now fortified with impotent fury!risperdal

Well, we did childbirth prep class.

I think we flunked. At the very least, if we were handed report cards at the end, ours would have made liberal use of ‘needs help playing with others’, ‘talks too much in class’, ‘cannot sit still’, ‘did they not get the memo about this being the most ooeygooey miraculous thing ever’?

My hate for this class knows no bounds- and is in fact fueled by the knowledge that I was so foolhardy as to think this might be worthwhile and got testy with the Lad the night before the class when he was being a little too snarky for my hormonal self, and, god help me, I hauled out the platitude that right now I need him to say supportive things (while I know, deep down, he is supportive, i need to hear it) and need him to keep his snark to a low level. I know, I was posessed by aliens, and it is a testament to his love for me that he did, indeed, tamp down the snark. Until, 15 min into the class, I leaned over and hissed something inappropriate, thus letting him know to cry havoc and release the hounds of sarcasm.

We were one of the last couples to arrive, and ostentaciously have different last names which got us an arched eyebrow. The instructor bore a striking resemblance to Stereotypical Angry Lesbian Nun, which is not a a demographic I feel I should be getting childbirth advice from. Then she opened her braying piehole, and I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole- or, preferably, her. She had a high, goat-being-killed-in-a-hail-of-bullets nervous laugh, and alas one of the husbands there was a sod farmer who was quite the jokey good old boy so she opened up and said ‘yeeeeeethaptathaptaaaaaaaaaaw’ quite often. It became established very quickly that she would pose a question, wait 1 second for feedback, and then answer. She, at no point, laid out a schedule for the day, a ‘here’s what we’ll cover’, or any such nicety, leaving us all to wonder if the class ended with ‘and then the kid is put in your arms’, ‘and then you might allow your husband to touch you in a sexual manner again’, or ‘and then your child departs for college’.

She also, if she didn’t know the answer to something, would 1. blow it off 2. whip out the incorrect answer, because you see, she’s no longer an active Oby nurse, and hasn’t been for 20 years, so her information was horribly out of date. There were 3 nurses and one doc in this class ass attendees, and one of the nurses was so bold as to offer a tidbit of information, once, which then meant Angry Nun (who, it turns out, is married with 4 daughters) would ask her for info on stuff after saying in response to a question, “Oh they might do THAT on the coasts, but not here…. they don’t do it at your hospital, do they?” I swear, if I had heard the phrase ‘they might do that on the COASTS’. Because you know, NY and LA are other planets. How about Chicago? That’s not a coastal city, and everything that was asked about is offered in Chicago.

After lunch, I started whining to the Lad. He stoically said we’d assess at the next break. Then we talked episiotomies, because someone asked, and this instructor had the gall to say, repeatedly, “An episiotomy is nothing”. Excuse me, no. And I opened my mouth about methods to avoid one, and recommended the woman asking talk to her oby, and boy did I get the evil eye. At the next break, we inquired what was left to go, and then chirped why GOSH, we’d been through all that, and while she did not believe us (and in fact demanded to know where we’d gotten the info), we ran, ran like the wind. You bet your ass I’m calling annd complaining about her disorganized, misinformation laden ass- and taking special care to mention her culturally insenstive remarks re: asian women, their foot size, and its implications for pelvis size and thus they get c-sections.

So. Yeah. A for effort. F for sociability scores. We went and ate big slabs of meat and the lad had a beer. And let’s hope they still let me deliver there.

S is for scritchy. Ah who the hell am I kidding, alphabytes is pretty much out the window.

So there’s no point ducking it anymore. Everything revolves around Baby. The nursery is almost done, the crib is together, the changing table assembled, just enough clothing and bedding washed to accomodate the snarklet (rather than cutting the tags off of everything and washing it, which really seems like tempting the fates- if nothing else, it’s asking to have a child too big for 0-3 mo clothes). I need to get a can of formula and sterilize bottles for first time use. I’m getting effing huge. I can’t get comfy at night. I can barely roll over without the use of one of those enormous cranes they show on ‘Monster Machines’ on Discovery. I am dealing with spring allergies.

