Stroller People

I know you were all waiting for the post about my position on whether or not Chavez is good for South/North American economic policy. But that one will have to wait. Because today's post is about strollers.

We've devoted many hours of late to stroller research. Online research. In-store research. We've read the profiles. We've assembled and reassembled the store models.

Lovey Loverpants has scoured the messageboards about the hippest in stroller equipment. Since he is a male conducting consumer product research into something that has wheels, he recognizes that our stroller is a pure reflection of Who We Are As People and may even say something about our characters and our longevity and whether or not we have good oral hygiene. My husband has actually filled out online questionnaires that conveniently match you with the right stroller according to your lifestyle needs. Isn't that auspicious of a stroller store to do that? And what do you know? They matched us with the most expensive stroller in the aisle! Yipee-rah!

Last night, we purchased the Graco Snap n' Go which all of the new moms on the messageboards have been raving about as convenient, affordable, and light, which are the holy trinity of stroller qualifiers for yours truly. It's pretty minimalist. You just snap the infant car seat into the strolling part and abracadabrapeanutbuttersandwich! Stroll! We bought it cheap from a non-shady lady via craigslist.

As I tried out the new stroller apparatus in the parking lot of the craigslist lady's apartment, I started to quake.

People? I was pushing a stroller. Nevermind the fact that there was no little Pillsbury dough boy/girl swaddled in a snugrider to look back at me and assure me that I was someone's mother and therefore someone's stroller pusher. I was pushing a stroller and it was VERY UNCOMFORTABLE. It was slow. It was so slow, it was geriatric. I just couldn't see myself enjoying the leisurely pace of strolling up and down the streets of the finest ghetto with my hot roddin' Graco Snap n' Go. And mind you, I've pushed many a stroller in my day of being a big sis and big cousin and big babysitter but suddenly, I have realized, I am not all about being a stroller mom.

I might have to papoose it, peeps.

Aren't you so glad you read this post on stroller research so that I could conclude that I'm more of a papoose artist? I thought so.

Baby Girl/Mama

When I walked into the waiting room of the OB/GYN yesterday, I saw a young lady whom I recognized immediately. I'll call her Maria. She was one of the teens that my husband had led on several wilderness trips over the last few years. She had a huge crush on Hubs. I had met her several times and spent one afternoon hiking with her. She had a great spirit and designs of studying music in college. She spent her last year of high school in Puerto Rico where her mother thought she'd be away from distractions. She had just graduated in May.

I had known her older sister was expecting, and I said how excited she must be to be an auntie. She nodded her head and smiled.

Her sister came out into the waiting room and I asked her how far along she was.

"Six months," she said.

Then, Maria piped up, "I'm almost six months, too," she said. She was barely showing.

My heart sank. I tried to be smooth and not ask too many judgmental questions. I tried to take on the pregnant sister-in-solidarity persona. But all I could do was punctuate every, "Wow! Yeah! Congratulations!" with a distracted glance around the room at all of the baby magazines and posters.

I.
Wanted.
To.
Shake.
Maria.

All day long, I felt cranky and upset. Why does a good kid on a college track have to get sidetracked? Why is it so inevitable? Why was Maria sitting in a waiting room to see an OB/GYN nurse rather than waiting outside the office of her college advisor yesterday morning?

But then I thought about how typical, how cynical and how wholly unproductive was my attitude. I thought about what a great mother Maria would be, how she'd be passing on her wilderness experiences and love of music to her child (she was having a daughter). I don't know what an eighteen year-old expectant mother needs. I only know what this twenty-seven year-old expectant mother needs. And that's a lot of encouragement, and a little less judgment would be nice, too, thanks.

Looneybin

Lovey Loverpants and I are not a perfect couple, but we usually maintain a level of decency behind closed doors that does not involve the pulling of kitchen knives nor the shredding of bedsheets, though our tempers may escalate. Lovey is generally more mild-mannered than I, but I hear that since he is an Aries, he can go from calm to excited very quickly. I, on the other hand, am neurotic by nature. I ride a frequency wave that most mood-o-meters would indicate as Borderline Spazz. Hence, I wisely partnered with a man that is the easy-going yin to my hyperactive yang. Yestereve, however, all decency was forgotten. I'm not sure how to preface this except by listing the following realities of late:

1.) For the last few months, my sleep has been interrupted every night by the need to pee every 4 hours. 2.) For the last few months, my sleep has been interrupted a couple nights a week by my husband's medical pager going off, sometimes more than once in one night. 3.) For the last few months, my sleep has been interrupted by my husband's re-emergence into bed after responding to the emergencies that warranted the page.

In short, I've not enjoyed the kind of sleep that is prescribed for the pregnant. And this makes me a delightfully hormonal crankybutt.

Last night, my husband texted me from the ER while I was in class. He was having his knee X-rayed after a particularly idiotic heroic spill during his ultimate frisbee game. After it became clear that the triaging, X-raying, etc. was going to take a while, I went home and waited for his call for a ride home. At 11p.m., decent man that he is, he suggested I go to bed and he'd just take a taxi home. At 12:30a.m. I heard a door unlock and the sound of someone slipping into his bathroom. "JOHN?" I asked. "JOHN?" I yelled. "JOHN!!!" I shouted like Bastion in "The Neverending Story" so that the walls of our home shook.

No answer. I heard the shower.

I cried his name through the bathroom door once again. My naked husband emerged.

I then went into the bathroom yelling something that was probably highly complimentary and highly reflective of the kind of darling I can be.

And then I did something that I have never done to anyone out of anger, but which I suddenly felt compelled to do to my husband whom I would later learn had ridden his bike home from the ER with a swollen knee.

I turned off the light on my husband with the swollen knee in the shower.

"HEY!!TURN ON THE LIGHT AGAIN!!!YOU JUST TURNED OFF THE LIGHT ON ME!!"

And then, without turning it back on, I went back to sleep.