Turkey Sandwich

I can't eat turkey sandwiches anymore. I haven't had one since I found out I was pregnant.

The problem is that deli meat and unprocessed cheeses sometimes carry a bacterium called listeria. Listeria can cause fetal death, which is something I'd like to avoid.

Last night, I had a dream about a turkey sandwich on wheat bread with mayo and mustard and provolone cheese and lettuce and tomato.

One of the first things I'm gonna do after the baby is born is eat a turkey sandwich.

Stupid Bitch

Does it say “Stupid Bitch” on my forehead?

No.

Funny, because I was treated like a Stupid Bitch today when I went to have another key made for my truck. I have one of those fancy-pants keys that has the plastic above the teeth, but the plastic part broke and I can only super glue that shit so many times before I decide to break down and spend the money.

I went to the dealership where I purchased my truck, and went up to the counter. Nobody was there, so I rang the bell. Waited. Nobody came. Rang the bell again. Finally, Schmoe showed up. I’d never seen him before. Where’s the cute guy who sold me my tires? The one who could sell me a used lollipop stick?

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I need to have another key made for my truck, please,” I said.

“We can probably do that,” said Schmoe.

Probably. Nice.

“How much does it cost?” I asked.

“Well, if you get the same type of key you have now, only it’s all metal and it has the plastic around it, it’s $7.00,” he said.

“That’s fine,” I’m not loosing sleep. After all, it’s not like I’m drinking lattes right now. But, for seven goddamned dollars, I better get more than "Probably."

I gave him my key and he starts to go to the back, but he stopped, held up my key and said, “Don’t get rid of this key, now.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t intend to.”

I’m standing there waiting for Schmoe to come back up with my both keys, and I’m starting to think, “Does this clown think I’m a Stupid Bitch? Honestly.”

He comes back up and says, “Now, is your car here?”

“Yes.”

“Because we should really check this before you leave. Why don’t you tell me which car is yours and I’ll go check it for you,” he said.

I said, “No thanks, I can do that.” I take both keys and head out to my truck thinking, “What the fuck? Does he treat all women this way? Or just the pregnant ones? And, since you work with the public, you may want to get that fungus on your fingernails taken care of, A-hole.”

The key worked. On my way back in I was thinking, “I should’ve let him do it because the alarm was set and he would’ve looked like an A-hole.”

I go back in and he gives me my receipt, I thank him. I then take my receipt to the lovely woman behind the cashier’s counter. I tend to give her lots and lots of money and she’s always pleasant. Imagine that.

I wanted to ask her, “Does he treat all women like they’re Stupid Bitches? Or just the pregnant ones?”

But, I refrained.

Then, when I got home, I made sure to wash my hands. I'll probably take another goddamned shower. Don’t want a goddamned fungus.

Comment of the Day June 23, 2006

Subtitle: Circumcision

Bumped into a colleague earlier today. She was very excited to see my now bulging baby belly.

She asked the usual questions:
“When’s the baby due?”
“Do you know the baby’s gender?”
“Do you have a name picked out?”

I replied politely to all of her questions.

Then she said, “Are you going to circumcise him?”

I was a bit taken aback by this. The only other people I’ve had this conversation with are Zel and Our Good Doctor.

Not even my Jewish Mother has broached the subject with me. She probably presumes I’m just going to be a wee-wee choppin’ parent.

My colleague said she didn’t circumcise her son and she thinks it’s important that parents don’t make that decision for the child.

I told her we haven’t made a formal decision yet, but as a Jew, I feel the need to uphold some of my people’s practices.

She looked at me over the rim of her glasses and said, “I’m a Jew and I didn’t do it.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s quite a personal decision and Zel and I are confident no matter what we decide, it will be the right decision.”

A great point that Our Good Doctor brought up: we can’t choose our child’s religion. If the kid decides to be a Muslim or a Jew, he’ll need to be circumcised.

Our Good Doctor also told us that the older the baby gets, the harder it is to circumcise him. And, as he gets older, the more involved the procedure is…like in a hospital…with a urologist…considerable time under general anesthesia...and lots more pain…increased chance of complications...increased recovery time...and thousands of dollars.

If we do it pretty soon after Baby Kaos is born, it will be an in-office procedure that Our Good Doctor can do…won’t cost a foreskin load of money (if you will)…a local anesthesia will be used…he’ll have a decreased chance of contracting a UTI during the first year of life…he’ll have a decreased chance of contracting STD’s and developing penile cancer as an adult.

Regardless of our decision, I think she has ovaries the size of coconuts to ask me something so personal.

Comment of the Day, June 21, 2006

Last night, we were driving to our first Childbirth Education class.

Suddenly Zel said to me, “Oh shit!”

“What?” I ask.

“I forgot something,” he said.

I’m thinking to myself, “we have the yoga mat and two pillows and the checkbook and the water bottle, what else do we need?”

“What did you forget?” I ask.

Zel said, “My book.”

Soccer Players

Soccer players are the toughest dudes in the world.

An Ecuadorian player just got kicked in the head.

The docs came out to carry him off on a stretcher.