The last one is the pisser. I knew this would happen- I had to cut back on all of my steroid based allergy meds while pregnant (gosh, wonder why?), and so I am woefully inadequately medicated to deal with my first spring in the Land of Allergens New To Me. Given what spring in Chicago, a place I had lived for years, was like, anything short of knocking me out with a rhino-sized tranq gun was bound to be woefully inadequate, but oh man does this suck. It sucks worse because of my body’s own wackiness.

You see. My body hates me. No really. So many women cry “I hate my body!”, but that’s so done. Instead, my body hates me. I have an immune system with an itchy (hah! immunology puns! oh nevermind) trigger finger. I am, no joke, self-reactive. I react to my own tears. Anyone who has seen me sob can attest to this- I end up looking like a baboon with a rippin case of hives and a crack and bleed reaction, who is then beaten with an ugly stick for good measure. My old allgerist in Chicago idly said, one time, as he watched his newly minted resident stumble, dumbfounded, through an exam with me, “You know, when you get pregnant, the whole milk thing could be a problem.” We know from my youth I’m allergic to breast milk. We know I’m allergic to my tears on my flesh (for those in the audience wondering, part of the eye and the uterus are ‘immunologically priviledged sites’ in the human body, and my immune system doesn’t seem to be such an overachiever as to have trumped that bit of biology- thus, my tears don’t irritate my eyeballs, just my skin). And so Kris put two and two together.

Sure enough, the bastard was right. My oby, mildly alarmed by my description of issues with the girls at my last appt, called down the hall and had a colleague of hers, an allergist, consult. A blood draw later, and I was sent on my merry way, being patted on the head and told it was probably nothing. Wrongo! My specific IgE responses and histamine levels are off the freakin charts, and Dr. Genius Allergist’s response was, ‘we need to put you on steroids, now!’. I mildly replied that wasn’t such a good idea for me while I am pregnant, and he mused, in response, perhaps we could deliver me early. I double dog dared him to run that idea past my oby- I could only imagine her transforming from mild mannered soothing doc into raging tower of female fury at that genius idea. Please note I did not pick this genius man as my allergist, he was sort of foisted on me in 90 seconds.

Well, I’m now supposed to crank up my claritin, rub anti itch cream into the girls, and I’ve been exorted to not let liquid linger there- my GOD is this man stupid, does he think I’m happily lying around all day firing off the man eatin cachongas like they’re the dancing fountains at Disneyworld or nerf super soakers? I am so glad I don’t have an office job, or the need to scritch would drive me mad mad mad. And the nanosecond I deliver, they’re slapping my ass back on the steroid meds.

In the meantime, I am allergic to my boobs. Medical science is powerless to stop the force that is Itchy Man Eatin Cachonga.

I have not written Alphabytes in some days. I have not written in some days, period. At first I didn’t know why, and then it became clear, as I sat down to write entries on Jambalaya (can’t eat it) or markets (I’m a whore for the first farmer’s market) or turkey (have you ever tried making a 36 pound turkey? They never defrost. Ever.), they would invariably veer off course from Proustian remembrances of meals past and descend into a pit of seething incogent profanity laced anger and hurt and pissiness and general fed-upness. Political commentary as provided by a tag team of Dennis Leary and Farina, with a dash of Alton Brown thrown in for good measure. There’s no point in pulling my punches now. And I shall say nothing earth shattering, be no more eloquent than professional writers who have written deeply and movingly on the subject. I shall be one of approximately 8 billion journal entries decrying and bitching this morning.

Dear rest of the world, as an American citizen, I apologize. I apologize that we elected (and that’s up for debate, you know) Crown Prince Buttmonkey Assclown as ‘leader of the free world’. I apologize that our country is lead by a petulant 2 year old who at every turn has not listened to his advisors, who has spewed rhetoric which could have no possible outcome but to paint us into a corner, who has shot off his mouth mere hours after his cabinent members had patiently and with great skill tried to use diplomatic channels to sway world opinion. I apologize that his speechwriters have framed this conflict in such a way that of course! of course we look like raging arrogant fuckhead assholes!

