P.J., get my coat.

I think we've stayed at this party too long.

a.k.a., That natural childbirth video made me yuke.

Last night was our first "Great Expectations" class at Northwestern (do they mean for the class? For my Expectations are only Meh) and what a time was had by all! Eight to ten couples eyeing the other eight to ten couples with these actual inner monologues: Guys- Does he make more money than me? Is he younger than me?/ Gals- She best be delivering after me. She is ridiculously tiny. I don't think she's really pregnant.

We started off by arranging ourselves by due date, this after I'd already propped my knees up on a yoga ball and paged through my info packet (actual info for the Transition stage of Labor: "Tell her how great she's doing! Tell her that the baby will soon be here!" And P.J.'s reply: "You're fiiiiiiiiine." After which I mentally swapped my Support Person.) We found ourselves in the middle of the group, with due dates ranging from the end of December (See? Hardly pregnant) to OCTOBER FIFTH. Yep. That girl is giving birth in a MONTH. We have four classes in this session. P.J. and I are wondering if she's gonna make it to the end. (Of the session, that is. I doubt that missing the last class will cause something terrible to happen in the actual birthing of the child. Maybe they give out magic potions?)

Then we got to go around the room and announce our birth plans. The girls who chose to go natural smiled smugly at those of us who like drugs (yum) and the rest of the girls looked at the 'au naturale' gals like they were missing a screw or seven. It was a tender moment.

Then, oh THEN, we got to see a video with FOUR ACTUAL LABORING MOMS who- get this- delivered babies without drugs (even when they mentioned that they wanted them. That bit was towards the end. Apparently women in this stage are HILARIOUS!) Speaking of not making it 'til the end, there was a featured woman that P.J. and I seriously wanted to poke in the eye. For real. I realize that no one was having a grand time, but this gal was moaning from the second the lights were being hung in the video. It didn't stop her from eating chips n' salsa, oh no! (Now, I'm no "doctor," but maybe eating spicy food as your water is breaking is NOT gonna feel good in a couple of hours. Different strokes, I guess.) And THEN, she got to the hospital! And donned a HEADBAND. You know the kind of headband I'm talking about. The Down To Business Headband. Not a hair was to touch her forehead- she was in Active Labor. (And her husband was kind of a dope- staring wide-eyed and kinda drunkenly throughout the entire ordeal.) And may God forgive me for saying this, but hers was an ORDEAL. Plus, she had this whiny "pain face" really early on- terribly mean of me, yes, but you can TOTALLY tell that it's also her face for when her husband's running late. It was hard to build any sense of caring for her character and the arc of her story line.

And MY GOODNESS, did some of these women realize they were going to be filmed? I will say no more. (Except that it was a sight to behold. I'm sure you really don't care at that point, but REALLY, shouldn't it have crossed one or two minds beforehand? Film is forever!) We both felt badly for the featured Asian lady who barely spoke any English and had a vacant look on her face the entire time- while she labored ALONE- who probably didn't understand that a camera crew was to be present...and that an epidural wasn't.

Next week- epidural videos! Woot!

My favorite part of class came when we had to visualize labor and use our Bag of Tools (I keep mine in a toolbox, thankyouverymuch) to send ourselves to our favorite strip of beach. Our Support Person (P.J. was still holding this title) had to squeeze an appendage of ours tighter and tighter for fifteen seconds, loosening their grip for the next fifteen. Our jobs were to BREATHE THROUGH THE PAIN. Most husbands chose an arm. Mine grabbed my inner thigh. I am very ticklish on my inner thigh. He also started the count with a KUNG FU GRIP and tightened from there. I'm sure my reaction had the teacher putting Child Services on speed dial for the Schoeny household.

Then I started laughing. And couldn't stop. So P.J. grabbed my thigh between two fingers and proceeded to walk me through the gentlest contraction ever, through which I almost hyperventilated. The combination of Deep Cleansing Breathes, an ant-like contraction on one's thigh and a mortified husband does that to me, apparently.

I hope the teacher's getting paid well.

