this? I don’t know and I’ve done it countless times. Basically, if I weren’t me and I witnessed me doing something like this, I would have myself sterilized, lobotomized and euthanized. But since I am not me half the time, I am exempt from this fitting punishment by Tax Code 150.34c.
Logic and common sense does not apply to women until they are 70. Some women
mature earlier, others much later. Some never. This generalization can be applied to men as well, but this is not the time or space to discuss that subject.
Take the Black Shoe Theory, for example. Go into any womans closet (mine too) and there will be at least 20 pair of black shoes in a variety of styles and heel heights for any occasion, not of which ever arise. (The occasion, not the shoes, silly.) Except she wears the same pair of cobby cuddlers every other day (alternating with Black Low Heeled Free Spirits) to work. There is some
kind of Bermuda Triangle Magnetic pull a woman feels when she spies a shoe rack. We cannot stop ourselves from “Just Looking”. It’s like engineers and hardware stores. Unexplainable. What goes through the female mind is, " I really need another pair of Black shoes to go with that outfit because the shoes I bought just don’t work." As if they are Teamster shoes. Something that is With It, Works and is Comfortable. A triple play, ergo, a rarity with Women and Shoes. In the end, as I like to say, we all wear velcro closure tennis shoes.
Men, on the other hand wear posess one pair of ratty sneakers, one pair of work boots, one pair of dress oxfords (black) and one pair of cowboy boots that they bought in the Urban Cowboy frenzy back in the 1970’s and haven’t worn since. When men die, they are wearing velcro closure tennis shoes. The
difference is that Men save thousands of dollars and hours NOT looking for the
Holy Grail known as Comfortable shoes, they just don’t give a damn and watch sports or start a project in the garage they never finish, but I digress.
Back to names. I cannot stand cutesy names. Cheerleader/perky names are evil. Any name associated with some she-bitch self absorbed lemming from my past is vetoed before my husband can finish saying it. He, naturally, likes happy, cute names. Might as well name her Sparky or Muffin and get it over with, I
say.
Naturally, being totally the opposite of the man I vowed to do laundry for for the rest of his life, I like names with strength and character. Thor and Zena have been vetoed for some odd reason. So we went on a fact finding trip to England. Looking for inspiration in places like the white pages, cemetaries (yes, honey, I named you after a tombstone. Hold the pepperoni.) and asking all the locals what their favorite girls names are. Apparently the number one
favorite girls name in Essex England is, “My Wife’s.” Hmmmm. That’s a schoolyard pounding if I ever saw one coming.
It wasn’t until about 10 minutes before boarding our flight home that I found and bought with my extra currency( read: I needed to unload it before getting on the plane because it won’t by me squat when I get back to America.) that I bought at Gatwick Airport a A-Z Baby Name Book. When my daughter needs therapy over her name ( and other issues due to parental retardation) I will simply hand her this book and tell her to sue the publisher. This book is waaaay different that the other baby names books I posess. They are titled: Is it a Saint’s Name ( from 1948 and a total hoot.) Beyond Jennifer and Jason, All Those Great Names, 10,000 baby names, Baby Names for the
