I remember sitting and clutching my squally infant son, born mere weeks before, as I watched the second plane fly into the Twin Towers. I remember holding him and crying myself, wondering how I could have been so awful as to bring a brand new baby into a world where stuff like this happens.

I remember crying for all of the parents and children who died that day, now knowing just how much they had lost. I remember being afraid, so very afraid, of what was going to happen next.

I remember now, and I wonder: what will I tell my son who was there with me that day, the two of us against the world?

What do you remember?

Three years ago today, on arguably one of the most disgusting days of the summer, my lungs so full of phlegm and on a day in which I infected half of the people whose dinner I was paying for, thereby earning the nickname Typhoid Becky, I got married.

I’d never been one for romanticizing weddings, I never had an idea for a signature cocktail or monogrammed napkins, I never really even wanted to get married. I’d rather have imagined my future life as an Army NINJA Commando or as The Crazy Cat Lady than as a wife. I wasn’t anti-marriage or anything, but it was something that only happened to Other People. Like children.

Ahem.

People who tell me that they Just Knew about someone or something like the Perfect House, The Right Man, or Which Flavor Baby They Were Carrying always annoy me. Really, they do. Not because I don’t believe that they MIGHT have known something ahead of time, but because seriously, how many of them confess to Knowing something that didn’t happen. Plus, they always say it with this I’m More Of A Creature Of Mother Earth Than You and blow a raspberry in my direction when I confess to not knowing I was even pregnant when I was. Or maybe it’s all in my head.

Sure it annoys me, but you know what? I Just Knew when I met Daver, after spending the night at his apartment for the first time, that this is the man I would marry. Like it or not, he and I were going to be together for a very, VERY long time. While I’ve never asked him if he had the same sort of revelation, which even if he did, I doubt very much that he would tell me, I think he had a pretty good idea of the same thing.

The day of my wedding was not the best day of my life. Honestly, it was probably one of the worst days, although I won’t get into my reasons there, and I wanted nothing more than to leave the party and hang out with my new husband. But every day since then has been one of the best days of my life.

Even on our worst days, when we can barely tolerate the sight of each other, when his throat clearing and my incessant use of nose spray annoys us both so very much that we could each scream, I know how lucky I am. I have never, and will likely never take him for granted.

He’s the man I didn’t know I was lucky enough to marry.

Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

-Pablo Neruda

Or a baby boy who will be super mad later. Becky asked me to post for her post US today as she is waaaaayyyyy too cool (or has a Dr’s appt and lunch with the B-day boy. Whichever you prefer). The baby’s brand is still undetermined. It is a bit too early to tell for sure, but apparently the tech made an eduacted guess that Becky is incubating a GIRL. The important thing is that there is a brain and a heart that both look healthy and normal. So, let’s all help Becky obsess over the superficial things like pink or blue for the next 3 weeks until she has a definitive sex, because we now know for sure the bigger worries can be put to rest (at least this set can).

Happy Birthday Daver!!!! Your balls are officially old.

Ashley

Today is a landmark day for us at Casa de la Sausage. It is my husband, The Daver’s 30th birthday.

I give Dave an awfully hard time, really I do, like how I’ve called him Old Balls since we got together 5 years ago (he is, after all 2 years older than me), how I constantly feel the need to grab his ball-bag as he sits on the couch next to me, or how I scream out things like “Hey Dave, weren’t you out of DEPENDS?” or “Hey DAVE, didn’t you want that New Kids On The Block CD?” when we’re out in public.

(Hel-LO run-on sentence!)

But as anyone who truly knows me knows, the harder time I give you, the more I love you. It’d be my family mantra if having a family mantra or mission statement wasn’t the stupidest thing on the planet aside from perhaps The Wiggles. Which may be dumber.

So, Happy Birthday, The Daver.

I’d say something cornier, but I’m saving it up for our anniversary on Wednesday. Good idea, you, with putting our anniversary right near your birthday, ensuring that you will never forget the day that two became one. Yeah, that’s right. I used THE SPICE GIRLS to describe our WEDDING.

HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES, OLD MAN?

