L.R. Burt

One of the things I’ve discovered about being pregnant is that everyone likes to make small talk with you.  (Once it’s obvious that you are, indeed, sporting a baby belly and not a spare tire.)  I think it’s one of those things in life that’s common to just about everyone:  either they, personally, have had a baby, or are in the process of having one, or they know someone who has had/is having a baby.  Also, I think people just like babies and pregnant women!

Sunday night, Mr. Burt and I went to dinner at Sweet Tomatoes (which is, by the way, a fantastic salad bar/buffet that caters to a younger, more health-conscious crowd than Golden Corral or Sirloin Stockade) because I was too tired to cook after a long previous day of shopping and decorating, a largely sleepless night, and a baby shower that afternoon.  As we were carrying our trays of salad to a table, one of the guys busing tables interrupted an animated conversation he was having with a table of ladies to shout to me, “Hey!  How many months are you?  Eight?”

“Just about,” I replied.

He threw his hands up in the air like he’d just scored a touchdown.  “I knew it!”

“You’re having a boy,” chimed in one of the women, pointing at my belly.  “I can tell from how you’re carrying.”

“Oh yeah,” agreed the busboy.  “You’re totally having a boy.”

“It is a little boy,” I said.

Another victory dance.  I wondered how excited this guy would get if his own wife told him he was having a boy.  “Is he going to be a junior?” he asked Mr. Burt.

“Nah,” Mr. Burt answered.  “He’s my little dude, but we’re not naming him after me.”

The busboy’s jaw dropped.  “You have to name him after you!  Carry on the family name — all the kings did.  You know, like Henry VIII.”

Apparently the busboy missed the part where Henry VIII kept divorcing and beheading his wives because they weren’t having boys… (Though, to be fair, Henry VIII’s illegitimate son was a junior.)

“You should name him Kingston!” suggested the woman subscribing to the old wives’ tale that carrying low means a boy.

“As in, the capital of Jamaica?” I whispered to Mr. Burt as we left the busboy and the customer to continue their discussion about what to name baby boys.  Who knows?  Maybe a romance blossomed that night, and nine months from now the busboy will be the proud papa of Busboy, Jr.

Thankfully, the nurse who took my blood pressure yesterday at my OB appointment thinks Liam Alexander is a great name.  We concur.

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funny things are everywhere, pregnancy, strangers in the night

We’re having a family game night here in the Burt house, and I’m composing this post as I wait for Mr. Burt to make his third move in our Scrabble game.  Which began just about two hours ago.  (Oh!  He actually played!  And now I have quickly spelled my fourth word, so am now waiting on him to spell his fourth word.)

Though I’ve been playing Scrabble continuously for about three years with friends on Facebook, it’s been almost that long since I’ve played a game of actual Scrabble with my husband.  I’d forgotten what it’s like to sit and wait in real time for an opponent to make a move.  And Mr. Burt is, perhaps, the most agonizingly slow Scrabble player who ever lived.  He cannot be satisfied unless he lays down a high-point letter on a double or triple letter score tile and gets a double or triple word score, too.  Hence, four moves in two hours. Sounds boring, doesn’t it?  You’d be surprised.  There’s never a dull moment when the conversations go like this:

Mr. Burt:  “Is xenit a word?”

LR:  “No.”

Mr. Burt:  “It seems like it should be.”

LR:  “Why, because you want it to be a word?”

Mr. Burt:  “Look it up.”

Mind you, the whole time Mr. Burt was going on about xenit and axetin and xarent and tintax and a number of other made-up words, not all of which were appropriate for all audiences, he could have played extra, for a respectable twenty points.  After about forty minutes had elapsed in his turn, I finally cried out, in exasperation, “Just settle for extra already!”

To which Mr. Burt replied, “I’m not going to settle.”

“You have to settle!” I retorted.   “Sometimes you have no choice but to settle!”

