ironSoap

“Turn left here.”

I glance over my shoulder and note the impenetrable wall of traffic. “Uh, no can do.” I coast into the intersection and look forlornly through my driver’s side window at the road I should be on. A scowl of annoyance folds my cheek and I heave a sigh. “Well, I guess I can swing around at the next light.”

The next light is a No U-Turn intersection. I’ve already committed to the turn lane by the time I realize this, so I take the left anyway and figure I’ll just make another left on the other side of the overpass and come back ’round to my initial destination. Of course there is no left turn possible so I stay in the furthest left lane that I can, hoping soon some light will allow me to reverse direction and get back on track. I am reminded of my dad, whom we’ve occasionally teased with names like “The U-Turn King.” Yes, karma, I see you over there in the corner. Ha ha. Very funny.

“Hey,” Nik remarks, “I think this street is the one you were trying to turn left on originally.” As I breeze past the crosswalk I duck my head and look up at the rapidly passing street sign and, yes, this is the street I originally missed turning onto, obviously it had curved sharply right after the intersection and now ran parallel to the initial road.

“Perfect,” I say.

The next nine minutes involve sixteen left turns, two U-turns and a punched steering wheel (okay two punches were attempted but I’m such a poor executor of my frustration only one of my blows actually lands on the wheel which is half a foot directly in front of me), but at last we’ve found the correct road—and the correct direction, which was a point of consideration I hadn’t thought would play a particularly strong role but proved to be nearly as vexing as locating the proper street. I silently say thanks for my wife’s insistence that we leave the house with time to spare, “just in case.”

I consider what peculiar decisions we’ve taken to arrive at this point in time and space and trace it back to Nik’s central neurosis. It’s like this: We had an ultrasound which confirmed the gender of our baby (a girl) six weeks ago. They took a picture from an unflattering angle off the monitor with an arrow pointing between her legs and typed across the image, “It’s a Girl!” It’s one of the many things that will only fly (with me) for a very brief window of time. Anyone expressing this much fascination with my daughter’s reproductive organs beyond that had better come equipped with an expensive diploma, a stethoscope and a healthy fear of lawsuits, hedge clippers and firearms. But Nik has a sort of casual paranoia: She doesn’t concoct elaborate scenarios in which aliens kidnap her or governmental bogeymen plant tracking devices in her toenails, she prefers to presume that cosmic forces plot against her in an effort to thwart her shopping trips and decor decisions. In this case she’s convinced that we require independent verification of our unborn child’s sex or she will refuse to purchase needed items, register for gifts or accept charity on the (let’s face it) 50/50 shot that the doctors are incorrect.

Which is what has us traveling this twisty maze of unfamiliar streets, looking for the offices of a private ultrasound technician specializing in—ahem—state of the art 4D ultrasounds. The term 4D is something that would probably only get a pass in the logic-adverse world of commercial prenatal products and services. The real fourth dimension is a spatial construct separate from the commonly understood planes of height, width and depth which is described as reasonably as the concept can be in this mind-fracturing article. I think what the marketers mean in this case is that the imagery incorporates the fourth dimension of spacetime which is linear progression via chronology. In other words, the images are arranged in a sequence. Never mind that this is classically defined as, you know, video. I guess it just doesn’t have that same cutting-edge ring to it.

These sorts of establishments offer a variety of services, not unlike studio photographers, only with extra-womb shutterbugs you have to find particularly seedy providers before you encounter the analog to the “genitals only” package. They are intensely specific about this option, including several blocks of disclaimer verbiage in assorted font sizes reminding customers that even an accidental glimpse of the baby’s head, neck, chest or face region is likely to cost upward of $200 additional dollars in service fees. As I settle into the longer stretch of non-highway road on the route I wonder what sort of trickery they plan to employ to prevent us from catching a glimpse of our daughter (?). What if the arbitrarily selected placement of the ultrasound wand happened to be right above her (?) face? They wouldn’t really charge us extra just because the baby was trying to use my wife’s navel as a periscope, would they?

I decide, as is my cynical tendency, they most definitely would. I try to gently prod Nik to get the child to turn around or something. “Where do you think her head is?” I ask casually, breaking the relative silence.

Nik shrugs, she’s still staring at her handwritten instructions. We’re a pretty wired family but we’re notoriously bad about keeping our printer stocked with ink, so we spend a lot of time looking up directions online and copying them by hand onto the backs of envelopes or torn receipts. I let the question linger in the air. She finally looks up. “Huh?”

“Do you think she’s facing toward your front?” I ask, still keeping my voice suave.

“I dunno, I guess so.”

I consider this. “So you think he’ll probably start toward the bottom of your stomach like the OB/GYN? Or do you think he’ll go for a top-down approach?” I’m thinking of the diagrams in a number of books I’ve thumbed through which always depict the infants sort of heads-up until it is time for the labor/delivery process during which they seem to execute a precision half-gainer with a twist. She regards me like a pet owner who just watched their dog run facefirst into the screen door after barely getting the sliding glass door clear.

But before she can chide me she glances out the window and realizes that the scenery has changed and she quickly examines her note. “Whoa, it’s around here somewhere,” she says. I look out the window, searching for a reference address. Rather than noting any street digits, I’m distracted by the black glare of the telltale signs of Bad Neighborhood: Bars line every window, graffiti extends beyond the typical suburban targets like open sound walls, bus stops and public school portables, spilling onto traffic signs, parked cars and unlucky pedestrians. The street lights have dimmed to a dull yellow, the universal color of warning and I begin to process what she just said in the context of what my fight-or-flight reaction is relaying to me now.

“It’s here?”

“Yeah, well the website says it’s not the nicest location. You know, so they can keep the costs down.”

“They keep costs down by squatting on Skid Row?” I can practically feel her scowling at me.

“Oh!” Her death gaze is cut short by a glimpse of a passing address. “It should be right… around…” her finger points out the window like a divining rod trying to find a lock. “Here!” I slow my approach and make the right hand turn into what must be the smallest parking lot ever designated as such. It contains one ’87 Oldsmobile Cutlass and is already full. There is a razor thin pathway leading toward the back of the building with a sign clearly punctured by multiple drive-by shootings indicating additional parking is available through this alley/ambush bottleneck.

The building itself is a fleabag hotel that has been converted—my guess is illegally—into a business park. The tenants include two bail bond operations, a head shop (hours: M, Th from 11:00 am – 3:45 pm) and the local NA chapter, who are currently holding a meeting. The ultrasound place is on the lower floor, street side in what I’m beginning to think of as the “killzone” for any marauders or other passing brigands. I’m trying to execute a three-point turn at a safe 45 mph while Nik is calmly gesturing toward the canal of death, deeper into the inky blackness of urban nightmares. “Looks like we’ll have to pull around back.”

