Little Poseur Versus Bey-Z

Beyonce is pregnant.*

*Jay-Z is the father. I call dibs on naming the baby Bey-Z.

I know Beyonce and the Posette have been in a long-running feud over who is hotter, but this is just trying to steal our thunder. We were pregnant first. Back off lady.

That's just like her to totally step all over our news. Now I'm sure Mr. Z is going to write some song about the responsibilities of fatherhood. It'll be slow and mushy, and also probably the worst thing Jay-Z has ever done.*

*The song, not the baby. I'm sure the baby will be really cute and have a three record deal from Geffen within a decade.

It's going to be tough to compete with that power couple in the press, but I think we're up for it. I can outblog you, Jay-Z! The gauntlet has been thrown. It's on like Donkey Kong.

Ginger Snaps and Poseur's Cooking

The Posette has been enjoying her first bouts of morning sickness. I will spare you the jokes about how it's not really morning sickness because it happens all the time. Anyway, she's been hanging out on the couch all weekend trying not to do anything too strenuous.

This means I got sent to the grocery store to go pick us up food for the week. I'm working on my hunting and gathering skills, which means I can't just walk into Albertson's and buy up all of their Doritos. She probably expects me to come home with food that can actually be consumed over the course of the week.

Now, this has all of the major problems you would think. I'm not totally incompetent in the kitchen, but that's about the only bar I clear. The Posette did most of our cooking, and she is quickly deciding that she doesn't really want to do that for the next nine months. Can't say I blame her.

I can make just about anything from a box, but past that, most of my cooking skills tap out. I've started to make some meals, but that only means the Posette is getting a steady diet of spaghetti and all of the Zatarain's mixes.* I'm not trying to pretend I'm Emeril here, I can ground beef and boil water -- one of the reasons I can make spaghetti as it requires both of these skills -- and not much else.

*The jambalaya mix is especially delicious once you properly doctor it.

So if you have any recipes for the barely competent person, y'know, me... I'd greatly appreciate it. Remember, I am an idiot and I work for a living. Don't send me a recipe for fois gras or anything like that. Because we'll starve to death if it requires more than three or four steps.

However, there is some upside to doing the shopping. I read up a bit on morning sickness, and one of the things that helps with nausea is ginger. Which means I had an excuse to go out and buy ginger snaps. This worked out great for me for several reasons:

1) It showed I've actually read something about pregnancy.
2) It also shows I've applied some of that knowledge. Without even being asked!
3) Hopefully, it works. Nausea sucks.
4) I get to eat ginger snaps.

Really, ginger snaps are one of the most delicious cookies on the planet.* Now I have an excuse to buy them, as we've been trying to keep cookies out of the house. Look, you buy cookies, I'll eat 'em. I've seen me do it.

*Well, most cookies are delicious. It's hard to break them down into little groups. Chocolate chip, of course, are the classics and probably the definitive cookie. I'm also partial to sugar cookies and snickerdoodles. Ginger snaps probably finish a solid fourth, ahead of such contenders as Oreos and butter cookies. Oh, and those iced animal cookies, those things are like crack.

Well, how I imagine crack. I've never actually had any crack, so perhaps this is a bad comparison. But I hear it's addictive and not very good for you, so it sounds like a good comp.

We'll see how this cooking and shopping thing goes. I'm sure I'll be okay, as I have long experience of cooking for myself. I'd worry about the Posette -- she has to eat the things I cook. But at least she gets some ginger snaps.

Being the Lesser Half

I was forced to socialize last night at a reception without the benefit of my better half. Forced to develop my own charming personality, I did the only logical thing when forced into social chit-chat: I talked about the Posette.

Talking about my wife has two distinct advantages. First, no one has ever stormed out of a conversation in which someone says they love their wife. People will almost always politely listen when you say that your wife is pretty darn cool, and the chances are good they will even like you for it.

"No! I disagree! You do not love your wife...." is high on the list of unlikely things to hear in conversation.

