well, here we are, in the homestretch. the prawn is due one week from today. i am sorry for the dearth which has no doubt disappointed all of the millions of tinyengine readers over these last few weeks and months, it's just that the gigantic prawn-of-next-friday has sucked all the life out of me. my days now consist of intermittently sleeping and hobbling around on what i used to call my feet. somehow the shift in my center of gravity has left me with what i now refer to as 'prongs.' it feels as though there are no less than 5 prongs coming out from the ball of each foot, one prong for each toe, and then maybe 3 prongs, arranged like a tripod, coming out from each heel. if i don't wear some kind of cushy prong covers, i have trouble following the well-worn path from the bedroom to the kitchen without experiencing intense pain. the other day, i was wearing my most comfortable prong covers with my most comfortable cushy wool socks. i looked maybe a little like i might be going on an alpine expedition in 1947. i was otherwise fashionably attired in the height of summer maternity wear.
everything was fine, until we went out to get my grainy protein drink which has been sustaining both the prawn and myself these last few weeks. it seems i had forgotten to change my prong covers into something more presentable, so my darling hub of all hullabaloo actually laughed out loud (believe me, it was warranted) as we were getting out of the car in the protein drink parking lot. there was nothing i could do but take off the woolen socks. so then i was barefoot in the alpine shoes, with big indented woolen sock marks where my wooly mammoth socks had been. well, that's the price you pay when you are 9 months pregnant, it's 100 degrees out and you need some frozen protein elixir.
but enough about that. i have a number of things on the agenda today. the first is pluto. i got up in the middle of the night a few nights ago, as happens, about 6 times each night, and i did my regular rounds about the house, ending, as i usually do, with a little check of the internet. it was then that i read the devastating news about pluto. it's no longer a planet. have you heard? i nearly cried. first of all, it has the cutest name of all of the planets, but also, it seems to me that once you are a planet, you should stay a planet. when you're a planet, you're a planet all the way, from your first cigarette to your last dying day. i mean, it's sort of like when you go to buy something at the store, and it's been marked wrong, but they still have to sell it to you at the price it's marked. fair is fair. so, just let pluto stay a planet. it doesn't matter. where's the harm, really?
i read a quote from the widow of clyde tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered pluto. she said that her husband would have accepted pluto's demotion to non-planet status because he was a good scientist. well, i'm also married to a good scientist, but i don't accept it. i think there are certain things in life that should just stay the same, science or no science. (i know my scientific cher mari of all parapluies of cherbourg is shaking his delightful head right now) - but it's how i feel. what will i teach the prawn? shall we say: my very elegant mother just sat upon nine?? nine what?? oh, this is madness.
this brings me to topic number two, (or is it three?) of the day: the mgm lion. if you watch old movies, like i do, you will know that there are different mgm lions. my favorite are the two oldest lions. they are both black and white and if my memory serves me correctly, one of the sequences has a little edit in there, where they capture a few growls and then there's a little edit and then he growls again. maybe it's a skip in the film. i'll have to check. but anyway, i saw the other black and white lion today on tv and it made my heart ache a little bit for some reason, so i decided to find out more about them. it turns out there have been about 5 or so lions used in all. the oldest two (and my favorites) are named slats and jackie. jackie has a little hesitation between the second and third growls that i find very endearing. also, i kind of like that they are just sort of growling--they aren't delivering a big roar or anything. and also, i learned that before all the high-tech things like regular sound that we have now, they used to play the growl on a phonograph record while the image played on the screen. how could somebody not think that is the greatest thing ever? i am now in search of a phonograph record of just the growl. i would play it over and over again on my victrola and the prawn and i would make lion faces. well, if you do get to see an old mgm movie sometime soon, don't miss the beginning. i think it's worth the price of admission. by the way, i saw the end of 'the shop around the corner' today, which has always been one of my favorite old movies. it takes place at a little shop in budapest, of all places, called 'matuschek's.' you should try to see it. jimmy stewart is in it. plus, you get a lion at the beginning, so what do you have to lose?
oh, and then there's one more thing i wanted to mention and that is the dream i had 2 nights ago. i have kept this to the very end, because i think it might upset some tinyengine readers and if you've stuck with this terribly boring entry this long, then you will certainly not be troubled by what i'm about to tell you. i had a dream that i had had the prawn and i was holding him. everything was going along fine until, well, i dropped him. i did manage to catch him before he hit the ground though, but i still incurred the wrath of my grandmother who told me that i was not a good mother. i told her that she shouldn't judge me and that "everyone drops the baby once in a while." (?) i then went upstairs to my sister's room (oh, this dream took place in my childhood home) to feed the baby, only when i got there, the baby was no longer a baby, but a tiny turtle, so small that i could have fit two of them in the palm of my hand. the turtle was so dehydrated that its head fell off. i was quite shocked, but i managed to stick the little skinny neck right back into where it had come from and the head seemed to be securely back on as near as i could tell. then, it was time to feed him. i opened the little cottage cheese type container full of little worms that i had and i fed the turtle the whole thing. when i went to open the second container of worms, i didn't realize that this new container was labeled for a later stage of turtle and while the first container was full of just skinny worms that just squirmed around over one another, this second container held snakes, a scorpion, and all kinds of big things that raced out as soon as i opened the top. they all scurried out and slipped under my sister's closet door, and i went running after them, but couldn't get to them in time. well, just about that time, the granule woke me up for breakfast and i thanked her all morning for getting me out of that weird dream.
now, if you're rushing off to read the dream interpretation key for what this all means, you can save yourself the time and email me. i will be happy to interpret it for you. and while i'm at it, i'll tell you all about the dream where the prawn emerges and tells me quite clearly that he doesn't like the outfit we've chosen for him for the ride home from the hospital. then there is the dream where i can't get him to nurse no matter what happens. seven more days. now is the age of anxiety. just like w.h. auden said.
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