Nothing in particular, exhaustive discussion of

Morning, everyone.  I have no particular agenda today, so I'm just going to free associate a bit.  It will keep me from thinking too much about the giant sinkhole that has been revealed at the top of my former driveway, a seething, sucking 6 x 6' pit of porcelain-grade clay centered around a merrily bubbling spring.  Let's not discuss that, okay?

Paula's comment reminds me of a story.  She said:

We were scheduled to have a washing machine delivered the day I went into the hospital to deliver our son almost 3 weeks early.  Hmmm, tough choice, deliver the washing machine or the kid.  Our downstairs neighbor kindly did our son's laundry until we could reschedule the washer. Who says people in NYC can't be nice?  Seriously, we had wonderful neighbors.

I happen to have a New York washing machine story, too.  Once upon a time, Paul and I lived on the top floor of a five-story loft building in lower Manhattan.  The building's laundry facilities consisted of a single washer and dryer in the basement — inconvenient by suburban standards but bordering on decadence in the city.  Every week I would carry our loads of laundry down the sloping stairs in two or three lurching runs; once it was finished I'd heave it up in a lung-punishing test of my wifely — well, live-in girlfriendly — endurance.

One of the building's units was occupied by a married couple with two children.  The couple employed a cleaning lady, a hapless-looking islander they tasked with everything from doing their laundry to stripping their wood floors.  On her knees.  With a putty knife.  Livin' the goddamn American dream.

It had been made brutally clear to me when I moved in that Thursdays were the day the cleaning lady did the laundry for this couple, and that I was not to interfere.  "It's the only day I have help," the woman explained.  But one Thursday — I quake to remember it — I broke the sacred covenant.  I was scheduled to leave town that afternoon, and had taken the morning off work to pack.  Surely...surely it would be all right for me to do one little load...?

I took my basket of feminine dainties down to the basement and saw that there was a lull in the action.  The cleaning lady had left a load in the now-idle washer, so, seeing no other laundry queued up for washing, I took the wet clothes out and placed them on top of the dryer.  I loaded my clothing, selected the shortest cycle, and set our kitchen timer so that I wouldn't miss the end of the cycle.  I returned promptly, dried my clothes, retrieved them in a timely fashion, put them in my suitcase, and got ready to leave.  On my way out of the building, suitcase in hand, I happened to meet the wife of the couple in question.

I am not exaggerating: She bared her teeth at me.

"Were you doing laundry in the basement?" she snarled.  The cleaning lady had ratted me out.

"...Yyyyes..." I answered, blinking, wondering if what I'd heard about how to neutralize hostile dogs would work here, or if I'd have to vault over the banister to escape.

"It's Thursday," she roared.  "I have had the laundry room reserved on Thursdays since 1986."

Wow, lady, I thought, that's a longer run than the Fantasticks.  What I said, however, was, "..."  I couldn't stop staring at her, waiting in fascination for flecks of foam to emerge from her mouth as she yelled at me.  She went on for quite some time.  Even during her rare pauses, I found I was incapable of answering her, so demented was her rant.

"I don't even know who you are!"  My name is Julie — maybe you'll recognize it from the maintenance checks I give you every month...?  "You could be anybody!"  Not only have we met many times, I've lived in the building for two full years.  "I could call the police, you know!"  Hey, great idea.  "Hello, officer?  Will you please come arrest this woman who...well, she was in our basement!...yes, we keep it locked...sure, she has a key, but...oh, doing laundry...er, she does live here...So!...Anyway!...When can I expect your arrival?"

It took a while, but eventually she ran out of steam, finishing with a toss of her head and a dramatic hiss.  "I'm going to talk to Paul about this!"  And then stomped up the stairs, entered her apartment, and possibly, I fear, took out the remainder of her fury on the cleaning lady.  (Jasmine, last name unknown even to your employer, all these years later, I must tell you I am sorry.)

I stood on the stairs for another moment, completely nonplussed.  Then I went out to meet the car service, rode to the airport, and jetted off to, I don't know, who can remember?  Aruba.  Someplace great, I'm pretty sure.

That night I called Paul to let him know I'd arrived safely.  He told me he'd had a call from the husband of the couple.  The wife, said the husband, had been too upset to call Paul herself, so why didn't the long-suffering but level-headed menfolk just hammer it out between themselves?  I do not know that he actually said that — probably not, but the very idea of it still makes me cackle.  As does the idea of the two of them, a loud, pugnacious corporate lawyer and, well, I mean, Paul, putting their formidable heads together to resolve...the female question.

"So what did you come up with?" I asked Paul once he'd shared the husband's confidence that the wife was going through a rough patch just then, since they were about to begin a separation.

