Doula (Oblongata)

We had our first Doula (oblongata...you wanted to say it too, right?) interview today. At Starbucks. My head nearly exploded. She was awesome but her "menu" rivaled Jerry's Deli (an L.A. haunt that has a menu as dense as the bible...or torah...or insert your own wicked long-confusing-too-many-option text).

I found myself pretending to understand the way I did in Math class senior year of high school. I got the whole SOHCAHTOA thing but everything else evaded me. I told the principal that I would like to abandon math for creative writing. The principal said "you need this math class to graduate." I said "I will be hiring accountants and business managers because I am going into the arts." I got out of the math class. And I have a great business manager. And I can totally multiply, divide, add and subtract. So don't try to trip me up with numbers...I got mad 9th grade level skills. Holler!!

That said, before I left the math class, I did a great job pretending to understand everything. Well, great until the exams came. Then...umm...not so great. Hence, creative writing. So, I am going to make it my job to comprehend everything the doula (oblongata) was talking about. This guy is going back to school...baby school.

I'm not afraid of flashcards!

Baby Disc

My wife is on her way home with a new DVD. It is starring our baby. There are not a lot of locations. Just a womb really. So, production was wicked cheap.

I could not make the doctor's appointment today so Meesh went solo. She called after to tell me that everything looked perfect and told me "Maybe it is better this way...I go and get a DVD for you." She said that because I break out into cold sweats before the doctor gels her belly. Meesh is fine. Like when we fly. I can't breathe and she reads The Barefoot Contessa. If this is any indication of how Jewishly worried I am going to be as a Dad...shit, I need therapy...or valium (yay).

Those BOOBS are made for walking...and other things

The last time I had an intimate experience with such wonderfully, large breasts was, I think, in the fifth grade. Mrs. Maderos was my teacher and she would hover above my desk and shade me from the flourescent lights. Yep, her boobs were that big. Big enough to eclipse things. And she wore them in a bra that made them desk-like. I used to laugh to myself thinking I could actually do my homework on her chest. Where's my number 2 pencil? Likely, on her chest. Her desk chest. Chest desk. I thought that if it poured during recess and I was umbrella-less, I could find shelter under the bosom of Mrs. Maderos. Her nickname was torpedo tits.

Okay, you can't do your algebra on Meesh's pregnant boobs - they're not THATTT big. But let's just say I am proud of them. Better than that, Meesh is proud of them. Wears 'em like a badge, errr, badges of honor. The boobs are just one of the things Meesh loves about being pregnant. She is cooking a quiche right now while talking on the phone with our friend. I am writing this and overhearing her say through a smile "I love being pregnant! I am so happy." Fuck...I found the Golden Tickkettttt! That was all I had to do. Get her pregnant? I warned her that if she keeps this up...this overwhelming bliss...I am going to have to keep her pregnant for years...nee...forever and ever.

Anna Rodrigo

I woke up this morning thinking I was married to Anna Rodrigo. And never have I been more frightened. My biggest fears...flying, jail (although I love saying things like "this ice cream is jail good") and dinners with boring people ain't got nothing on my fear of Anna Rodrigo.

Anna was pregnant with her second child when she was 15. She was still in 7th grade. She may, in fact, still be in 7th grade. She wore huge hoop earrings. She had a flat top and a tail that she chewed on. She beat up my friend Jojo (a Jewish, musical theater girl) because she didn't like that Jojo "thought she was all that cuz she could sing and shit." A week later, Jojo came back to school with her own hoop earrings and a Puerto Rican accent and she shoved Anna into a locker. Jojo got suspended because Anna was pregnant. Apparently you can't push a pregnant bully into a locker...in the 7th grade.

Anna's pregnant belly was as much a bully prop as her tail and those fucking hoop earrings. She would shove people out of lunchroom lines because "My fuckin' baby need a twinkie." Her baby bump made her bigger and more intimidating. She could part a crowd in a corridor like no other. Bitch was the Moses of our Junior High School.

She would push an empty stroller around school "cuz I'm preppin' for Anna Junior." These 7th grade Jewish eyes had a hard time comprehending the visual. And the day my knees buckled was the day I tried to make sense of the visual. I found myself in a dead-lock stare. Staring at Anna Rodrigo. I was at my locker and she was talking shit with some of her friends (and by friends I mean girls who were so scared of her but did not want to get beaten up so instead they split a necklace with her) and she was wearing a bikini top. Flat-top. Tail. 8 months pregnant and a bikini top. Mid-winter in New England. Are you scared?

I couldn't help but STARE. It was one of the greatest things I had ever seen. Fuck THE DAVID, I got Anna Rodrigo. Well, she caught my eyes. And this is how it went.

"The fuck you lookin' at? You Jewin' my belly? My belly could beat yo ass up. Talkin' bout you 'lil Jew. My belly could knock you right good."

Then I blacked out. She never touched me. But I blacked out. Literally. My first experience with sniffing salts.

