It’s been quiet around Blogapotamus central for the last week or so. I feel the need to express this only because I imagine that not writing for some time around when one is expecting a baby makes people think that there are better reasons for your silence. However, my excuse is that there’s been bugger all to talk about.

The waiting game at the end of pregnancy is kind of a crappy one. You feel like you can’t really make any plans, but you’re reluctant to completely shut yourself off from any and all social occasions because god knows when the next time you’ll have a chance to talk to grown-ups without having to worry about whether or not you’ve got baby sick on your shirt. However, the desire to socialize outside your own home is hampered by the fact that you are now the size of an aircraft carrier.

The Rock Star and I did venture to the cinema the other night to take in a film that got good reviews on the opposite side of the Atlantic, The Good Shepherd. Sadly, the most exciting thing I can say for the experience was that our local cinema now has a Ben & Jerry’s stand where I got to have a cone of Oatmeal Cookie ice cream.

The film seemed like one that SHOULD have been very good. The premise- the beginnings of the CIA, through the experience of one of it’s founder members, beginning with his recruitment just before the second World War and following him through to the period just after the attempted overthrow of Castro in the 60’s. This SHOULD have been a good movie, but it found all kinds of ways not to be.

It’s number one problem was Matt Damon. While I can appreciate a small percentage of the body of his work, he is PHOENOMINALLY boring. Although his character went on a rather extraordinary physical and life transforming journey in the film, there was no HINT of an emotional one. NO ONE is limited to one facial expression for 30 years, no matter how stoic, stony or clandestine. The other major problem was the script, which managed to make a film that should have been interesting….not. The origins of the CIA? Working undercover in war torn London and post war Berlin? The paranoia of the Cold War? Great spy film criteria. But the film makers managed to make a spy film with all of the interesting parts cut right out. Even the “big reveals” of the film were done in such a distinctly underwhelming way that one was left wondering if you’d missed it.

At any rate, I felt a bit gypped- likely my last trip to the cinema for a good long while and I spent the last, unnecessary half hour of the film hoping that it would be over soon so I could stand up and get the Prawn off of whatever of my major arteries he or she was sitting on.

I had just walked into the living room from the kitchen when I saw this picture on the evening news. I couldn’t help myself and burst out laughing, simultaneously feeling awful, because usually the only reason they display pictures such as this on the news is if someone has kicked the bucket in a tragic fashion.

Luckily, it turns out this guy has NOT kicked the bucket, but is rather in police custody under suspicion of being a mail bomber. And you can kind of see why. (His neighbours, rather unsurprisingly described him as “quiet”.) Anyone with a picture such as this in their personal history is probably not going to have model social skills.

I’ve always had a slight fear of this sort of occurrence- a tragic early death or unexpected incarceration and a grieving relative searching desperately through a photographic file to find a decent photo for the 6 o’clock news. Unable to function properly, they choose the first one they can find- that one of me as a college freshman at a New Year’s Eve Party, having peanut butter licked off of my face by a guy called Andres.

Well, let me just clear this up for everyone. If something ever happens to me, THIS is the photo I would like you to send to the BBC:

I look young and healthy- pink of cheek and blue of eye, surrounded by flowers and next to my lovely husband. It is a picture that will make people alternately weep for me or wonder how someone as well balanced looking as me could have committed such a heinous crime.

Always keep em guessing.

Yesterday morning on the BBC’s Breakfast show, there was an interview with actress Jenny Agnutter, who’s starring in the Gielgud’s much touted production of Peter Shaffer’s Equus, now better known to the press as “Harry Potter and the Horse Fucker.”

It was obvious the two journalists were probably being restrained by means of electric shocks from simply coming out with the question, “HOW BIG IS DANIEL RADCLIFFE’S PENIS?” They politely asked her about her role in the production, what the play was about, her career, etc, all the while flashing the disturbing soft core promotional shots of Radcliffe in the background. Agnutter seemed just a touch uncomfortable talking about Radcliffe’s acting abilities, saying simply that he was “doing wonderfully.”

I think everyone knows where I’m going with this.

Strangely enough, when I wrote this blog about my despair regarding the state of big theatre and it’s willingness to sell out to titillation, I actually had the play Equus in mind as one work where I believed that the nudity could be justified within the context of script. Shaffer is a hugely challenging playwright (also responsible for the magnificent Amadeus on which the Oscar winning film was based) and Equus a hugely challenging play, requiring total commitment on the part of all of the actors involved, ESPECIALLY the young man playing the role of Alan Strang, the stable hand, who inexplicably one night, blinds 6 horses with a hoof pick. The play takes the audience on a journey through Strang’s psyche and sexual hang-ups until the motive behind his actions becomes more clear.