I can’t bring myself to actually stop the car, so I speak quickly, “This place is a hovel. We are going to die here and our tale will serve as a grim warning to future generations.” This is my protest, but I note with chagrin that I haven’t been able to avoid actually directing the car down the alleyway. At the back side of the building is another parking lot in the loosest sense of the word. It is an enclosed and dimly lit cul-de-sac crowded with stolen cars and derelict RVs whose windows glow with ethereal lights in sickly green hues. The sort of mad street chemistry being conducted behind those filthy panes of shatterproof glass by bearded urban hillbillies frosts me with a deep marrow chill, like filling my bones with Icee™. Crowding the limited space available are looming trees, bristling with sniper’s nests and camouflaging the night’s sinister soldiers.

“There’s a spot,” Nik chirps brightly.

I pull into the stall and begin to hurriedly collect anything that might be of value—anything loose, essentially. I’m glancing out the windows, praying the automatic interior light timer will hurry because as it is we’re a virtual Victim Beacon, broadcasting our location with searchlights and highlighting our lack of defensive weaponry with fiber optic sandwich boards. Nik looks over at me, my arms laden with personal electronics, spent checkbooks, car chargers, pens, anything shiny that might reflect light and draw the villainous eye of a thug on patrol through his favorite hunting grounds. Sweat beading on my brow, she crumples her lip as if she was seeing me for the first time for what I truly am: A five-foot-seven banana slug. “Let’s just go,” she says with a heaving sigh of exasperation. A sound pierces the darkness which I immediately attribute to gunfire but upon further reflection…

“Was that… cannon fire?” I can honestly say I never expected to be dragged by my earlobe through a parking lot by a pregnant woman. Oh the places you’ll go, indeed.

The door to the destination is open, but the lights are off. Also open is the door to the meeting in the next suite which I thought originally was for NA but turns out to be Serial Killers Anonymous, a lesser known organization. The gathering of greasy-haired outcasts thumbing something rigid and slender outlined just beyond the threshold of recognition in their jacket pockets, talking to their curtains of hair with sharp bird-like movements of their heads is peppered with beefy tattooed convicts proudly displaying an impressive array of improvised blade scars across their arms and faces. Their heads turn in unison as we pass, regarding this pasty suburban couple with the same intensity as a pack of starving jackals watching a flat-tired butcher delivery van. Our options are to brave the unknown darkness behind the portal that represents what I can only assume is our final destination or stand out here testing the efficacy of the 12-step program.

“Come in, come in,” a voice creeps from the darkness, “I’ve been expecting you.” I’m having trouble placing the accent, and Nik and I shuffle nervously into the dim room, sort of egging each other on. A form moves toward the back of the suite and my eyes adjust enough to make out a shadow pulling away from the pale glow of a laptop monitor. There are flashes of color and motion just visible via the insubstantial orange light that barely filters through the slits in the closed blinds. It doesn’t seem like the form really moves, it more appears at our side, and the light clicks on.

Our host is an eastern European man, maybe mid-forties. He’s suddenly wearing a hunting-safety orange vest over a set of blood red scrubs, where a moment ago I swore he was wearing some sort of hood or at least a cloak. After another second of consideration I decide I’m not much comforted by the notion of red scrubs and I examine the extremities of them, the wrists and cuffs, to see if perhaps they were once white and only appear to have been intentionally dyed red. He’s swarthy and has a scruff of salt and pepper across his chin and neck, but I notice with some alarm that his eyes are solid black and even under the unforgiving illumination of these florescent bulbs, they reflect no light. “So, what are you here to see?” he asks cordially. I finally recognize the accent: Transylvanian.

Nik explains to him that we want to verify the baby’s gender. “You didn’t get an ultrasound from your doctor?” he asks. Looking a bit embarrassed, Nik shuffles her feet.

“We did,” I say, my voice croaking a bit as I realize my mouth is entirely devoid of saliva. “We just want to be sure.”

“Okay,” the Count Ultrasound says. Only he doesn’t say it in that “yes I understand” sort of way, he says it like, “Ooookay,” in that “hey it’s your money, weirdos” kind of way. I’m a little insulted that a vampire masquerading as a medical professional would be judging us. He continues, to Nik, “Up on the table, please.”

From across the room I’m suddenly acutely aware of several things:

1. My wife has a long and particularly luscious neck.
2. Count Ultrasound has positioned himself between her and I.
3. I left my ghoul-hunting equipment at home.

I look around the room, trying to find any sort of object I could use as an improvised weapon, thinking, “What would MacGuyver do? What would Jason Bourne look for?” The most useful result of this exercise is that I confirm for the record that I am neither MacGuyver or Jason Bourne. Less useful but interesting is the room itself. Aside from the standard issue exam table, there is a high-quality color printer, a pretty state-of-the-art HP laptop which is really a desktop replacement, a massive screen stretched across the far wall, a decent projector mounted on the ceiling and an ultrasound machine that makes the one in Nik’s OB/GYN’s office look like it could have been used to confirm the gender of Caesar Agustus.

In no way am I up on any of the current models in the ultrasound sector, but I know snazzy techno-gizmos when I see them and this thing is pretty smokin’. It has its own flat panel high resolution display and as Count Ultrasound begins, he dims the lights in the room and suddenly the inside of my wife is projected wall-sized in HD on the screen from the projector. The picture quality, compared to the images I felt I was getting pretty good at deciphering, is astounding. Within moments I feel like I can start to make out tiny details I would never have distinguished from the blizzard of static at the OB’s office. I swear I can see a tiny wrinkle in the knuckle of a baby toe when suddenly the Count snaps the light back on and announces, “We’re done. It’s a girl.”

I think he’s joking, but it’s hard to tell from the back of his head. Nik looks like she’s near to tears so I’m guessing maybe he’s serious? The moment lasts too long and Nik and I exchange a few glances before she catches the Count’s look again and seems to soften. He says something I don’t hear and Nik laughs her nervous fake laugh while he replaces the wand on her belly and begins again. Oh, it was a joke. You know that one where you make a pregnant woman almost cry?

Hilarious.

