Quitting Cold Turkey

I picked up this pamphlet from the supermarket the other day. It lists all the foods you're supposed to avoid when pregnant or trying to get pregnant:

And more...

After looking over these lists, I don't understand how pregnant women gain weight. It seems to me they're not allowed to eat anything!

Shellfish...unpasteurized cheeses...sushi. All right. Fine. I can live without those once I am with child.

But I don't know how I'm going to give up cold turkey, cold turkey! For years--nay decades--it's been the healthy, responsible, and tasty cornerstone foodstuff of my lunchtime diet, and now you're telling me it's evil? How bad is turkey for you when you're expecting, really? I mean, are we talking cigarettes and crack-cocaine-bad here? Has a baby been born with fetal deli meat syndrome? I'm having visions of a pregnant me hiding in a dark closet stuffing turkey hoagies down my throat, while friends and family gather in a sparsely decorated room at a nearby hotel waiting to stage an intervention against my thinly-sliced poultry addiction. "Think of your baby!!!" they will cry. I'll deny it at first, insist the used Subway wrappers are someone else's. But eventually I'll break down in tears and agree to go to treatment. After one last hit of a Club Sandwich, of course....

I know becoming a parent means sacrifice. I just never realized it starts with sliced turkey.

Playing with Food

This is what J and I do while waiting for our breakfast orders to arrive:

I'm not sure how we are going to parent anybody.

Sleep

Since J is in between freelance gigs, and I quit my job in preparation for going back to school in the fall, we have started acting like college kids on summer break. We slept until 10 am yesterday and then stayed in bed for another hour and a half watching reality television shows about house flipping. A few hours later, we made a last-minute decision to drive to my parent's home so that people who are older and wiser could be in charge of feeding and housing us for a few days. They seem to enjoy taking care of us as much as we being taken care of. At this point, I'm questioning why I was so resolute to grow up and be independent in the first place? Responsibility is sooo overrated.

Speaking of which: I've decided there's no way anyone over the age of 30 can logically justify having kids. It's way too much work and sacrifice. But the hardest thing to imagine surrendering by far is sleep.  I lay awake at night cringing over how much sleep I'm going to lose by having a child. Damn it. The little bastard is keeping me awake already.

The Pull Out Method

J and I have been using the pull out method for the past four months. I feel like we're 16 again. Not that I was actually having sex at 16. Or 17. Or 18. Or 19. Or 20. *sigh* Anyway. My point is, we're using a half-ass, unreliable method of birth control which would feel totally and completely irresponsible if we weren't married, in our mid-30's, and thinking about getting pregnant anyway. Not to mention I've been taking prenatal vitamins for the past six months, as my girlfriend and mommy-mentor, CM instructed me to do. (As I write this, she's two months away from baby #2 being born. She is brilliant with kids and assures me I'll be a good mom, so I do everything she tells me to do even if I'm not sure I believe her about that.)

I started taking prenatals -- Trader Joe's brand -- while I was still on the birth control pill. Talk about mixed signals! I felt like one of those Occupy Wall Street protesters who used their IPhones to Facebook against big corporations. Make up your mind, already! I don't want to seem overly dramatic but I had a mini-panic attack the first night I took it. The reality that this was the first step towards having a baby hit me. Am I really ready to be a mom? I poured myself an extra-large glass of Zinfandel to help it go down a little smoother. After all, it's important to drink responsibly. The second night I forgot about it completely. I woke up at 4:00 A.M. and remembered that I forgot and realized I was already a horrible mother.

The plan was to start trying for baby the night of our anniversary: May 7th. And we did. Doggie style, thank you very much. But the next morning I freaked out and asked J if we could wait two more months because I'm starting my writing program in the fall and would love to get through at least one year of school before the baby comes.

So after pulling out of our conception plan, it's back to the pull out method for now. Because let's be honest: condoms really suck.

Mom Memo #1:

When I am a mother, I will definitely teach my child that it's absolutely unacceptable to pick his or her nose... until he/she's old enough to drive.

Hell is an office cubical

I quit my job two weeks ago. I was a writer for a wedding magazine, a position I landed while planning my own nuptials. I swear I was never, ever a wedding-girl growing up, but as soon as I became engaged, I drank the cool-aid and became completely enamored with everything wedding (Feel free to visit my old blog to see what I'm talking about: www.brideflu.com. Or don't. It's up to you. I'm cool either way).

My job at the magazine was to instill the fear of God into future brides who fail to select the best font for their wedding invitations. I had my very own cubical and a pretty sweet wireless mouse. I only worked there for a year and two months but it felt like twenty. Because as soon as I said, "I do" and our "Big Day" was over, the spell lifted, and my view of weddings reverted back to what it had been: excuses for girls to behave like bitches and spend an obscene amount of money on flowers. (Of course I did neither of those things, right honey?!?)

Writing for a wedding magazine required alternating between the following adjectives: lovely, stunning, radiant, gorgeous, breathtaking, luminous, beautiful, resplendent, splendid and enchanting. As nice as it was to be earning money as a writer, I knew I couldn't take much more of it. My soul died a little every time I had to decipher whether the flowers in a bride's bouquet were Cattleya orchids, ranunculus blossoms or peonies. I mean, how is this getting anyone any closer to world peace?

So I quit my job. Also, I was accepted to a graduate writing program at USC that will start in the fall. My plan is to take a lot of courses in writing, graduate and be an unemployed writer...but this time with a degree.

Oh yeah, and somewhere along the line, I'm going to try to get pregnant and bring a baby onto this planet.