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| Two negatives equal a positive. |
I had just returned from a month in England, and had chalked up my horrible feelings to extreme jet lag. So of course, I wasn't clued in by the huge box of Del Taco burritos I inhaled upon landing at LAX, or how I nearly passed out while buying groceries (I just thought it was the prices), or how my boobs felt like two angry water balloons filled with aquavit, or how I started to fall asleep in the middle of my sentences, or how everything smelled like sugar-coated shit—finally nailing the scent that Sara noticed in the taxi on the way to the library in Inferno.
One pee test—and then another— confirmed it: the culprit wasn't jet lag, or Mater Tenebrarum.
It was Mater Fahker, I'm knocked up. As in, the rabbit died. As in yes, we have no more bananas. As in, there was this duff, and I got up it. With some help, of course. This is actual natural sound from the moment when I saw the two lines on the home pregnancy test:
What followed was me in total shock, followed by (I'm sorry, I'm not going to lie) thoughts of pure selfishness: our bed becoming covered in dust and cobwebs from disuse, the lights dimming on my beloved Vegas Strip, another beautiful lazy stoner summer at Cinespia going up in smoke, and the sympathetic looks of street monsters at Knott's Halloween Haunt and Universal Horror Nights carefully dodging my waddling 8-months-pregnant frame in order to scare the crapola out of younger women with flat tummies and tiny asses and not a care in the world.
My second thoughts were of my worst nightmares coming true, worse than anything Freddy could conjure up. Having a perpetually "metal" baby who would keep me, John and our neighbors up at all hours with his/her best Dio howl. Hanging out with other moms. Play dates. Parties. Gross. By the time I took mental inventory of every stupid thing I'd now have to do with a child, I was actually lying on the ground, kicking and screaming like one.
My third thoughts? Those came after John and I saw the baby's heartbeat. At that moment—as we looked at each other as if we couldn't believe that we had actually made something a) other than a sandwich, and b) with a beating heart—I thought that my own heart would surely stop beating if I couldn't carry it to term.
I will be 39 in June. I wasn't thinking about a child. But now, this child is all I think about. Well, that's not true. I think about how some of the coolest horror people I know (@greencapt, @twistedcentral) are parents. I think about buying cool DOTD onesies, and Googling the appropriate ages to take a child to their first concert, or horror film, or Halloween Haunt. Can I take a child to Cinespia? Can I smuggle a baby in my handbag while I play the penny slots at Excalibur? Obviously, the last one is a joke (or ... is it?), but yes, I really, truly, absolutely do want this baby to happen, and can't wait to introduce the little one to the rad life I share with his/her dad.
I'm due at the end of November, so maybe I'll start while they're in the womb. Practicing my waddle now.