The clarity in this ultrasound is remarkable and indeed after a couple of seconds to get my bearings I can clearly identify the parts he’s highlighting with the mouse cursor on the screen: This child is indeed my daughter. He flips the mode over to the dubiously referenced 4D mode which mostly seems to fill in the x-ray style ultrasound with an amber coating to give it some solidity and creates a more photographic effect. Indeed, if you wish to be charged for the privilege, the technique can give you something that approximates the child’s first picture in which you can make out a lot of their features. I’m impressed by how deftly the Count avoids the child’s face so as to avoid granting us any freebies, but I also note that Nik seems to be subtly shifting herself underneath the wand, trying to trick him into rolling over the child’s head area and giving us a peek.

Without thinking I avert my eyes, afraid Nik’s gambit will be successful. Sure, there is the ridiculous reflex based notion which puffs out its tiny chest in the face of logic and suggests that if I somehow don’t see the baby’s face I can’t be charged for it but there is something else driving my actions. It’s subtler and less prone to metaphor. Obviously I’m curious. I’ve waited for months for this child, my offspring, to reveal herself and yet there are still months to go. I have a documented fascination for technology and the wonder of using it to simulate magic.

But something in me feels like there is a magic in itself to that moment so poorly captured in novel and film where a child is drawn crying from its mother and placed into the waiting arms of its parents. It is like meeting a pen pal for the first time and finding the love you hoped and feared you might have for them is in fact real and consumes like a fire. It’s like opening the Christmas present you’ve pretty much got figured out and finding your hopes confirmed but being even more grateful for it than you thought you’d be. It’s the surprise that isn’t a surprise, something so marvelous that it can’t be cheated, it must be experienced. And at this moment I’m feeling like I risk ruining it before I’ve had the chance to know what it’s like.

Listen, the truth is, I chicken out.

But honestly it doesn’t matter because the Count is crafty and he shifts the wand with Nik like a bemused dancer dealing with an overly confident upstart. I guess he’s played this little game before and I realize he’s got the upper hand regardless: Even if Nik is successful he can always just charge us for it and emerge the victor one way or the other. I try to telepathically relay to Nik that the deck is stacked. Whether she receives the signal or comes to the conclusion on her own, she gives up.

We spend a few more minutes checking toes and seeing the baby kick, which gives a peculiar reference to the little bumps we’ve felt for weeks now. After a bit the Count stands up and snaps on the light (again), provides Nik with a towel so she can clean the goop from her stomach and fusses with his high tech equipment for a bit before dangling a parcel containing a CD-ROM and a couple of high-res printouts in front of me but just out of reach like an older brother. He’s expecting payment and suddenly I realize we haven’t discussed methods. Does he accept cash only? Checks? Discover card? Plasma by the pint?

Our exit is awkward, we’re reluctant to turn our back on him but similarly hesitant to return to the mean streets, especially carrying an unmarked package which could entice a particularly curious brand of mugger. My voice wavers as I speak intentionally loudly about our recently acquired baby pictures, clarifying that we aren’t transporting rare electronic devices or precious stones or anything else appealing to any hooligans who may be lurking just out of site, in wait. We reach the car out of breath although neither of us recalls running or even walking fast. I leave a sixteen foot streak of black rubber on the asphalt in my haste to depart and I glance into the rearview mirror one last time, confirming we don’t have a tail. A quick look to my right finds Nik, pale faced and clutching the package of images of our unborn daughter’s genitalia, an approving grimace on her lips.

“So,” I ask, trying to regain my cool exterior, “Want to try the best ice cream in the world?”

00:01

I guess I should have realized what she was doing earlier. Silly superstitions fluctuate between amusing and annoying for me, but I don’t have a problem with little games. That she kept her half of the wishbone in a plastic baggie was the tip-off I should have received, but it wasn’t until just this moment that the light bulb had sputtered on.

As an aside, I can’t figure out the phrasing “The light bulb went off” as a metaphor for sudden realization. Given cartoon parlance, the idea always illuminates the bulb, which means if the bulb “went off,” the idea would be extinguished. An odd turn of the language, that.

Anyhow, here I am with a mouthful of kettle chips, staring idly into space while the open refrigerator cools my jeans because I’m functionally a very thin-haired teenager, waiting to sip Diet Coke directly from the two-liter once I’ve had a chance to swallow and I’m staring at this bit of chicken carcass magnetized to the fridge door and I get it. She wished that she was pregnant.

And it worked.

Or, at least, it proved to be a timely guess. Or an accurate hope. Or… something. For a few seconds I marvel that most of the truth or effectiveness of hope and wish and prayer and astrology and superstition and faith and optimism is basically attribution: If you think of it as coming from fate or God or cosmic forces or planetary alignment or positive thinking or the power of the human spirit it works either way. Did a wish on a chicken bone give my wife what she’s always wanted? Did God answer her prayers? Did nothing more magical than raw biology occur? It just depends on how you look at it. Maybe, technically, the answer is just “yes.” Maybe God granted the chicken bone the power to grant the wish that provided the sperm with the strength to push that last tiny bit.

Maybe it’s just easier to say she got her wish.

00:02

The fleshy woman had a security camera poised above and just to the right rear of her desk, overlooking both the semi-awkward chairs that served to provide customers with a modicum (a very small modicum) of comfort and, my paranoid mind assumed, to evaluate her level of worktime dedication. Pre-registering for admission to the hospital is kind of surreal when you think about it. Delivering a baby is one of the very few times you plan on visiting the hospital. I guess that’s why most people hate hospitals: They always interrupt your life.

Really, we love hospitals. They give us a place to go when these mysterious bodies of ours malfunction. I tried to imagine living in a place where hospitals weren’t standard issue in every township and populated region. It looked a lot like the scary places on Earth that I’m hesitant to visit. Maybe because they lack hospitals.

Jowls swinging, the woman “hoom”ed over our paperwork, flitting thickly back and forth between the forms (which weren’t that detailed) and her computer screen, which was turned opposite us so the security camera could stare watchfully at it but we could not. We listened to the clack of her fingernails on the keyboard for what felt like too many seconds while she let the semi-silence drag on. Finally she looked up, “Can I have a copy of your driver’s license, please?” Nik complied readily. “Did they take a copy when you were in here before?”

Nik looked puzzled but replied, “Yes.”

Heaving her bulk out of the chair (an unnecessary motion, I presumed, the office was scarcely big enough for her full frame, much less the three of us; I couldn’t imagine what she would need to do that one of us couldn’t handle by lifting an arm six inches to any side) she slapped the ID cards into the copier tray. “Well, no harm in copying them again, I suppose.”

