Twenty-six

I woke up feeling pretty shaky this morning, not surprising since this week my house has been one big phlegm fest. I heaved myself out of bed and as I was making coffee I thought, “Geez, this coffee stinks.  Does coffee bad?  You know what sounds good….bacon.  Lots and lots of bacon.”  I never eat bacon. Never.  Except when…… 

Oh. My. Gawd. 

Batten down the hatches, the McCollow’s are reproducing again.  Which means you won’t be hearing much from me for the next few months, as I’ll be developing a rich and intimate relationship with my toilet. 

Twenty-seven

The early stages of pregnancy can pretty much be summed up in two words: DEAR GOD ALMIGHTY WHAT IS THAT STINK?

Yes I know, that’s more than two words, but seriously WHAT IS THAT STINK?

Parked the car, took a deep breath, psyched myself up, “You can do it,” I say, “it’s just food.  They have to sell it somewhere.  Just go in.  It’ll be fine.”

Another deep breath, walk in the sliding doors……..

The instantaneous assault on my olfactory lobes nearly knocked me down.  What kind of sadistic store wraps up big hunks of raw meat and puts them on display…has anyone ever noticed that baby carrots look kind of like orange slugs…A bag of slugs…big squishy slugs…I went to the bakery, where I thought I’d be safe, but I couldn’t get the image of a slug sandwich out of my head….Gotta sit down…..hey free pizza slices…salty….gimme gimme I SAID GIMME GET OUT OF MY WAY YOU STUPID HAG whaddya mean it’s all gone HEY HAG GIMME YOURS  oh crap are those black olives JESUS ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME GET IT OFF MY TONGUE GET IT OFF I THINK I’M GONNA BLOW!!

Why is it that it’s only when you’re super nauseated that you start wondering what exactly is in a bratwurst?  Or what it would be like to drink a glass of olive oil?  Or why the woman in front of you in line insists on bathing in a tub of cheap perfume before going grocery shopping? Or why your young son decides that now would be a good time to harvest whatever he’s been growing in his nose?

I gotta go, this keyboard smells funny.

Twenty-eight

My almost three year old son just informed me he would like to be called T-Bone.  I'm not sure what to make of it, is he embarking on a rap career already?  But he shrieks at me if I don't call him that, so T-Bone it is.  The truth is, the poor kid is so dang mad these days at having a sick, boring mommy who never takes him outside or plays with him, he's probably developing some extra personalities in order to cope.

I'm actually feeling a little bit better, not barfing nearly as frequently or with the same intensity. Thanks for asking.

Got Meg's school pictures back, and they are hilarious. You don't know my bright little ray of sunshine, but she is miss happy go lucky,  a chatty Kathy, a loving sweetheart with those she holds near and dear, and to hell with all the rest.  

She's not mean or crabby or anything like that with people she doesn't know, just incredibly stone-faced.  At her school conferences, her kindergarten teacher said she just didn't 'have a read' on Meg yet, which made me chuckle inwardly as I was thinking, "That means you have not yet proven yourself worthy to her, you silly, naive woman." (I still have to prove myself to her on a daily basis.) The teacher said she was extremely quiet and kind of did her own thing in class, and I told her in the most gentle and encouraging way possible, "That's how she'll be for a while, until she's, um, more comfortable with you." (Decides you’re not an idiot. Don't hold your breath.)

Anyway, if Meg doesn't enjoy meeting new people, she certainly doesn't enjoy having her picture taken by them, and her school portrait looks like some behind the lines shot of a child of the gulag.  I'm not doing retakes, because its just so......her. 

However, today when I picked her up, her teacher told me she had had "quite a breakthrough," raising her hand, telling stories, helped make apple dolls, etc., and as we were leaving, Meg ran up and gave her a big hug. I'm very relieved. For the teacher.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Twenty-nine

HAPPY HOLIDAYS…

Sorry, folks.  No picture of the McCollow clan this year.  Having just emerged from my first-trimester-vomiting-haze, there simply wasn’t time. I would be glad, however, to describe us to you.

