Humble (Frito) Pie

(NB: This is an entry I wrote a while ago and never published, so it's chronologically askew. Have no fear. I'm not really pregnant again.)

I felt about as friendly as Medusa in a fit of roid rage all day yesterday, and maybe it was my body telling me I had a bug. Who knows. That's P's generous theory. I think I just woke up grumpy and made poor decisions as a result. Anyway, here's what happened.

On a given day, I eat pretty healthy. A cup of tea in the morning, with milk and a half a spoonful of sugar. Maybe some toast. Lunch I have some kind of veggie-heavy home made sandwich or panini with some fruit and a glass of water. Often, there's a cheese and cracker or chips and salsa afternoon snack and then we always have a family dinner that I make.

Yesterday was not this way. The day's tranquility fell apart around 9:43am and never got back on its feet. We were one car and two brains short of a smooth operation. By the time dinner rolled around, P had just finished his seriously delayed lunch meeting, HC didn't want to go run at the track on a full stomach and F was just generally refusing to eat.

So there I was, faced with eating dinner alone. No big deal. Easy cleanup.

About an hour later, P and I took the dog and baby out for a walk. We saw a family of ducks and some beavers swimming around in the lake and F got obsessed with them. The "Beabers" as she calls them, were so cool, in fact, that the whole way home she pouted and dragged her feet and kicked leaves and muttered "beabers an'a beabers in'a watahr and da ducks, beabers...beabers 'n beabers..." in an incoherent, toddler type way.

P tried to distract her with a pine cone, and she inquired doubtfully whether it was a beaber. It wasn't.

By the time F was bathed and toothbrushed and read to and tucked in, I was feeling really sick. I wallowed around on my bed for a while.. Then, when things got dramatically worse, I called P who insisted I call the doctor. It wouldn't have been a big deal, except I thought I was getting contractions, so the doctor told me to go to the hospital and met me up there.

I hate calling the doctor.

I'd much, much rather just wallow in my own self-pity behind closed doors than let on that I'm not feeling very well. I'm like one of those dogs that sits on it's own broken leg so none of the other dogs notice and challenge his top-dog status. Except, I never wanted to be top dog anyway, I just feel guilty if people have to go out of their way for me. It's sick, I know.

Not only did I not want to call the doctor, but I didn't want to go up to the hospital for monitoring, either. I knew everything would be fine (and it was). It was a waste of time. To top it all off, pretty much as soon as I got off the phone with the doctor, I started feeling better.

At any rate, I find myself in a room with P, the doctor and two nurses. One of the nurses is hooking me up to all kinds of machines to make sure I'm ok. There are beeping machines involved. It was totally silly.

One nurse pulls out a clipboard and starts to ask me about my symptoms.

"And when was the last time you ate?"

"Uh...a couple hours ago."

She marked something down with her thick yellow pencil.

"What did you eat?"

This was a nightmare. Here I was, in a room full of people who I am inconveniencing over something totally silly, and they're all listening to me answer this question. I wanted to curl up in a ball and hide under the gurney. I looked at the nurse, wishing she would get distracted by something, anything.

"I'm a healthy person, I promise." I said.

"I know,  I can tell by looking at you." She looked right back at me. I was definitely not off the hook.

"...a bag of Fritos and two jelly doughnuts."

The nurse put down her clipboard without writing anything on it. The other nurse stopped fidgeting with the wires they were fastening to little listening devices around my belly. They both looked at me and laughed. LAUGHED.

"Well I think we found the root of the problem, Doc," the first nurse said.

Yeah, I guess so.

The thing is, I don't even like jelly doughnuts.

Especially not the second time around.