Smokey the Magnificent

So, yesterday, someone dissed mah pig. I was at the supermarket with the snortlepig and the auxiliary pig, feeling vaguely skilly because I managed to wheel them around the supermarket with minimal tears and make my new credit card work on only the second try… actually the third, if you count having to push it in, not swipe it, but still… and as I loaded the goods into the boot, an old Chinese couple approached me with clipboards. At least, I assume they were Chinese - the clipboards were for a petition asking the Chinese government to stop persecuting Falun Gong practitioners, it being (according to the leaflet) a peaceful religion, with no post office and very few exports. This petition has been circulating around our fair city for approximately ten years - you can’t walk down to the Indian grocer in our suburb without being accosted by it, and again on the way back. I must have signed it about forty times. (And, side note, what’s with that anyway? Is an evil Communist regime really going to go “Oh, ten thousand people in New Zealand think we shouldn’t persecute a religious minority? Well, right-o then”? I mean, as I say, I sign the thing when asked; it seems like the pukkah thing to do; but it seems like there must be more effective methods of persuading governments. Nuclear methods, mebbe.)

Anyhoo, so I smiled benignly at the couple and said “I think I signed that one yesterday”, and the chap approached Miles in the trolley and began to make fond faces at him and chuck him under the chin, the way one does with pleasing infants. And then he said “How old?” and I said “He’s four weeks today”. Whereupon both petition-holders began laughing their heads off. There was a brief pause, and I said “Yes, he’s quite big” - because he is, and people do frequently make comments to that effect, which is fine. But they kept laughing and laughing. And after a moment it became Awkward, and eventually I gave them a smile of vague, frightened goodwill and hefted my laughably enormous baby into the car and drove off, thinking: they totally done just mocked my pig. And they were still laughing.

Suggestions? I mean, yes, he’s fairly sizeable, and possibly babies run smaller in China, but I wouldn’t have thought he was mirth-inducingly big. And is that really the way to raise support for Falun Gong?

Also, look at him. Who would mock such a pig? He’s squashy in the face and says “pla” when he sneezes.

In other news, the cat of Helpdesk Man’s dear friend just died. So, being a Woman and therefore full of Tact and Empathy, I made a commemorative mousse. It was less blurry in real life. Helpdesk Man’s dear friend didn’t have much to say about it, but he did eat the mousse.

RIP, Oogley.

Since you asked, although I note you didn’t, we had many reasons for choosing the name Miles for the Auxiliary Pig. Firstly, we felt it conveyed a cosy, homely, English-old-man-in-a-tweed-hat-with-a-pipe vibe, which pleased us. Secondly, there was Miles O’Brien on Star Trek, and he is awesome. Thirdly, Liam was the most popular boys’ name in New Zealand last year, so that was out. Fourthly, Helpdesk Man vetoed evey other suggestion I came up with - a sprawling and venerable list including such gems as Lachlan, Llewellyn, Brock, Leander, Mason, Morris, Hunter, Firth, Finn, Fionn, Linden, Lincoln, Lewis and Hugh. (Yes well, I wasn’t unquestioningly keen on all of them.) Fifthly, and this is actually true, Helpdesk Man has an ancestor known in his day as Miles the Slasher, whose coat of arms features a severed hand dripping blood.

Sixthly, the name Miles reminded me of a pleasing poem we once studied at university: “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”, by the venerable Robert Frost. It is a sweet poem, made all the more awesome by being quoted in a few seminal episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; and goes like this.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Charming, no? Anyway, my sister was asking about it; so this evening I emailed it to her, and on reflection sent the link also to Helpdesk Man, who being an undereducated philistine had not read it (I rightly assumed).

Some minutes later Helpdesk Man leaked out from the bowels of his office, and we had the following conversation:

ME: Did you read the poem I sent you?

HELPDESK MAN: Yurs.

ME: Did you like it? Isn’t it nice?

HELPDESK MAN: I thought it was a bit suggestive. It had sinister undertones.

ME: What? It’s a nice poem.

HELPDESK MAN: What do you think it’s about?

ME: Stopping by woods on a snowy evening?

HELPDESK MAN: I think you’re being naive.

ME: What do you think it’s about?

HELPDESK MAN: Well, “I have promises to keep” strongly implies that he was burying a body.

I don’t think he was joking.

So, yeah. I had a baby.

Not that one. That one’s a bat.

It probably would have been easier, though. Maybe next time I’ll have a bat.

Anyhoo. Baby. Yus. Miles David. Nine pounds six, if you don’t mind. Cute in the face, poops a lot, not a tooth in his head, and doesn’t know squat about the South Beach diet; in which respects he reminds me strikingly of his dear papa. I would show you a photo of his newborn self, but my midwife took them and managed to include the more salacious parts of a Smokey in every single shot; not to mention the waters of the birth pool, which are enough to convert one to dry-cleaning for life.