Mr. Burt maintained his cool.  “I never settle.  How would you have liked it if I’d just settled for some ugly girl at Baylor?  But I didn’t settle, I waited, and I found you.”

I suppose I ought to have been melted by this, but despite my love of BBC costume dramas, I’m not particularly romantic.  “You didn’t find me.  I found you on that stupid college dating website you’d forgotten all about!  I contacted you!”

Mr. Burt sheepishly laid down extra and took his twenty points.

Actually, that is a lie.  Mr. Burt realized that if he played extra, it would leave a double word score and a triple word score square open for me.  So he played rex.  (Which, interestingly, in addition to a king, also means “an animal with a single wavy layer of hair.”)

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family togetherness, language, scrabble

You’d think that such a life-altering experience as pregnancy would be a subject a writer would eat up, wouldn’t you?  Yet this writer has made it six months into her first pregnancy without really blogging about it.

Several things can account for this, I think.  During the first part of my pregnancy (17 weeks, to be precise), I was too sick and tired to blog.  These days I’m feeling better physically, but I most often don’t feel I have the mental capacity or creativity to write; I’m preoccupied (gee, I can’t imagine with what), and I believe that my body is so busy making a tiny person that there’s not much left for making stories of words.

It doesn’t account for the slowdown in my novel work, but I think the biggest detriment to my blogging is Facebook.  When you can share any interesting news or amusing tidbits in one line, or upload a photo album to share with all your friends, why go to all the trouble of writing blog posts?  (Which is an entire blog topic in itself…)  But the writer in me resists this laziness – the less I write, the less I’ll be able to write.  And the sentimental part of me knows I’ll regret not having written anything but Facebook status updates about my pregnancy.

Though maybe there’s something to not chronicling pregnancy:  if I don’t write about my experiences, I won’t remember them as clearly, and will be more likely to consider a second pregnancy… Because I’m convinced there must be some sort of amnesia that sets in after birth, or women would never volunteer to do this more than once!  (I don’t know what to make of all these women who claim to love being pregnant…)

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liam, pregnancy, preparing for parenthood

Last week at my five-month checkup, despite the controversy surrounding the H1N1 flu shot, I submitted to be vaccinated.  Why?  Because my doctor strongly recommended it for all her patients, and I trust my doctor.  Also, because I’ve heard a lot more about pregnant women dying of swine flu than about pregnant women suffering complications from the vaccine, and while it’s not hugely likely I’d catch it, I’d really rather be safe than sorry.  I didn’t have the slightest side effect from the vaccination; my shoulder didn’t even get as sore as it did from the normal flu shot.  (Which I also got just as a precaution, even though I never get the flu, because I really don’t want to get it while dealing with being pregnant.)

Yesterday afternoon Mr. Burt and I went to Lowe’s, and while we were hemming and hawing over which winterizer to get for our lawn, an elderly man whom I’d just watched have a very confused conversation in broken English with one of the employees about garden plants versus sunroom plants, approached me and asked, “You have shot?”

Not sure I’d heard him right, or, if I had, what exactly he was asking me, I said, “Pardon me?”

“Shot,” he repeated, and gestured with his not-a-garden-plant to my shoulder.  “In shoulder.  Shot for you and baby.”

“Oh!” I said, realizing he must mean a flu vaccine.  “Yes, I just had one last week.”

“Good,” he said with a nod and a grin, and then walked away.

But a moment later, he came back.  “I not get shot so you and baby have one.”

Now, it’s very sweet (not to mention very random and very funny) that this guy wanted to do right by all the pregnant ladies out there this flu season (I wonder if he’s stopping all the pregnant women he sees to share this with them?) I’m pretty sure the FDA or whoever recommended that the first vaccinations go to pregnant women and the elderly!  I hope this man, whoever he is, makes it through flu season okay!  And that his not-a-garden-plant lives.

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chivalry, funny things are everywhere, pig flu, strangers in the night