But I really can't complain- P.J.'s a pretty fun guy, he's promised me SUSHI if I do a GOOD JOB, and I have a lovely home with a couch newly on the floor of the actual living room in the house where the baby will live (see last eight posts). I'm certainly better off than the video gal whose husband blathered about how hard labor was for HIM. During the actual labor! Sit back down, son!

Although, in their interviews, I couldn't help but notice that THEY had a finished stairwell leading to their first floor.

I'm just saying.

Thirty weeks! That sounds close.

It kinda feels like I'm in the "official" part of my pregnancy- like, now that it's ten weeks or less 'til Baby Central, this means that I actually have to HAVE THE KID. And other such fun.

I'm thoroughly NOT enjoying the every two weeks appointments. The constant poking, prodding and weigh-ins make me feel less Earth Mother and more Rocky Post-Retirement. Or like a science experiment gone horribly awry. ("Why are you still gaining weight?" "Well, until the kid starts shrinking, it may become a necessary evil.")

I'm rather done with caring about weight gain at this point. (*Rather*, mind you. I will always be enough of an actress to wonder how close or off the mark I am to the weight listed on my theatre resume. 125lbs. Shut up.) Besides, if my doctors really wanted me to obsess about my weight, they're about nine years late to the party. We don't do that here anymore. And if they really wanted me to count calories (yep, there they are!) then tomorrow I'll just get off at the floor hosting the Weight Watchers meeting and skip the blood draw altogether. If I'm humongously overweight when the kid hits middle school (and still blaming the pregnancy), then yes, get my bum to step aerobics. Until then, pass the pumpernickel.

We start our childbirth classes next Tuesday, a blend of Lamaze and Bradley techniques: half 'Oh, this is gonna hurt, so breathe rhythmically like they do in the movies' and half 'Oh, pain is totally cool. Visualize a cloud. Don't you like CLOUDS?' I hope they offer snacks with the informative videos. I hope I can record P.J.'s face whilst watching the informative videos.

Yesterday I finished up a one-act play about biological clocks- seems to be a bit on the brain- except that my female protagonist can't find hers and desperately wishes to. Ha! It's funny, 'cause it's a myth! Like people who gain seven pounds during pregnancy! Because what woman DOESN'T hear her clock chirping in the middle of the night like a Tourette's-afflicted cockatiel with ADD on a sugar high? Wearing little finger cymbals and an umbrella hat? (The umbrella hat doesn't make noise, it's strictly a sight-gag.)

Oh, for real?

You don't find that this is GENERALLY the case? Oh.

That's weird.

So, tonight may be the night that a "guy" comes over and "saws our couch in half." And we're paying him cash money to do this! At this point I'd give him one of the cats if he could unwedge the sectional from the stairwell. I find that I'm losing my ability to notice large, out-of-place objects in my daily life. Totally walked into a filing cabinet two days ago- it COULD have belonged in the family room...who am I to argue with the laws of spatial relations? (On a positive note, we still have a homeless box spring blocking the storage area, rendering it officially Not My Problem. There's clutter back there? Prove it.)

But for now, murder, mayhem and diamond theft. For at least three more scenes. And then perhaps elevated ankles, strategically-placed pillows and a snore or two.

For at least twenty more minutes.

Wanna come see my MacLaren?

This past weekend Peej and I headed to Pittsfield to be showered with baby...think 'It's Raining Men,' but with pastels. Delicious food, adorable [teensy] presents and a couple dozen of the East Coasters I like best. Also- more than five instances of "I cannot believe how HUGE you are," to which I reply: a) Believe it. I am carrying another PERSON, and b) that is something extraordinarily obvious to say and (more likely than not) the expectant mother is walking around at the time thinking to herself "I hope I don't look HUGE in this." Which she does. Because she is almost seven months pregnant.

Public service announcement aside, it was a lovely trip and party thrown by my sibs and mother, WAAAAY too short (all Massachusetts jaunts feel about five hours long these days) and complicated with rain delays at the airport. To paraphrase P.J., we've got centuries of advancements that can get hampered...by water droplets falling from the sky. Nice. My sciatic nerve thanks you, O'Hare.

