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January 31, 2009

Champagne

All right.

Fifty something more days to go. Feeling way better! Skin is clearing up. Walking upright though? Not so easy. Baby is huge. Four pounds and six ounces. That's really heavy for me. But whatever, she's perfectly healthy and this part is almost over. Imagine a church scene on Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is and say "Praise God!" really loudly, intermittently throughout reading this entry. That's how glorious I feel. P.S. I love you Frankie!

Justin Beck has been scouring the Internet for all the things she needs. So far he has purchased the following for his daughter:

One gel ant farm. Two Vitra miniature Eames Lounges and Ottomans (for her modern dollhouse that he plans to build). Five Yo Gabba Gabba plush toys (will the show even be on the air when she can understand it?).

I bought her a dashiki (thank you for all your suggestions – I am still going through all of them). A few Hello Kitty dresses and onesies. Lots of the Roger Hargreaves books. Mainly the ones I will read to her and say, Hey this book is about your daddy. So Mr. Messy, Mr. Perfect, Mr. Clever, Mr. Clumsy.

All the major important stuff has been magically taken care of by people who love us. Must be a Long Island thing. I have never in my life seen so many things disappear from my registry so quickly. One girlfriend was like, “Um, I went to your registry and there’s nothing expensive on there! You need to add stuff so I can buy you a nice gift!”

Okay. I was totally flattered and surprised.

Really? I edited the thing like crazy on purpose. I tried to choose only necessities and when I did “splurge” I picked cheap things just in case people can’t afford stuff and they feel obligated to buy me something. No one has to buy me anything, really. Babies have been thriving and surviving on diapers, breast milk and blankets for centuries. I really don’t need the baby wipe warmer or Diaper Genie (heard it doesn’t even work). Registering (for baby or wedding) the Long Island way has been a real social experiment slash treat for me. Apparently you’re allowed to just put down everything, expect to get it and then you will get it! Like, the lottery. You just win that shit. That shit is crazy!

Where I grew up, there was no registering. You got a check for $30 (that the writer may ask you to wait until next Friday to deposit and even then, it may or may not clear), someone said a prayer for your ass and you were really happy about that shit.

Here, you get to register for two car seats! One for each car.

Gone are the days of laboriously transferring the car seat from Granny’s Oldsmobile to Papa’s pick-up truck (that they begrudgingly let you borrow if and only if you replace the gas you used) or to the sperm donor’s sports car (if and when he decided to show up with a raggedy box of diapers that are two sizes too big for the baby). You never had the car seat in your own car because that shit was fixing to get repossessed. You would sleep with one eye open in the living room that no one is allowed to touch, shoes by the front door. You check out the window every hour or so when you thought you heard the sound of car doors slamming or chains or large trucks. The Repo Man is never kind enough to let you get your shit out of that bomb ass Honda Prelude (two-door with a sun roof, heeeey). And if he left with the car seat in the car, damn it all to hell, you’d miss a shift at KFC and it would fuck your whole week up. (Can you even put a baby seat in the front seat of a pick-up truck? We did.)

You needed that $45 KFC cash for formula and a fill (yes, acrylic tips). Fuck. And Shorty would remember that shit. Much as he loves his grandbaby, he still is none too pleased about handing over his recreational money. “$45! Negro please,” he’d say. As he hands it to you, he has to let you know how painful it is. You should know full well he was going to use that for the Lotto and the barber. “Don’t you know the jackpot is $8 million? This is a bad week to be fucking up your finances, you know. And a mother fucking doubly bad week to be fucking up mines!” No worries though. You’re starting a new job at Arby’s for a week, then a real upgrade weeks later at Blockbuster Video. WOW, what a difference!

So basically my new Long Island life is straight up notorious. Birfdays were the worst days, but now I drink champagne when I’m thirsty for real. TWO car seats. What?