I almost spoke up, suggesting that having unaccounted for copies of her driver’s license and insurance card lying around was indeed capable of causing harm, but I decided to stow it. Instead I marveled at the unfunny cartoon magnet on her overhead cupboard and the gigantic teacup-and-saucer shaped pots that crowded the room with poorly maintained plants.

The copier whirred and she lifted the lid too soon, half-blinding herself with the scanning light. I suppressed a laugh, mostly for Nik’s benefit, and watched as she handed the cards back to my wife, beaming with her un-self-conscious radiance in the stiff chair next to me. Before the woman flopped herself back into the chair I already knew that she was going to tell us we were all set to enter the hospital in less than 100 days for the first steps in the journey that would alter everything forever. I wished the confirmation was being delivered by someone with less Mary Kay brand lipstick on her teeth.

00:03

It had been a pretty tough morning. My first-shift partner had taken a personal day and things were breaking all over the place, causing me to get overwhelmed and stressed out. I griped over IM to Nik and she almost immediately asked if I wanted her to come out and have lunch. It was well past my lunchtime but having no relief/backup that day, I hadn’t actually taken a break. I didn’t really want her to go out of her way, but I did want to see a friendly face so I said if she wanted to come out, I would like to see her.

After the break she had decided to just stay and hang out until my shift was over. Fortunately the rest of the day had been much smoother than the first half and now we were discussing dinner options while I tried to pack up my equipment and hit the road. When Nik and I talk about what to eat for dinner the conversation often goes something like this:

Me: “What do you want for dinner?”
Nik: “I dunno, what sounds good to you?”
Me: “Meh, I could go for pretty much anything. Did you have any preferences?”
Nik: “Well, I’m starving but nothing sounds good.”
Me: “How about something we don’t get very often?”
Nik: “No.”
Me: “How about something we eat all the time?”
Nik: “I’m sick of all of that.”
Me: “So… if you could eat anything in the world right now, what would it be?”
Nik: “I don’t know. I can’t think of anything. Give me some suggestions.”
Me: “Like, more suggestions than I already have?”
Nik: “You didn’t give me any suggestions.”
Me: “I should start carrying around a tape recorder.”
Nik: “You should start carrying around some sandwiches.”
Me: “…”
Nik: “…What about sandwiches?”

But in this case we were also saddled with an additional issue of being close to our budget limit for food, plus we were in an unfamiliar location and had two cars. We had a meal at home that we were prepared to eat but it was at least 45 minutes until we could get there and then another probably hour until it would be ready. I suggested we push the budget anyway and get some food.

As we exited the building Nik said she didn’t want to do that because she’d feel guilty the whole time she ate, knowing it was bad for our budget, and she wouldn’t enjoy it. I said that was okay and we could think of something else. We walked along the sidewalk that separated the lots. My car was in the one to the right, the employee lot, hers in the left for visitors. We stopped moving because we hadn’t decided how to handle the transportation. Nik was looking increasingly agitated. She didn’t think we could agree on anything to eat and didn’t even know what we could find.

I suggested we could head into the main part of Sunnyvale and see what we came across, then come back and get my truck before we came home. Nik finally lost it. Her eyes puddled with tears and her lip quivered in that sad/cute way it does when she’s trying to avoid feeling silly for being emotional. She spoke in short, liquid phrases. “I haven’t eaten since before I left home! I know we should just go home, but I’m so hungry I’m getting a headache… I can’t think straight…” Out of the corner of her eye she saw one of my unknown co-workers, who was trying unsuccessfully not to stare at the cad making a pregnant woman cry. Embarrassed now at her audience and tumbling into a self-replicating spiral of emotional overload, she clammed up and tried to urge me toward my truck to just get something happening so she could try to forget the fact that she was crying about food of all things.

I don’t always know what to do when people get worked up over small things. I don’t judge them for it, in my estimation people like me are probably too cold and reserved for this world. Frankly, there’s a lot of stuff to get worked up about. In that second with tears falling against her will onto her stretched belly (where else would they land?) as if to bathe my unborn daughter with tears wrought by my inconsiderate behavior, I made a command decision. “Come on,” I said. “We’re going to get hamburgers. And I’m going to drive you there.”

“What about your tru—”

I cut her off. “I’ll take the shuttle tomorrow morning. I’ll drive it home then. No problem!” I smiled at her, hoping to appear reassuring and not reveal that if my all-in gamble on swaggering confidence failed me I would have no backup plan for how to ease her pain. She choked on a little laugh and glanced nervously at the bicycle-fiddler, who might as well have been whistling and staring at the clouds. She blinked back the pooled tears and wiped a palm absently on her shirt, and circled her arm around mine so I could lead her to the car.

00:04

It’s really not the sentiment the bothers me. I appreciate that people are engaged with expectant parents the way they would never otherwise be. There is a certain universal human-condition aspect to being pregnant that causes a sort of softening of the edges on the barriers that people usually construct between themselves and the ubiquitous strangers who populate their same general space. It’s in the smiles from passerby, it’s in the breezy conversations that wouldn’t otherwise be struck, it’s in the sense of palpable excitement from random humans with no other connection to you than their appreciation for your contribution to our species.

Still, there ought to be some limits. In some cases those non-pregnancy barriers exist for socially relevant reasons. Nik had just undergone the most recent barrage of naming suggestions from some arbitrary, disconnected passerby which sounded more like names they would like to use on their own children than names they felt would really suit a child coming from the collated DNA of Nik and I. We hadn’t exactly kept a secret that while we were fully prepared with a previously agreed upon name for a boy, the revelation that we were having a girl left us without a solid contingency in place. Hearing this had seemed to open the door for people to supply us with useful suggestions.

It wasn’t that we hadn’t scoured baby name books and sites already. Options were hardly what we lacked. What we lacked was that sense of connection to the name, the feeling that it was the end of the sentence that started with, “So I was hanging out this weekend with Paul, Nikki and…”

Of course, I wasn’t making it easier. I insisted that whatever name we chose also had a solid nickname. My entire life the principal complaint I had about my name was that it couldn’t be shortened. It felt many times like people avoided calling me by name, preferring to address me as “dude” or “bud” or whatever because there wasn’t a decent “hey-I-know-this-guy-and-we’re-on-informal-terms” phrasing for my name. Even people who have single syllable names like Tom or Jim can go by “Tee” or “Jay.” I won’t pretend I’m upset that no one ever felt it was cool or funny to call me “Pee.”

