He's practically a midwife!

My husband. He makes me laugh. Last night he told me the following story, the kind of story that makes you choke out a strangled laughing, "Oh, I'm soooo blogging that!" He said okay, because that's the kind of good sport he is.

So. As we're loading the dishwasher and rehashing our days, Pynchon says, "Hey, 'Christina' at work is pregnant again" and I offered my usual response, which is to snort and say: "Sucker!"

"How pregnant is she?" I asked.

"Well, I don't know. She's showing and she told everyone at work today. But she says that you show right away with the second one." He paused. "I've known for a while, though."

"Oh," I said, "you didn't tell me that! When did she tell you?"

"Um, she didn't actually tell me. I sorta knew. Urr. I mean. Um. I noticed a while ago that her boobs got REALLY BIG."

"!!!!"

"Ahhhh, 'Christina' is not, like flat-chested or anything, you know, if she wears a good bra, like you, you'd never really notice she's got big boobs. But then, like, all of a sudden, they were CLOWN BIG." (Here you have to imagine him doing the song and dance 'clown boob' routine he developed when I was pregnant.)

"!!!"

"So I thought she was pregnant, but obviously, I wasn't going to say anything. And then she started to look fat, so I was pretty sure. And then today she announced it."

This is the part I almost died laughing. I'm actually kind of proud that he is looking at coworkers' chests mostly to determine how far along they are. He's practically a midwife.

And I laughed and laughed and laughed. Ha!

Date night, post kids

I'm finally well enough that we felt safe to book the babysitter Friday night, so that we could go out, as a couple, on a civilized date.

We brushed our teeth, spruced ourselves up a little, and decided to eat dinner at a nice restaurant nearby that just opened. We sat in the gimmick seats: a dining bar on a pass-through into the kitchen. We watched the clang and clatter of food prep, held hands, ordered drinks, flirted. We bantered with the staff, laughed, nuzzled each other like newlyweds. It was an eventful week and we had lots of catching up to do. Pynchon had an interview for a FULL TIME! PERMANENT! GOOD JOB! ON CAMPUS! so that was something to rehash. As for me, I had six and a half hours of high-impact meetings on Friday, with lots of news to share. We jabbered about work, and potential work, and stuff in the news, and things we'd been thinking about excitedly while clutching at each others' fingers and cooing.

As we giggled and oohed (somewhat obnoxiously) through dessert, our (somewhat obsequious) waiter slid up close and noted conspiratorially, "I guess you guys would like the cheque, because it looks like you're in a hurry to get home" (nudge, nudge).

It's almost like we could hear that sound effect of the record needle dragged across the interrupted conversation. SCREEE!

We looked at him, in bon's words, like he was speaking Swahili.

I blinked. Considered. Replied, aghast: "Oh, GOD, no. The BABY'S at home."

Now that we have kids, if we're having a flirty, sexy, fun, grownup time on a date? The last thing we want to do is go home. Parenthood. It really is the great divide.

Delight

Tonight, I'll set all the clocks ahead by an hour before my Magic Bag and I retire to bed, all snug and cozy against the pounding rain. I guess it's spring.

I've never liked spring, really. Half-melted snowbanks, sand-crusted and full of dog shit, do not inspire euphoria, in me, at any rate. Chill rains and grey skies do not lift my spirits as much as a crisp winter sun reflected off endless white snow does, even if the chill rains are tepid and I can leave the house without a shudder of cold. It's cool and dark and rainy here, and I've been feeling a little glum. We stayed in this morning, exhausing our options, and Munchkin settled into a three hour nap during which I actually ran out of things to do.

And then delight: trying to lift my own mood, when she woke up, I presented her with a surprise. New rain boots--a wild pattern of white, fuschia, green, yellow--and, even better, an umbrella. She was astonished. She thanked me over and over and assured me it was the best present anyone ever got her. She dressed as fast as she could and raced downstairs to don last fall's hot pink splash pants and rain jacket. She could hardly sit still as I got her boots on, put her umbrella in her hand.

She clutched that umbrella over her head all the way to Starbucks, splashing "like a duck" in every puddle we passed, quacking maniacally. She was so proud, so silly all at once. Urban pedestrians hunched tight against the rain lifted their heads as she approached, a vision of glee in day-glo nylon and rubber. They smiled.

I smiled too, wrapped up tight in my grey windbreaker, hood up, hands in pockets, a damp cloud in contrast to the brilliant rainbow my daughter streaked across the sidewalk. Suddenly, I wanted my red coat, my chequered scarf, some wild rubber boots of my own. To smile and sing with the joy of new puddles, the freshness of a season returned that was barely remembered.

She had the very best time. On the way home, I let her jump over and over and over in one particularly ferocious puddle. She soaked herself thoroughly and when I dragged her finally into the house, water poured from her boots when I removed them. "Thank you, Mom," she said, snuggling into me as I wrapped her up in a towel and held her close to me. It was as near to perfect happiness as I've ever really experienced as a parent.

What's it about, this post? It's just a little piece of time, really. I want, I guess, to revel in the particularities of my own experience of her delight, my own witnessing of her wee toddler joy, to remember. It's okay, sometimes, I think, to be particular. To just be in a moment. To want to hold it tight to my heart, a very personal bit of sunshine carved into words that I'll share with you, if you want to enjoy them too.

WW: Will winter ever end?

A study in mother-daughter simililarity of habit ...

And so on and so forth

UPDATE! It's acute sinusitis, with developing secondary bronchitis. Doctor told me I looked terrible, and suggests in future I stay away from sick people ... okey-dokey then.

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Academics have more speaking tics than other people, I think. Maybe it comes from spending so many hours of every work week filling the air of the classroom (and, it is to be hoped, the minds of the undergraduates seated therein) with the sounds of our voices. Conscious, perhaps, of hogging the floor in so many of our verbal interactions with others, we seem, we professors, to self-deprecatingly indicate that we know we ramble. We tend, when speechifying among ourselves, to interrupt our own monologues and trail off, hands waving, into "etc, etc, etc" or "and so on and so forth" or in my own decisively pop-culture-attuned way, "blah blah blah" or "yadda yadda yadda".

What I've got, lately, is a whole lot of "and so on and so forth", which is why I've not been around.

I've been sick for a month, cancelling more classes this year than in the previous four combined, while working on two fantastically busy committees, sleeping 14 hours a day if I can, yadda yadda yadda.

I miss my family, because I'm always working or sleeping, and they're so adorable, and poor Pynchon is doing the work of both parents and it's not like he's not busy, etc etc etc.

Because I'm only operating--at best--at about 60% capacity, when I can drag myself upright at all, all my work is either half-assed or desperately tardy, so now we can add panic attacks to the litany of problems above, blah blah blah.

I've become so weak that I got winded walking to the end of my block and had to go back to bed. And so on and so forth.

I'm too tired to read and too bored of my own life to write. I'll see you all again if I ever, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, recover from the five constant weeks now of flu-cold-shakes-snot-coughing-exhaustion-feel-like-shit routine I'm boring myself to death with. I'm angry and bored: it's no longer fun to cuddle under the duvet in a cough syrup fog, and I want my life back.

Tell me: are any of you routinely sick for six or seven weeks in a row every winter? What the hell can I do?