Miles is coping well with life. Between the civilising atmosphere of the birth centre and our natural desire to impress him with our excellence as parents, we have been unusually polite in the face of his sometimes unreasonable demands; and he has responded by being as amenable as his digestion allows. It is an artificial and probably short-lived truce, but it works.

MILES [2AM]: Parents, I have a complaint.

US: What is it, my sweet sugar lumpkin? Do your insides pesk you? Let us walk you around and pat you lovingly on the back.

MILES: Boip. Boip. BOIP. Boip.

US: Oh dear, you have the boips. You are brave and soulful in the face of adversity. Have you perhaps completed the boips?

MILES: No. Yes. …Boip.

US: What a clever and precocious child you are! A spot of milks?

MILES: Thanks. I will.

[All slumber.]

MILES [2:25AM]: I’m sorry to bother you again, but I think I may have pooped.

US: What an admirable boy! We shall turn on the lights and leap to your sanitary aid.

HELPDESK MAN: Let me, wife of my bosom, for you are weary with the exertion of birthing our marvellous boy.

ME: K.

MILES: AAAAH! MURDER! TREACHERY! MAYHEM!

US: Ach, tish and piffle, little sweetness; coochy coochy, hey nonny nonny etc.

MILES: Sorry! Sorry! I don’t like having my nappy changed.

US: Think nothing of it, son and heirling; it is a distressing event indeed. Come, let us sleep. Have some more milks.

[All slumber.]

MILES [2:40AM]: I have more boips. Also, I was sick on your face.

[Etc.]

As you see, this pleasant interchange is unlikely to continue for more than a few days - I’m ballparking Helpdesk Man’s breaking point as Wednesday - but it is merry while it lasts.

I’m, like, totally in labour.

I always wanted to blog that. It’s the small things in life.

1. I am forty million years pregnant.

2. I want to drink ALL THE MILK IN THE WORLD.

3. I am paralysed by a mental inability to make baked custards, which I desire muchly, and to finish sewing a bunch of winter clothes for the snortlepig, which she sorely needs.

4. I watched LA Confidential the other night and was left with the impression that it was a Good Thing, but if held at gunpoint would not be able to tell you who most of the corpses were or exactly what was going on with the bad guy, who surely can’t have been all that bad anyway, because he was Zefram Cochrane and also the farmer in Babe.

5. Braxton-Hicks remind me of when the Enterprise on Enterprise does that weedy hull polarity thing instead of having proper shields. Kinda cool, texture-wise, but it won’t keep the Klingons out.

6. When was the Holocaust named the Holocaust? During? After? Was there a poll? Did some people have an alternative title?

7. The pig made up a song yesterday. It went like this. To get the full effect, you must understand that she has trouble pronouncing the word “fat”, so she says “flat”:

“Mummy’s so flat

She has flat cheeks

She’s so squishy

She’s got a baby in her tum

It’s very very very very very very very very squishy

It’s the squishiest baby I ever seened”.

8. Still haven’t settled on a name for the Auxiliary Pig. I’m thinking Gaviscon.

9. A small and unworthy part of me sort of wants to get into a minor fender bender of dubious faulthood with another car, so when the chap gets out to yell at me I can go into labour and disconcert him all to hell. Wouldn’t you?

10. Just finished reading Love in the Time of Cholera. Good book, but a surprising lack of cholera. I kept waiting for someone to die of it, and nope. It could just as well have been Love in the Time of Eggplant, eggplant featuring rather more promimently in the text and having less sphinctery connotations to boot.

11. I bet a good bout of cholera would get the Auxiliary Pig out.

Last night my computer died. We were innocently watching an episode of QI when it let out a long-drawn-out scream, went “kbbbpt” and perished. According to Flatmate Man, who knows these things, it’s either the power pack or the motherboard; either way, it don’t sing no more, and I am reduced to typing this on Helpdesk Man’s laptop, which I despise.

On the bright side, the loss of easy entertainment did mean I accomplished things last night. I sewed a good portion of a baby shirt, and then spent an amusing half-hour trawling through my past, in the form of a bag full of childhood memorabilia foisted upon me by my mother, who is moderately sentimental about such things but has, after all, six mostly-grown-up children, and who has the time?