I built a spreadsheet. It contained the names we were considering in one column, the possible nicknames in another, matching middle name options in the third and then a column each for our individual ratings: 0-5. A calculated column then tallied the scores and sorted them by which names we both liked the best.

Lots of names Nik liked I had to rate low because they didn’t have nicknames at all. Many of the names I suggested were nixed because they were too unusual, even though I selected them to be long versions of the short names she liked. Nothing scored a higher cumulative rating than 6, and I kept dropping my score on that one because while I liked the full name, the more I thought about the short name the less happy I was with it.

Nik sighed and tried to shake off the well-meaning but ultimately frustrating encounter. Since we had the boy’s name earlier than we needed it we weren’t shy about sharing it. Even that had been somewhat bewildering as people felt perfectly at ease offering us critiques as if their reminders that it made a very excellent dog’s name was somehow helpful. The process felt in many ways like a classic case of too many cooks occupying the same kitchen.

“You know people are going to drive us crazy about this until she gets here, right?” Nik asked, although it wasn’t exactly a question. It was my turn to sigh. “I mean, what if we can’t come up with a name until right before she gets here?”

I rolled the thought around in my head for a moment, like Play-Doh. “What if…” I trailed off.

“What?”

“Nah. Nevermind.”

She scowled. “You have to tell me now. You know I hate that.”

“Okay,” I said with a grin. “I’m just thinking, what if we just told people we weren’t telling anyone the name?” Nik wrinkled her nose the way she does when she’s thinking.

“We could say it was going to be a surprise!” She seemed very excited about this.

“Uh, yeah. Sure.” I’m not huge on surprises, but I supposed that was what I was insinuating anyway. “Plus, that way even if we can’t agree on anything until the day before she’s born, no one has to know how much we struggled to come up with it. They might just assume we knew it all along.”

Nik cocked an eyebrow at me. “Ah, the procrastinator’s dream.”

00:05

We didn’t anticipate much of the reality of the pregnancy. We had plenty of notions about what it would be like. Having suffered from lower back pain for several years after an on-the-job injury and even undergoing spinal surgery to correct a herniated disc (an uncommon procedure in someone so young), we assumed Nik would have lots of back trouble during the ordeal. Instead it turned out that her lower back was fine but her ribs and mid-back were what sustained the most pressure from the extra weight in front and were causing her lots of sleepless nights and frustrating issues with general comfort.

I went to the freezer and retrieved the two ice packs we kept in there, these funky gel-based numbers that supposedly stayed cooler for longer periods of time. Than what I’m not precisely sure. I suppose than regular bags of ice cubes. That’s not the point. The problem was that even through a shirt they felt like they caused frostbite. We solved the problem by arranging them into a pillowcase, along the seam, separated lengthwise by about six inches. She would then wrap the case around her side, one ice pack lying atop her belly bulge and tucked under a breast so it could numb the thin muscles overlying the ribs. The other pack pressed against her back, just on the other side of her body from the first.

The problem was the position she had to contort into to hold the packs in place made the pain even worse than without the ice. So I grabbed an Ace bandage and wrapped it around her middle several times, making sure to get up underneath the edges of the ice packs so they would stay in place, then I clipped the bandage snugly in place. It was a little silly looking, with a bandage around the middle of a pregnant woman and a cream-colored pillow case hanging off her hip like a tiny mis-fitting cape.

I finished wrapping it up and the cold sent goosebumps up her bare arm, disappearing under the strap of her tank top. “Thank you, sweetie,” she said and planted a soft kiss on my cheek, standing up with surprising lightness on her tiptoes to reach.

00:06

Instinctively, my defenses began to rise. Forcefully I kept my voice even and tried again to explain my position, but I didn’t get far before her mind came up with another point. I could tell from her tone that she was on edge as well but trying valiantly to avoid escalating the conversation into a genuine quarrel. The curious thing about parenting is that so much initially affects the mother directly and physically. Eventually I presume the biology gets out of the way and things even out, but at this point there was so little actual influence I had.

“I think you’re not grasping that this is a long time we’re talking about. You don’t have to watch what you eat. You don’t have to alter much of anything, because the baby isn’t depending on your body!”

I nodded. “Well, that’s kind of exactly my point. I appreciate the reality of that circumstance, but don’t you think I should have some kind of input on things that affect our child? How is it fair that you play the biology card and it turns out it’s a trump card?” I’m sure she loves it when I make gaming metaphors.

It was all theoretical at this point. The discussion revolved around a comment she had read on an online article discussing bad husbands in the delivery room. One example had been a guy who, when the mother asked for an epidural, told his wife, “Come on, honey. We can do this!” Universally he had been reviled but I felt there was more to it. Perhaps they had agreed earlier that they would try for as natural of a birth as possible. It seemed like he was merely cheerleading, although I sort of understood that his use of the pronoun was a bit mistimed. My contention which was leading us down the path of disagreement was that husbands shouldn’t be chastised for offering opinions about labor process just because they weren’t the ones who had to do it. Initially my example had been that Nik once told me, “You can’t hold anything I say in the delivery room against me.” I was merely suggesting that the same ought to hold true. As much duress as men aren’t under in that situation, it’s still sort of new and scary. Plus, I say more stupid things per day than the populations of many second world countries combined, so my odds of not being a fool during delivery were vanishingly slim.

Eventually we were here, debating how much input on all things parental a father could really have when the executor of those decisions was, by definition, the mother. Nik was nodding as well, but not in agreement, more in understanding. “Well, you can have input, but you can’t have the say.”

I considered this. In a phony authoritarian voice I said, “That sounds like ‘Your opposition has been noted for the record, Mr. Dad.’” Nik curled her lip in a way to suggest, well, like, yeah. I softened my voice. “Can we at least agree that I should be some part of the decision making process?”

She tried to hide the eye roll, but I still caught it. “Of course we can.”

I’ve considered the prospect of parenthood for many years at this point. I never thought it would take less time than was necessary for the child to gestate to realize how challenging it actually was going to be.

00:07

Ultrasound technicians like to pretend they’re privy to some deep magicks, enabling them some true sight when they wield their arcane implements of divination. Honestly, they just have a lot of practice staring at grainy video feeds and speaking with authority. By the time the 20-week scan arrived, I’d seen about half a dozen or more of these in the last couple of years and felt like I was getting pretty good at seeing what they could see.

