Saturday morning breakfast

Two cars arrive separately and take parking spots next to each other in a McDonald's parking lot. A woman, pregnant in a flowing olive-green tunic, steps out and waits while a man gets out of the other car.
"Do you have a pen?" he asks.
"Yeah." She unlocks the door she'd just locked with the remote and pulls out a heavy leather bag. She straps it across her shoulders and they both walk inside. Eyes downcast.
They wait, standing a couple inches apart, behind several people ordering Egg McMuffins or pancakes or breakfast burritos. They don't speak. Just wait. Then order. She orders a sausage biscuit, and he gets a McGriddle sandwich. "I'll get it," he says and pulls out a credit card, swipes it, while the woman finds an empty table, across from two elderly men with discarded wrappers littering their table, still drinking their coffees.
The man walks over and takes a seat at her table. "Let's get this done," she says and pulls a black pen from her bag, then sets the bag carefully next to her seat. He opens a stapled wad of papers.
"Okay, sign and date here," he says, pointing to a blank line on page three. She signs, a sadness in her face, while she stares down at the words on the page.
"Now here." She signs again. The black ink trailing and drying on the page while she hesitates, her arm resting on the page.
The man stands and brings over their food.
"Don't you think we could work it out?" she says, resting her arm on the shelf her pregnant belly provides. Then rubs gently the foot away from where it's lodged under her rib, creating a sharp pain.
He shakes his head back and forth, then slides her sandwich across the glossy table until it stops, in front of her. She opens the wrapper and eats quickly.
"The child care isn't a write-off," he says.
She nods understanding and signs one more time, after he points out the last blank line.
"Why?"
"Your company had a loss this year." She looks up and smiles.
"What? I didn't make a profit?" They smile.
"Maybe next year."
They finish their food quickly. Then walk out of the restaurant separately. She sits heavily into her car and drives south, while he goes north.

This is an UN-premeditated blog . . . so beware

This is the first time I've actually sat down and started a blog that I had no idea what I was going to write about. I've felt so uninspired lately, to write anything, to clean my house, to stand up.

The good news is that my house IS clean. I hired some ladies to come over and clean it, and they came this morning. It was wonderful. Well, great, except for I felt so guilty letting them clean my house that I had to be up organizing and straightening while they worked. Why is that? I can't just sit down and relax. Not while they're cleaning up my mess. That and well, they were speaking Spanish to each other and laughing and I just couldn't knock that Seinfeld episode (where Elaine's getting her nails done by some Japanese women who sat around talking about her while they worked). Everytime they laughed, I wondered if they were laughing at how dirty my house is. Did I mention that pregnancy makes me a little paranoid?

I've been upset lately. Mainly about my dad whose health is deteriorating fast. We found out that his neck is fractured, along with several vertebrae. No wonder he couldn't hold his neck straight. Looks like he's going to have surgery soon. To put in some rods or something. I don't know if he's healthy enough to undergo anesthesia. I worry. My sister says that he's having a hard time concentrating on a conversation. That his brain just isn't functioning like it was. And worse, he's lost hope. I'm scared.

I'm also starting to worry about having this baby. I know it's going to be hard. I'm worried that I'll be overwhelmed, my hormones will be all out of whack, and then I'll have Miranda's birthday several days later. I'm worried about being depressed. My only other spout of depression (not catastrophe related) was post-partum, so I know it's possible. I hope that if I expect the worst, then it won't be as bad as I think. But not only that, I'm worried about the first fifteen months of Portia's life. That everytime she does something, I'll be thinking about the last time I went through my baby's first time, which will have been with Miranda. I'm pretty sure that's why people always said that that's why the first year after losing your baby is so hard--because you have to go through your first Christmas, Easter, birthday, everything without her. Well, here I go: I'm going to have a complete fifteen months of firsts with a baby that isn't her. And I'm scared. I'm scared I'll resent this baby for not being Miranda and that's not fair.

Wow, so I just dumped a lot down. Sorry. I guess I needed it somewhere besides stuck in my brain that wakes me at 3 a.m. and won't let me get back to sleep. I have, however, gotten a lot of reading done because of my body's inability to go back to sleep.

The phone just rang. It's a miracle. Eric's on his way home and it's 5:15. I think the last time this happened was in college.

I'm ready to take my dog to the humane society

It was weeks after Miranda was born that I got rid of my cat. Kitty Bumpkin. He'd been with me since before I was married, when I was living alone in my first 400-square-foot apartment in Taylorsville. I loved him. But when Miranda was born, he started peeing all over everything. I don't have that much patience.

I don't know if this is related to the baby on its way or not, but Tigger has been going all over my new basement. At first I thought it was because he was staking his territory with the construction workers downstairs all the time. But now they're gone and he's still doing it. I can't get it to stop and I'm about ready to go crazy.

So, I've decided to re-train him to go outside--he's been using training pads because he was never really trained. I put him in his travel kennel and I'm only going to let him out to go outside or if I can keep my eyes on him 100 percent of the time. This is a last resort. If this doesn't work, if any of you know someone who would like a purebred chihauhau who goes on pads, let me know.

He really is a cute dog and we've grown to love him, but it's usually right after I have a baby that I lose patience for anything that didn't grow in my uterus. I know this makes me sound like a horrible person, but I never really wanted this dog in the first place and I think of him as expendable. He was given to us. And he was an expensive dog. The person who bought him paid over $2000 for him. And you know me, I can never pass up a "good deal."

I'm trying to be patient. I really am. Even now, as I'm listening to him whining and barking and trying to get me to take him out of the travel kennel. He'd better get used to it. He's got another hour before I'm taking him outside again for another potty break.

Watching dust settle

The dust is finally settling. I mean, settling an inch thick throughout my entire house. And the banging, hammering, and drilling have finally stopped. My house is quiet again--well, at least in the mornings while Bianca's at kindergarten.

Our basement is unofficially finished. The carpet went in yesterday. I'm anxious to get down there with a mop and a vacuum and a thousand dust rags and go to work. The problem? After five minutes of cleaning, I'm completely worn out.

So yesterday I called around to get some quotes on hiring someone to help me clean the house before the baby comes. (For those who don't know, we've chosen April 23--Shakespeare's birthday--as our C-section day for Portia.) Back to the story, the bids were high, of course. And I know I'll probably just end up doing it myself.

I wish my mom lived here. I'd invite her over for a cleaning party. I love how she keeps herself busy when she's most stressed out or upset. You should have seen how clean my house was after Miranda died. But not only thanks to my mom, people were always showing up on my doorstep with buckets and cleaning supplies and mops then. And a good thing too. I probably would never have cleaned my house then. I have the reverse effect when I'm upset. I sit in front of the T.V. and watch things I loathe, like talk shows and dating games and other nonsense.

And then looking around at a dirty house makes me even more depressed--the physical manifestation that I am entirely too lazy to get up and do a half hour's worth of cleaning. I'm pathetic!

My arms are itching now and I'm starting to feel a little lazy sitting here at the computer. I think I'll grab a couple minutes now to get to work.

See you all later, I've got work to do. The basement's waiting.