Two, the Posette is really cool. Even without delving into her personality, she's a school teacher who is currently pregnant. I like to latch on to her inherent goodness and bask in the reflected glow.

Hey, if this fundamentally decent person likes to keep me around, perhaps I'm not a total jackass. It's about the only card in my deck, and I play it early.

Oh God, I'm going to be one of those parents, aren't I?

Information Travels Faster In the Modern Age

Sorry, Poseur HQ was knocked offline due to the aftermath of the Great Earthquake of 2011. Pay no attention to the fact that I live in Texas. I'm from Maryland, and I felt the pain of my homeland.

I just couldn't focus knowing that there were chai lattes that had fallen over and will never be refilled.

Actually, I was struck by something yesterday, following the news of the earthquake. I found out about the quake from Facebook. An hour later, I had seen about two hundred thousand* jokes like the one above on Twitter. An hour after that, I saw another twelve kajillion* pleas that Earthquake jokes were all played out. It had been two hours since the event, and people were already objecting to jokes as being "old".

*All numbers are 96.3% accurate and not made up at all.

This is the world the Little Poseur is going to be born in. This blog is less than two weeks old, and you're probably already sick of it. Most of my readership has moved on to something more timely, like that pregnant puppy down the street. I mean, seriously. Puppies are really cute. I can't compete with that.

You mean this pregnancy thing is going to drag on for nine whole months? Firefly didn't last that long.*

*Damn you, FOX television executives. Damn you straight to hell.

One of the biggest events in the world that happened during my childhood was the Miracle on Ice. Perhaps you've heard of it. Well, I watched it on tape delay. Tape delay! And I had no flippin' idea who had won when I sat down in front of the TV. Because I was five. And my parents didn't like hockey. But had I been a motivated five-year-old, there still would have been no real way for me to find out about the game. The TV networks were able to keep us in the dark for half a day, and we were none the wiser.

The LP won't ever experience that. The very concept of "tape delay" will be foreign to the LP. The Little Poseur will be born into a world that moves so fast, that we tire of jokes about something happening contemporaneously. I mean, people hadn't finished putting their lawn furniture back in the same place, and we, as a culture, had moved on.

Once-in-a-century earthquake? How five minutes ago. Literally.

I don't want to be too much of a Get Off My Lawn type, but I hope the LP learns to slow down and appreciate the world. Just because the world keeps moving faster and information keeps moving, doesn't mean we can't stop and marvel at things. Once in a century!

How fast will the world be moving when the LP is writing some blog about the Even Littler Poseur in some distant future?*

*Assuming, of course, we are not conquered by robots.

The LP probably won't have a problem with the faster and faster pace of the world. Will I be able to keep up with my child?

The Pickle Myth

I always thought the pickle thing was a myth. Sort of the go-to joke for hacky comedians when they run out of material about airline food.

Nope. Not a myth.

I grilled some hamburgers last Friday and when I was at the store getting meat and buns, I also picked up a jar of pickle stackers to put on the burgers. I put precisely one pickle slice on each burger, leaving the rest of the jar in the fridge.

By the next Friday, the pickles were gone. The pickle jar has since been replaced by another jar of pickles, which I'm pretty sure won't last the week. I've also discovered that the Posette downed a jar of pickles the previous week as well.

Now, I like pickles as much as the next guy. I enjoy a crisp dill spear with a sandwich.* I think my pickle consumption would be measured right at the national median, if tested by the Department of Pickle Consumption, one of the more obscure U.S. government agencies. In our pre-pregnancy days, a jar of pickles would stay in our fridge for about a few weeks, if not months. Now, we are going through pickles at an advanced rate.

*Ed Note -- However, I do love sandwiches. Sandwiches are easily my favorite food. They are incredibly dynamic - hot, cold, closed-faced, open-faced, with an almost unlimited number of toppings. The Posette often complains about my sandwich consumption, which is Dagwood-esque. Now, she's got an arrow in her anti-sandwich quiver.