——————-

Also today, at 12:30 my son Ben will be “thinking good thoughts” for me as I go into my Big Scary Ultrasound. All by my lonesome. That’s the kicker at my OB’s office: you have to go through the first (i.e. frightening) part of it all alone (it’s policy, not because I bring an entourage with me).

My mother has been making fun of me (along with The Daver) for being so worried about this US (and the one’s I had with the other kids) and I think my friend Andria said it best when she told me yesterday something like with her third, she couldn’t believe that after two perfect little boys, that she’d be fortunate enough to have another healthy one.

I’m paraphrasing, perhaps badly, but the point is clear: like her, I don’t believe I’m lucky enough to have something good happen to me again.

Why? I have no idea. It’s sick and it’s stupid, and as yet another friend of mine, Carlynn, imparted yet another piece of wisdom onto me this weekend (they make me feel SMRT). She said, “”Why not be happy now? You can be sad later. If it’s necessary.”

They’re both right. And while I’m going to try my best to smile and appear like I’m not ready to chew off one or both of my arms, it’s gonna be hard.

Fake it ’til you make it, right?

Will you hold my hand, Internet?

I have now officially popped by guest posting cherry over at Bad Ass Geek. Here’s what I said:

———–

When both of your parents are hippies, there isn’t a whole hell of a lot of things that you can do to rebel. I mean, any parents who protested the Vietnam War and marched at the Democratic National Convention (the rioting one), and admitted to smoking the ganja often and with gusto aren’t exactly the sort that might ground you for being 3 minutes past curfew.

Hell, I didn’t even HAVE a curfew.

Nor did I have any real ground rules to follow other than to be kind to living things. And not vote Republican.

Between the admitted lack of boundaries and my incredible sense of Not Wanting To Get Busted, it was with many hooting and hollering friends that I called my mother to get permission to smoke The Weed for the first time.

I was 14, I’d just gotten my tonsils taken out (no small surgery for someone past the age of 6) and I wanted to make sure that nothing weird was going to happen. Like I specifically didn’t want to suddenly think that jumping off the roof was a great way to finally fllllyyyyyy, like always happened in the DARE movies.

She was taken aback, my poor mother, when I called her and asked her if I could toke up with my friends. To her credit, she didn’t laugh hysterically or anything, but she did sound pretty surprised even as she agreed to it. Providing, of course, that I drink a lot of water.

Drinking lots of water and going out in the sunshine are two of my mother’s favorite pieces of advice. I could probably be bleeding to death in the woods from a gunshot wound, and if I were to see her she would likely tell me to drink some water and lay out in the sunshine.

My first choice of Smoking Implement was a 3 foot purple glass bong I’d named Stinky, and as my friend Josh lit the herb at the bottom of the tube, I sucked in as hard as I could, my finger covering the rush hole. The smoke in the chamber reached a thick consistency we called “mayonnaise,” and after I held in my first toke and blew it out, I put my mouth back at the rim, unplugged the rush hole and sucked in.

In that moment, I suddenly earned the respect of each and every seasoned pot smoker I knew as I cleared the chamber. Apparently this was no small feat.

After I was done with my hit, I popped off the bed and bopped into the other room, squeaking out a “Thanks, guys!” as the room burst into rounds of applause for Wonder Girl, Pot Smoker Extraordinaire.

I didn’t get high that first time, despite the massive influx of Mary Jay into my system, I felt nothing. Perhaps I was a smidgen gigglier (no huge feat for an admittedly giggly 14 year old girl), perhaps it was just the atmosphere in that house that night.

Perhaps it was all just one toke over the line (Sweet Jesus).

Tell me about one of YOUR first times. I could use some entertainment, dammit!

I just changed my Big Scary Ultrasound appointment from the 17th of September to the 8th of September (also: Daver’s birthday. Where he turns 30! Officially OLD BALLS TERRITORY). Which has made my body Full of The Nervous, as I stare down the barrel of that gun. My reasons for changing my appointment are less “ohmygod, I can’t WAIT to go shopping” and more “ohmygod, I can’t WAIT to find out if it’s healthy,” which make me a killjoy, but a practical one.

