My seventeen year old niece said words I was always sure I’d dread today while on the phone with her boyfriend: “We’re having a baby!”
Don’t worry.
She was playing Sims3, sick, wrapped in blankets and cackling because her self-inspired Sim had driven herself to the hospital while her boyfriend-inspired Sim screamed incoherently in panic.
They had a baby girl, incidentally, and promptly got themselves a nanny to take care of her.
Oh, to be a Sim.
But as my niece’s character sat on the bathroom floor, choking her guts up, I was reminded what it was like being pregnant and expectant and hopeful and terrified, all at the same time. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to feel happy like that. Excited about the most tiny development that I could show as proof of the life inside me. I smiled at the memory, even the ones of me grabbing my son’s Easter basket and doing unto another what I hope to God never happens to me.
It all seems so nice and perfect in Simland. Nice house, nice food, nice decorations. Everything generally going as planned.
But real life has a way of throwing curve balls.
Take for example my last weekend.
My niece and nephew were coming over for the weekend to go on a long-awaited Disneyland trip with their aunt for their respective birthdays.
Well, the weekend turned into a full week. My sister couldn’t come until Friday, but guess what, my Dad was coming too! Yay! Then my husband found out that he was expected on a business trip cross country and had to be at the Long Beach airport by 7 am the morning after the trip. Oh, and Dad can only stay the weekend, so he’s leaving at 10 am for the train station. This complicated things ever so slightly because yours truly can’t drive and not only was there no way to get the kids home an hour and a half away, but there’s no way to get hubby home from the airport.
It was, to put it politely, utter mayhem.
But the funny thing is that everything went off without a hitch. Dad drove me and hubby to the airport. Niece’s boyfriend drove Dad to the train and kids back home. Hubby will grab a cab on his return flight. The Disney trip was an unmitigated success. And so was the week of kids. In fact, I was kind of sad to see them go back.
So maybe messy isn’t as bad as all that. Sims might have pain free labor and a criminal lack of wrinkles, but I doubt they have the fun I do. Especially when I point and laugh at my niece and tell her, yup, you DO throw up that much when your preggers. (She’s not at all interested in kids at the moment, but just in case life plans on getting messy in that direction, I throw in a few labor memories until she turns slightly green. Sims also don’t have the benefit of extra insurance!)
Anyone else going a wee bit crazy this month?
No related posts.
I do that too. One of the benefits of having been pregnant five times is my eldest daughter has first hand experience with the reality four times over! Just this last weekend I pointed out to her that I only got pregnant on purpose twice.
Not this month, thankfully. Just this week.
I’m working as a dresser in a local theater, which is awesome, except it’s hell on wheels for my scheduling. And I have loads of work to do, in addition to personal writer goals. And I’m involved in a volunteer project at the end of the month, which should make things hinky later. But, if I survive through Sunday, things should be looking up majorly.
One nice thing about being busy is that it reminds you want an accomplishment it is to be alive.
(If memory serves me, Sims can only get pregnant on purpose. Life doesn’t come with such a safety built in. This is something to remind our youth.)