Cry Baby, Redux

Sometimes, you write something, and believe it to be, like, one-hundred and ten percent true - like, say, I cry so much because I am hormonal, and happy - and then, just hours later, you find yourself standing in the kitchenwares aisle at Zellers sobbing and whimpering, to no-one in particular, I am crying because I CANNOT HANDLE THIS SHIT, I CANNOT HANDLE THIS SHIT, I CANNOT DO THIS, as your toddler disappears around another corner with a fistful of lifted lollipops in her tiny hands, cackling with the maniacal glee that only a shoplifting toddler can summon.

And you seriously consider going home and deleting every reference to happiness from your blog and very possibly removing every single happiness signifier in your household - beginning with that stupid grin on that stupid stuffed Dora doll that Wonderbaby received for Christmas, which, you think, could be quite effectively dealt with by means of black Sharpie - because how can one be happy when one simply cannot cope with the quotidien requirements of being a mother while also being pregnant and having run out of chocolate?

And although you don't make the tempting deletions, and you resist defacing the nauseatingly cheerful Dora doll with a Sharpie pen, and you do, thankfully, wake up the next day feeling a little more balanced, you decide that you need to be a lot more careful about your declarations about happiness, because the gods are bitches, and they will fuck with you if you get cocky.

And then you go buy more chocolate.

Cry, Baby

Why is it, that on top of all the other discomforts and inconveniences of pregnancy - the heartburn, the back-ache, the farting (it's not just me, is it? It can't be), the disrupted sleep (what agent of Satan decided that pregnant women could not sleep on their backs? Side-sleeping is an unholy torture when the combination of belly weight and gravity constantly conspire to tip you over), the nauseau (more or less recovered from, but I still can't face a weird smell - and here I do not refer to my pregnancy farts, which are more noisy than smelly, but rather to things like, oh, say, peanut butter - without retching) - the forces of universe decided that one of the symptoms of hormonal unrest due to pregnancy should be extreme moodiness?

I don't want to cry about the fact that the cats scratched my brand-new rug, again, or about the play of light through my kitchen window, or about Ella Fitzgerald singing How High The Moon, or because I couldn't get the espresso machine to make me a decaf non-fat latte just by standing in front of it and yelling or because Britney Spear just keeps making things worse for herself. I don't want to cry, period. Crying gives me headaches, and if I get another headache right now it will probably just, you know, make me cry.

I also don't like being Her Bad Jekyll and Mother Hyde with my husband: I've been known, over recent days, to suddenly snap at him for, say, looking at me the wrong way or insisting upon making the gravy for the mashed potatoes or making puns that I don't get (although to be fair, I did laugh once I got it, like, two minutes later). He tolerates it, which only makes it worse, because his unquestioning acceptance of my psychotic condition just makes cry.

Feeling really fat while eating all the chocolates that a dear friend sent me also makes me cry (which, yes, I insist is a hormonal thing and not self-loathing, because most of the time I don't mind so much feeling fat, only, sometimes, when I'm eating handfuls of chocolates and getting a stomach-ache) but I keep doing it, because otherwise HBF would eat them and I would snap at him and then I would cry anyway, so I might as well skip the middleman and get the pleasure of the chocolate before I get weepy.

But the biggest headf*ck of all is that it's being really happy - which I am, these days - that has got me most constantly on the verge of tears. Feel Sprout kick? Eyes get wet. Listen to Wonderbaby sing ABC? Throat closes up. Watch HBF and Wonderbaby count the stars - which we can now see in abundance, outside the city - through her bedroom window? Choke back tears. Reflect upon my lovely family and my lovely life and the bright horizon that is constantly unfolding before us?

Sob. And smile.

Why I Love My Husband But Have Been Known To Roll My Eyes At Him, Dramatically, Part XXVI

Dinner chez HBM, last night:

Wonderbaby (pointing, with frown, to suspicious orange lump on plate): Whassat?

HBM: Sweet potato.

Wonderbaby: NO LIKE TAY-TOE.

HBM: Fine. It's a yam.

Wonderbaby: HAM?

HBM: YAM.

HBF (helpfully): It's a tuber.

Wonderbaby: TOOBER?

HBF: Tuber.

Wonderbaby: NO LIKE TOOBER.

(Tuber/yam/sweetpotato flies by HBM's head, very narrowly missing her nose, and lands, with a splat, on the dining room wall, where it clings for a sticky moment before sliding, tuberously, to the freshly-cleaned floor.)

HBF: Ah.

HBM: WHAT?

HBF: Tuber-too-close-is. Be glad you didn't catch that.

(ba-DUM-DUM)