Full Circle

We went up to Northampton for the weekend. Nicole’s friend Tim is in a touring improv/comedy company and they were performing in Springfield for five nights. We went up for the Saturday night show. It was hysterical! It was the most I had laughed in a long, long time. The babies were kicking the entire time, so they have either developed an early interest in sublime sketch/improv comedy or they are sensitive to all the clapping and laughing around them. Oh, it might have also have been the licorice I ate before the show began. During the intermission Nicole and I watched my stomach and could actually see the kicks and punches. It was surreal.

The show was mostly skits a la SNL, but the group also did several improv sketches, where they took suggestions from the audience and turned said suggestions into skits off the top of their heads. It is mind numbing how some people can do that. In one skit, Tim pulled out of nowhere: “I’m going to crawl inside your mouth and kill you from the inside.” I couldn’t (and still) can’t stop laughing. It fit into the skit perfectly, and it is so funny to boot.

On Sunday morning, Nicole and I performed my experiment of waking the babies up. I laid in the giant hotel bed and didn’t move and the babies were still sleeping. So Nicole started talking to them and after a minute or so they both started kicking. I think this is proof finally that their little ears are working. They can hear us. That is surreal, too. I makes me want to talk to them all the time, but I am aware how crazy that would make me look. Now Nicole needs to start having daily conversations with them so they recognize her voice too when they join us on the outside.

We picked up Tim at 9, I mean 8, I mean 10 (daylight savings has me all screwed up) and went for breakfast in Northampton (eggs AND French toast) and Tim took us to this great book store about 10 miles north called The Book Mill. It was an old mill outfitted as a book store/restaurant/café, complete with dusty corners and Victorian couches and lots of nooks and crannies. All overlooking a waterfall. It was great. I wish we discovered this about four years ago. It must be beautiful in the fall. Then we went back to Northampton for some burnt sugar and butter ice cream; dropped Tim off at his hotel and began the drive home.

What was nice was that I didn’t really worry or fret at all over the weekend. We were too busy and having too much fun for me to let any bad thoughts seep in. Tim is hysterical pretty much all the time, so having him around was like having your own personal comic.

But now that we are back home, let the games begin. Actually, I am still not really fretting about Awful Things That Could Happen because I am concentrating on finishing a ton of work for my Masters. It occurred to me that I am just so done with grad school. I finished my first Masters in two years and went straight into the second without a break. So it’s been four and a half years of grad school. Granted, I am not working this semester and that makes a huge difference, but right now, I just feel like I have so many other things to concern myself with, like these babies, and getting ready for them. I want to take care of myself and Nicole and the babies….not my class readings. I am slightly resentful that I still have grad school looming over me, with some big projects to finish and papers to complete. In theory, I was going to start a doctoral program right after this program was over, but I have come to my senses. I need a break, for at least a year, and then I can assess where I am. More school and babies will be a difficult load to balance. But I am happy to sacrifice the former for the latter, for a few years or even forever.

Interesting tidbit: At breakfast, I made a pit stop to the bathroom and there was a woman ahead of me waiting to use it. So I sat down next to her and waited my turn. The bathroom frees up and I wait for the woman to go in. Instead, she says with a smile, “Go ahead, Hun. Been there, done that,” while waving her hand around my stomach. Pregnancy membership has its privileges, and I still can’t believe I am a member. But this is the interesting part, for lack of a better word: This wasn’t the first time I heard “been there done that.” After one of my miscarriages, a coworker, who didn’t get the memo apparently, asked how the baby was. I said I had a m/c and she flippantly said “Been there, done that,” without so much as an “I’m sorry,” or “I feel your pain” or anything. I remember feeling stunned: How could someone who knows this sort of horror be so trite and borderline cold? And this morning, I got to here this expression again but in much better circumstances. Kinda makes me believe all that talk about the things in life coming full circle.

Pictured above is my giant sleeping pillow on location at our hotel. The pillow comes with me wherever I go (that is, when I sleep someplace other than home). And yet I am still not sleeping that comfortably. It might be time for a new, extra-strength pillow. Also pictured are Nicole and Tim at The Book Mill; and Nicole and the babies and me, looking like a Weeble Wooble. I swear I don’t look this rotund in real life.