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| Chicken plays while I go shopping for Squishie at Target. |
Okay, so April 1st isn’t always my favorite.
Because besides Squishie’s due date, I’d never had an April Fools joke I’d been really excited about. My older son loves them, and my husband wishes he was better at them, but, as Kaje Harper said earlier today, they always felt like sort of a betrayal of trust. I mean, I DID have a couple of AP students convince me that one of them had gotten knocked up over Christmas vacation–they took me outside and conferenced with me all sober like, and given how many baby blankets I made for actual students back then, I bought it, hook, line and sinker. I actually told them both “Fuck you ALL and the horse you rode in on!” when they broke character and called bullshit, and in a way, that was fun, because the whole class was in on it. It was a GROUP thing, and since this was the class that gave me a truly spectacular shower gift when they found out I was having Zoomboy in the Fall, I think we all loved each other enough for it to be okay.
But I still wasn’t excited about the day.
Ten years ago, I went into labor on the evening of March 31st. Four days of almost constant labor later–and of child raising, trips to Target, trips to Chipotle, walking around the block, writing Bound, and probably being FUCKING INSANE– I gave birth to Squishie. She weighed 10 lbs–I said WHILE PUSHING that it was like passing a can of Crisco.
But I have to admit the results were better.
Anyway– that was favorite April Fools joke. “April Fools! She’s gonna be born on the THIRD!”
By the way, I had to tell this story in court.
The day we got home with Squishie–the fourth–my parents arrived to take Big T and Chicken to Hawaii. Yes, Mate, Zoomboy and I were supposed to go, but seven months earlier my stepmom and I had the following conversation:
Stepmom: Hey, we’d like to take you to Hawaii in the beginning of April– our treat!
Me: Hawaii? At the beginning of April? That’s… *sob* Awesome!
Stepmom: It will be–what was your news?
You can guess the rest.
Anyway–between getting the kids ready for Hawaii, getting the house ready for Squishie, and being insane for four days before I passed a can of Crisco, I forgot I was supposed to go in on the seventh for a traffic ticket.
I went in a month later to plead down the failure to appear. I brought Squishie as visual proof.
“So, I understand you didn’t get home until the fourth of April–were their any extenuating circumstances or complications that would have kept you out of the courtroom on the seventh?”
“You mean besides the four days of labor?”
All the women up in front of the courtroom snickered, and the judge reluctantly smiled–and took $200 off my FTA. That worked for me, actually. I got the ticket making a California stop two blocks from home, with Big T in the passenger’s seat as I took him to his wrestling match. The officer stopped me and I was fine. He said he was going back to write up the ticket and I had a big old hormone surge and fell THE FUCK APART. By the time he got back to me, I was sobbing so hard I couldn’t breathe and Big T looked like he wanted to crawl out of the minivan using his butt-cheeks alone.
The policeman was like, “You’re making me feel really bad about this!” and I was like, “I”m SOOOORRRRRRRREEEEEEEE…” I should have been like, “You SHOULLLLLLLDDDDD BEEEEEE…” But that didn’t occur to me.
So yeah. Didn’t want to add an entire $300 to that bullshit.
Anyway– all this leads me to today. This morning actually.
Last night I was feeling one of those disheartening moments– sad and sort of stressed. Anybody who read my blogpost, you’ve got a decent idea that between work and family this month, I’ve been stretched to the limits.
Well, this morning, after I’d dropped Squishie off to school, Mate texted me: Came home to work before my quarterly.
Me: Yay! I need to walk the dogs.
Because that’s what we do. Anyway, I grabbed the dogs from the car, stuck my head in the door and said, “Hey, do you want to walk the dogs with me?”
And Chicken–San Diego Chicken, my older daughter whom I miss and love and worry about–that Chicken– walked around the corner and said, “Yeah!”
They’d been planning it since February, when she decided she needed to see us BECAUSE, and made plans for Squishie’s birthday.
I have to say, as far as surprises go? April Fools pranks?
It was one of the best.
So, if I disappear a little this weekend, it’s because Squishie is having a birthday party, and Chicken is here to celebrate. And SURPRISE! I’m going to take advantage of having my kids here while I’ve got ’em.
