Anne Nahm

Just signed lease on new house twenty minutes ago. Hard to think coherently over booming voice in my head that keeps asking:

WHATHAVEYOUDONE

Whatever the pregnancy hormone equivalent to beer goggles is? Promptly fell off upon handing over the deposit.

Currently wandering around old house, tallying up things that will not fit in new house, feeling so OMGWTFBBQish that I should really send out invitations for you all to meet up in my back yard Saturday afternoon for some brewskis and burgers. We will sit out on the lawn drinking margaritas and wearing sunglasses. The invitation will read: BYOWhatTheFuck, and RSVP by: Yesterday. Why the hell did I think moving to this house was a good idea? It has white carpet. In the bathroom. And dude. It’s small and awkward. And I am a total asshole, because I am going to do it anyway. It is being done. Even as I hold my head so it won’t crack like a soft boiled egg. Moving.

PS: Every time the baby kicks, I fart. Explosively. Am beginning to suspect the fumes coming out of my butt are so noxious as to be causing me brain damage.

PPS: My husband is super happy with me that I twisted his arm to move and now I am crying into my Fat Bastard style baby belly and telling the internet how stupid it is to move.

PPPS: Have been getting up between four and six every morning to work on finishing novel before baby gets here. Know this is stupid behavior, yet can’t stop obsessing. Surely I should stop until we are packed? Maybe? Yet I think I will not. So maybe I should ask: Surely movers will just pick up everything in the house and magically transport it to other house just exactly how it is now? Possibly? Hmmm…. I have the strange suspicion this post could be the genesis of a whole new tag called Really Bad Ideas.

* We are moving, peeps. Wheee!

I am thinking of going with a Dexter-style kill scene decor in the white carpet bathrooms: Everything sealed in plastic to catch spilled bodily fluids. Anyone know where I can get a commercial grade roll of saran wrap that totes easily? Me neither. Which, PS: That fact has always bothered the hell out of me about that show.

Well, that and when Dex and Debra got married in real life. On quick mental comparison, I think I would be less squeeged out to discover Michael C. Hall was really a serial killer than to hear he had committed T.V. incest. Anyway, we’re moving.

* I am also down to those OB appointments where you go every two weeks. Thus I learned I have gained four pounds in the past fourteen days. Hello, massive weight gain, we meet again. I could absolutely fall through the floor and die of shame. Or, you know, of massive internal crush injuries.

As a short aside, I really wanted to change my banner to a huge close up of my camel toe in maternity jeans after last post. My husband talked me out of it. By which I mean he pleaded with me: Please, if you love your children, do not make them be the kids whose mother has a camel toe on the internet. I was thereby robbed of some horrible, boundariless confession. So instead I tell you this: I will weigh more than Oprah by the time this pregnancy is through. It is a statistically unavoidable probability, seeing as I weighed in at one hundred ninety freaking six yesterday. That belly’s not so cute now, is it? Oh no. Nor the cankles that go with it.

I’ll be sure to let you know when I reach the big two-oh-ohhhhhh if I can heave myself over to the computer and I don’t dehydrate from crying and sweating before I get there. It’s already totally horrifying at my current weight. Furniture creaks when I get on it. And when I get off of it. And when it sees me coming. I pulled underwear out of my crack yesterday that was such a huge swatch of cloth that it covered my whole hand when freed. A small child could rig a boat using my maternity panties as a sail. They could travel to Where the Wild Things Are.

And yet, even this humiliation can’t quite stop me from shoveling in the food. Foooooood! It tastes good.

Cheer up.

Because no matter what else happens to you today, at least you’re not wearing clown pants.

Also, you are not sitting in front of your computer about to blog about clown pants and suddenly realizing: Most of the pictures you just took of yourself? Show you riding the seam. You know. That seam that is conveniently placed between the legs.

You are not riding just a little bit either, you notice as you glance over all ten photos. Oh no. You are totally urban cowboying that denim. I mean, moose knuckle and camel toe are mudwrestling under the shade of your enormous belly, half nelsoning each other for frontal wedgie superiority. Either that or there is a fat lipped beaver in there, eating your pants for dietary fiber.

You could take another picture to try and fix the problem. But that’s assuming you can even reach the area needing the tug. Plus, you’d have to take off your top and look at yourself naked again. And that is just too much for one day. Also, you’re not sure that you can walk back to the camera on account of all the pins and needles you’ve suddenly got in your left labia.

Clown pants, angled for modesty.

* In response to my iron pills question, I was surprised by the resounding cry of POOP! from the internet. Usually, when the internet does that, I’m woman enough to listen.

However, when it came last week, for some strange reason, I was all, Nuh-Uh! My machinery is top grade, impenetrable to the effects of well known chemicicological changes!

And that was true until about a day ago, when I discovered my butt had turned into a chocolate covered espresso bean dispenser. One that worked really slowly. With grinding gear sound effects.

Internet, I apologize. You were right and I was wrong. I don’t know that this speaks too highly for the expensive iron causing a girl to avoid such problems, but I am now totally invested in the idea of paying 40 bucks a month so it doesn’t get any worse.

* While in Trader Joe’s yesterday (stocking up on prune juice, prunes and prunecicles, btw), I was checked by a guy with a thick Australian accent who kept calling me ‘Mate’. As I was pondering why on earth I didn’t qualify as a ‘Sheila’ according to my knowledge of all things Australian (as dictated by The Crocodile Hunter and prior to that Crocodile Dundee) (and also Men at Work’s Down Under) the guy leered at my belly and asked when I was due.

“Ten weeks” I told him.

