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.
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