Ok. So. Daniel Radcliffe.

Radcliffe has made the journey in a remarkably short time from being little known, above average child actor to being fantastically famous mediocre teenage actor. Someone on the look-out for his future career (my money’s on pushy stage dad and Harry Potter producer, Mark) is obviously trying to keep Daniel from the sort of typecasting that is inevitable when one grows up playing an immensely well-known character and secure a future career, although it’s fairly likely that Radcliffe’s already substantial personal fortune will make it possible for him to enjoy most of his life on a yacht, up to his neck in bikini models. Unfortunately, this mystery benefactor’s plan to avoid this fate can be summed up in four words.

Get.Your.Knob.Out.

And yet again, I despair of the theatre.

What better way to get publicity than to get a barely legal former child actor to get his kit off in front of several hundred people every night? What better way to ensure packed houses than take barely printable publicity photos? In a world that was fair, an unknown, but vastly talented young man would be chosen to head up the cast of this superbly written and sadly underperformed play rather than, at BEST, a competent actor who will bring in the punters who merely want to say that they’ve gotten a look at Harry Potter’s wand.

Radcliffe may yet prove me wrong and time will tell, but there is no denying the shameless exploitation of his celebrity, youth and squeaky clean image for the promotion of this play. Will the time ever come again when people will go to the theatre to be entertained rather than titillated? The late great Bill Hicks asked the same question in the furor that surrounded the release of “Basic Instinct.”

“You guys know that there are whole movies out there that are JUST PUSSY, right?”

So, it’s official- the Prawn is now considered to be fully cooked. Any time that he or she elects to stay inside is just “browning the crust,” as The Rock Star puts it.

It’s slightly alarming to think that this whole circus could kick off at any minute. While I know that labour isn’t exactly like someone waiting around the corner to go “BOO!”, I’m still kind of walking around looking behind all the doorframes, if you know what I mean. From what I’ve been told, labour is rather more like an annoying person with a sharp stick who starts poking you gently at first, but becomes increasingly malevolent.

While, after 3 years of reproductive difficulties, I’m hugely thankful for this giant, uncomfortable bump in my midsection, it is becoming harder to function from day to day. I dare not complain over-much- I’ve had a blessedly comfortable pregnancy up until around about a week ago when it suddenly occurred to me that it was no longer possible to put on my own socks, stand up from a sitting position on the floor without assistance or move without waddling. Although I know that the time is coming rapidly that I will not be able to spend much time in my unbelievably comfortable new bed, at least I will not be winded any just from the effort of putting my head down on the pillow.

The nursery is mostly finished. Whether we have everything that we need or not remains to be seen. (Like I said, we’re totally clueless and pretty much just dumped everything in the cart that looked like it would be useful) The crib is mostly set up, all of the Prawn art is in place, the changing table is ready and my parents and aunt have generously decided to buy us a rocking chair for Prawn-related feeding activities. I am vaguely concerned about our choice of wardrobe for the Prawn- looking at the size of my belly and at the size of the newborn clothes that we’ve picked up, I am slightly worried that this child will look like a sumo wrestler stuffed into a schoolgirl’s uniform, so it’s conceivable that we might have to stop off on the way home from the hospital with a completely naked baby to get clothes that do not strangle him/her. “For infants up to 10 lbs” my ass.

There are 2 baby books, sitting mostly unopened on the coffee table and one in my bedside drawer, where I locked it after becoming afraid of it about 3 chapters in. (The New Contented Little Baby Book, by Gina Ford, just so that you know.) People have said that parents fall into two camps with Ford; they either think she’s the Mother of God or the Sister of Satan. Me personally, I think her strict routines probably work EXTREMELY well for some children, (Mr. DD’s cousin recommended it to me with unbridled praise- not surprising, as she got her first son to sleep through at 6 weeks and will be using the same regimen with her newest one.) but there are probably many MANY more that it DOESN’T work for, leading to feelings of failure on the part of parents. Ford has good ideas that one can use for the basis of a schedule, but the truth is, I just don’t like her personally that much. (Using your lawyers to threaten the shut down a useful mothering forum because someone on it said something mean about you is a little childish, in my opinion. Not sure someone like that has the authority to tell me how to get to the ladies room, let alone raise a child.)