To which the guy wiggled his eyebrows and says this: “Once you get the little one out of there, you’re gonna be running around like a…. Well, a blue-assed redacted!” And then he offered me a free box of cranberry stollen.**

I waddled away with my stollen, laughing and confused. But now I am totally into it. It sounds like some rare bird. In fact, I have had some extensive fantasies about my post partum profile ending up on a two cent stamp or something. It would read Blue-Assed Redacted under my smiling face. I’d be perched on a twig, about to take flight.

*I am a little giddy about the inauguration today, but have nothing more to say about it. So I’ll just throw it in here. Whee! Inaugeramalamadingdong!

* I got an email from one of my old classmates collecting gossip tidbits for the alumni pages. I was kind of psyched because it was from a guy I actually knew and the email was personalized with all these funny stories about what he had been up to the past few years.

But when I started to respond, I realized all the things I do these days (this blog, that book, etc.) are also things I don’t want associated with my real name.

After minutes of mute struggle, I sent this really lame, “gestating another babee and livin’ mah life” blurb that pretty much covers every disclosable thing I’ve been doing since the last time I answered one of those emails, (which coincidently enough, was the last time (before this last time) I was gestating a baby. Really hoping they wedge my new blurb between the alum who took a year-long honeymoon traveling the world and the one who graduated top of her class from medical school like they did last time). I am a hobbit, people. Living my sad little life in secret.

* And finally, I am super excited that back in hobbit land, I am going through the revisions of that story again. Yay! Can it be done by the end of the January? That would be so cool if it was.

**Which, the only way you would get excited over this last part is if you have never had stollen. I’m guessing they were giving them away because not even the local shelters would accept them.  Those things only have two true purposes in life: Wedging open fire doors and making fruitcake look appetizing.

And at the risk of going too far off on a tangent, Little sister is dating a guy whose family is in the business of making high end, famous recipe stollen. As part of checking out if he was the right guy for her, we ordered a stollen in secret from his company this past Christmas. We decided she should break up with him just to save her from having to eat that stuff and smile every Christmas if she married the guy.

And now that I’ve disclosed that, it is pretty much guaranteed she will marry the guy and he will eventually read this. Hi bro! Looks like I knew you were marrying my sister before you did.

*The doc told me I’m anemic, and so now I’m on iron pills. Which should help with the fatigue.*

The doctor has me on some super spaceman iron that requires a prescription my insurance doesn’t cover and costs 40 bucks every thirty days. Even though it sucks to pay out of pocket, I guess I kind of sympathize with the insurance. The last two types of iron I took were over-the-counter and twelve bucks for a billion doses – if I don’t even understand why this iron costs an extra thirty dollars, I don’t know why my insurance would.

Unless someone in comments says Oh noez, this is the best iron evah!, I think I’m going to ask the good MD to switch the prescription next time I see her, because: Forty bucks!

Am hoping my request for some regular iron doesn’t result in a soooo- you’d-sacrifice- your-babee’s-health -to-save-a- buck type conversations. Even if that whole conversation only involves the raising of an eyebrow, the big sigh, and the whipping out of a prescription pad. Because holy shit: It’s. Iron.

And yet, I am completely vulnerable to the preshious-babee-money-pit eyebrow raise which will make me throw money down the toilet so I don’t have to wonder if I’m gestating a regular iron serial killer or something.

*In other news, we decided our family fan is not nearly poop covered enough, so we are probably going to move this month. Wheeeeee. The move is across town, it’s necessary, and it’s better to do it now than later with a newborn.

The prospective house is, in general, satisfactory. With the wild exception that for some reason? The owners decided it would be a really good idea to install white carpet. Everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean that stuff is in the bathrooms.** Seriously. Right up under the toilets and surrounding the tub and everything.*** Goodbye, deposit. I hardly knew ya.

Although when I think on it, it makes more sense that the owners should have to pay me some sort of stupidity tax. Every time I get out of the shower, I’m pretty sure it is going to feel like I’m stepping on one of those maxi pads they put in chicken breast packaging to sop up the E. coli juice. But you know, other than that, the house is pretty decent.

*I am so effing tired it’s kind of amazing. I spent most of yesterday crying, and then viewing houses, and then crying some more. It started off when someone in Mommy&Me said something that hit me wrong and kind of snowballed from there into a house moving expedition. The whole day yesterday, I kept reminding myself that I always have at least one crazy freak-out third trimester.**** Looking forward to some distant moment in the future when I can say, “hey do you remember when I lost my mind and thought it was a good idea to move ten weeks before giving birth? Lulz!” You know, instead of being where I am now, which is crying over packing boxes.

*Although the instructions specify I should take each pill three hours after eating and also two hours before eating. Very, very sadly, I will have to get up in the middle of the night to make those conditions work, as all waking hours are now filled with some sort of grazing behavior. Which, PS? I. Must. Stop. Eating. Every pair of pants I can fit into have perma-wedgie so damn bad they make my ass look like a toothless old man slurping up noodles.

** Also in the kitchen nook and dining area.

*** My husband wanted to know why the kitchen counters were not carpeted. Why not the garage? Damn you interior decorators and your half assedness with carpet application. Also, he asked if we can purchase some carpeted toilet seat covers (in white, natch) so that the whole bathroom can be awesome. Annnd now you will tell me that you have white carpeted bathroom in your home, and you love your carpeted toilet seat covers, and I am a total bitch for making fun of completely awesome bathroom decorative choices. Yes I am. But soon enough, I will be folded into your carpet flock, and isn’t that punishment enough?

****The First Annual Anne Pregnancy Freak being six years ago, when I called my mom at two in the morning and insisted she come over right. that. minute so I could tell her how my aunt hated me and I never wanted to see her again: That bitch coughed in the baby’s new room, thus infecting all the new stuff with illness and death. I mean, anyone could see that.