It helped when I realized that what often makes it strange-looking is that you can see completely through all the tissue most of the time. I guess it makes sense if you can see through the skin and organs of the mother that the sonic waves don’t conveniently stop when they hit the baby’s body. So sometimes you can see the baby from the bottom and catch a glimpse of its tiny, developing brain. On a related subject, I sometimes have a really tough time not making inappropriate jokes. For the record, ultrasound appointments in which they examine your fetal child to determine if everything is developing properly? Not great stages for witty stand-up routines.

I could tell the tech and Nik were discussing something; the lady squishing the paddle through the ultrasound fluid, more than a little reminiscent of hair gel, was talking a steady clip and adjusting various knobs and dials on the machine. I was in another land. I was watching my daughter roll and bounce, springing her head back and pushing off with tiny feet from the lining of my wife’s uterus. She was, it seemed, playing. It was the kind of moment you might catch if you walk up to a child’s room and find them alone, unaware of your presence. They softly entertain themselves with something mundane and maybe repetitive, lost in the world of minor activities that are still new to these inexperienced creatures. She was swimming, or jumping, or just rocking herself.

It looked like fun.

00:08

When I work from home, I tend to sit at the dining room table. The desk in the spare room/soon-to-be-nursery is always ridiculously cluttered and far too crowded with other computer peripherals from the aging desktop we can’t quite seem to part with for my laptop. Plus when I’m out in the main part of the house I don’t feel as much like I’m just stuck back in my cube at work. Nik, especially these days, prefers the couch. From my station it’s nice because we’re more or less facing each other and that makes it easy to chat while I work and she does her thing, usually studying or reading or watching TV.

She has a weird obsession about her face and makeup: She claims she had horrible acne as a teenager and she regularly complains about suffering from adult acne although I never really noticed it in high school and I don’t think it’s even remotely as bad now as she makes it out to be. But regardless she made a set of rules that she lives by regarding her skin. For one, she never leaves the house without makeup. This is frequently inconvenient for me since that means there is no such thing as her just “running out” to pick up something from, say, the 7-11 on the corner. If something needs to be picked up quickly, I’m the guy. For another, she never sleeps or lies down with makeup on. That means that if she has plans to take a nap at any point during the day, she tries as much as she can to avoid getting ready to go out until after the nap.

Sometimes, this doesn’t work. We’d had an OB appointment earlier that morning which had necessitated her getting her makeup on and she had class that evening so she couldn’t even get ready for bed early. But it was clear she was fading and needed to get some rest. She compromised by arranging some pillows on the couch and sitting in a more or less reclined position, head back, feet up, hands folded gently across the expanse of her stomach.

I was busy working, head down in some crisis of the moment and I stopped to crack my neck. As I did I pulled off my glasses and rubbed my eyes, catching a glimpse of the clock to see that I still had hours left to go in my work day. In an effort to shave a few extra seconds off my work and add a bit more mental refreshment, I looked around the room and my eyes rested on Nik.

She lay there, sort of awkwardly positioned but looking almost improbably relaxed, and I noted that the sun was low in the sky so it shone past the tall trees outside the balcony, and through the opened blinds on the patio door, illuminating her face. She says regularly that she doesn’t have that “pregnant glow,” which I believe she considers to be little more than myth. I sat for the full minute, watching that glow come from both within her and shining from without, cast by the golden sun and lighting her up the way rooms do when she enters. The soft rise and fall of her breathing, the barest of smiles tipping the edges of her mouth, a cool serenity in her expression the way she’s looked since she found she was pregnant.

I reminded myself to swallow, and reluctantly turned back to my tasks, wondering exactly how I happened upon this state of unimaginable fortune.

00:09

I don’t even remember the dream, now. In fact, given that it had wrenched me out of slumber several hours before, I didn’t even really remember it as I stood zombie-like in the shower later that morning. I was trying to concentrate on the pounding of the hot water against my neck and shoulders and not on the dream. Or the memory of the dream. Or maybe just the feelings of loss and sadness that had permeated my mind since it had played out in my subconscious.

All the books say expectant fathers often dream about their own dads, and while the specifics of the nightmare were nebulous and slippery, sliding further away on the masochistic occasions that I tried to recapture them, I do remember this: When I woke up, near to tears, I asked a concerned Nik who had shaken me out of it, “Is my dad okay?”

I guess the connective thread that binds fathers to sons as they become fathers themselves is predictably strong. The notion, passed into my waking forebrain, of losing my own father was readily contrasted with my sense of apprehension at suddenly having an entire set of people who depended on me and found value in my existence who would be left behind and, ostensibly, worse off in the case of my demise. It’s all very morbid and depressing to contemplate, especially before breakfast.

I honestly don’t know how we do it most of the time. I mean “we” in the most inclusive sense, the humans who get up knowing full well how tragically fragile our lives can be, and we carry on doing our thing, spending our time like borrowed money understanding that with each new relationship we forge we create another strand in a web made of spun glass, as easily shattered by a stiff wind as by a swung hammer. The shower thundered against the backs of my ears, and I listened carefully to its drumming, aware at once how dangerous and incredible this world can be. I shifted my weight a little, thinking it was probably getting to be time to dry off, get out and continue my day.

Maybe that’s just how we do it. We get up. We kiss our families. We face the day as bravely as we know how. We just hope. It seems somehow worth it, though thousands of years of poetry and art and music have tried in vain to describe why, we just sense it. Somehow it matters. Somehow, it’s worth sharing.

I decided to let the water run, just a bit longer.

00:10

It was the sixth time we’d visited Old Navy in as many weeks. When Nik first started to show, she was pretty pleased with her body. She had been on an impressively strict exercise regimen prior to conceiving and the first trimester had been a loathsome ordeal during which Nik was locked in a tense battle of wills with her own stomach. In this corner, crippling nausea. In the other corner, Nik’s lifetime aversion to regurgitation. The bout was ultimately ruled a draw but each landed some vicious blows.

Anyway, going into the second trimester Nik had actually lost weight, which didn’t make her doctor ecstatic but I’ve yet to meet a female who didn’t find weight loss, regardless of circumstance, a net positive. I’m fairly sure chemotherapy patients at least start off my saying, “All things considered, I’m pretty happy with the results.” She was starting to show in those blissful early visits but was only stretching her waistband a bit from the bump and overall her confidence was high.

I suppose “blissful” is a relative term. Shopping with Nik is a very effective tool in building patience. For one thing, she’s almost—almost—as picky about her clothing as she is about her food. Which means she can walk into any of two dozen stores packed floor to ceiling with garments, make a single circuit through the rows of jeans and dresses and shirts and jackets and return to the entrance declaring with authority: “They don’t have anything here.” It’s like a strange shopping blindness and I’ve found through repeated trial and error that picking something up and showing it to her does not penetrate the filter.