The contents were as you might expect: immunisation records, a second prize for needlework, recommendations as to my character wheedled out of parishioners. There were a large sheaf of school reports, all of which stated that I was bright - which was probably true - and a pleasure to have in the class - which was at worst and likeliest a bare-faced lie, and at best teacher-parlance for “has not yet actively committed arson”. There was also a fulsomely enthusiastic assessment of my brainials by a child psychologist, which might have been more flattering if I hadn’t been sent to see him on account of my temper tantrums; but still. Apparently most of my problems were due to the ineptitude of my peers. Yes, you. I hope you’re sorry.

Lest all this praise go to my head, I also discovered two sobering truths about myself.

1. A while back I started toying with the idea that I had had, as a teenager, a mild form of body dysmorphic disorder; a psychological condition in which one views oneself as far more hideous than objectively warranted. Aside from the natural pleasure of diagnosing oneself with a condition of any kind - this year I found out I have megalophobia, and the pleasure this gave me almost outweighed the crippling paranoia I get upon seeing the Free Willy DVD case at the shop - it explained, I thought, why I spent my adolescent yeas hiding behind my hair, unable to respond to personal compliments from Helpdesk Man for the first two years of our relationship with anything other than a muttered denial and ungracious scowl.

Unfortunately, last night I happened upon some photos of my teenage self, and let it be sadly stated for the record:

I did not have body dysmorphic disorder. Just a hella unfortunate face.

2. From somewhat earlier in my lifetime, but perhaps foreshadowing Point Number 1, I came across my birth notes. I have a bit of a thing for birth notes; I find them fascinating; so naturally I perused mine with great interest. The snortlepig’s moment of birth, for the record, was heralded by my lovely midwife with the words “Baby girl born at 6:33; well done Mum! Beautiful girl; welcome [name of snortlepig]“. Not strictly scientific, perhaps, but charming. What did my OB-GYN have to say, in the section marked “notes on newborn”?

“Vernixy”.

That was it. A single, dismissive word, dripping with disgust. One could imagine him dangling my infant self distastefully by one arm, remarking to the nurses that he would skip lunch after all; perhaps then striding down the hallway with a pained expression on his face, heading for the dispensary for the first time since he promised the wife. Maybe he jumped off the carpark. I don’t know; but it seems he could have reflected a little on the ignominity of being thusly summed up in one’s earliest moments of life. “Vernixy”. I should put it on my tombstone.

So there that is. In other news, I am now officially 39 weeks and 1 day pregnant; and if I make it four more days without giving birth, I shall be the most pregnant I’ve ever been. Oddly enough I’m not, as pregnant women are expected to be, impatient to meet the baby. I have a lot of sewing to do; all my Hypnobabies practice has yet to convince me that childbirth will be a fun and Christmassy event; and when it comes down to it, in the words of the immortal Jean Kerr, whoever she was - “Now the thing about having a baby - and I can’t be the first person to have noticed this - is that thereafter, you have it”.

Well said, lady. Anyway, Super 8 comes out on my due date, and I want to see it. And I stood on a small sharp shard of something the other day and cut my foot, and I object to going into labour with a cut foot; it might throw off my whole vibe. (I felt similarly about last week’s flu, but that seems to have mostly disappeared, save for a hacking cough; thank you for asking.) Worse things do happen; I know a lady online who broke her leg a few weeks before going into labour, and can you imagine? Horrid. Even a bad sunburn, really, would put a damper on things. Or ebola.

You know what pretty much defines misery? Running out of Gaviscon in the middle of the night, while coming down with a sore throat. Not just a sore throat, neither, but a full-blown leak-from-the-face teeth-aching winter cold. When desperately wishing to sleep, however, it is the combination of a throat rasping with infection at the top end and being sizzled away by gastric juices at the bottom end that really makes life worth living.

So this morning, I sent Helpdesk Man out on a mission to bring me back pizza, which I was inexplicably craving, and enough Gaviscon to neutralise a citrus grove. Poor man, he tried. First he went to the Warehouse, which didn’t have any; but brought back the pizza as a peace offering, which the pig and I contentedly ate. It was a good one - pine nuts, apricot sauce and cubes of cream cheese. Then he kindly took the pig for a walk to the pharmacy. It was shut. In a burst of right-brained brilliance he headed for the local Indian grocer. The woman did not stock Gaviscon, but pressed upon Helpdesk Man a number of Indian herbal heartburn tablets. Unfortunately she did not specify what was in them, nor whether they were safe for pregnancy, so I didn’t quite fancy them (and Helpdesk Man, having been forced to taste one by the lady, was sympathetic. Apparently they were vile.) So he valiantly made a fourth trip to the supermarket, where the life-giving elixir was finally found and brought to justice.

That was several hours ago. Thanks to the Gaviscon, I managed a few hours of fitful, fevered sleep in a semi-upright position. Then I woke up rather suddenly, bleated a shrill and unwifely demand at Helpdesk Man, and was flamboyantly sick all over the bed while he was hunting around the kitchen for a bucket.