Apparently, pregnant women are not supposed to consume cold cuts. I think this is just one of those made up rules, as our doctor seemed completely unaware of any reason for a cold cut prohibition. So I think it's a diabolical plan by the Anti-Sandwich lobby.

The Posette has also taken to drinking the pickle juice, once she has run out of pickles. You know, just to fight cramping in case the Cowboys ask her to play some in their dime package. Because that's the only reason I can possibly imagine someone to willingly ingest pickle juice.

She claims it is not a craving. She just likes pickles. Now, this could be true. That her heretofore dormant love of massive pickle consumption existed, but I never noticed since I'm too lazy to actually go to the grocery store. That is a possibility, I must admit.

But I don't think so. Buy stock in Vlasic. It may be the only safe investment in these troubled economic times.

A Glass of Scotch

Friday was my birthday. The Posette took me to a Brazilian steakhouse because, well, do I really need to explain that decision? People walk up to your table and give you meat. Almost continuously. It's a little bit what I imagine heaven to be like.*

*Or how a vegan imagines hell. It's all a matter of perspective.

Anyway, the Posette obviously can't have any alcohol right now. In the spirit of teamwork, I'm cutting back my own drinking, but I'm still going to enjoy a glass or two on my birthday. She says she doesn't mind, and it didn't feel like it was one of those girl traps.*

*Memo to guys: pretty much everything is a trap. If she wants to be mad at you, she has ample justification, and you really only have yourself to blame. She could just pick one of the many stupid things you have done at random from the very, very long list she keeps in her purse. You could go into her purse and steal that list, but A) you'd end up touching a purse, B) she's committed that list to memory anyway, and C) you will get caught. Men memorize baseball statistics, women memorize every event in their relationship. The lesson here, as always, is that men are stupid.

So, we're sitting in one of the greatest places on earth, and I decide to order a glass of scotch. I love scotch more than I probably should, and I was looking forward to a nice glass with my dinner. The waitress comes by to take my drink order. I ask for scotch and she offers me Crown Royal. Which is not a scotch.

I ask if they have any single malt scotches, and then the waitress informs me that she has never heard of single malt scotch and they don't have any. Now, I don't expect the waitress to be conversant with every drink on the menu, but how can you work in a steak restaurant and have never even heard of scotch? I can't be the first person to have ordered scotch, right?

Eventually, she has a conversation with a bartender, who gives her a drink menu, and I'm able to order a drink with a name starting in Glen. Which was delicious.

A new waiter delivered our drinks and then our food. In fact, we didn't see our waitress again for the rest of the meal. Hopefully, she was abducted by agents who sent her to a Scotch Re-education Camp. Maybe there she can learn the difference between scotch and Canadian whiskey.

I realize that going forward, I'm the least important person in this household. In a way, I'm really looking forward to that -- there is virtue in putting other people before yourself. Sure, I'll still have interests and personal goals and all that, but the family comes first. They are more important than I am, and I think that's really cool.

Which is why on my birthday, the one day on the calendar that is about me, I want my waitress to bring me a drink and not argue with me about the existence of single malt scotch. Yes, it exists. Yes, I want a glass. I don't think that's too much too ask.

Iggy X

Today we had our first Baby Name discussion. Now, as we don't even know the sex of the LP right now, this discussion is truly academic. But it's fun to throw out names.

We do seem to have our first philosophic schism, though. The Posette believes that the baby's name should be what we're, you know, going to call it. I believe that a person can have, in essence, two names -- their formal name that they have to put on applications and the name people actually call them.

For demonstration purposes, I will use my de facto Baby Name that I know for a fact I would never actually use: Ignatius Xavier.* The existence of this name allows me to occasionally reference the exploits of the future Iggy X.

*Ed Note -- Still, it's a good, solid, Jesuit name. Also, Iggy Pop is arguably the coolest person to ever exist. So Iggy is a better name than it gets credit for. Iggy is hardcore.