Saddam Hussein is a man who will stop at nothing. He has no regard for human rights. His regime has killed scores of dissidents, used rape as a weapon, gassed ethnic minorities (does this all sound familiar). Framed in those terms, hell yeah he needs to be taken down. But ‘axis of evil’? ‘Evil-doers’? Harboring terrorists and thus his country must be brought to its knees (newsflash- the US has terrorists too, you know! We call them domestic terrorists! Next shall we frag ourselves?). I hate that our president is such a simpleton that this had to be reduced to a black and white issue- military might or so-called diplomacy- rather than a careful, thoughtful strategy with our fellow soverign nations around the very real, very valid issues that Saddam presents. Instead we’re the arrogant fuckhead 900 pound gorilla. We’ll be rebuilding our reputation, our trustworthiness, our relationships with dozens of countries for decades. This is a diplomacy and foreign relations nightmare. But Toddler Bush cannot see that. He’s too busy jumping up and down and screaming in the sandbox.

And of course, we’re being blitzed by the media. Hysterically so. Dear NBC, the phrase “Saddam Hussein is all that…and more!” really doesn’t make me take you seriously as a news source, though it does make me wonder if I act now if I’ll get an extra tub of oxy-clean and a bag of chips. Guys, there is nothing going on, yet the area is crawling with reporters, detailing every minute non-detail. And yet, there’s so much they’re not reporting (want to know what? Go read another country’s newsfeed. My favorite so far is the BBC’s careful analysis of born again christian fundamentalism in the US government leadership, teehee. Plus, well, all of the analysis of the so called intel that’s been provided. The sad thing is, I have no doubt that we have reams. And reams. and reams. of incredibly persuasive, horrifying intel that we, for perceived reasons of national security, are not sharing with potential coalition members, and thus shooting ourselves in the foot. At least, I tell myself that- I don’t think Colin Powell would be behind this without seeing something so horrifying in the intel that he wakes up screaming in the night.) I am of a mixed mind. Freedom of the press. Ability to ‘get the job done’, as it were. Once you’re in, militarily speaking, you’re in- don’t half ass it, get it over with- and it doesn’t make it easier if you have CNN reporters fucking up and revealing locations of stuff. Surely the American media can understand the need for the military to have surprises up its sleeve?

I cannot help but think back to freshman year, when as a bunch of us lingered over the remnants of dinner in Driscoll dining hall, one of the dining hall student workers casually informed us we’d started bombing, and the lot of us leapt from the table as one and raced round the backside of Prohaus to Fayerweather, sliding on the icy path, to plunk ourselves in the TV room. My winter study professor was testy with all of us the next morning for blowing off what we all thought was an option evening art seminar on- no joke- the art of winter. He furiously informed us that we were irresponsible, and this was ‘nothing major’, and would blow over in a few days and be done done done and we’d never have to worry about it again, and we were blowing it all out of proportion, we didn’t know what war was. I doubt he was testy last night, if students blew off stuff.

Accordingly, I have flipped away from all the news stations and am listening to Johnny Cash’s cover of NIN Hurt (an ironic choice, no?). I am fixedly going to put in a couple of hours of work this morning. I am going to go to the fabric store and pick up samples. I am going to go buy wine from Tim. I am not going to turn on NPR. I am not going to let myself become glued to the TV. I am going to keep mentally apologizing to the rest of the world. I am apologizing, every time it enters my brain just what’s going on, to snarklet. Baby, I promise you I will do everything in my power to make sure that, while on all of the ‘on the day you were born’ crap your paternal grandmother will invariably give you it will list Crown Prince Buttmonkey Assclown as POTUS, that he will not be elected again in your lifetime.

Continuing my trend of turning Alphabytes on its head and making it a foodie centric thing, today I is for Ice Cream, as ElleBee sensibly pointed out.