"I told him," Paul said mildly, "that you would never, under any circumstances, ever do laundry on Thursdays again."

And I never, ever did.

...

The contractor just came in to break the news that the driveway is going to cost either an additional $1500 to do a passable job, or an additional $5000 "to do it right."  Moving on!

Sarah V. asked:

I'm curious as to how you feel now you know for sure it's going to be a C-section.  Pleased that the decision has been taken out of your hands, saving you the trouble of making it?  Annoyed that the decision has been taken out of your hands, meaning you don't even get the chance to try? Relieved?  Disappointed?  Wishing that "Wave magic wand, translocate baby out of uterus without need of incisions or contractions" was a valid option?  Fed up with the entire topic and ready to stick pins in the effigies of anyone tactless enough to raise it again?  Some/all/none of the above?

Pleased, actually, though I am loath to admit it.  Despite the kind assurances of my friends inside the computer, I still feel I'm "supposed to" be disappointed, and confessing that I am not is harder than I'd have expected.  Although I did hope for a VBAC, that hope was pinned squarely on the knowledge that the recovery from a vaginal birth would be easier — and that's if I actually achieved it, which was to be an open question until the very end.

Ever since the baby's growth started to seem...unusually exuberant, I've been skeptical that a VBAC would work.  But until the baby's growth started to seem...downright extravagant, I was willing to try.  That conviction started to waver when even my MFMs began gingerly asking me my plan.  Based merely on the fact that they're the ones directly responsible for the work at hand, I would have expected my OBs to advise the most conservative course.  But when the doctors whose interest is at this point purely observational let out a low, impressed whistle as they look at the ultrasound screen, that advice starts to carry additional weight. 

And I know.  I've heard it: ultrasound weight estimates notoriously inaccurate 15 pound baby forecast 6 pounds 3 ounces delivered big baby no reason for C-section without trial of labor aaaand the rest of it.  I just don't, in my case, believe it.

So in spite of my reluctance to say so, yes, I am pleased to have this birth booked.  It feels like the safest option for the baby and for me.  Even if the baby is, as of yesterday's scan, now head down just as he should be.

...

thrice asked:

Ahem, you were planning on a live baby?

Well, it'd be nice for something to go according to plan, because apparently the excavation contractor won't return until Sunday.  As to when the paving contractors can return after that, well, who can say?  Not them, apparently, as they are a fun-loving band of will-o'-the-wisp dreamers who won't be tied down by your uptight rules, man.  I'm not worried, though; for my postsurgical return home I see no problem with having one of the hospital's helicopters deposit me gently on my front lawn, mere steps from the haven of my bed.

They'll do that, right?

...

Moving on!

Jerry!

Rebecca!

Twins!

Thanks to all of you who passed along the news:

Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O'Connell will soon be on double diaper duty.

Us Weekly has learned that Romijn, 35, and O'Connell, 34, are expecting twins this winter.

A spokesman for the couple confirmed the news Monday morning [9 days after O'Connell's announcement that they were trying to conceive].

Now, I have several options here.  I could do the math, figuring that "this winter" could mean no later than, say, the end of February, and generously date their gestation at, oh, about 9 weeks currently, give or take.  But I doubt they would announce a pregnancy before the end of the first trimester.  So let's put it at at least 12.  And after doing that math — move the decimal point, carry the twins' sexes — I could get all cranky about the disingenuousness of O'Connell's earlier-by-barely-a-week announcement.

Or!  I could speculate about their mode of conception, although People attempts to put paid to such scurrilous gossip: "The twins were conceived without the help of in vitro fertilization or the fertility drug Clomid, a source close to the couple also says."  (I could also, if I were being a douchebag, point out that, curiously, no mention was made of, say, injectable gonadotropins.)

But the fact is that every time I venture a comment about the fecundity of anyone in the public eye, I regret it, even if only a little.  Oh, sure, some agree with my overall feeling: When the vitality of your chosen career depends on media coverage, discussing your child's conception at all constitutes an invitation for even the wildest speculation.  But others rightly point out that just because we're invited doesn't mean we have to do it.  In fact, a careful analysis of past posts and comments in this vein reveals a predictable pattern of reader responses.  Same thing every time.  I have made it into a pie chart for your easy digestion:

(Because I am constantly seeking to improve the A Little Pregnant experience, I have broken down one of the categories further to see how I might do better.)

So based on these figures I have concluded that it is better to say nothing.  Or, uh, at least as close to nothing as I can manage.  Which, if the last 1800 words and two hours are any indication, is nowhere close at all.

But then thanks to the gluey quagmire that is our driveway, neither is our car, so I guess it all works out.  Right?

Right!

Moving on!