The Bat Man Cometh

Sunday, the Bat Man (background) showed up in the Silverado Bat Mobile. I was a little concerned about his superpowers, since he has a hunchback and a little bit of a limp. Heck of a Gal said he looked more like an organic farmer. Fortunately, he had his trusty sidekick, Bat Boy, with him.

I even got a glimpse of their secret weapons.



Before I left for one last trip to the State Fair, the Bat Man warned me that despite his best efforts, I might have one last visit from a bat or two that refused to be evicted. Sure enough, there was one flying around the bathroom last night. This morning, I found it hanging out in my closet. I think it's still in the house somewhere. I hope it crawled into a hole and died.

Nonetheless, today I found myself worrying about the bats. I mean, they've been living here for at least the 7 years that I've been here. What happened this morning as dawn broke and they headed back to the roost for a well-deserved day of sleep after a long night of bug-eating, only to find the locks changed? Where did they sleep today? Where will they go? Will they find a new home in the neighborhood? How far will they have to travel to find a new belfry? Will some of them perish in the transition? The babies are barely out of the nest!

It's dark outside, and I don't hear the familiar squeaking. I hope they're OK.

Pregnancy Fun Fact #63

“Pregnancy can make skin tags and moles change and/or grow. Skin tags are small tags of skin that may appear for the first time or may grow larger during pregnancy. Moles may appear for the first time during pregnancy, or existing moles may grow larger and darken during pregnancy.” --Your Pregnancy Week by Week

And suddenly, there was discomfort and chafing where none had been before. That's all I'm sayin'.

So I went to a dermatologist earlier this week to have what felt like a few bits of sandpaper removed. The dermatologist seemed to be slightly uncomfortable with the prospect of removing moles from a part of the body that, I'm guessing, dermatologists rarely have the need to examine, much less perform excisions on. Apparently his solution was to share the discomfort.

There I was, in the office chair, barely covered and in a most indelicate position, when the dermatologist started probing more than my skin. It was the most unpleasant experience I’ve had with a man between my legs since I was married.

“So…..twins. Were you taking fertility treatments?”

WTF? First of all, it’s not like there’s 6 of them. Second of all, isn’t that kind of like accusatorily asking a cancer victim if they smoked? "No."

“Didn’t your chart say you’re divorced? Are they the ex-husband’s?”

Oh, no he didn’t. I started incredulously at the ceiling. “Um, no.”

“Oh! Whose are they?”

“It’s probably best not to go there.”

“How are you going to take care of two babies all by yourself?”

“Welfare and the charity of strangers.”

I wish that last one would have been my actual response. It wasn’t. Then again, it’s difficult to think of a snappy comeback when someone's holding a scalpel mere inches from your private parts.

How many more weeks till the aliens release my body?

overheard, state fair edition

*** updated 8/14

Holy carp (as in the fish at the DNR building). The switch has flipped--I have completely lost interest in any food that is not fried and any drink that is not heavily sweetened. And lumberjacking is my new favorite sport. God bless Indiana, and its wonderful State Fair.

Props to Nora for helping to flesh this out. Submissions welcomed.

(On the tractor shuttle, getting ready to cross the new covered bridge) "Omigod, we're going through the barn! We're going to get stuck in the barn! We've got to get off now!"
"Just don't look, Beth!"


"Where's the Midway?" (young woman to ticket taker entering gate directly in front of the Ferris wheel)

"He's an eater, Grace, he's an eater! That boy can eat!"

Mother at hand-washing station: "Wash only your hands, J.D. It's not warm enough to get your hair wet."
J.D.: "Can I get my face wet?"

"Earl, don't put that baby down--it ain't wearin' no shoes!"

miscellany

Well, I still haven't figured out how to blog properly on a Mac, and I haven't loaded on the program that will let me get pics off my camera to post. I've also lost access to a scanner, so I can't show the ultrasound pics that prove the two feti in my uterus are a boy and a girl (Corndog and Tater Tot). Needless to say, that news makes me very happy, largely because it greatly reduces the changes I will mix them up.

Anyhoo, in lieu of a good story I'll just throw out some mental snapshots into B.I.G.'s summer of '08.

*Poison ivy covering approximately 30 percent of my body, and not being able to take the prednisone that will stop the itching....MY GOD THE ITCHING!!!!!

*Joining Big Head Dog as he stands in the bathtub, which seems as good a place as any to hide from bats.

*Attending classes with names like "Bow Wow and Baby" and "Marvelous Multiples." And enjoying showing up with my sister and Nora in tow at the swanky hospital in the cushy suburbs and sitting among the assorted "cop/schoolteacher, lawyer/event planner, hospital technician/nurse" husband/wife couples.

*Going to the Jackson County (Ind.) fair, where the swine barn has lots of signs that say "Enjoy Pork Often!", a Belgian horse tried to eat my hat, and I saw the scariest religious-inspired "art" I've ever seen.

*Getting Asshole Joe liquored up on my front porch.

*Stressing out about all the things necessary to make sure the authorities don't get called about my mothering skills and wondering if it's really so bad for babies to sleep in dresser drawers.

*Playing with Big Head Dog in the creek on a hot summer day.

*A bathtub sitting on my front porch.