I have not had a long love affair with ice cream. My raging milk allergies meant I didn’t really taste ice cream until I was about 12 (and after that? No goin back my friends). In fact, my food allergies were so bad that many of the things I considered treats as a kid others viewed as child abuse. My father, god love him, would get himself a soft serve at the Smitty’s (a sort of bastard offspring of a K-Mart and Supermarket) and hoover it down, and then hand me the plain, unadulterated, now dairy- free cone (they wouldn’t sell him a naked cone). This was the bestest treat ever. Other shoppers, however, saw a 6-6 1/2 grown man wolf down ice cream and give his 6 year old a barren cone, and would hiss and make unkind remarks. One grandmother, in particular, whacked him across the shins with her cane.

Now, of course, as with everything else I consume, I am an ice cream snot. Edy’s Dreamery and Ben and Jerry’s, I am your bitch. (In fact, one particular Vermont liberal arts college lingered on my possible school list for very long, due in no small part to its proximity to the Ben and Jerry’s plant.) Some of my favorite memories of summers on campus in college revolve around piling entirely too many people into our vehicles for safety’s sake and tearing down the 2 lane highway to the Ben and Jerry’s, where we’d split into teams and kill vermonsters. Because of our proximity to the Ben and Jerry’s plant, that particular store got a pair of flavors- Maine Blueberry and That’s Life Apple Pie- which are the best non chocolate laced or laden flavors I’ve had (well, short of coffee gelato, which is a category unto itself).

I had thought that pregnancy would be a license to ice cream. It’s the classic thing you hear about. So much for that. I’ve really not had food cravings, and I’ve certainly not sent the lad off to forage icy creamy goodness for me at 3 am (hell, I haven’t demanded he go out and buy me anything between the hours off 11 and 9 am). In addition to the whole my-body-refuses-all-food thing which lasted for 6 weeks, I went into a- quelle horror!- chocophobic phase, and I just couldn’t face ice cream for a long while after that initial deep badness. Now I can eat it again. Except I can get about 5 spoonfuls into me and I’m full, because His Royal PITA has shoved my stomach off out of the way and compacted it so much the thought of settling in with a pint of ice cream and a spoon for an hour of trashy Lifetime Movie Network watching is just nauseating, which is less than no fair. I’m 7 1/2 months pregnant, if I ever deserved to lie on my ass eatin ice cream and watchin craptacular movies with Tori Spelling, it’s now.

I forsee this summer being a festival of ice cream and booze. We own an ice cream maker (natch). I may just have to combine the two and make a lot of kahlua-chip ice cream. I might as well multitask and pack in fat calories and alcohol in the same food source.

Okay. So, in a stroke of genius, I’ve decided how to motivate myself- at least for, say, today- on the whole updating thing re: Alphabytes. To hell with the world list, I’m doing my own, and it’s food based.

H is for ham. You’d think, being jewish, I would not be a big proponent of pig. But oh, oh how I love the tasty pig, in all of its permutations. A classic dinner in my house growing up was homemade blueberry muffins, cottage cheese and peaches, and ham steak. The Lad and I would drive up to Wisconsin to go to a certain butcher outside of Kenosha and get hamsteaks cut to order. I have bought hams for holidays, as well as received them, and jealously hoarded the bones to make ham and bean soup to die for. In a particular bit of tempting the wrath of the big G, I have been known to use the Maneschevitz kosher split pea soup mix and jazz it up with… a smoked ham hock. Yes, it’s astonishing my kitchen is not a smoking crater and I have not been zotted in a fiery display of diety wrath for that one. I cannot, however, bring myself to serve ham for Easter when Easter and Passover overlap (which is 90% of the time).

I have not, however, ever tackled cooking a ham. No really. And I want to. No matter how goofy it seems for 2 people (let’s face it, snarklet will not be born wanting to mow down sammiches). And not one of those revolting sounding soak it in coca-cola or Dr. pepper versions either. Feh. I am toying with the idea of actually doing this, slicing it up, and freezing it, as part of the ongoing food stashing program so that we’ll have decent meals post baby which require nothing more than defrosting.

