Well

It's not looking good. I don't want to bog you down with a lot of TMI, but I'm due today, and I'm willing to bet you're not in the cards this time.

Is it my fault? I'm too anxious, aren't I. Too anxious. Too old. In the darkest, blackest corner of my irrational heart, I fear that it's because I'm not nice enough. Not warm. Too self-interested. That on some level, I don't deserve to have you.

Timing

Lessee. I'm due on Sunday. In theory, this magic pee stick will give me the goods up to five days before Sunday.

That's....Tuesday. Yesterday. Depending on how you count. But today is already basically over. Right? Sure. So. I'm going to give it a shot tomorrow. And if it's no dice tomorrow, I'll wait til Sunday and see where we are.

Imaginary baby, you aren't going to like this, but I'm having a rum and soda with lime. It's good Barbados rum, white rum, and the limes are small key limes. I'm also full of Mexican food. So full my stomach is sort of sticking out. I'm having a Mexican food baby.

A lot of crazy stuff unfolded today, none of which will mean much to you, though it suggests that if you do wind up existing, and appearing in the fall, there's a good chance you'll be born in a new state that we never planned on living in. I know! It's weird. I was kind of hoping we could swing it for you to show up in Massachusetts. I have sentimental reasons that any reasonable person could easily dismiss.

Rum was part of the triangle trade, which brought wealth to New England and misery to untold numbers of African slaves. There's a whole world out here, with all these preexisting conditions. It's exhausting, thinking about explaining everything when I understand so little of it myself.

FYI

If you do wind up existing, I'm betting fully 30% of your DNA will consist of Lay's Kettle Cooked Low Fat Jalapeno Cheddar potato chips.

Super Powers

A little over a year ago, I developed super powers. Specifically, I had spidey smell.

It happened while I was riding the T in Boston, something I did all the time. The T doesn't generally have much of a specific smell. It's not like the New York subway, which reeks of hot old asphalt. Boston is just sort of there. Train. People. Wet coats. That's it.

But this time, it was different. Every human who came near to me was packed in a thoroughly detailed set of layered smells. My eyes crept to their corners to look at a man who, I was 95% certain, had had a chicken parm sandwich for lunch four hours ago. A woman on the other side of me had a drinking problem, and her preferred poison was gin. This person was wearing musky perfume with top notes of sandalwood and lime. That person hadn't brushed his teeth that morning. I was riding the Blue Line, and I'd started at the end with a nearly empty train at Wonderland, and has more and more people piled on I had to swallow back the rise of bile from too many smells. I pulled my scarf over my nose, which helped a little, but even my scarf was too detailed. It smelled like me, my hair in particular, but also with the faintest remnant of dry cleaning fluid.

When I arrived at the dinner party, I knew at the bottom of the stairwell what was being served.

"This is weird," I announced to my friends. "I don't know what's going on."

My friends were privy to the recent medically-necessary removal of my IUD. (I still think it's the best method, shift in position notwithstanding.) They were also mid-baby-creation attempt. They had all the books and everything. I wasn't "trying" at that point. I was winging it. When the IUD came out they asked me what method I would be switching to, and I'd swallowed hard and said "None." The nurse practitioner's eyebrows went up. "I'm married, I'm 36, I have a good job. You know. I'm just going to see what happens." She'd told me to take a vitamin every day and sent me on my way.

"That's him," my friend W said wisely.

"Come on," I said.

W and his wife exchanged a knowing look common among fertile people.

"Totally," said K, W's wife.

What they didn't know is, I'd recently checked myself out with a pee stick, and it had turned up with a "Room for Rent" sign.

"It's not," I insisted. "I checked."

"It's him," W nodded like a wise mage. "He's just hiding."

Well, it wasn't you, as you've probably noticed, because you still don't exist, but I will say that my spidey smell lasted for about a week, and then the world resumed its normal olfactory contours, and my super power hasn't come back since.  I was suspicious. I kept pulling out the neck of my t-shirt and looking down.

The temptation is there, to read the signs. To consult my body like a mystic reading tea leaves. Am I bloated? Is it normal? I get woozy at yoga, have to gulp for air, put my forehead down in child's pose, and stop early. Is it Something? Or have I just not slept enough?

Last night, I lay in a heap on the sofa watching reruns of Sex and the City via my in-law's stolen HBO passwords, shuddering at the fact that I'm now older than all those characters (except Samantha). Around 12:30, I got hungry. Not just hungry, but Hungry. I considered eating a block of cheddar cheese. In a fit of reason, instead I heated up a little vegan barbecue snack pocket thing - only 230 calories, and 10 grams of protein - and scarfed it down while it was still hot enough to singe my fingers.