In other news, our doorbell still doesn't "ring" the way it's "supposed to." (It's in a pile on the kitchen counter called P.J., CAN YOU FIX THIS TONIGHT? (Marriage is fun.) This lack of doorbell was made quite clear the other day when the FedEx gal came to our door with a package needing signing. (Two things: WOW! A FedEX package? This NEVER happens. And secondly, I was upstairs in the master bedroom, where apparently one can hear door pounding through the FLOOR'S VIBRATION. Awesome and kinda not-so-awesome.) Regardless, sensitive soul that I am, I heeded the door pounding and found a bored looking FedEX employee waiting to thrust one of those electronic signing devices in my hands (that never looks like my signature anyhow and cuts off the first half of my name- so has this 'technology' really advanced modern mail? Let's put our energies into waterproof airports.)

"Violet Bodillo?" She asked [boredly], thus crushing my dreams of signing for a FedEx(!) package.

"Nope."

Raising an eyebrow she [boredly] repeated, "No?"

I assured her that, while I may have many names, Violet Bodillo (which, I'm sorry- is NOT even a real name) is not one of them.

Bored gave way to irate.

"4330 N. Troy?"

"4338."

She looked around angrily for the house numbers, which, believe it or not, had been attached to our brick wall weeks before. (Side note- Peej. Apparently our numbers are missing.)

"Sorry," I lamely apologized. "It's a foreclosure."

She did not accept, and instead marched down past my mailbox (which had the correct numbers AND non-Violet Bodillo-names on it- plus, I'm sorry, we're still between 4336 and 4340 which are labeled largely. 4330? I feel no sympathy) without so much as a howdy-do.

I think a howdy-do would've made that day so much better.

Later I picked (stole) some plum tomatoes and carrots from my previous garden. My rationale was that I had planted them, it wasn't MY fault that the wonky weather had made it a late season, and besides, they wouldn't have survived the transplant. I was doing everyone a favor, see?

The only trouble was that I happened to glance into the back window where my office used to be- and it was full of dolls and toys for the new little girl who lived there. (Or, let's be honest, another 29-year old who cannot let go of possessions.) This sight filled me with so much sadness that I had to go to the Taco & Burrito King on Addison and Western to drown my sorrows in a small horchata and some nachos. (To be fair, I was also waiting to pick up my mother-in-law at the Enterprise so it wasn't just a binge. It was a 'killing time' kinda...binge.)

However, the nachos- which had one purpose in life then and there, to make everything OKAY- were stale. And soggy. Yes, stale AND soggy.

I am not ashamed to admit that I cried. Yep, I sat there in the parking lot of the Enterprise, amidst people who had trouble parking compact cars in diagonal spaces and employees taking inappropriately loud cellphone breaks and cried. I don't know if it was the stress of the move, the renovations of the new house, the travel and visitors, the inability to finish up two plays before August 1st or simply the failure of my favorite comfort food.

I'm gonna go with the last option. And you hafta agree with me, folks, because remember- she's pregnant. And always right.

And maybe a smallish bit big. But not from nachos.

At least not that day.

So, we really have to live here now, huh?

Big news this week- (Okay, I do realize it's all very self-importantly "big" news to us...but I'm kinda longing for a week where I whine about being bored and say inane things like "I just painted my toenails. Again. Went with pink." And hopefully we'll get a week of that before the kid joins us)- we have a BED and FOUR WINDOWS. We actually have about thirty windows, but FOUR of them are NEW and UNBROKEN.

