whiskey in a teacup . com

We are due in two weeks.  Everything about this clip is exactly how I expect labor and delivery to go.

People always joke that there are certain movies you shouldn’t watch while pregnant, like Eraserhead or anything else where the baby is actually some sort of monster.  I’m unmoved by this argument, having happily watched The Brood (complete with “lady tearing open an external womb with her teeth” scene) in the second trimester.  However, I can state with some degree of authority that one should probably not watch The Fog of War while pregnant.  Sigh.

I was happily reading at the coffeeshop when a middle-aged guy plopped himself down in a seat near me, and apropos of absolutely fucking nothing started complaining loudly, to everyone in the general vicinity, about the terrible acoustics in the room.  Despite his clear grasp of the technical aspects of sound control, he seemed to have virtually no awareness of how shouting into a small, enclosed space (and one known to have poor acoustics, no less!) was not really 1) solving the problem or 2) doing anything to improve anyone’s day.  In a heartening display of affability, another guy tried to talk to him and ask questions like, “So how could they fix it?  How much would it cost?” but every time he spoke the first guy would brashly interrupt him.  He then segued into a story about how twenty years ago he was part of some Cambridge-based recording association, but got kicked out because he moved and was no longer a Cambridge resident.

At a certain point it was almost impossible not to grab him by the throat and ask if he noticed the glaring irony of complaining about how much voices carry by taking a high-decibel verbal shit all over those of use who were actually behaving like respectful adults, and furthermore, that it was overwhelmingly obvious to us all that his city of residence had nothing to fucking do with why the association kicked his ass out, but instead I just sat there in dismay.  Eventually he left (failing to bus his table–further evidence of a corrupt soul) and the owner of the coffeeshop came over and apologized, explaining that this was far from his first tirade.  The moral of this story?  STFU, guy.

Every now and then people will start threads on pregnancy message boards with topics like “Things no one tells you about pregnancy and childbirth!” or whatever.  The main thing that seems to shock women is that they poop during labor…which, really?  You didn’t realize that bearing down with all your might for hours on end might cause you to take a shit?   But in the past week or so I’ve discovered my own Thing Nobody Told Me:  that somewhere between the eighth and ninth month I would get the distinct sensation that someone had whacked me in the junk with a baseball bat.  It’s a pain that has taken my waddling to a whole new level.   And yet, if this illustration is to be believed, my junk is in for a much greater insult in just a few more weeks!