The Ecuadorian player was like, "Screw you guys. I'm not gettin' on that goddamn stretcher." And walked off the field.

Kicked in the head. Walked off the field.

Comment of the Day June 19, 2006

Since I'm starting to make this a regular thing, I thought I'd better put a date up there in the title.

I was headed in to the office this morning and bumped into the caterer we work with. She talks incessantly. Diarrhea of the mouth, if you will.

And she said, “When’s that baby due?”

“End of August,” I said.

I was being polite, but I kept walking a bit. I was thinking, “I can always say I have a meeting.” What did people do before the spontaneous meeting was invented? What do people who don’t have meetings do to get out of conversations? Do they say, “Well, I’ve gotta go plumb”?

She said, “Well, you’re bigger than the last time I saw you. Pretty soon you won’t be able to drive.”

“Well,” I said, “I guess I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it.”

Funny, really, since just last week I was told I wasn’t big enough.

Travel Agent: Update

The travel agent I’ve been making an effort to work with replied to my email. She said, “I think I finally figured out your email and I emailed you the information on your brother’s flight. Did you get it?”

I replied, “I did not receive any information from you via email regarding my brother's trip. Will you please resend it to this email address? Thank you for your time.” This was on Wednesday.

On Friday, she forwarded me the email she had sent to some other Amelia Kaos. When I originally gave her my email address, I spelled both my first and last names for her; she misspelled my first name. Also, I specifically said “underscore” and not “hyphen”.

What should scare us is that she's a trained professional.

From her email, the cost of the roundtrip ticket for my Little Brother to come up is $615. Ouch. Especially considering that on the phone on Monday, she said $500, which was high but doable. Not sure where the extra $115 is coming in.

And that’s for one of the lower-end airlines. For that price, the ride better be direct from his town to my town, and come with strippers and blow jobs.

I've decided that travel agents are a special breed. I considered calling travel agents “Timmy Agents”. But then I decided it would be an insult to Timmy.

Travel Agents

My Little Brother and I are trying to arrange for him to come up here at the end of July.

Our Mother insists on working with a travel agent. “They can get you the best fares. Much better than the internet.”

The web scares the hell out of Our Mother. Computers scare the hell out of Our Mother. (Blog for another time.)

I’ve been surfing the web pretty extensively to get him a decent priced flight from the Desert Southwest to the Pacific Northwest. I’m happy to pay for half his ticket. He’s a starving college student and on a bit of a fixed income. Well, not so much starving because he still lives in the same town as Mom and Dad. And, he works like a dog waiting tables at one of the nicer restaurants in town, and they feed him pretty well at work. And, he makes decent money. But, still, you do that kind of thing when you make more money than him and he’s your only Little Brother. Your only sibling, in fact.

When we lived in Vegas, it was easy for folks to come, so they came.

Getting to our little town is a bit of a pain in the ass. Now, the closest major airport is about 3 hours away by car, including a ferry trip (when you grow up in the desert, taking a ferry is a novelty, so you take it). Riding in the car for 6 – 7 hours isn’t something I’m really going to want to do when I’m about 4 weeks away from delivering Baby Kaos. You hearin’ me?

He can fly here, but here’s how it would work:
Fly from the Desert Southwest to the Pacific Northwest.
Take the shuttle from Airport A to Airport B.
Fly from Airport B, which is in the same city as Airport A, to our little town.

Sounds easy enough.

But then you take into consideration that you’ve got to coordinate times of the flights at Airport A and Airport B. This could result in a major layover…like three hours or so. He’s a damn good-looking 21-year-old, about to be senior in college, so he could probably nail 2 or 3 chicks in Airport A before he catches the shuttle to Airport B. He’s a Creative Writing major, so he could actually nail like 6 chicks if he felt like it.

But, it’s a pain in the ass to coordinate the times and the flights and all that jazz. Especially when you’re trying to keep the cost under $10,000,000.

So, we each called a travel agent in our respective cities.

He called his about three weeks ago. He still hasn’t heard from her. Three weeks.

Hello? I need to put in for vacation sometime soon! Can you pick it up a bit?

So, I called her on Monday. She was out until Wednesday. I spoke with another travel agent at the same office. She was about as friendly as a rabid raccoon.

He’s also trying to book some mega-trip to Vegas and stay in a mega-resort with his girlfriend. They want to go all out, and that’s cool. Our Mother is worried they’re going to get married while they’re there. I’m not worried. The dude has a good head on his shoulders.

She hasn’t called him back on the Vegas trip either.

I called my travel agent on Monday, gave her my email address, no email from her yet.

She did call me on Tuesday, left a message, said she couldn’t get anything to go through to my email address.

So, I went on the web and tracked down her email and emailed her asking her to please email me. She replied back saying she think she figured out my email address and she sent me information on Tuesday. I replied to that and said I hadn’t received anything from her, would she mind resending me the info when she has some time?

My question is: what goddamned school did these travel agents go to? Is it the University of Stupid Bitch? Or is it the School for the Overly Incompetent?

Sweet Jesus, you guys. If I did business like this, nobody would every be educated about their health. The world would be full of smoking, overweight, drug-addicted, alcoholics, that were illeterate. Oh, wait. That's America.