Image from Yahoomood.com. Seriously, you tell this guy he has a silly name.

Now, the Posette objects to Ignatius Xavier for all of the obvious reasons, while also conceding that Iggy Pop is really cool, because really, how can you argue against that proposition? But assuming the Posette was hit in the head with something heavy and actually agreed to call our child Iggy, she would still object to Ignatius on the grounds we would call the kid, "Iggy," so why not just name him that?

I argue that we could call him Iggy. Well, that is, after we made sure the Posette's head injury was okay and there was no hemorrhaging or anything. We could call him Iggy (in this example, the LP is a boy, because naming a girl Iggy is doubly cruel), but he could still have the name Ignatius for when he grew up and needed a real grown-up person name to put on his stationary.

Anyway, it is our first major difference, and it's creating problems on the naming front. Then again, we're still in the early stages. And one of the good things about suggesting Ignatius Xavier is that no idea seems all that bad after that.*

*Not entirely true. I'm already putting my foot down on Stripper Names. Any name that you can imagine being announced before some DJ plays "Pour Some Sugar On Me" is automatically a bad idea.

However, we have found some common ground. People, stop naming babies after characters in Twilight. That's just lame. If you must name your child after a character in a vampire move, please at least choose a good vampire movie. Or at the very least, The Lost Boys.

Because one day, your baby is going to grow up and actually see that movie. And, boy, is she gonna be pissed at you. But not as pissed as Iggy X will be at me.

Day Care

I dropped Elvis, the Official Dog of Poseur, off at day care today. The Posette is working late, and we didn't want him sitting in his crate all day, wondering why his people had abandoned him.

We pay for Elvis' day care in a block of ten appointments, which normally lasts about ten weeks. He goes in once a week, gets to play with his friends, and then come home and take a long nap on the couch. Our block ran out today, so I had to purchase a new block of ten days of day care.

Total cost? $180. $20/day with the tenth day free.

I have a hunch day care for a live human being is going to cost just slightly more than that.

Which is why I've decided I need to train Elvis to look after the LP. Elvis can fetch, lay down, and sit. He can even shake hands. He's a very good learner, and eager to please. So it shouldn't be too hard to teach him to care for a child, right?



This is Elvis. Look, this is a dog so functional that he can order a drink at a patio bar. and participate in a raffle!*

*Which, I'd like to point out, he won.


Think of the cost-saving opportunities! If Elvis can watch the LP, that reduces the need for day care, and thus, more money in my pocket. And I'm sure Child Protective Services would have no problem with this plan, and would be impressed by my Dog Whispering abilities.

There is no downside here. I mean, other than prison and likely divorce. But other than that... no downside. We start working on basic First Aid this evening.

Lawnchair

One of the biggest questions we’ve had to answer so far is whether to tell people about the pregnancy. Given that this blog exists, you can see how we answered that question, but it is one of those first “I hope I don’t screw this up” decisions.

They say that if something is going to go wrong in the pregnancy, it is most likely to go wrong in the first trimester.* This leads some happy, expectant couples to decide not to tell anyone until they navigate that riskier first month. Now, people are entitled to their own opinion and there’s no wrong answer here, but... those people are wrong.

*Ed. Note – Who the heck are “they” anyway? Where do they get off? Is there some secret council somewhere that dispenses conventional wisdom until the water supply?**

**Yes, I’m bringing back this joke from my old blog. Deal with it. I like footnotes.

First off, it’s not like you’re going to jinx things. It is scientifically proven that the only thing you can jinx by talking about it is a no-hitter. The proper procedure is to refer to the no-hitter as something else, like “lawnchair”. It is perfectly acceptable to say “Honey, change the channel to the Rangers game because Colby Lewis has a lawnchair through seven innings!” OK, Colby Lewis is not going to throw a no-hitter because he’s too inconsistent and has a tendency to leave the ball over the plate as he gets tired, but it’s just a hypothetical.

