Well Hello, Dali

Today has been one of the most surreal days of my existence, because I cannot seem to wrap my brain around the fact that in just 52 short days, we will be parents. Of a baby. A human baby. One that will be ours...all ours. And it occurs to me that God really knew what He was doing when he put the 9 month gestation in place. But it hasn't been a constant "OhMyGoshOhMyGosh" - which was kind of how I spent the weekend after Tim and I got engaged (when I should've been, you know, studying for finals. Details.) (Well, that and admiring my ring. Which of course then started off the "OhMyGosh" cycle again.) No, today has been sort of a "La la la...life is normal. Nothing to see here, move along" for about ten minutes followed by a dawning giddiness mixed with panic that I have 52 days to prepare for a kid. And that's of course assuming that the baby is not early. Please God, don't let the baby be early!

If I were to take you upstairs and show you the nursery, you would be greeted by what we lovingly refer to as "the junk room". Or the Guest Annex (used in case the actual Guest Room is occupied already). It contains a double bed smooshed into a corner. A book case packed to the gunnels with programming and other computer books as well as binders full of cutting edge research in computer science from 1996 mixed in with notes from my Master's degree. You never know when you might need those. A dresser full of Tim's seasonal clothes (because they don't all fit into his dresser at one time.) A treadmill that is fully functional that no one ever uses and we really need to donate somewhere or sell. And a closet full of miscellaneous junk, which is about as specific as I can get because I really don't know the last time someone actually opened the closet to see what we have in there. The walls are covered with a thesis in "Everything I need to know about life I learned from..." posters that run the gamut from Star Trek (Original Series) to Star Trek (TNG) to Deep Space Nine to Star Wars and so forth. Because it's important to know that tribbles are your friend. Under the posters is the same speckled, watered down paint job that the builders haphazardly sprayed on the walls in their mad rush to pretend that they'd finished the house 7 (now almost 8) years ago.

If you flip through the last year or so of my datebook, you will see frequent notes on my various to-do lists that approximate "clean up nursery" or "paint nursery" or "clear out old school notes". Because I like to be proactive in my procrastination.

And it's not that I have to have a magazine perfect nursery. It's not that at all. I just think there probably ought to be room in there somewhere for a crib. Maybe some diapers. And it'd be nice if the kid didn't learn to read by sounding out Ferengi.

So, to try and stave off the building panic, I spent some time today looking at cribs and other baby accouterments. Holy cow. You need 9 months just to figure out what kind of car seat you want to buy. And even then it's likely you won't have actually spent 30 seconds reading about all the varieties that exist. What was hilarious though was that several times I caught myself shaking my head and reminding myself that it was stupid to look at this stuff now because we didn't know when we might actually need it. I might have done just a tad too well at convincing myself to not get my hopes up.

52 days.

Yet part of me (the not panicked part) still doesn't actually believe this is happening. That part sits and sort of watches over my shoulder and wonders when I'm going to wake up. But if this is a dream...let me sleep forever.