The other two bits of lit are the standard What To Expect in the First Year and What to Expect When You’re Breastfeeding…And What if you Can’t? Both seem reasonable tomes of parenting knowledge that we should probably have lying around for those three o’clock in the morning questions like,

“My child is levitating above her crib, there appears to be ectoplasm dripping down the walls, a high pitched wailing and the smell of sulphur. Is this normal?”

(To which the answer would probably be, “It’s nothing to worry about. 1 in 4 children experiences demonic possession in their first year.”)

So here I sit, feeling the Prawn becoming increasingly pissed off at his or her confinement. Digging heels into my ribs. Bashing head against all and sundry privates. Just generally asking his or herself, “Hey, didn’t this place used to be more like a three bedroom cottage rather than a bedsit? WTF? I’m SO out of here.”

Hopefully this frustration will manifest itself into something useful sooner rather than later.

I love me some useless knowledge. Now that I’m going to become a mother, I feel it’s my duty to educate myself on little things that I take for granted so that I can give such a detailed answer when the Prawn asks “why?”, that the little bugger will find it easier to go and look it up on Wikipedia instead. (While the Prawn might not reap the benefits of upcoming internet technology, I fully expect our next child to have a Matrix style jack plug in their brain stem.)

Since I have already had my little toot about the commercial juggernaut that is Valentines Day, I thought I’d check out the background of the celebration.

It’s not surprising that the Early Church had it’s hand in the early, structured celebration of Valentine’s Day. Trying to sit on and squash pagan festivals was one of the Early Church’s very favourite pastimes- especially festivals that involved sacrifices or screwing. The Feast of St. Valentine was most likely placed near the ides of February due to the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, (honouring the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus and also Faunus, the god of agriculture) which featured both. Young acolytes of the Luperci (an order of Roman priests) would sacrifice a goat and a dog and run through the streets with bits of bloody hide to wipe on young women and wheat fields. If someone did this to you in the streets of London, you would undoubtedly be offered counselling by the local authorities, but back in the day, it was a fertility charm and the young women of ancient Rome were all too happy to be smacked with bits of dead goat.

Later in the day, all of the bachelors of the city would draw women’s names out of a giant urn and spend the next year paired with them, obviously resulting in quite a few marriages. (And quite a few homicides, but I could find no mention of it.) The Early Church obviously thought this was Un-Christian and that it was much more holy to be forced into a marriage of convenience with your cousin, so they slapped St. Valentine’s Day over top (a saint about whom REMARKABLY little is known, including what it was that he actually did to become a saint or how he died) to try to put a stop to all the pagan fun.

It was someone in the middle ages that noticed the middle of February was around about the time all the birds got busy, so the idea entered public consciousness that the Feast of St. Valentine should be about love and romance. One of the oldest recorded Valentine’s greetings dates back to 1415, written by the Duke of Orleans to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following the battle of Agincourt. It probably went something like this:

Rofes ayr red,
Vyolets ayr blue,
How we loft that god dammed battle
If fomething I cannot explain to you.

poftfcript- Pleafe fend cafh.

The popular celebration of the holiday seems to have come into prominence in both the US and the UK sometime in the 1800’s when the first mass marketed Valentines came into popularity. In the US, this was accomplished by a New Englander by the name of Esther Howland, who I guess most greeting card companies have a picture of somewhere in a secret chamber that they go to lick every 14th of February for continued prosperity during the year. And then obviously, Hallmark, FTD and Vera Wang came along and rode roughshod over the whole affair, making it into the guilt inducing, diamond/flower/chocolate/card buying extravaganza that it is today. So powerful are they, that they have even managed to introduce the Westernised holiday into traditionally non-Christian countries such as India, who, let’s face it, has taken enough shit from the West in the past without being made to feel guilty about not buying their significant others a box of Ferrero Roche; a significant achievement in a culture where holding hands in public and kissing in movies is frowned upon. The power of Hallmark is potent indeed.

However or WHATEVER you choose to spend on Valentines Day, may it bring you happiness.

And maybe just a touch of dead goat.

As we all know, the insidious forces of guilt and commerce are gearing up for their second biggest annual assault on our wallets, Valentine’s Day.

This is my third VD blog. (In fact, my second Blogaversary passed completely unremembered yesterday. Go me!) And every year, I tell you that, despite the yuck, I kind of LIKE Valentine’s Day, but OH MY GOD, LOOK AT THIS THING THAT SOMEONE IS TRYING TO GET AWAY WITH.

This year, it is FTD, the flower people (Over here, they’re called Interflora) and they are trying to sell this.