In the meantime, there are so many other places to tuck the tasty treyf. Ham ham ham. I love serrano ham, and prosciutto, and those so salty if not soaked properly country hams. Asparagus rolled in prosciutto and then quickly sauteed is delightful, canteloupe wrapped in prosciutto is a swanky sunday brunch item. Little cubes of serrano or even just regular old ham tossed in with pasta, goat cheese, and pring peas is a sure harbinger of spring in this house (or use asparagus instead of peas). My mother has perfected the snottiest ham and cheese ever- thinly sliced peasant bread, mezzo secco cheese and prosciutto or serrano. At least she and I can burn burn burn together.

G is for grouch and grinch and groan and gruff and gack (it is not, however, for slacker, which I apparently have been in a large and flagrant way).

I have hit the wall. I am sick of being pregnant. I am sick of being ruled by hormones, and my brain spinning madly wildly yet strangely lackadaisically out of control (riddle me that!) and having neuroses and fears and money fret fret fret rule my head and make me blue and spinny. I’m sick of snarklet deciding he likes being transverse and kicking my stomach and making me puke my breakfast 3 times. I am sick of the nursery not being done thanks to the broken crib, and sick of the client who’s driving me up the wall, and sick of the investors who can’t shit or get off the pot regarding my coolest project just fund it damnit and let me sign my contract. I am sick of the client who wasn’t honest with me about their financial situation and is now sitting on an invoice they haven’t paid and show no sign of paying and just expect me to be understanding (fuck you, shitheads. I have a network and I am not afraid to drag your effin names through the mud. Stylishly and in a way which cannot get me sued, of course). I am tired of worrying I won’t be a good parent, or love the snarklet enough, or be able to endure sleep deprivation without snapping.

I know it’s all bullshit. I know I’m groaning and moaning and grouching.
I know it will get better. The sun was out and the breeze was delicious, and I threw open the windows and ran around in tevas, and began to feel like life might not be the grey of february forever.

Feh. Tomorrow will be better.

And now, F! in the Alphabytes March Collab.

Anyone who watches Inside the Actor’s Studio knows of the damn survey at the end, and one of the questions is what’s your favorite curse word. Mine, without a doubt, is fuck. Fuck in all of its permutations. ‘Cocksucking motherfucker’ is an especial fave. And amongst King of the Hill People, Dog Faced Boy, Matilda, and the Lad and I, anything can be turned into “X brought to you by Dennis Farina…Fuck you, you fuckin fuck!” Fuckledeedee, such a delightful combination of obscene and Scarlett O’Hara wide-eyed calculated gentility is also good.

I had, however, forgotten the power of fuck. Chicago, while a friendly city as cities go, is not a land of soft spoken people. My job, at times, involved riding herd over several dozen burly contractors, who could not be moved to take me seriously until I delivered such lines as “Do not fuck with me, you cocksucker, I know you just violated code. Rip it out and fuckin do it right or fuckin get off my fuckin site.” The word, along with the rest of the litany of obscenities, was in regular use in that city.

And then we moved to Kansas. And I have found I no longer need to come up with increasingly complex strings of conjugations of fuck and its scatalogical buddies (fucking buttmunch asswipe!). The simple use of the word ‘fuck’ is enough to make people here in our new hometown go wide eyed with shock, movements stilling, stupidity on the roads ceasing as they stare at me in horrified wonder. Yet, because we are not in a clear channel dominated market, the alternative station cheerfully rolls out the NIN line ‘I wanna fuck you like an animal!’ with nary a bleep.

I anticipate my blase attitude towards the word will come to a screeching halt as soon as the kid goes verbal. That would be when my father finally believed mom telling him I would pick up his language habits.

Look, tons of updates all at once. This is E is for Edgy, from the Alphabytes March Collab. This is not a fun entry. This is, in fact, my fragile, shivering snow crocus like psyche spilling across the screen. Or, uh, somethin.