And this morning, I woke up from a nightmare that the pregnant woman in my bed was Anna Rodrigo.

It wasn't. It was Meesh. And she was pretty and sweet. But she was chewing on her tail and her belly did kick my ass.

It happened just like this, the house literally began to twitch

It could have happened in Los Angeles. The morning before we left for Italy. At 8 a.m. we did that thing called "trying." Still confused about that expression "we're trying to get pregnant." Correction, "we're banging...a lot...on a cycle in fact...one according to ovulation and moons and tides and the Princes of them..." We're trying to get pregnant is like "I'm trying to win lots of money at the blackjack table by the pool at the Atlantis." You're playing blackjack and if luck strikes you will find colorful chips in front of you. If my sperm does a great breast stroke, Phelps style, I will find chips in front of me, too. Blackjack, babies. There's no trying in Babesball.

But, it may have been that morning. The morning that the 'moons' were so powerful...bed shaking, head hitting wall and back nearly breaking. At the 'climax' of this story, I yelped for two reasons. One was...well...and the other was that my back done thrown out. Never have I felt more Jewish. More not 25. Great preparation for Daddy-hood. I spent the next five hours on stretching machines and big, bouncing balls. Being cracked and massaged. My neck could not move. If I had to move my neck that meant I had to move my body. I was basically Vicki from Small Wonder. I had to fly from Los Angeles to Rome with this. I had to go to Rite Aid and buy heating pads and Icy Hot and on a happy note, fill my prescription of Vicodin (yay) and Ibuprofen (boo). But if all of this pain meant we were....errr...meant SHE was pregnant well then who the fuck needs mobility.

Warning: If SHE is following an ovulation cycle, a calendar of BEST MOMENTS TO GET PREG, beware. You will have to drop your pants whenever she calls...albeit en route home from work, on a lunch break from work, in the wee hours of morning before sun rises, before sun sets, before you can think...brush your teeth...while you're dreaming, blacked out from drinking. It doesn't matter. She want it...she gon' git it.

p.s. getting an erection on command is up there with farting on command, being funny on command or remembering the Bush Doctarine on command.

A baby this way comes

I am having a baby. My first. Well, let me clarify. I am NOT having the baby. My wife is. However this baby is my first...baby that I am not carrying but fathering. Is that right? Fathering? Sounds like it was a deal. It was not. We decided to get pregnant...oops a daisy...we decided that we wanted to have our first child and that Meesh would (fingers crossed) get pregnant. And she did. She got pregnant right around our first year wedding anniversary. She woke me up at 6 a.m. waving what I thought was a popsicle stick in my face. My first thought was "lady, get out my face." My second thought was "we have popsicles in the freezer?" When my eyes focused and my mind connected to what I was seeing I jumped out of bed. Freaking out. Excitedly freaking out. Overwhelmed with freak out. I asked first "should we frame it?" "It...?" my wife asked. "Yeah, the stick. The plus sign. Do we keep it?" I collect memories. Movie tickets. Notes from people. I have a box of wrist bands from concerts and waterparks and lame V.I.P rooms. So, why not a pregnancy stick? Meesh was quick to remind me that the stick was urinated on. This reminder after I grabbed it from her hand. I suppose, though, if I am adult enough to help make the stick a plus sign I can certainly get some sissy on my hands. (My mother taught us to pee in the toilet by saying "want to make a sissy?" I now use it for my dogs. Try it...something about the sound of the word just makes you want to, well, make a sissy.)

Alas alack (always wanted to use that expression) that stick was accurate. We were, are, indeed having a baby. Our first. Some months from now I will be someone's father. I will have fathered someone. I will, for the rest of time, be father to someone. Holy shit!!!!!!

I will be writing here to tell you all the tales of what it is like to be the one NOT carrying the child. The one dealing with the one who IS carrying the child. I feel much like I felt on semester abroad in Europe. I had never been to Europe so everything was so NEW. New enough to write every detail. You know when you are 20 and you do anything NEW...everything is so big in your mind. You see a fat drunk guy in an English pub and he is singing songs you've never heard and you are blown away and calling your parents to tell them and talking about fat drunk guy for weeks and referencing him to other backpackers on trains. I am not saying my wife is a fat drunk guy, on the contrary she is a beautiful brunette with a gorgeous baby bump...but yeah, I am feeling 20 and fat-drunk-guy-referency these days. You know you're in that space when you are around people who already have kids and you tell them things like "dude, she was so nauseous and tired the first three months." And those people just Laughhhh at you. Yes, AT YOU! They've been there and done that. They are thinking "ohhh you...look at you...so cute you are having your first..." Yep, I've realized that people with children look down on those having children. It reminds me of going to my Hasidic cousin's wedding (yes, I hugged the bride...NOT ALLOWED TO DO THAT) but moreso I felt Catholic. My Judaism was nothing but a thang compared to their Hasidiasm. So it is, people having their first child must beware of sharing too much with those who already had the children.

Gotta go. Have to decide on everything for the next 25 years. Bye.