The One Where I Meet Joan Cusack

I must say, April 15th has a nasty habit of getting in the way of my little hobby here. Though to be fair, not much has happened since my last post.

While Lauren spent her spring break traveling back to New Jersey to be showered with tiny, baby-sized gifts in a pre-birth ritual whose name escapes me at the moment, I stuck it out in Aspen hobnobbing with the likes of Joan Cusack (ski trip), Lance Armstrong (baby mama drama), and disgraced Yankee Alex Rodriguez (laying low from steroid/prostitute scandal under guise of hip rehab). Mrs. Cusack seemed particularly friendly, though several things she said left me suspicious that she may have mistaken me for a certain Sixteen Candles castmate with whom I share some physical characteristics, which may explain her gregariousness. Very hot! Very hot!




Once reunited, Lauren and I set out to begin preparations for the arrival of as-yet-unnamed-baby Nitti. Rooms were painted, furniture built, and impulsive purchases made. (A Patagonia puffy vest for a one year old? And it's on sale? We'd be stupid NOT to buy that!)

Lauren's pregnancy has been progressing nicely, free from physical ailment, and with only the rare emotional outburst or sign of impatience. Fortunately for me, the cosmos have a way of evening things out, and when my wife goes against her natural instinct and gets a little cranky, it usually backfires on her.

Case in point: we're in the grocery store the other day, and I'm quickly growing miserable, as tends to happen whenever I find myself in a grocery store. I'm trying to rush Lauren through the process, and she's growing increasingly annoyed. She stops by the deli counter to order some lunch meat, but rather than wait with her, I continue on, grabbing everything I can to speed the whole ordeal up. After a couple of minutes, I'm really getting frustrated that Lauren hasn't left the deli counter yet, so I yell to her from 15 feet away and ask what's taking so long. Now, this is probably the third time I've asked her, and she's seven months pregnant, so basically she's a race car (palindrome!!) in red at this point. Her frustration mounting, she yells back to me, within earshot of many fellow Citymarket shoppers, "I'LL BE RIGHT THERE. I'M JUST CUTTING THE CHEESE!!"

You probably think I'm embellishing this story or subtly changing the structure of her response to make it more incriminating, and as much as I'd like to tell you -- for Lauren's sake -- that this is the case, it simply isn't. That's exactly how it went down. Now, to her credit, as soon as Lauren realized what she said, she broke into laughter, but the damage was already done. We both learned valuable lessons that day: Lauren learned that yelling at your pain-in-the-ass husband in public can have unintended consequences, and I learned that a nonsensical colloquialism for flatulence can still make me laugh my ass off. It was win-win.

The impending arrival of baby Nitti really started to hit home this Monday, however, as Lauren and I began that parental rite of passage known as Lamaze Class. We've only been through one class, but it's proved quite valuable so far. In just two hours of classroom time, many of our preconceived notions of childbirth have been forever changed. For example, did you know that the average labor for a first-time mother lasts 15-18 hours, the typical hospital stay is two days from the moment of delivery, and much to my surprise and dismay, in today's modern hospitals you can expect little to no stork involvement?

Who knew?