Let’s Panic, Shall We?

The other day Bart and I were at a store in our neighborhood looking at picture frames for the Star Wars prints he bought for the baby’s room. (I was under the impression we were going with a classic Pooh theme but as it turns out, Pooh and Darth Vadar actually look pretty good together.) Anyway, this store has a fun selection of books like Knitting With Cat Hair and 1,001 Famous Landscapes Recreated with Broccoli. I get all my friend’s birthday presents here.

So, we’re walking past the book section and this one in particular catches our eye:

“Oh ha, ha,” I said, pointing. “Look at that funny, totally useless book that’s clearly meant for people not as collected and composed as we are!”

“Ha,” Bart said. “Clearly. How silly.”

And he picked it up just to prove show silly and irrelevant to us it was.

He pointed to a blurb on the front cover. “Diablo Cody says we messed up royally by getting pregnant in the first place. Ha! Funny!”

“Oh look,” I said, opening the book at random. “All the really gross ways my body is changing! Meatier smelling body odor! Boob sweat! Incontinence! Yay!”

“Funny, funny book,” Bart said, taking it from my hands and replacing it next to the copy of Stuff on My Cat. “Just meant to make people laugh. Nothing useful in here!”

“Totally,” I agreed. “What’s funnier than hemorrhoids? And there’s like 19 pages on them in here.”

We walked away, then stopped and looked at each other. My big, frowny, panicky face was mirrored in Bart’s big, frowny, panicky face.

“We need to get that book,” he said.

“It’s totally meant for us,” I said.

So while we’re painting the bedroom with the best closet in the house and washing clothes the size of tissues with Dreft detergent from 1959, we’re panicking. A little. I mean, no one told us babies shoot laser beams out of their eye holes. I guess that could explain the burning sensation coursing through my esophagus right now.

I can only hope the baby will be comforted by the swaddle blanket I’m knitting him out of Zelda’s fur.