The other part of the equation is that she hates trying on clothes. I mean she really hates it. Given the choice between trying on clothes and stuffing live carpenter ants into her nostrils, I’m guessing the first thing out of her mouth would be, “How many ants are we talking here?” Practically this results in her returning a lot of clothes. I mean a lot. Every single trip to the clothing store(s) has, in our ten years plus as a couple, resulted in at least one item that needs to be returned. Of those approximately seventy-four trillion garments, I’d estimate one-third have actually made their way back to the place of purchase to be exchanged for cash or credit. Goodwill shoppers frequently petition us to move into their region when our leases expire.

I believe it was the former issue that ultimately led to this moment. It wasn’t that we didn’t see any maternity items, but Nik didn’t like any of them. She was also trying—and you will detect no note of complaint in this fact from me—to avoid spending a lot of cash. Naturally such ideals are lofty; lacking a large or persistent customer base maternity shops have decided to price according to demand and demand is high when as each week passes the figure a woman once only thought she loathed transforms into a mocking caricature of what she’s always envisioned herself to look like on her darkest days. Given the very real prospect of trying to squeeze an expanding body into a shirt that fit mere months ago and having the result resemble those Pillsbury biscuit cylinders when they’ve been accidentally dropped at the checkout line, women will pay upwards of $200 for an eyepatch if it makes them feel a little bit more attractive.

The obvious tragedy here is that pregnant women look, to outside observers, adorable by their very nature. We are genetically programmed to have a melting fondness for the rotund pregnant form unless we are actually the ones who are pregnant. Cruelly, maternity outlet stores capitalize on this biological fact like wolves serving starving sheep crabgrass à la mode in some famine-stricken region.

I’m not sure if I was shocked or relieved to find that even during the months Nik had spent shopping for maternity clothes, stores who didn’t specialize in them seemed to be ridding themselves of stock. I guess it’s difficult to justify charging $86 for a maternity T-shirt when you have regular, non-maternity T-shirts in XL two aisles over selling for $5.99.

But this Old Navy had clearly sold maternity clothes, they had sold them to Nikki, earlier in this exact pregnancy. Now here we were a week later, operating under Pregnant Lady Logic which suggests that seven days is all it takes for an entire rotation of a store’s stock. We were bewildered to find the spot we had checked to see the exact same elastic-waist pants and mid-paneled jeans and stretchy tank tops the prior Saturday was now an extension of the Jr. Ms. department like an encroaching vine of youthful non-reproduction had overtaken the motherhood section in the night. Nik approached a woman wearing an Old Navy name tag, tiny fists balled, clearly expecting a fight.

“You don’t have any maternity clothes.”

The employee looked up lazily from her strenuous task of folding. “No.”

“No? So where are they?”

“Where are what?”

Nik’s brow furrowed. “Where are the clothes?” The employee matched her rumpled expression and looked around, clearly thinking, look around lady, they’re everywhere. I didn’t have time to inject a friendly word of advice warning the girl about how pointing out the clothes was fruitless.

“I’m sorry ma’am,” the employee said, dropping the half-folded skirt onto the stack in front of her, “but what?”

“I’m looking for the maternity clothes,” Nik said, a little optimistic now that they were finally getting somewhere.

The girl, whose name tag read, “Mindee” and was adorned with what I presumed were supposed to be floating hearts but looked more like a child’s first clumsy attempts at the capital letter B, spoke slowly, now understanding that she was dealing with a challenged couple. “We don’t carry maternity clothes. Like I said.”

“What?” It was Nikki’s turn to be perplexed. “You just had them—”

Mindee cut her off. “Yeah, we got rid of them.” She resumed her skirt-folding. “Sorry.” She didn’t sound the least bit.

I could tell Nik was ready to launch into a tirade questioning the marketing decisions and lineage of every single employee who received a paycheck from Gap, Inc. I swiftly interjected, “Thanks,” and began tugging Nik by the arm toward the front doors. She was irate and hardly softened her voice much less her tone as she adjusted her focus from the shopgirl onto me, which I suppose was the intended effect of pulling her out, though just then I couldn’t remember why.

She was practically growling: “How are you going to just up and stop selling maternity clothes? What, did people stop getting pregnant all of a sudden!? Because, oh look! Here’s a pregnant woman RIGHT HERE and she thinks this is complete bul—”

The young man clearly knew nothing about the encounter at the rear of the store. He had been given some menial fabric-related task up near the entrance and obviously had been instructed to greet every customer as they entered and to cheerfully bid them farewell as they left. He was only doing his job when he piped up in a brisk voice as we stormed past, “Have a great day!”

Without even pausing for a breath Nik broke off her epithet and brightened her own voice into the patented Cheerful Nikki Phone Chirp: “Thanks! You too!”

00:11

At first it had seemed like one of those things, odd coincidences where something could be interpreted several ways but it was just nice or funny or pleasant to pick the unlikely explanation. But it was getting uncanny. Nik had popped on the TV just for a moment to set up the TiVo to record the Sharks game that night and when she was done she had dropped it back into Live TV which for whatever reason was set to Animal Planet. The show was some random pseudo-documentary probably full of dubious science about lions. As a sort of joke she had addressed our cat directly: “Hey, Dixie! Those are like, your cousins or something. Check it out.”

The cat had turned her head toward the TV, regarded it in her cool catty fashion for a moment, and then sat down, still staring straight at the set. Nik and I had shared a laugh. “I think she’s intrigued,” I remarked from my station at the dining room table. We tried to transition back into whatever conversation we’d been having before the game had come up.

But it was increasingly difficult to ignore the amusing spectacle of the cat who, for all appearances, was actually watching TV. She hunkered down into her relaxed, belly-down position with all four feet under her. She was apparently transfixed. “Wow,” Nik commented, “It really does look like she’s watching it.”

We had sat there for a few more minutes, watching her look intently at the television, waiting for her to break the spell. Then the show went to commercial, and things got surreal. As some ad for breakfast meats or impotency drugs came on, Dixie diverted her attention, staring first down at the carpet and then gazing languidly around the room. We had watched as several more commercials aired and she showed none of the previous interest in what was being displayed. And now the commercials faded and the show started up, some baritone voice-over artist booming, “Welcome back to Animal Planet!”

And the cat returned her attention to the show. She had watched the lions, stopped caring during the commercials, and was now glued again to the set, watching as the pride stalked some breed of Elk or another. “I’ve never seen a cat actually watch TV before,” I said aloud.