I do not reveal all this out of a base desire for pity, Gentle Reader. Rather, it is mere preamble to the next event, which was probably the highlight of my year so far. Several minutes after divesting my innards of chunder, I blew my nose in a fretful way… and a pine nut flew out.

Helpdesk Man is a lucky guy, I like to think.

Int, afternoon.

SNORTLEPIG: Can I has a glass of water?

HELPDESK MAN: What do you say?

SNORTLEPIG: PLEASE can I has a glass of water? Not wet water, dry water.

HELPDESK MAN: Ookay. This dry enough for you?

SNORTLEPIG, judiciously: It’s fairly wet…

Smokey and heartburn have been engaged in an escalating war for the past few weeks. First the raw almonds were enough to keep it at bay; then I progressed to papaya enzymes, which worked for a couple of nights; but last night I surrendered to the remarkably unpleasant-tasting Gaviscon. It seems to have temporarily foiled the heartburn, but it had better keep working - I’m not sure what the next stage would be. A bionic sphincter? Self-immolation? A made-for-TV movie dramatising my plight? If you’ve never experienced heartburn, just imagine your oesophagus corroding and causing you to spend your nights retching, gurgling and hoicking up things that have long been extinct in the wild. It’s demoralising, to say the least - and the first person who suggests I try a nice glass of milk before bed can undergo a heart bypass with a cup of chamomile tea in lieu of anaesthetic.

Also, there’s a slight possibility that I may be losing my mind. A cynic might observe that I’ve never been the poster child for mental health to begin with, but a string of recent events has left me looking sideways at my mind, going “Uh-huh?’. To wit:

1. Today Helpdesk Man breathed on me, in the faintly threatening way he has, and he distinctly smelled of lamb hot pot. We have not eaten such a dish for weeks.

2. Tonight being Saturday night, I invited two friends around for dinner and a movie, and made a batch of chocolate mousse, which I divided according to custom into four bowls. I did this yesterday, because I am Skilly and Organised. Then last night I thought “Well, there will be three of us”, so I ate the fourth bowl for dessert, and was happy. Then this morning, one of said friends emailed me and said she had invited another friend along too. And it was too late to retrieve the mousse. And I spent about five minutes in a blind panic, flapping my hands in terror, before it occurred to me I could, y’know, make more mousse. Which I have now done, and the world is safe and shiny again; but it was a near thing.

3. A couple of weeks ago, I was hallucinating. Srsly. I was home all alone at night, and rather overtired, sewing; and out of the corner of my eye I saw a corpse on the couch, and later a mannequin slumped on a chair. I considered mentioning this to my midwife, but I wasn’t sure I’d like her response. What is the appropriate midwiferly response to that, anyway? “Heh”? “Duuuude”? She’d probably have given me a brochure with the telephone number of my local antenatal hallucination support group, and I would have left it in my bag, and the snortlepig would have pulled it out during church and biffed it at a deacon, and it would have all been too too. And the hallucinations have not recurred. But still though.

Also, have you ever tried brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand? Harder than it sounds. You could lose a uvula.

1. The snortlepig referred to me today as a “meat pompom”. I think it was intended as a compliment, but it is too apropos for comfort. Sucks to snortlepigs, I say.

2. Did you know you can assess dilation without internal exams? Someone posted this link on a pregnancy forum, and I found it fascinating.

3. In keeping with the grand Hypnobabies tradition of weedy birth euphemisms, Helpdesk Man and I have decided to post a note on the door of our room at the birth centre, requesting that all staff refer to contractions as “squeezles”. If anyone refuses, I shall look her darkly in the eye and start to seize. It will help to pass the time.

4. Raw almonds do actually kinda help with heartburn. The snortlepig is a great fan; she keeps finding the bag beside my bed and saying solemnly “I gotta baby in my tummy, I got heartburn, can I has a almond?”. As a result we are going through them at a great lick, which is a shame as they are rather costly; cheaper, however, than the papaya enzymes I bought from a troublingly dim-witted woman at the health food store. Helpdesk Man has developed a curious mental block about the word “papaya”, and refers to them as pimiento enzymes… which would not help heartburn… but assures me that they work. I have not tried them yet myself. I don’t trust furrin fruit.

5. Last night I ate practically an entire pizza and garlic bread. Living in an Atkins household must be getting to me. Today we are having guests for dinner, and I made the most enormous marbled chocolate-orange cheesecake you ever did see; and if they turn up late, I will eat it all. Fortunately Helpdesk Man, having been dropped on the head as a baby, does not like cheesecake; so he is not jealous. I think he’s been popping more papaya enzymes than his heartburn strictly requires, though.