I am edgy these days. Apparently, it is not showing near so much as I’d think it would. I have managed to paste an utterly deceiving mien of strange zen-like earth-mother calm over my riotous ‘inside my head voice’. Everything, though, has me on edge. Right when I had finally gotten to the point of ‘oh fuck it’ re: deli meat, a pregnancy mag arrives in my mailbox with a multipage article on Deli Meat: The Worst Possible Thing You Can Put In Your Body- Please, We’d Rather You Do Some Crack Instead. Right when I felt really confident on the money front, I sat down and did our taxes and fuck me gently with a chainsaw (I will caveat: no need to panic, we can pay our tax bill, it’s just not comfy to owe Uncle Sam that much when I know- know!- my taxes this year are going to support the hissyfit of the 5-year-old-in-sandbox like crown prince monkeyboy of the universe prez). Right when I thought we were comfortable with our decision on formula, the Lad asked me within 5 min of my waking up this morning, “So, does soy formula have, like, nutrients in it?” No, darling, I’m advocating and have convinced a pediatrician to support me in starting our child on formula devoid of any nutritional content whatsoever, in fact, it’s very very very thin recycled paper slurry with just a hint of soy for the faintest whiff of protein and added ass flavor.

I am a roiling ball of worry. Worry worry worry. I am paralyzed with indecision. Buying baby clothes at the Kohl’s sale the other day was an agony, as it combined my pregnancy brain death inability to do basic consumer math with the need to make choices. Waaah! I am edgy because I am not comfortable in this skin. I am confident. I can make decisions. I am responsible, I am a leader, I rule with an iron fist in a velvet glove, and I am realizing that I can read and research alllllll I want, but I am about to undertake something huge which inherently I have no experience at. I have a low pain tolerance and I’m realizing that this child must come out of me somehow. I can’t stand bad smells and I’ve got a shit machine incoming. I am an inherently selfish person, who guards her time jealously, and I’m about to be at the beck and call of a puling creature, I have no idea what to expect- the kid could take after the lad (angel baby) or me (horribly ill and did not sleep through the night until the age of six.) I am not a sanguine person by nature and do not deal well with not knowing what’s coming, it puts me on edge.

Heh. Yes, I am edgy.

4 days, 4 entries. Woo, I’m on a roll! D is for Doormat, in the Alphabytes March Collab. I am sure the D is for Doormat is not what folks were intending. I’m sure they meant the word in the deep, self-reflective sense of do you let people use you and walk all over you.

I, of course, will not be taking it that way. D is for doormat, as in the piece of whatever you have outside your front door for people to wipe their muddy paws on. When we bought this house, is was Country Cute. Circa 1990 middle America. Dear god, was it bad. The house had been a model home for the community, and thus had been tricked out by a good Kansas interior decorator, so enormo balloon valances and board valances and matchy matchy was the order of the day, and the extremely OCD former owner (he is past president of the homeowner’s assoc) refused to change a thing. In fact, they lovingly maintained it all. They grounded their daughter, in fact, when she put glow in the dark stickers on the blades of her ceiling fan, because it meant she messed up an original aspect of the home. But because all the decor had been installed by the builder, it’s all installed with 5 inch galvanized steel L-brackets, so taking down drapes is a several hours long procedure which involves battling vast hordes of spiders. We still have some of the eye searing floral curtains because we can’t afford to rip down many rooms worth of curtains all at once. The deep green paint in the living room, has to go. The beige pinstripe wallpaper in the kitchen, which resembles nothing so much as the bland interior of a mcdonald’s fry box, also must go. The entire downstairs is slathered in oak (which my father in law adores. Me, not so much, and so it’s a game of Oak Mitigation by incorporating ostentaciously urban colors).

I had not noticed, when we looked at the house, that they had a butt freakin ugly pink with flowers doormat. I should have known. It should have tipped me off to what lay within (granted, I already had an idea from the online real estate listing.) When we went down to the house first time after closing, the fourth of July weekend, we were shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover that the former homeowners had cheerfully and sweetly left us little piles of pillows and frills that matched the drapes in every stinkin room. And they left us the doormat of incomprehensible ugliness, which froze us in our tracks. We elected to keep it for the time being, so that, well, we’d HAVE a doormat.