I wouldn’t trade any of it though. I became an Auntie at 14 years old. Never did I view that life as financially difficult or weird, in the sense that this wasn’t the “nuclear” family. It didn’t seem hard though. And I honestly don’t think we were “poor.” We weren’t. The cars were insured and we went to the commissary once a month and spent a lot of money. A Long Island childhood is just so different and privileged. Camp! Uh, sleepaway camp at that, like in the movies. Summer and winter vacations! Birthday parties every year – the kind outside of the home, like renting out a place. Eating out with the whole family! It was just not like that in Tampa. And yet it was still fun and I have fond memories. And I feel more “prepared” as a result.

My nephew (called Boo to this day) rolled out with me when I got my bomb ass ’91 Toyota Corolla at 17. I earned that car with many hours of work, lots of re-doing the “towel wall” by color and tri-fold at the Linen Barn off Highway 60. That job was awesome until I got held up at gunpoint. Anyway, I took Boo to Chuck E. Cheese’s (before all the violence). I had the hook-up, all the tickets and coins yo. Pays to sleep with the manager. He was my boyfriend for five years, don’t trip.

I’d get my check. Cash most of it if it wasn’t time to pay my car note. Put a little into savings. And I’d allocate funds for me (shoe shopping with Anisa, headbands, Red Lobster, the record store, maybe $5 for my little brother if he agreed to be my “slave” for a day) and then for stuff I wanted to do with Boo. Something like the aquarium was no joke. It was expensive so that’d be like two checks’ worth of saving because we had to eat lunch there too, and get a souvenir otherwise I felt insufficient as an Auntie.

He was a major part of my daily life. After school (high school and college), I’d do my homework at the dining room table and he’d sit right there with me. He’d color and ask lots of questions about life in general. He had an amazing attention span. He’d dig in my backpack to find candy. I’d put it in a different spot every time to watch him find it. He’d find it and yell “non-tee!” which was his word for candy. We shared everything. We practically shared a bedroom. But he was my baby as much as he was my sister’s. He wasn’t like a baby brother either. He was like my baby. She “got her shit together” and I was sad to only see my nephew on random weekdays or weekends depending on the babysitting schedule. Getting your shit together is a phrase we lovingly use in my family to mean upwardly mobile, doing something to better yourself. According to Shorty, when I stopped trying to be "half famous" and let the "Hollywood dreams" go and moved to Long Island to settle down, I was officially "getting my shit together." Everything previous to that was deemed "playing around." I did not see it this way for a while and that shit hurt my feelings because my bills were paid and I was happily floating around in the California sun. Now that I'm pregnant, writing checks to my niece's Girl Scout troupe for the 19 boxes of cookies I ordered and spending an hour on the Kelly Mom website reading about boobs, I get it.

Thinking about it, those years with my nephew as a baby were easily some of the most memorable and best years of my childhood, young adulthood. I really can’t wait to be a mom. And I'll never forget this. Once I had just given my nephew a bath. My sister was doing some kind of homework in the bedroom. Court reporting shit. I brought the baby in the room to dry him off. He was lying on a towel on the bed. The oscillating fan was going because Shorty only let us use the air conditioning at certain times. I shut the fan off so the baby wouldn't be cold and I dried him off and cuddled him. My sister looked up and said, "You're going to be a good mommy one day." I have never forgotten that day. Ever. I think about it every time I think about my daughter and wonder (translation: have a panic attack) about how I'm going to get through this. I'm nervous but really excited!

Tomorrow I’m paying all the money and I’m going to get a 3D sonogram done so I can see her face. In the regular boring technology sonograms, I can only tell that she has fat huge chubby cheeks. But nothing else. My friends all got the 3D sonogram for free at the 20 week checkup. Um, some of us have the same doctor so what the fuck? Why didn’t I get one? In those pictures you can see what the baby looks like exactly. I need to know. I can’t even miss a TV show without reading the message boards for spoilers before I catch it, so how does anyone expect me to grow a baby and not know what the hell she looks like?

I can’t wait!

Posted by melissah at January 31, 2009 02:01 PM