In the words of Eric Cartman, "I...am...so...pissed...off...right...NOW!!!"

Comment of the Day

One of my homegirls, who lives in the Desert Southwest, called.

Wanted to see how the pregnancy was coming; she said felt horrible for not being in contact, blah blah blah.

I told her to not even worry about it…we’re all busy with life…life happens…blah blah blah.

She asked if we’d come up with a name yet.

“No, not yet,” I said. Which is the God’s honest truth. (Does saying “God’s honest truth” make it more truthful as opposed to simply, “the honest truth”? But I digress).

“Why not?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, “picking a name is pretty challenging. And, because we have a common last name, we want to name the baby something that’s not quite so common.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I understand. I mean, I’ve had a hard time picking a name for a puppy.”

Comment of the Day

I'm starting a new thing called Comment of the Day. Because everyone has a comment for the pregnant woman. Not sure how many times I'll post a new post called Comment of the Day...we'll see how it goes.

I have a colleague who's baby is due about two weeks before Not John (that's what Zel and I call the baby, because we're not naming him John [no offense to the Johns out there, but there are a hell of a lot of you]).

I was chatting with another colleague, and she said (and I quote):

"Well, for only being two of weeks behind her, you're not nearly as big as her."

Nice.

The “Heat” of Summer

Several times each day, people ask me when Baby Kaos is due to make his entrance into the world.

“End of August”, is my typical response.

To which they say a variation of the following:

• “Oh, you’re going to love the heat!” (in a sarcastic tone)
  
• “What a horrible time to be pregnant. What about the heat?”
• “Why did you choose to get pregnant during this time and suffer through the heat of the summer?”
  

And, my typical answer is: “I grew up in the Southern Arizona, and I’ve also spent several years in Las Vegas, so, I’m not overly concerned about ‘the heat’ of the Pacific Northwest. After all, we live on the coast. And one’s definition of heat is relative.”

This usually causes them to stifle.

Sometimes, when I know the person, I’m feeling particularly surly, or they feel they need to push the issue I'll say: “Well, the timing for my husband and I is actually perfect. He’ll be done teaching summer school, and then he doesn’t report back to school until the end of September, so we’ll have about three or four weeks of the two of us being at home with Baby Kaos.”

What I’d like to say to people is: “Well, the baby’s like his Daddy in that he comes when he comes.”

Other times, especially when I’m super crabby, I’d like to say: “Fuck you for judging me. You don’t really have the right to do that. Are you a conservative?”

But I don’t. I refrain.

Not Making This Up

The following is an excerpt from my local news station's web site. Don't forget that I live in a small town, where a single vehicle accident is big news.

"The truck came to rest less than 20-feet from a small beauty salon. Women in that building two deputies they thought the pickup was coming right into the building."

Perhaps they should consider hiring a proof reader. I'm happy to do that for them if they'll pay me.

Forgot My Panties

This week, I traveled into the Big City for a one-day meeting. I went into the Big City the day before the meeting, because the meeting started at 9:30, and it generally takes about 3 hours to drive to the Big City. No way am I getting out of bed at 5:30, leaving by 6:30, dealing with Big City traffic, sitting all goddamned day in a meeting, and driving home all in the same day. I could fly, but I took my own rig because I needed to do some shopping and I didn't want to deal with getting the playard on the plane.

I was unpacking in my hotel room, and ironing my pants and shirt for the next day. It was around this time that I realized that I forgot a clean pair of panties.

"Sweet Jesus," I thought. Well, I guess that's what I get for talking on the phone and packing at the same time. I'm learning in my pregnancy that I'm not really able to multi-task, which is frustrating on many different levels.

I heard my Jewish Mother say, “Amelia, I have always told you to make sure you pack one extra pair of panties. So, if you go somewhere for one night, you take two pairs of clean panties. And, if you go someplace for a week, you pack eight pairs, that way you always have one extra pair, because you never know what's going to happen. You always want to have on clean underware. And you didn’t, so you won't. Way to go, honey.”

I’m not sure where the idea of packing more than you need came from. Probably from my Jewish Mother’s Jewish Mother.

So, I punted.

I washed my black panties in the sink of the hotel room and hung them out to dry.

I had packed cream pants for the meeting the next day.

Fortunately, I had a long shirt to cover my expanding Baby Belly. So, one couldn’t see my black panties through my cream pants. I tried this before I washed my panties. Otherwise, I would’ve gone without underwear, which really isn’t an option because pregnant women have an increase in the amount of vaginal fluid they excrete. Not cool if you're free-balling, if you will.

When I got up in the morning, my panties weren’t quite dry. So, I blew them dry with the hairdryer that the hotel was kind enough to provide. I stood naked in the bathroom with the hairdryer on high and my panties blowing in the wind. I couldn't help but think of Bob Dylan. I had to laugh at the entire situation, because it really was pretty funny.

I dried them, finished getting ready, and went to my meeting.

In my head, I said to my Jewish Mother and my Jewish Mother's Jewish Mother, “See, I’m not too dumb.”