So, if you’re nervous about the whole jinx thing, just say that your wife has a lawnchair. We’ll know what you mean, and the Jinx Gods have been appeased. If it works in baseball, it’ll work in real life. Now, I realize this could cause problems if you and the missus actually purchased a lawnchair, which would lead to all sorts of confusion. If you are trying to get pregnant and also plan on purchasing patio furniture, perhaps you should use a different code word. The principle is still sound.

More importantly, it’s not like you’re going to be less sad if something awful happens. However, it’s a lot more joyous to tell people right now, and share in good news. It can be best expressed in two separate mathematical formulas:

Joy derived from telling people about pregnancy > Joy derived from not telling people

If something hideous and awful happens, then:
Sadness from telling people = Sadness from not telling people.

So why rob yourself of the joy? Telling the world increases the joy derived, at no risk of increased sadness. You only get to live life once, and constantly being afraid of things that might happen is just a way to prevent yourself from immersing yourself in the things that actually are happening.

And what’s happening right now is awesome. The Posette has a lawnchair through one inning, and is there any better feeling than going to a ballgame and silently keeping track of the potential no-hitter?*

*Ed. Note – Pregnancy is nine months. Baseball games are nine innings. Coincidence? Well, yeah. But methinks this may not be the last time we see this analogy. I’m also dreading the fact that the LP (Little Poseur) is probably going to be a Rangers fan. Rooting for the out-of-market (and dreadful) Orioles is going to be a tough sell, especially with the Posette and the Texas grandparents certainly promoting the local team and blocking any Orioles Indoctrination efforts I may try. But the LP will be the only Texan who knows, that’s right KNOWS, that Jim Palmer was a better pitcher than Nolan Ryan.

There’s a lot of joy in the world if we just let ourselves experience it. Getting the news that we’re going to have a Little Poseur was one of the few moments in life that was pure, perfect joy. Now, why wouldn’t I want to share that with everyone?

I'm Not Pregnant

"We're pregnant."

Well, not really. It's not like I have to incubate the baby for nine months, much less pass it through my, er, well, someplace uncomfortable. Saying "we're pregnant" is just a way we guys tag along someone else's hard work.

Sure, I'll take the slaps on the back and the obligatory "Way to go, big guy." Really, it was no trouble. Being congratulated for your wife's pregnancy by your in-laws is downright creepy when you think about it. They are congratulating me for having sex with their daughter. Not that I mind, but is not the normal way of things.

However, it's not like I'm not making any sacrifices or I have no part of this thing. Sure, the doctor performed a pretty damn invasive exam on her, not me. But I was at least in the room. They say 90% of anything is showing up, but...
Well, let's just say that other 10% seemed pretty damn significant to me. Sure, I cracked a prostate exam joke to the doctor, who politely laughed but no one is under any illusions here. That's a walk in the park compared to the exams the Posette has been and will be subjected to.

I'm a partner in this, but I'm not an equal partner. My role right now is limited to buying an instruction manual and figuring out our insurance plan. I'm already failing the second, though I did wander around a bookstore on Saturday and purchase a pregnancy book. I'm not gonna lie, those things are intimidating. Some of the books go into such excruciating detail of the medical procedures that I thought I had picked up the wrong book. I don't need to know how to perform the surgery. Hopefully, the doctor knows how to do that.

Still, she's got to do the bulk of the work. I'm just trying not to do anything stupid. Which, given my track record on this planet earth, is probably beyond my capacity. But I'll give it a go.

So what better way to start not doing something stupid than to restart the old Poseur blog? What you're reading as an attempt to keep y'all updated on the Posette's pregnancy. I'll be using pseudonyms for everybody because this is the internet and if someone wants my personal info, I'd like for them to have to put forth a decent effort to get it. Besides, this is an excuse to crank up the old Poseur HQ.

Yay, we're pregnant!