People tend to assume that since I have two boys at home, that I would somehow really be upset if I didn’t have at least one baby girl. And while I might be upset for different reasons (i.e. I don’t get to buy frilly dresses and tell the Internet about it), I’m sadly boring when I inform you that really, REALLY, all I want is for my baby to be healthy. I don’t even care if it’s HAPPY (my babies are NEVER happy), just healthy.

I’ve tried to get in touch with my inner voice, you know, the one that’s supposed to guide my womanly intuition toward the gender of my Sausage, I’ve really tried. And all my womanly intuition wants to tell me is that I’m in dire need of buffalo wings.

When I was pregnant with Ben, delusional and pregnant, I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles, Cosmos, whatever that I was having a girl. I had a girl’s name picked out. I hadn’t bought any CLOTHES yet, since I was both poor and practical, but I had my eagle eye set on some frilly dresses.

It was a good thing they have you lay down for your ultrasound, or I may have toppled over onto the floor, never to get up again, when the lady informed me that I was carrying a boy. I insisted that she show me the evidence, and she did, a heavily pixilated penis/balls combo floating lazily in a bath of amniotic fluid.

I’ll admit to being somewhat disappointed at first, not that this was a very PC reaction, but with fairly good reason. When you have a boy, pregnant by a dude who is on his better days Captain Douchebag and on his worse days Captain Asswad, the last thing you want is for YOUR son to turn out just like his father.

I’m positive I’m not alone in this feeling, which at the end of it all, does come from the right place. I wanted better for my Ben.

And I got it.

When I got pregnant with Alex, Dave and I formed a kind of bet for what flavor of baby we were carrying. He INSISTED with more conviction than I’ve seen him muster save for the time that he tried to convince me that “Kung Fu” was a great show, that we were having a Girl. I was so much sicker, he reasoned, my pregnancy was so very different, it HAD to be a girl.

I took the option of Boy, just to make the US day more interesting (and to quell my aching nerves), and we had our bet.

The Stakes For Alex’s Pregnancy:

If I was right, and the baby was a Boy, Dave would wear a baby doll Britney Spears shirt IN PUBLIC on a day when it couldn’t be covered by a jacket.

If HE was right, and the baby was a Girl, I would, when I wasn’t overly pregnant, wear a Chicks Dig Unix shirt in public.

Due to our cheap-ass nature, and the fact that I sort of forgot (remember, this was also November in Chicago, where it’s certainly not warm enough to wear a t-shirt outdoors), Dave never wore the Britney Shirt.

So this time, in order once again to distract myself from the rolling ball of nerves that I now am, I tried to get him to make a bet with me. I was going for Team Girl, I figured he would go for Team Boy and we could come up with something new. Other than, “Hey, I’ll give you $20 from our JOINT CHECKING ACCOUNT” as stakes.

Now I need your help, Internet.

First, will you come with me to my US appointment on Monday at 12:30? Please? Even if it’s just in your head, please send me healthy baby vibes. I’ll be your BFF!

Second, go ahead and vote up there. I’m dying to see what YOU think I’m carrying.

Third, and perhaps most entertaining, help me come up with some stakes with which Dave and I can lay our bets. Here is the pertinent info on Daver (you know me already):

He is a geek, but not a nerd. I’m assured that there is a difference here.

As you may have guessed, he has an excellent sense of humor, so pretty much anything is fair game.

He’s Mr. Wilson to my Dennis The Menace.

He doesn’t appreciate the beauty of pop culture as I do as he’s far more deep and meaningful than I am.

He will stop at nothing to embarrass me.

Anything else you need to know?

Every now and again, when I duck into Mimi Maternity or Pea in a Pod I run into another pregnant lady (I know, who’d have thought it?). The sort of pregnant lady that makes me gnash my teeth and drool in her direction (she’s probably all, who let Crazy McFat Pants out of her cage?).

Because while I’ve looked about 6 months pregnant since day 4 or 5, my rolls getting rolls on top of even more love handles, my cellulite now covering me in some sort of bizarre pregnancy suit, my bra stretching and groaning uncomfortably against my saggy boobs, she serenely pats her tiny belly as she confides in the salesclerk that she’s due any day now.

I pray feverishly as I peer between the racks of clothing to find something that’s decidedly more flattering to the figure (what figure? I look like an olive on toothpicks) than what I’m wearing, that she’s about to divulge that this is her first baby or something, anything to make me feel better about myself and my ham-hock arms at 4 and a half months along, before she then mentions that this is her fifth baby.