Meg: Roughly the size and shape of a five year old girl, Meg has a curly brown bob, hazel eyes, olive skin and a penchant for wearing her underpants backwards.  She looks a little like her parents if either of them were at all attractive.  She worships Julie Andrews.

Finbar:  About half the size of Meg, saucer sized brown eyes, perfectly round head.  Loves any game that involves him pummeling someone else, putting a hole in a wall with a blunt object or leaping off something high onto unsuspecting passersby. Life with Finbar is much the way I imagine living with a small Grizzly bear would be.

Mike is exactly the same as you remember and will be running his second marathon next month.

As for me, well, three months of ignoring one’s personal hygiene does take its toll.  I had fooled myself into believing that my overgrown mess hair made me look not unlike a young Julie Christie, but my sister, who is a hair stylist, disabused me of that notion when she took one look at me and blurted, “HA HA HA, You look like Beck.” So if you must, picture Beck after a two-month beer and ice cream binge.

Much Love and Good Cheer,

Katie

Thirty

We sold our house. In case you're confused, I'll try and get you up to speed:

We bought the house from our landlord two months ago. About a second afterwards, we found out that my Grandmother's house was available, so we put ours on the market and now it's sold. Granny's house will be purchased as soon as Mike gets home from Phoenix (wasn't that a Glen Campbell song?) where we’re opening another store. It’s gonna take a lot of work to fix it up since my two Collier-brothers-esque uncles have been living there for fifteen years, rotting in their own filth. (And I believe that was a Marty Robbins tune.) And of course, we've got the new brat coming as well, so it should be an exciting spring.

Saw the touring production of Cinderella last night, starring pop icon Debbie Gibson and still breathing Eartha Kitt. We all had a great time, and Meg's been playing Cinderella all day. I sat next to Mary Jeanne, who, in the snide comments department makes me look like Mother Theresa, and she had me laughing so hard my mom kept slapping at us.

Well that’s about it, I'm off to the store for more hot fudge.  

Thirty-one

This letter contains swearing and a generally bad attitude. If you don't spend a lot of time around dock workers or if your kids are reading this with you, I suggest you press delete.

Normally in a pregnancy, at least my pregnancies, the trajectory is as follows: Trimester one: sick as a dog. Trimester two: happy go lucky, i.e. the 'golden trimester'. Trimester three: fat grouchy bitch.

I have apparently skipped the 'golden trimester' bit this time around and gone straight to fat bitch from hell. Case in point, my last doctor visit.

(Nine year old kid in lab coat pokes his head into my exam room, where I  am perched on the table in a threadbare gown that doesn't even come close to covering my enormous girth.)

"Ms. McCollow, I'm Dr. No Pubes?  I'm a resident?  Is it OK if I sit in..."

"Get out."

"Um.....Ms. McCol--"

"I'm sorry, I meant get the fuck out. I don't want to see your face in here again unless you can shave it."

(Regular Dr. enters.)

"Hello, Mrs. McCollow! How are you tod--"

"I want a C section."

(He looks at my chart.) "Uh, Mrs. McCollow, I see no reason why you should need a C section....."

"You see no reason? You see no reason? Well you wouldn't, would you, Dr. Man?!"

"Mrs. McCollow, I have delivered over three thousand babies, and I....."

"You know how many babies you've delivered, Dr.Penis? Absolutely ZERO.   You may have watched three thousand babies being born, but make no mistake, you didn't deliver a SINGLE.  DAMN.  ONE OF THEM. Hey Doc, wanna know how many times I've had my nuts caught in a vise? NEVER. That’s never, ever happened to me. The exact same number of times you have delivered a baby.  So you can just take that clip board and shove it where all those babies ain’t comin' out!"

Now, you may think the doctor would get mad at my little tirade, but if you've ever poked your head into an obstetrician's waiting room and seen the looks on his patients faces, you'd know that he'd already heard this speech three or four times that day, once from his own wife.  He actually scores us on originality of insult and use of blue words. That's why they make so much money.  No, he just patted me on the head and suggested very gently that I lay off the donuts. "But it's the holidays," I whimpered. "And I like gravy......." I digress.  

Damnit. All the gummi worms are gone.

 © Katie McCollow, 2004 •