Addict
Someone has carried coffee into the bathroom recently. I can smell everything. Including you. Right now. Go take a shower.
I smelled the coffee and felt relieved. That old feeling. Even bad coffee, how it tasted with cheap vanilla cream. The coffee machine banter. The Starbucks kids. Your name spelled on the side of a cup, your preferences ticked off underneath.
Just one cup.
As I thought this thought, this horrid thought, I felt a real panic seize my innards. Coffee.
It's been a week and a half. God I want coffee.
Farting Cashews Is Bad
Here's a little something nobody told me about pregnancy: Your bowels get lazy.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not what I signed up for. I wanted glow; I wanted attention; I wanted an epidural. Instead, I get farts.
The other day, I wanted cashews and dried apricots. I wouldn't call it a craving. To me, a craving means digging a chocolate cake out of the trash so I can eat the entire thing while sitting on the toilet reading Esquire.
Not that I've done that. Yet. But that is a craving, not thinking, "Hey, unsalted cashews and dried apricots sounds pretty good, plus I can eat them easily while playing WoW, and they're healthy for baby!"
This lazy bowel thing was one of the reasons I figured I was pregnant. I have my movements on a fairly tight schedule. I don't like to push or rush, and one day I found it just wasn't going to come. After a few days of gravity, and not muscle, doing all the work, plus perhaps the sensation of agony every time a breeze touched my nipples, I bought a test.
So I satisfied my... whatever... for cashews and apricots. I didn't even eat that many. But for days now, my shit has been apricot-colored and my farts have smelled of cashews, to the point where, if you offered me a million dollars to eat a cashew or dried apricot, I'd probably have to turn you down.
I just never got the chicks who wanted desperately to be mommies. Maybe all the babysitting helped knock that silly crap out of my hemisphere, but it seems like so much work. Anne Lamott wrote of being tired enough to get in the shower fully clothed on accident just after her son's birth. Maybe the teenagers with a ton of jing and stupid parents have an easier time of it.
I don't mean to sound like I don't want to have this kid - if, indeed, there is a kid to speak of this time - I do. I have wanted one ever since I laid eyes on my husband, and not before. He is so brilliant and beautiful, I cannot imagine his DNA stopping dead when he passes on. Plus, I have great lips. A kid could do worse than my lips.
But christ, please, enough with the cashew farts. I need a nap.
Ready
It's been Prodigy for a long time. The old stuff: Firestarter, Smack My Bitch Up, not this pansy feel-good crap they're putting out now. If I'm going to be running, I want a throaty, British man to scream "Come play my game" at me.
I'm not built for running. I'm thick, even though now I'm not fat. Walking around my neighborhood I realize this. Why have I been lumbering around the neighborhood, pounding hard onto my knees and pelvis and feet? My body was built for long, pregnant winters.
And that, if all goes well, is what I'm in for. I look at the next eight months or so with the trepidation of one whose entire body, life and being will change.
Last time, I wasn't so lucky. Or maybe I was. The pregnancy wasn't real, they said; there was a problem that was making my body think it was pregnant. I was drugged, carted into surgery, gassed, sent home. Then I made the phone calls.
My phone calls are different now. Nobody's particularly excited this time around. Neither am I.
But for now, just in case it's the real thing this time, I'm walking. I won't jar the kid around any more than I need to. It'll be Groove Armada and Joni Mitchell on my headphones while I walk, silly techno while I spin.
Mr. Aran says he's ready to be a daddy.
Like A Virgin
Regarding my previous post: I may have overreacted. I was in the same emotional vein as the EA Spouse. I do that when I read. Mr. Aran's job isn't nearly as horrible as EA Person. I just miss Mr. Aran a lot.
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I was a little disappointed with Furor the other night. Furor, the leader of the infamous guild Fires of Heaven, has been helping me quest in the Plaguelands this week. He's known for being an asshole, and entertaining as hell. The sweetest thing he's ever said to me, before inviting me to a raid, was: "You'll have to do."
The best quests in the game thus far are in the Plaguelands. You're putting dolls together for little girls who don't know they're dead; using machines to make worms crawl out of buildings; blowing up ziggurats; and killing some really epic elite mobs.
I know Furor doesn't like to die. I've heard tell. His girlfriend likes to imitate him by pointing at the monitor and yelling, "Why am I dead?" So when you're the priest to his warrior, you go in knowing he'd better not die, or you'll get a... screenful. Some of the most colorful insults I've seen have come not from Shakespeare, but from old FoH raid screenshots.
So, Furor dies.
Pause.
"Gay," he says.
Quietly, he retrieves his corpse. I feel a bit inadequate, at level 56, with ho-hum gear and no prior mmorpg experience. We discuss, civilly, how I might manage mana better this time. "Use more efficient heals," he advises, "and no bubs. And he seems fearable."
We try again. We get adds, he gets low on health. I hit fear. The adds fly off, but the big guy resists.
Furor dies.
"Don't fear," he says.
This time, I die too. We ride around looking for the guy. The most antagonistic thing he says is, "Where the fuck is he?"
With the help of a couple other guildies, we take down the monster and loot his patch of fur.
I thought, up until last night, that he was being easy on me because Mr. Aran has big biceps and a knife rig in his office. He can be intimidating. Then, last night, Furor let me know he wasn't afraid of no biceps.
After killing off our party near Stratholme (I was too far away for him to take aggro off me) the resulting conversation was a blur of "What the fucking fuck fuck fuck! Fucking fuckety fuck Samus! Fucking range fucking ability fucking imbecile!"
Okay, he may not have called me an imbecile, but it was implied. I laughed my ass off. I read it off to Mr. Aran (who was loving a new wrestling game in the next room), and took screenshots.
I felt exhilerated. It was my first time, and I think he was rather gentle, in comparison. At the end of the evening, he thanked everyone but me for their help.
I went to bed hours earlier than I would have with any other guild. God bless FoH. I love all you guys.
Nuthin' Doin'
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_spouse/
I like to DO things. I do not like to sit back and watch, I do not like to be upset without taking action. This makes me upset.
But I do not know what to do. My whole chest feels tight.
I'd like to quietly applaud EA Spouse for making this public. Mr. Aran loves his job, and never complains, but I have watched his health and vitality drop significantly over the last year. Our lives, and family decisions, have been effectively put on hold while he works on this project.
Just reading my entries, below, should prove how much I love the product, and what an amazing work of art it is, but nothing is worth the health of the best man to ever walk the planet. Not to mention that one day, I'd like for him to be the father of my baby, and he'd like to be around to watch that baby grow into adulthood.
The only other profession I've seen firsthand like this is my brother's. He is a Marine Drill Instructor. When he first started, his day began at 4 a.m. and ended at 11:00 p.m., sometimes later. He did this for three months straight, and then had three or four weeks off.
Even the Marine gets time off!
The reason this practice hasn't seen the light before this is, we are all scared shitless. As I type this, college and high school kids around the globe salivate after Mr. Aran's position.
I have heard of lawyers, doctors and investment bankers pulling these hours, especially at the beginning of their careers. Not only are they paid accordingly, but there is, for them, a light (and a corner office) at the end of the tunnel if they keep at it. If Mr. Aran keeps at it, he will get a sword. He will still share a dark, windowless office.
And the line that has become our mantra will continue:
"Maybe next year..."