Is it Something? Or is it nothing?

Ooof

Greetings, imaginary baby, as I lie staring up at the ceiling with a pillow under my ass. Okay, not up at the ceiling exactly, more like at the laptop propped on my legs. I'll spare you the particulars. Suffice it to say, I got a flashy smiley face today (in a related story, 37 year old women can still be relied upon to respond positively to smiley faces), and so.... anyway.

This is too much information for you. I can tell. Sorry.

So. Now what happens?

I guess that's partly up to you, isn't it. Not as a matter of will, which you do not possess, but perhaps as a matter of math. What's your schedule like? What are you up to, in there?

Has it been thirty minutes yet? Okay, I'm getting up. I have a book to write. This is how a lot of our interactions are going to end, I'm afraid.

New Resolve

Greetings, imaginary baby, from my office in a tiny school in rural North Carolina, where I am a writer in residence. It's a drizzly day outside, and my office overlooks what I think are three giant exhaust tubes behind another classroom building. If covered in snow they would look like part of the rebel base on the ice planet Hoth. You don't know about Hoth, but don't worry - I'm guessing, should you turn up, you will be exposed to Hoth probably within the first week of your life. Your mother soothes herself by watching movies she has seen one million times. It's a quirk of her personality that will probably drive you batty, as it drives your would-be father batty. The thing about family life is, you show up with certain buttons pre-installed. That's just how it goes.

We're both having a surprisingly good time in North Carolina. The food is really good, we've both settled into a routine. Your would-be father is getting a lot of work done. My teaching is going well. I even went to yoga last night, and today I feel pleasantly tired and stretched out.

I've bought another supply of plastic sticks. The expensive ones, that give you four days of smiley face. And I've been taking the vitamins.

You should see these horse-pill vitamins they tell you to take. The first one I tried turned my urine florescent green and made my breath smell like a barley field. I reasoned that if I was peeing out green then I probably wasn't actually absorbing any of the vitamins, so what's the point? I quit. They were hard to swallow and gave me a stomachache anyway. I went several months sans vitamins. But, begrudgingly, I have reconsidered. I switched brands. These new ones are wine-colored caplets, and they are partly made of fish (don't tell your father, as we don't eat fish - more on that later), but they change neither my breath nor my effluvia, so I've decided to stick with them. I've actually taken them every day for a whole week. Not bad, huh?

You don't seem impressed. Listen, kid, you have no idea. It's complicated out here. Lots of things to keep track of.

So, I've got the vitamins, I've got the yoga class, I've got lots of sleep, I'm relaxed and also I'm in a place that's not too cold, so I'm shivering less. That's got to be good, right? And now I've got a two month supply of the serious, four-smiley-faces pee sticks.

I'm ready. I think. I think I'm ready.

What do you think? Are you ready?

Oh man

Would you look at this?

Shit.

Nothing written here since April. I'm sorry, imaginary baby. It's not that you haven't been on my mind, because you have. I've just been really busy, you know? I know. That's not your problem. Fortunately, I console myself that lack of existence also suggests an independence of time. And so April is the same as July is the same as tomorrow. Feel free to disabuse me of this assumption, should you ever come into being.

Not much has changed since last we spoke. I've had some busy work time, with another book coming out, and then another on the horizon, and yet another one due in a mere forty days. A lot can happen in forty days, as you may one day discover. Just think. In forty days you yourself could venture from hypothetical to possible. Not quite actual. Just short of actual. But certainly possible. I guess we'll see.

You should know that I've stopped with the plastic sticks. I'm not convinced they're the best approach. According to the doctor who is treating my brain tumor, by the time the lines or the crosshatches or the smiley faces or whatever appear, it's actually a day or two past prime exposure time. So what's the point, then? Just another case of the commodification of women's bodies, if you ask me, which you didn't. Trust me, though, that's a thing. One hopes it might be less of a thing, when you roll around, but I don't have high hopes. Suffice it to say. No more plastic sticks.

Which is not to say that I'm giving up, necessarily. I'm taking the brain meds and everything. I'm just endeavoring not to worry about it as much.

Actually, I'm sort of lying. L thinks we're giving up.

Are we giving up? Am I?

Are you?

The world has enough people, it could be argued. And some of them need homes. In fact, one of those people has been living in my house over the past year - your half uncle (is that even a thing?). He's nineteen. I don't really need to go into that with you right now, but let's just say, it's tiring. Teenagers, man. They're a lot of work. This is why you, you lucky duck, will be sent to your father's boarding school for high school. Trust me, it's a good idea. You'll thank me when the time comes.

If the time comes.