Part II of the birth story that somehow turned into me bitching about punctuatlity.

Wait, you came back? You’re still reading? What the hell is wrong with you?

But seriously, thank you all for coming back. I love that my last blog was perhaps “the best birth control ever” (thanks, Mr. Stapleton) and your support and feedback means a lot.

So where were we? Oh, right. The lady doctor whose name I can’t remember had just told me I’d have to wait two more days (two more years in miserable pregnant time) until they’d induce me. Forty-eight hours before beginning methods approved by those in the medical community to evict Danny.

That last sentence sounds kinda weird, huh? Well, you obviously weren’t there later on that night when over at my brother in law’s house I started staring at the trampoline in his backyard. I was doing Beautiful Mind equations in my head related to the force of gravity as it applied to my uterus and dividing Danny’s head volume by his height and other scholarly shit. Someone in the house noticed me staring and stood in front of me saying, “Kelly! Kelly! You OK?” and snapped their fingers. When they turned around and saw what I was staring at, they calmly walked over to the door leading out to the backyard to make sure it was locked. My brother in law probably called George and whispered about how I didn’t look “well” and something something something something and yo, she has crazy eyes right now, son.

The day before Danny was born, approx. 2 pm:

I’d made the decision the day before to permit myself one hour and one hour only to freak the fuck out. I went from re-folding onesies to crying like a hysterical person who is one second away from falling to their knees and screaming WHY GOD WHHHHHY???

It happened to occur to me in that hour that there were a few things I would never be doing again, including sleeping, reading books without pictures, or stumbling through the door at 3 am while fumbling with my keys drunk off tequila and ready to tube top wrestle or perform a comedic lap dance for anyone or anything that will sit still, including (but not limited to) a human or the cushion of my loveseat.

Honestly, I’d already had my fair share of acting belligerent and idiotic. Luckily that was before Facebook or YouTube. I was totally fine with being completely responsible for another person and actually looked forward to doing so. But really, no matter how “ready” you are, there’s still that tiny pocket of doubt that will whisper to you and say “You are totally and completely screwed right now. There’s no way you can take this back. This baby is about to come out, and it’s not going to be pretty. In fact, it will probably be disgusting and so amazingly painful that you may Rick James style slap the shit out of one or twenty people if they happen to breathe too loud or look at you funny.”

While you’re having this breakdown, you may also find yourself texting the person who sperminated you with things like “FUCK THIS!” and/or “IM NOT HAVING THIS BABY TOMORROW! THIS IS BULLSHIT” and my personal favorite: “YOU KNOW WHAT, WHY DON’T YOU JUST HAVE THIS BABY? YOU’RE ALL CALM, ALL RELAXED, ALL AT WORK AND SHIT!”

I’m generally not a fan of caps, but I promise you that George got about five hundred of those texts, all uppercase with filthy and grimy language that would make Jenna Jameson blush. In what was potentially his only moment of sanity during my pregnancy, he waited about an hour to call me back because he knew I’d either be dead or calmed down by that time. When I answered, he casually said, “What’s up? You alright?” like I hadn’t just texted him in Spanish, English, and random punctuational symbols that could’ve been morse code or braille.

There’s good things about knowing exactly what day you’ll give birth (like a pre-planned nervous breakdown), but there are also severe drawbacks. Of all the things I was worried about, being late to the hospital was at the tippity top of that list. If you’re wondering why, you obviously don’t know anyone Cuban George’s family.

And have I mentioned that George is a Cuban to the tenth degree? Cuban squared? This man feels it’s his personal obligation to his people to be late. And late to him is not late in normal people land. Late for white people most of us is about five or ten minutes. Multiply that timeframe until you’ve accumulated several hours, and you have George’s version of late. He thinks he has that deep movie theater preview guy’s voice always following him around going, “In the year of 2007, there was a man who had to be at work at 9 am,” as if his daily life is some big race against the clock.

Prime example: around the 6th month mark of my pregnancy, one of the random doctors told me there was a good chance I had cancer and that I needed a biopsy right this second, like yesterday actually. Because throwing up eighteen times a day, being forced to quit my job, and dealing with threat level red fuckery from George clearly wasn’t enough. Obviously.

I purposely scheduled my biopsy for the afternoon and deliberately lied and told George it was in the morning. He took the day off work. We got ready in a relaxed manner, he had his jeans shorts (yes child) shoes and glasses on. We were walking out the door with a good one hour cushion to spare when he a weird look on his face and said, “I have to run an errand really quick.”

I’d planned for this, so I had my car keys in my purse, MapQuest directions in my left hand, and with the middle finger on my right hand raised towards him I walked out of the apartment. Instructions like “you will not be permitted to drive yourself home after the procedure” meant nothing to me.

What was George’s “really quick” errand, you ask? A leisurely thirty minute drive against traffic in the exact opposite direction of the doctor’s office, and work related. Flashback to last post: how is this person still alive?

When he arrived at my procedure, I was already in the exam room. If you were paying attention to the last post, that meant George was approximately 16 hours late. He had to drop off a cell phone at another Cingular store, he told me when he walked in all sweaty and scared. Even Danny (in utero) was giving him the “shut the hell up” face with the neck slicing gesture and may have pushed a shovel out of my body for him to use.

It’s obvious that George and several members of his family find some sort of sick pleasure in throwing a random and unplanned event smack dab in the middle of another much more important event that requires punctuality. Have you ever been late to the airport and missed your flight? Maybe once or twice, right? With them, it’s every single time. Their mental dialogue is going, “wow, I’ve actually got about fifteen minutes to spare before the plane literally leaves the runway without me, so I should probably stop for gas and then get lost on purpose right after that”.

Or maybe your daughter in law is waiting for you to come over and watch her son for ten minutes so she can walk her two large dogs without having to put the baby in a harness:

because your son left on short notice for a work function two months after Danny was born. And let’s just say you told her you’d be there at 8 pm (after all, she does have to work the next morning) and at 11:30 she’s sitting on her couch with her two dogs staring at her like she’s a life sized Pupperoni with her face so red that it’s actually pulsating. And then go ahead and knock on the door, walk in casually and say, “We decided to stop for dinner.” No apologies, no reference to my smoking head, no concern over one of the dogs going to the bathroom in the middle of the living room.

You stopped for dinner? Oh, how wonderful. Remix that shit: “Stop for dinner, and stop for dinner, ohhhhh ohhhh.”

Whew, sorry about that. That got kinda weird for a second.

The Herreras and the Ortegas don’t have the ability or desire to be punctual. And here’s a little secret: they believe that if things get really ugly, there is always the option to time travel. Let’s all screw with Kelly and see just how late we can be before her head explodes, and if it does, that’s when we’ll time travel. But before we do that, let’s stop for dinner.