She looks so put together, so firm and taut in her ass and thighs, obviously she hadn’t gained a pound over the recommended whatever it is you’re supposed to gain, while I? I look like I rolled out of bed, snapped on a bra, pulled my hair back and then went out in public. Which is precisely what I did.

And I am jealous. I’d love to be a svelte and sexy pregnant lady, gaining the tiniest amount of weight in my belly only rather than turning my ass into a shelf and my face into a moon pie. Ain’t gonna happen in THIS lifetime, sister.

When I had my first baby, I got hungry. I put my eatin’ pants on and I ate pretty much anything and everything I could get my grubby mitts on. I ate at least 2-3 times what I was supposed to eat, washing down every meal with a milkshake or three while I munched candy bars I hadn’t eaten in years.

Sure, I knew I was gaining weight, so I eventually just asked the nurse not to tell me what the scale said when I stepped onto it. There was no law saying I had to KNOW how fat I’d gotten, right? Besides, I’d just breastfeed it off later, I told myself.

Hardy-har-fucking-har.

Ben, who unbeknown to me at the time was autistic, refused to get anywhere near my massive mammeries once I popped him out, and after a spell of pumping he became a formula baby.

Fast forward 5 years. I’ve taken off the weight, however painfully, and am now pregnant with Alex. I have made precisely one promise to myself: I wasn’t going to become a fat ass when I got pregnant again.

Morning sickness, then hyperemesis struck, and even as I purged whatever molecules of food from my system, I watched horrified as the scale went up. Between 5-9 weeks, I gained 11 pounds. I ate nothing, threw up so hard that my nose was permanently bleeding and I gained weight.

Once I was able to hold down food again (around 18 weeks and 25 pounds heavier), I ate well. I ate so well that people couldn’t believe how fat I was getting. Egg whites, tofu, veggies, fruits. Small portions eaten often. And yet I found myself on the delivery table having gained 56 pounds. A mere 10 pounds lighter than when I’d had Ben.

(as an aside, it hurt me to no end that only The Daver believed me that I wasn’t secretly gorging upon hostess products and lard at night and while he was at work. Everyone else seemed to believe that I was lying for some reason, and was just ashamed of my weight gain. While I was TOTALLY ashamed, I’d never lie about something like that)

Oh well, I told myself, at least I’d breastfeed it off with this one. Alex was a champion nurser, nursed often and with gusto, and I knew I’d be back into my size 6’s in no time.

Go ahead, laugh away. I won’t blame you.

Turns out that no matter what LLL tells you, not EVERYONE loses weight while breastfeeding. Just wanted to be clear here, because I seriously wish like hell that anyone had told me this before I nearly killed myself trying to get this weight off.

So when I got pregnant with The Sausage, I made a vow to myself to eat what I want and enjoy it without feeling guilty about any weight gains I’ve had. My body does apparently like to pack on the pounds while pregnant, so why fight it? It’s not worth it to beat myself up over every single pound.

And so far? I’ve not gained an insane amount of weight for someone almost 18 weeks pregnant. Which shocks the shitballs out of me. Who knew that I just needed to let go and eat pretty much any and everything that I can find? My week’s menu reads just like the Very Hungry Caterpillar, and I’m loving every second of it.

Who the hell knew?

So dish. Tell me about YOUR pregnancy weight gain. Please tell me I’m not alone in reaching epic blimp-like proportions while pregnant. Or if I am, will you pass the ketchup and chocolate. Aunt Becky is ready for her 1st dinner.

Earlier today, at pretty much any hour that ended with o’clock, Alex treated me to a symphony of screams and tears from the floor, where he lay, prostrate with grief over some unseen slight. He rolled angrily, this way and that, his back arched and head occasionally making contact with a toy carelessly tossed about.

I’d try and pick him up every couple of minutes as he thrashed about in the throes of a massive tantrum, but he’d arch his back away from me, and I’d nearly drop him from the sudden shift in weight.