Dixie shot her attention over to me, giving me one of those wicked kitty glares that suggests, in a best case scenario, murder. I lowered my voice, “Sorry. Geez.”

She turned her head back, disturbance quelled for the moment.

00:12

There was no earthly reason for us both to be up that late. I was slated to work the next day although my sickly discomfort and sleeplessness was making that feel less and less likely by the moment. Nik, on the other hand, was just having one of her usual rough nights dealing with temperature control issues, aches, pains, discomfort with any of her recommended sleeping positions and you know, the regular stuff pregnant women go through like frequent urination and being woken by hunger.

Despite the unlikelihood of it all, here we were at four in the morning, sitting in the living room in un-slept-in pajamas, flipping through the channels. She munched on some late night snack or another while I curled my lip at both my gurgling stomach and the ridiculous choice of programming that late at night. I stopped on some random sports channel and dumped the remote onto Nik’s extended belly. “You find something.”

“Hmm-mm.” She said around a mouthful. “You do it.”

“I already tried,” I whined. “It’s your turn.”

“Well, I won’t,” she declared simply and definitively. We engaged in a non-uncommon battle of the wills as Ultimate Fighting played on our set.

“See? You won’t pick something so we get to watch these two dudes grope each other and—” a contestant punched the other in the head several times in rapid succession, interrupting my thought. “Oh snap!” I cried. That quickly, the match was over and clearly they had spent too much time hyping the event prior to the fight taking place because the post-game interviews were performed as the credits rolled by too quickly to actually read.

“Who actually watches this garbage?” Nik said, not necessarily revolted.

“Well, we do, for one.” I said.

“Because you won’t pick something good for your poor pregnant wife to watch,” she taunted. I just scowled in response.

Our banter may have continued, but the fighting show ended as abruptly as the match itself and the next moments would capture our attentions and seal our destinies for the next thirty minutes to come: The thrilling, self-declared NON STOP ACTION screaming from the intro to television’s only show dedicated to the noble sport—nay art—of turkey hunting.

00:13

Fathers are granted very little opportunity to connect on any level with their children until after their birthday. This is not some conspiracy organized by humanity’s sorority of mothers, it’s merely a fact inherent in the structure of the proceedings designed by God. I guess He figures that moms are going to be the ones handling the bulk of the physical contact anyway once the child arrives be it via breastfeeding or a slobbery thumb rubbed across the cheek to dislodge particles of Cheeto, dirt and congealed oatmeal. If there is any time to acclimate both mother and child to this bodily connection, it’s straightaway.

But dads on the other hand have to work to find that chemistry. Being uninitiated, I can’t say how much effort is involved, but I know that Nik has been talking to our daughter for months now, explaining the nuances of music and expressing her love and warning about the inherent insanity of her paternal unit. I, on the other hand, attempt to talk to her and end up feeling like I’m just talking to my wife via some odd bellybutton conduit. It feels sort of awkwardly silly, not unlike the times where I speak in a funny voice as if I were our cat, anthropomorphized, and she responds back. I know in an abstract sense that our girl is in there, a real person just too small to come out and be seen and held and kissed and loved, I just can’t get a sense for what she’s like.

I’m reading a stack of comic books, Nik is half watching something on TV and half fiddling around on her laptop. Abruptly she stops and sets down her computer, reaching over quickly to grasp my wrist. She drags my hand over toward her and I resist a little because I’m weird about being made to do things without any context or explanation. She plants my palm on her belly, low down toward her waistline and pushes my fingers under the elastic of her pants a few inches, a familiar touch that would be wildly inappropriate for anyone but me.

I know what she’s doing but honestly she’s been doing it for about a week and a half now and so far all that happens is she says excitedly, “Did you feel that?” I’m forced to respond truthfully in the negative which always leaves her looking crestfallen and me feeling a bit guilty. I’m even a bit annoyed at this point because I don’t expect anything will happen for a few weeks yet and I’m not looking forward to this scene playing out dozens of times before I finally give up and fib telling her oh yes, I did in fact feel that aw isn’t it so sweet and special. I’m really just wanting to get back to the adventures of the Teen Titans at this point.

Nik is valiantly patient with me. She likes to say that she envies my own patience but really all I offer is a detached indifference to most things that masquerades as patience. Her ability to never give up, to refuse to accept anything that resembles defeat no matter how long it takes no matter what toll there may be is real and genuine. It is unwavering. It is patience. She smiles as sweetly as I’ve ever seen her and she whispers, “Say hello to your daddy.”

The kick is little more than a soft thump, a light breeze tapping against my palm. It happens in slow motion, like a tiny high five shown for dramatic effect at the end of a championship game. One single moment, one tiny snapshot of time. One blink. One kick into my palm, and Nik glows. Her stomach seems to hum and it’s almost like there was a flashlight shining within her womb, silhouetting our baby against her smooth skin. She stretches her miniscule, developing hand into mine and we embrace the only way we are allowed at this moment. I linger there, frozen in a moment of pure contentment as we connect as one. Our family.

“Hi daddy.”

And I exhale.

You may have received word via other channels, maybe you didn’t. But Nik and I are expecting our first child late this summer. We returned from the second trimester screening today with knowledge in hand that so far everything is progressing normally and we have a healthy little girl on the way.

Which of course means that soon enough I will be outnumbered by women in what I can only deduce is a karmic reversal from the circumstance inflicted on my own mother.

The significance of the pregnancy and the impending arrival is not lost on me; I recognize that there has probably been plenty of ample blogging fodder in the last few months but my silence originates less (this time!) from laziness or some sort of blockage and more from a peculiar schematic dalliance.

Truthfully the road to this point has been long and peppered with drama, but it has been a shared road and thus I feel it is only fitting that any chronicle include my partner; since she is more or less uninterested in narrative writing (what you humans refer to as web logging) I’ve been searching for alternatives. I’m still working on the specifics, but the redesign of the site you see—still a work in progress itself—is a nod toward these ends.

And in case you were wondering about the redesign and it’s relative simplicity, I’ve taken my cue from the Readability project, which opened my eyes (ha ha) to the torture inflicted on the Web’s many readers. Counting myself among both camps, I chose to no longer perpetuate the affront to my consumer half and implement the beginnings of a friendlier format. Feedback is certainly welcome, and if you are so inclined, I implore you to keep your RSS feed active for just a bit longer. There may be additional change forthcoming. I’d hate for you to miss out now, on account of impatience, especially after we’ve endured so much together.