*Telling the ex about the twins, and then having him call a week later to say he had a gas range for me. It reminded me of a Derby party at the farm when I was 18, where a guy bragged that he'd bought all his ex-wives a washer and dryer.

*Bingeing on Cap'n Crunch Crunchberries for days on end. Ahh, the sweet sting of the roof-of-the-mouth lacerations...

*Watching various parts of my body below the waist disappear from view. I hope they'll still be there in a few months and functioning as I remember them.

*In related news, wondering for the 1,000th time what the hell is wrong with women who say they love being pregnant.

*Teaching my sister how to catch and remove bats from the house.

*Listening to the ultrasound technician, after several minutes of trying to scan a shy Corndog, exclaim with glee, "There's his junk!"

*Mouth-watering anticipation for the State Fair, which this year will feature a giant walk-through colon named Coco.

There, aren't you glad you asked?

bumper crop

Yep, here I am, holed up in my room with the dogs for the fourth night in a row. I've admitted defeat. The fucking bats can have the house till they're done with it, I'll just stay here from dusk till dawn every night, emerging only to pee (which I have to freaking do every 30 minutes or so), fishing net in hand, creeping hunched over in case a bat flies around the corner at me.

At first I thought I'd try sleeping on the couch with the lights on (bats are nocturnal--they hate light, right?), the A/C cranked up (they hate cold too, right?) and avoiding the upstairs, which is logically where flying creatures should be. That didn't work. That experiment ended with me on the front porch in my p.j.'s at midnight, front door wide open waiting for a bat to find its escape route, dogs seizing their chance at freedom and running the neighborhood.

Back in the day, I'd just come home after tossing back a few bottles of liquid courage and chase the fuckers down, fishing net in one hand, oven mitt on the other. Notsomuch now. So here we are in the Batfree Cave, waiting for the damn bat babies to get their flying sense about them and successfully find their way from my belfry to the great outdoors. I broke down Monday and called the Bat Man (not to be confused with Batman), who'll be coming out to batproof my house for a mere 2 gazillion dollars. Worth every fucking penny.

Oh, and thanks be to The Man for making this outrageous expenditure financially feasible.

oh yeah, I still got it goin' on

Last week I met Deputy Joe for a few drinks at the friendly neighborhood tavern.

I hadn't talked to him since December, ever since I changed his entry on my phone to "Asshole" to remind me why it is not a good idea to stop by his house when I'm drunk and it's 2 a.m. (Because he has a girlfriend he's never bothered to mention.)

Since being un-deputized in the November election, Asshole Joe has been unemployed. He just started a new job and wanted to get together "to get my input on it."

Translated: "Let's get drunk, talk business and politics, then get naked."

He's my kind of guy, really.

He's also the first MIF* who'd learn my B.I.G. news. This is not, incidentally, a topic covered in popular maternity literature, unfortunately. I was trying to decide at exactly what point I'd tell him, when he beat me to it approximately 3 minutes after we sat down at the bar.

"Why aren't you drinking? Are you OK? Are you sure? Everything's alright medically? Are you pregnant?"

First of all, I love that people are that concerned about my health when they notice I'm not drinking.

Anyway, he took the news well (probably because there was no chance the twins are his). So well, in fact, that we ended up making out by the dumpster. Pretty sure if I'd asked, he'd have stopped by my house on the way home.

Unfortunately, I'm sober these days, and therefore could think of all the reasons why that would have been a really, really bad idea. (it was late, we both had to work, the girlfriend issue, and call me old-fashioned, but does it seem a little weird to anyone else to have sex while knocked up, with someone other than the father? Maybe it's just me.)

He just sent me a text saying we need to hang out again soon. WTF?


*Man I've Fu....um, Found in my bed in the morning

In a family way

I spent the weekend at the farmhouse. Saturday night I went to my sister's high school reunion with her. The school is so small, they decided to wrap the 30-year reunion for three different classes all into one. That means one of my brothers was also there, along with a slew of our cousins, so it was almost like a family reunion.

Highlights:

* A family friend outed me as being pregnant in front of a large group of people while I was holding a Miller Lite Tall Boy (hey, I'd been looking forward to my weekly beer for days).

Larry (loudly, to everyone and no one in particular): "She's carryin' twins!"
Me (choking on beer, looking up to see my high school psychology teacher, now the school principal): "Uh..."
Larry: "It's OK, she's married!"
Me (as quietly as possible while feeling 20 sets of eyes boring a hole through me): "Actually, Larry, I'm not. I've been divorced over two years."
High School Teacher: "Yeah, that'll happen."

* My brother-in-law at various times promised to get the twins, to use while they visit: car seats for the golf cart, tricycles, bicycles, go-karts, and a pony. I never had a pony. What's the weight limit on those things?

* My sister's friends are calling her grandma. She's 10 years older than I am. It's pissing her off. Hee hee hee.

* Apparently twins run in my family more than I knew. I thought I just had one cousin with twins. Nope, my great-uncle Willie had a twin sister who died at birth, and my grandfather had twin sisters. Yet something else I can blame my dad for.

* I asked my cousin with twins (now in their mid-20s) for any helpful words of wisdom. Her advice was, "Try not to lose your mind. Heh heh, just kidding." I don't think she was.