In his defense, which I must remind myself of every 20 or so minutes, he’s getting approximately 4,000 teeth (give or take a few), which is standard M.O. for my poor kids who go from being toofless yokels to Jaws from Moonraker seemingly overnight.

Pleasant, it’s not. But it’s remarkably similar to how I’ve been feeling these days. The stuff I histrionically mentioned last week and then refused to elaborate on has gotten better, but not enough to ease things enough. Since it’s not something serious enough for me to blog about; it’s not cancer or a death in the family, no one is even physically sick right now, it’s hard to admit how much I’m struggling.

Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to try and rationalize away most of my upsetedness (totally not a word. Or if it is, it’s misspelled) by reminding myself that things could always be worse. And it’s the truth. No matter how hard things may be for me, someone somewhere may be dying a slow painful death by chocolate or pinto beans.

But rather than remind myself of this fact over and over and over until I feel like a shameless pile of goo for being upset about something so minor in the first place, I’m just going to go ahead and be upset. I’m not moping about the house, flopping aimlessly onto couches and sighing deeply anytime anyone talks to me or anything. I’m not crying in the shower–or anywhere else–or contemplating wording for my suicide note (although that would be a fantastic writing exercise).

No. None of those things.

Instead, of throwing things at walls or destroying box fans without mercy I am cleaning. I’m cleaning it all. Laundry that hasn’t been touched in weeks? Done. Car that hasn’t been cleaned in so long I’m too embarrassed to even write it down? Check.

It’s all clean.

When I was a kid, I could always tell when my mom wasn’t doing particularly well by the state of the carpets. The house would fall into disrepair, disgusting filth would pile up, and as a 8 year old, I would be stuck cleaning it with a bucket of hot soapy water so that my friends could come over without being disgusted.

As an adult, I associate dirtiness in my home as a sign that I am Not Doing Well. So, as a combatant to that, I clean the living fuck out of everything I can think of, when the going gets rough. I might feel sorry for myself a tad while I do it, but that’s how I handle things. Cleaning.

I wonder if my children notice. I wonder if when they grow up, they’ll become militant slobs when the going gets hard just to counteract the engrained idea that Clean House = Things Aren’t Well.

Or maybe they’ll just take after their father and be slobs no matter WHAT the state of the union is.

My carpet hasn’t looked this good since Alex was a (terrible) baby.

Let me ask you this, o! wise Internet:

Why are all of the really big blogs so very big? Stupid Inquiring minds want to know.

A little over 2 years ago, our favorite buffalo wing place closed up shop, a far more traumatic situation than it should have been, I tell you that much. And although The Daver and I searched high and low for Replacement Buffalo Wings, nothing stood up and shouted, “Hey, fatso! Pick ME!”

Until last weekend, when we rediscovered our love for buffalo wings. Happily for my ass padding, the place is an hour away from our house, so I can’t just drop by (and by drop by, I mean move in) and have lunch there every other day. And night.

Today, much like last Saturday, we ditched the kids with their beloved grandparents and hit the road. Without the kids in the backseat, which saved my eardrums from being blasted by Alex’s indignant squawks, but ended up feeling a bit…empty, I suppose.

The wings were everything I’d imagined and perhaps more, and as we headed home on the highway, we discussed the upcoming baby more than we had in the last 17 or so weeks. While we’re both thrilled to pieces by the thought of another ickle one, we’re also both pretty shell-shocked and battle-weary from Alex’s infant-hood, and honestly I’ve been trying to just get the hell over myself, let go and let God. I’m not a pretty person when I worry, and without being able to control all of the variables in pregnancy, I worry even more fruitlessly than I should.

My pregnancy is just something I barely mention or consider myself unless I’m having an intense craving for hot ketchup (please, don’t ask) or going to the doctor. It seems easier to pretend nothing is happening, save for some bloating and kick-ass comfy pants.

Yet. And yet...

Tap, tap, tap, Baby Sausage reminded me for the first time today that although we were without my older children, we were not completely sans child. Tap, tap, tap.

The tiny fluttering reminded me to actually stop and enjoy this pregnancy, to revel in my weight gain and rib spreading, laugh off the insomnia and horrifying gas, and to pay attention to this new baby too, dammit!

So, Hello World, indeed, Baby Sausage. We just can’t wait to meet you, either.