***Today’s guest post is brought to you by Katie, my good blogging friend who I hope to meet someday. I found Katie all by myself several months ago, by Googling™ the phrase “cupcake truck.” That’s how awesome she is. I highly recommend her website, and invite you to check it out for a good time. Take it away, Katie! —Camille***
Hi there. My name is Katie and I live over at Confessions of a Young Married Couple. I am so excited to be guest blogging today for Camille. Archives is one of my favorite blogs and one that I read every day, so this is kind of surreal. Like stepping into one of your favorite sitcoms. Now, if only Zack Morris was co-writing with me, life would be just about perfect.
On a normal blog post at Confessions, I generally would complain about my husband or my pregnancy (did I mention that I’m eight and a half months pregnant?). But today is special and so I will change things up a bit.
Today I will complain about both my husband and my pregnancy AT THE SAME TIME. Mind boggling, I know.
As I mentioned, my husband, Chris, and I are expecting our first baby in a few weeks. Chris has been super excited about the Bean’s arrival, but he has this fear that once the baby is here, we will never see civilization again. I have tried explaining that it’s a baby, not the bubonic plague, and that our friends will still come visit us and we will (eventually) be able to go out and see them again. But to Chris, a child symbolizes the ending of an era for he and his close group of guy friends. And so he has been on a goodbye tour for the past three or four months.
Most of our close, childhood friends live about an hour train-ride away in New York. We see them about once a month when they get tired of the city and they flock to our suburban home like homeless people, looking for food, shelter, showers, and a Nintendo Wii. I gotta tell you—I love it when they come. Our house becomes a small, unorganized bed and breakfast. We leave the windows open so that we can shout to each other from inside. We all cook big meals together. There are pool games, dart games, croquet games all going on at the same time. Someone usually has a Frisbee to throw in the back yard. It’s like camp for adults.
But the more pregnant I have become, the more these weekends take out of me. I really need the weekends to recover from my full-time job, which keeps me on my feet all week long. I need to be able to nap when I need to and to kick my feet up periodically. And as capable as the guys are when they are here, as a Southern Belle, I just can’t be a hostess with my feet kicked up in the air as I snooze on the couch. It’s just against my breeding.
I first mentioned this to Chris a few months ago when I started noticing that it was taking me a long time to recover from these weekends, and I suggested to him that instead, maybe he should head down to New York for the weekend. Then, he’d still get to see his buddies, but I wouldn’t have to put on my hostess apron. So, he heads down to New York for this Last Night Before the Baby Comes celebration.
Since that weekend, the guys have been up to our house three more times. And each weekend is a celebration of the Last Night Before the Baby Comes. It’s like Hanukkah. And I keep saying to Chris, “This is the last celebration weekend, okay?” and he keeps getting all sentimental and gazing out into the sunset as he replies dramatically, “Yes. This is the final celebration weekend Before the Baby Comes.”
And then the following weekend, my house is full again.
This weekend, the boys were here again for another Last Night Before the Baby Comes and I sort of lost my cool. Sort of. Might have. Could have.
Yesterday, the guys hung around all day doing what guys do. The plan was to have a late dinner around 8:00, which would require a trip to the grocery store. And the guys had very kindly agreed to go for me so that I could keep my feet up.
Too bad they didn’t leave for the grocery store until 7:30 PM. And too bad they were gone for an hour. By the time they got home, it was 8:30 PM. And I was already starving. But we still had potatoes to bake, salads to make, and steak to grill. In the hour and a half it took them to prepare dinner, I became irrationally angry at, who else, but Chris.
I was so hungry that I was about to eat my own arm. Hungry to the point where I couldn’t even speak. Or make eye contact. I just sat on the couch in a blind rage of hunger.
“How could Chris do this?” I silently seethed. “Doesn’t he know how hungry I am? Doesn’t he know that I have a person growing inside me? Doesn’t he know that it takes food to grow this person? Why doesn’t he love me anymore?!?!?”
By the time we sat down to eat, I was almost inconsolable. I’m sure the guys all noticed because I sat down, inhaled my food, and immediately stood up, announcing I was going to bed. I don’t think I had even swallowed my last bite yet. But I couldn’t help it. I was hungry and tired and no part of me could be polite even if the Queen Mum had been sitting on that back deck.
This morning when I woke up, I felt a little guilty for the silent temper tantrum I had thrown. I don’t want people to ever feel like they aren’t welcome in my home, especially those people. Cause they are, like, my people. Maybe I’ll apologize to them this morning for my very pregnant, hormonal, irrational reaction to a late dinner.
Then again, its already 9:30 AM and none of them are awake and its getting awfully close to my next feeding time. If I miss breakfast, the world may end. And by world, I mean their world might end. My world, of course, will go on just nicely covered in pancakes and bacon and cheese grits. My world rocks.
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