as i sit here this morning, putting off more of the housework i had hoped to catch up on while i was on my break from school, my sister is in a hospital over a thousand miles away hoping to have her baby today.
i shall be an aunt again -- an auntē maybe? i have no clue as to whether she is having a girl or a boy (neither does anyone else in my family, or my sister, or my brother-in-law's family, as far as i know.) but, it is indeed the intention to be delivering this child today, sometime.
i'm happy and excited for her, but in a detached sort of way as being so physically far away seems to make this less immediate in my mind. when my nephew was born in 1996, we were at the hospital shortly after we got the call that my sister was in labor. and we sat and waited and sat and waited and well... i'm sure you get the picture. it was about as exciting as watching grass grow or watching golf on tv.
now, of course, compared to my own experience with childbirth, anything following the natural order of things is generally unexciting. it only took me about an hour and a half to two hours from finding out i needed to have savannah RIGHT NOW, to actually being strapped onto the table and having her pulled from my body. most people don't get that kind of fast-track to giving birth. instead, we get to feel like we're watching golf on tv.
i'm much more interested in how things will be after the baby comes home. this is my sister's second child with her second husband. and he reportedly wants a boatload of kids, being the good Catholic that he is... i'm just dying to know what he thinks about that in about a month or so.
he needs to actually be a parent from the beginning to be able to come to that particular realization. it's far easier to fantasize about wanting children, until you actually have to be a parent. he's been great with my nephew for the most part, but he met him when he was already 4 or 5. not NEARLY the same thing.
i love my child and would not trade her for the world, but i imagine that i would have to have some kind of extraordinary experience for me to want any more. i haven't entirely eliminated the possibility of it happening, but it is not looking like something i think i'd like to do.
regardless, i am looking forward to finding out what new person is coming into our family. i adore my family, and i hope that it isn't a terrible adjustment for my nephew who will be 8(!) years old in july. he also says he wants a brother or sister, but he doesn't yet fully understand what that will mean for him either.
i hope that all goes well, and there aren't any complications. i hope that my sister comes out of everything well, and doesn't have too difficult a time with the delivery itself. and then maybe over the weekend i will go out and look for something to send to the new baby.
the only thing wallace and i bought before savannah was born was books. i have know the baby's name and gender before i feel like i'll be able to find something to send from us. i'm just weird like that, i guess.
here's to hoping for a happy day for my sister and all of our family. now, i suppose i should get up and do something more productive, and wait for the phone to ring.
today is the first day of my break from school. it's feeling nice, i have to say... my dad asked on the phone over the weekend if i was working on my homework. i laughed and asked that my dad show me a bit of mercy and that i really did deserve a little bit of time off. he thought i should be getting ready for the summer term already. i am not. i am going to enjoy basking in my 3.83 GPA and decidedly NOT think about school until i go back on 2 June.
today also is wallace's first day at his new job. i enjoyed taking him to work this morning, partially because i like the route we have choosen to take from our house to get there.
atlanta is such an interesting place to me. i love that i've lived here for almost seven years now, and there are still SO many places that i've never been or seen. i always enjoy discovering new things here.
one street we have to travel to get to wallace's new job is a rather upscale neighborhood. well, i'm not sure if upscale is precisely the right word. to me, it's much closer to mind-blowing. some of the homes there have their own names for gods' sakes. they are castles made of brick and stone and glass, bigger than any home i've ever been in my whole life. they fascinate me to the point of distraction (not so great when i'm the person driving the car) but i have to wonder just where do people get the money to live in places like that? even moreso, i wonder how one gets enough money to BUILD one of those fortresses, as per their specific instructions to live in?
these places are just so massive, they completely boggle my mind. they are beautiful, no doubt. we wonder together on the way to work how it is to live in one of these places. i mention the slums down the road, for the new development selling only $700,000 homes. i wonder how the other people in the neighborhood look upon those poor souls. is it like what i think when i see a particularly run down trailer park?
wallace laughs and mentions the bridge that one of the homes has to actually get to the house. he imagines the people inside getting a warning about jehovah's witnesses approaching the driveway, or some wayward girl scouts trying to hawk cookies, and mentions raising the drawbridge or releasing the hounds. i giggle hysterically, trying to imagine it.
i mean, i understand how actors and the CEOs of the enrons of the world could afford and would want to live in some of these places, but -- i know that whitney and bobby live in alpharetta, not in sandy springs. and i know that elton has a penthouse condo downtown. honestly, who lives in these places along northside drive and heard's ferry? many millionaires, to be sure. but, what do they do?
anyway, i have much work to do, as this is the first day of only two weeks i have to try to clean and organize my house before savannah is finished with school. i've been dying to purge our house for a while, but haven't been able to find time with school and everything else. so, that is my plan for the next two weeks. i can focus on that before i have to return to school and worry about classes over the summer. and with everyone out of the house every day i should be able to keep things relatively clean afterwards, right?
gods, i hope so. yeah, right.