But the doormat came to stand for something. Namely, fiscal paralysis (spend good money on a doormat?!) and the delicate balance between snark and suburbia. Given my druthers, I’d have gone for the simple statement of a coir mat with ‘GO AWAY’ in bold letters, but our cul-de-sac already has one family known as the antisocial freaks, and really, we didn’t think people here would get the, ah, humor. My second choice was a subtle commentary on suburbia by getting the treen astroturf with plastic daisy in the corner. Again, the subtleties of irony are lost on these people, and we would be seen as being horridly declasse for doing this, and people would begin to worry if we’d sit on our porch and shoot at bunnies and keep our cars up on blocks. I finally broke a month ago, as every time we went in via our front door I had a Talking Heads moment of ‘This is not my beautiful house’ because ‘there’s no fucking way I would own such a piece of atrocious floral crap, and if I did it’d be at the back, muddiest door possible, where I could cackle and yell ‘take that! asshole former owners!’

We now have a lovely coir doormat with black greek key design. Now to get rid of the heinousness which is the back doormat. This, however, will require the massive fiscal outlay of $12, and that’s 2 six packs of beer. We have our priorities.

C is for cookie. And well, caffeine, in the Alphabytes Collab. Yep, I picked the easy one.

Caffeine. Oh sweet precious elixir of life, how I adore thee. I was willing- though the science doesn’t bear it out- to cut out alcohol completely when pregnant, for as long as my doctor advised, but there was no fucking way on god’s green earth I was giving up my morning cup of joe. When I was a child, my parents scrupulously bought caffeine free soda, and I avoided soda at lunch at school. At college, in the beginning, I drank water at dinner. I got hooked on coffee summer after my frosh year, as a temp. And then it all fell to hell my sophomore year, when I moved in with 3 women. What had been a mild addiction to coffee turned into a full fledged love affair with the bean. Between 3 of us, we had 3 coffeemakers, 2 hotplates, one immersion coil, a minifridge (for milk, natch), one french press, and one espresso maker, all in flagrant violation of housing code. Given the caffeine consumption, I am shocked, shocked I tell you that at no time did the geology department come to investigate the measurable seismic activity due to the jittering. The 4th woman was allergic to caffeine, the poor poor thing, and I really can’t blame her for fleeing our suite when a room opened up elsewhere.

Junior year I fell in with a group that had coffee together in M’s dorm room one night a week, a gang that became my tightest group of pals. Koffee Klatch was a sanity saver, if not good for one’s heart rate. Having met Charlene, who managed the Ratskellar coffeehouse, I fell into asst managing for her- hoop de hoo! an excuse to sit around once a week eating excellent cookies and sucking down coffee. I also fell in with R and Leather Pants Grrrl who, damn them, converted me from regular Coke to Diet Coke, thus beginning a years long shame spiral of addiction to neurotoxins with my caffeine. I thought I hit rock bottom summer before senior year, when a friend came to stay over, took one look at the enormous pyramid of diet coke and mountain dew cans in my room, and began to say in soothing tones like one uses with a twitchy foaming dog that perhaps I had a caffeine problem if I’d drunk all that soda over the previous 6 weeks of summer. I blinked at him dumbly and informed him that 2 weeks prior I’d cleaned out the cans in anticipation of his visit, and this was only 2 weeks worth. And then I hit grad school, and learned the true meaning of caffeine addiction. I sucked down an entire can of diet coke in 3 gulps in the middle of my oral exam. I developed the ability to drink half a pot of coffee at 11 pm and still fall asleep 30 min later. I lost all lining of my digestive tract, I think. I dropped out of grad school and slept for about 2 weeks.

Me and caffeine, we’ve reached an uneasy truce now. I have a bowl mug of coffee in the morning, caffeine, she doesn’t send me the ass ripping headache by 10 am. That one slurpfest is enough to get me through the day, and even before pregnancy I’d pretty much stopped drinking soda regularly. I am looking forward to being able to order a coffee after dinner without having some nosy ass bitch 2 tables over begin to ostentaciously talk to her dining partner about the effects of caffeine on fetuses. I am looking forward to walking into the coffeeroasters and ordering a big big big honkin sack of costa rican SHB whole bean. I am looking forward to using my luscious big freezer to make coffee ice cubes for iced coffees that don’t get watered down.

No no, no addiction here. Just sheer, animal lust.