It’s a pretty bouquet with a designer’s label slapped on it. When trying to discover exactly what qualified this arrangement as a “Vera Wang”, I discovered that the box the flowers arrive in was exclusively designed for FTD by Ms. Wang.

I see.

THE PART OF THE GIFT THAT YOU THROW THE FUCK AWAY WAS DESIGNED BY VERA WANG.

On paging through FTD’s site, I discovered this, this, and this, all of which seem to bear a striking resemblence to the so-called Vera Wang arrangement for at least $20 less. Taking a standard floral arrangement used by just about every bride for the last 5 years and slapping an extra 20 dollars on it because of it’s PACKAGING seems to be the height of commercial “baboonery”, to borrow a phrase from the Rock Star.

Heh. I said “Wang.”

No abominable snowman jokes.

Dougal, the family dog learns about the temporary nature of snow.

A vaguely creepy snowperson constructed by The Rock Star at lunchtime.

CHOMP.

I show my distain for the media scaremongering surrounding Bird Flu.

Right, so you have my word that the minute I pop this sprog, this blog will NOT be turned into a repository of information about poop and the agonies of breastfeeding, (I have another blog for that) but I’m starting to think that I might actually be having a baby or something.

The Rock Star and I, looking nervously at the calendar, finally bit the bullet and made a trip to the local Babies backwards R Us to pick up…well, whatever the hell it is that babies need. I hate to admit that neither of us have a particularly solid idea and are totally beholden to the evil giant of the baby goods industry to shape our malleable perceptions of what is necessary and what is a load of shit that our kid won’t need in a million years but we better buy anyhow, because OTHERWISE WE ARE BAD PARENTS AND OUR CHILD WILL END UP BLIND, STUPID AND WORKING ON A CHAIN GANG.

Well, we figured a crib is probably a good start, so we got one of those. A changing table also seemed like a fairly good bet, so that went in the trolley too. A complete breastfeeding system from Avent seemed simpler than combing through the shelves for all the individual components, so what’s 129 quid between me and a multi million dollar corporation? (although, to be fair, I did do my homework a bit and it seemed to be the system that was reviewed most favourably by actual, honest to god people who used it.) Baby monitors? Check. Bedding? Erm….yeah, I guess we need that too, but aren’t there like 15 layers in a cot or something? What the hell do I know? Just chuck that in there too. The mattress cost almost as much as ours, so it should be comfy, right? A bath set? Why not? INTO THE TROLLEY WITH YOU.

Over 500 pounds later, we felt rather like we’d gotten screwed with our pants on, but at least we felt slightly better knowing that the Prawn wouldn’t be sleeping in one of our new dresser drawers.

To be honest, although the damage to my credit card frightened me, the idea that the Prawn will be here in a matter of weeks was a complete bowel emptier. Although the Prawn is hugely anticipated and very much wanted, I can’t help but ask the question, “What do I know about babies?” Jack, is the precise answer.

I’m an only child and since I lived in the middle of nowhere while growing up, the only kids to baby sit belonged to our next-door neighbors. By the time I was old enough to look after them, they were all well out of diapers. (They are now well out of college, which makes me feel slightly ancient.) So, experience with newborns? 0. Have I ever changed a diaper? Nope. All in all feeling of complete ineptitude? Oh yeah.

Of course, I would be naive to think that I’m the first person to experience this overwhelming feeling of unreadiness for parenthood. People much younger, in far worse circumstances and with far less life experience than me have made perfectly acceptable parents and have managed to make it through the first year without feeding their babies to wolverines or anything, so why should I be worried? Natural, I guess. No matter how old you are, or how desperately wanted the child, becoming fully and wholly responsible for a completely helpless person who looks more like Yoda than you for the first few months is a little overwhelming. Having a partner like The Rock Star is a huge plus, because his job is going to be to keep me from going completely around the bed. I’m going to be all, “WHY IS HE/SHE SCREAMING? DOES HE/SHE HAVE PLAGUE?” and he will tell me that maybe I ought to investigate the diaper situation before jumping to far more ridiculous conclusions.

At any rate, it’s going to be an adventure.

The Rock Star and I sat in the kitchen this afternoon drinking two bottles of very fizzy Diet Coke with lunch.

The Rock Star: Urp.

Me: Buuuuuurrrrp.

The Rock Star: Rrrrrrrruuuuuuuurrrrrrp.

Me: BRAAAAAAAAAACK!

Silence.

Me: We’re going to make AWESOME parents.

The Rock Star: Word.