Where to start? The bed. We went to Ikea last Sunday- a fabulous venture with a pregnant woman, I think P.J. can assure you. We got about six plates of food from the cafeteria and paid under fourteen bucks for all of it. BEST DATE EVER. God bless Sweden! And meatballs! We entered with the notion of getting JUST A BED, we only NEED A BED, we're not even gonna LOOK in other departments...and left with a bed, some curtains, those scuff pads for under furniture (they were on sale), a lampshade and parts for a desk (that later ended up getting put back as the desk was on too high of a shelf for Ikea employees to reach. What? Isn't that your JOB? Isn't that what Ikea is all about? Warehouse prices and warehouse storage? And it's too high? Couldn't we have planned this one a little better? How did it get UP there?) SO. We left Schaumburg, IL, (God bless our car as well), and headed back into the city- P.J. dropped me off at the house with the implicit directions to NOT do anything strenuous. He had to go downtown and pick up his mother, who would be visiting us until Wednesday. (Side note- she came for a number of reasons, among them to see the 'Snapshots' Festival at Strawdog...my Chicago premiere as a playwright! That is, for a show that I wasn't involved in the production of, the direction of or required by law to participate in the ensemble. And it was so cool! My piece was hilarity incarnate- I can say that with all modesty as the two girls cast were comedic powerhouses. And Peej was superb in two of the plays- and played the ukelele...exceptionally well!)

Back to the bed. I stared at the departing car. I stared at the couch still wedged in our hallway. And, walking upstairs, I stared at the two huge Ikea boxes of BED-ness that would soon replace the mattress on the floor. It was hot as hell, I was hungry enough to eat two pickle jars, I desperately needed a shower...but what I wanted most in the world was a nap. On a big kid bed. It was clear what had to be done. Grabbing a screwdriver, I sat on the floor and opened the box that I assumed would have the directions. Wrong box. Opening the OTHER box, I found "directions" that weren't in English. Heck, they weren't even in Swedish. They were pictures. Of screws. And big x marks over what screw NOT to use and how NOT to go about making this bed in seventeen easy(ish) steps.

The first picture featured one man wielding a screwdriver. For some reason he had a big ol' x over his body. The next image featured the same man (I imagine) next to another, identical man. This picture was circled and the men were smiling. They like quality furniture, too. Now, I took from this that I wasn't to embark on this project alone, that instead I should find someone who looked like me to hold certain frames at 90 degree angles while original me fastened the pieces together. Now, I don't know how men operate in SWEDEN, but I know a few things for sure; the toolkit and screwgun are mine, I'm an exceptional grouter of tile, and one pregnant American more than equals two bald Swedish men.

But it was frickin' hard. Turns out, some of that "90 degree angle holding" would have made things a little smoother. No matter. What should have been a five hour project (some lame-o on the website suggested that. I bet they were French) took me a mere 1.5 hours. That's right. And this is a honkin' bed. Not some particle board frame with slidey drawers, no sir. Solid...wood something or other...with a heavy, slatted headboard and a frame that could kill a cat. (I almost did. Twice.) And did I mention that it took five separate tools to assemble this bed? (The Ikea instructions didn't!) That stupid metal l-shaped thing they give you, a phillips-head, a flat-head, a screwgun for tightening the deep-set screws and an adjustable wrench for bolts. Thankfully I own all of these, but as the instructions made no mention of the items before their helpful images appeared on pages twelve and above, it required many trips up and down the stairs. P.J. and his mother arrived back home right before I lined up the supports- I informed P.J. that maybe we should see other people. Starting immediately. But the bed was mine. He asked if I needed any help but wisely retracted the comment mere seconds before a ratchet hit his head. (Because, yes! Those all-too-critical last ten minutes of a project are when the help is needed!)

But good God, is it glorious. And it works! It's all beddy and cozy and was pushed right up against the...broken window. No matter. Because yesterday our window guys FINALLY came! (There was some worry that they wouldn't come, or would try to reschedule because we had failed to speak with some entity known as "Monica...") But three weeks later, here they were! And they brought window-like and functional windows (two hours late, but NO MATTER. Because they were physically in our sidewalk area!) Three hours later (and two freaked out cats later- look, cats, this is the new order of importance: bed, windows, cats' feelings) we had two windows in our dining room and two windows in the BEDROOM that had, days before, been an ATTIC, with a MATTRESS and PINK STYROFOAM staple-gunned into the plaster! (House of dreeeaaaams...)I immediately hung these rad sage-green silk and rattan curtains, pushed bedside tables into place, made the bed, plugged in some reading lamps and...GOOD GOD, I could LIVE here!

P.J. came home, took one look at the bedroom and [wisely] told me, "I don't deserve you." This is, at times, truth.

But everyone deserves a glorious bedroom.

Check.