The I'm-Going-To-Have-A-Baby Post

This is when I tell the internet I'm pregnant.  Pretty fitting, coming on the heels of that last post, huh?  You can only do so much with a hot husband in a workshop filled with Rocket Rockers.  On the way home today I saw a lady walking a very old dog.  I mean, the lady was getting up there herself.  But the dog, which used to be black, was now a splotchy gray.  His legs were skinny and his body was lumpy and I'm almost positive there were big white hairs sprouting out from under his doggie chin.  The lady had on a sun visor (something I forgot even existed) and a ginormous tee shirt with a row of seashells across the front.  One day I'll look like that lady.  (One day I'll look like that dog.)

But not today.  Today the dew is still on the ground, and it's the first baby.  (Maybe - I hardly believe it's real).  We will look back on pictures of ourselves now and say things like "That was before you were born!"  Nothing sags yet (I said yet all you cluckers) and everything is brand new.  My little baby is the size of a grape, and she just outgrew her blueberry status, which is throwing everything off because we had just gotten used to calling her Berry Balkcom.  And yeah, I'm saying "she" because I want a girl.  There are stacks of unread books, a little container of unworn clothes and a baby backpack for hiking that is so new it still smells like plastic.  I look up and see miles and miles of uncharted territory, never before navigated waters, lots of places we've never been to or seen.  We eat a few squares of expensive chocolate and tortilla chips for dinner if we want.  We can't enforce a good bedtime to save our lives.  We feel frazzled if going out of town also requires calling a kennel.  Bless our little hearts, right?

So just a few days ago at work I discover that this guy I work with also co-owns this amazing company called Heritage Foods.  They provide all kinds of well-raised beef, pork, tuna, poultry, chickens and eggs to amazingly rich people by getting it from small local farms all over the Midwest and Virginia.  (Love when my world makes a circle like that).  As I perused the website I couldn't help but be amazed all over again at all the cool things so many cool people are out there doing.  College-quitting, company-starting, jet-setting beatniks who change careers midstream and die with ratty passports.

People that invent things.  That other people actually pay money to use.

People who own major league ball teams, who produce the TV show that millions of people watch, who decide it would be cool if all our jeans tapered at the bottom now.  

People who turn trash into energy for a living (and graciously pick up AT thru-hikers in the meantime).

People who've lived their whole life in a cranberry bog in Nantucket.

People who take a heart or a kidney or a lung out of one body and put it into another one.  And it works.

People who follow their guitar across the whole nation.

People who dive down to the bottom of the sea, have tan feet all year round and never eat anything out of a package.  White fish, mangoes, banana mash.

Those with personal chefs, those with best-selling memoirs, those with unkempt dreds, those who breed labradoodles.

Mountain climbers, zipline riders, horseback herders, hitch-hikers, lollygaggers and chocolatiers.

Anyhow, I just love the variety of things going on around me.  Suddenly I feel like being pregnant fits into the category of amazing things.  Because a teeny tiny blueberry-grape that just grew eyelids and has a microscopic pancreas could very well grow up to be one of these people.  Isn't that a cool thought?