Hurry up and wait

That is what our life is like now: wait.  Wait some more.  Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.  It has been this way for about two weeks, and will continue to be so until our son decides he wants to join the human race.

It's driving me nuts.

And yes, of course it is harder on my wife, since she's caring the little bugger.  She gets bigger everyday.  I can't imagine how any of it feels.  She has this thing living inside her; it likes to move all the time, and it is particularly fond of poking her in the ribs.  But she's not blogging this.

Waiting for our son to be born is unlike anything I have ever experienced before.  I've been nervous before.  I don't feel like I am now, however, maybe I am so perpetually nervous that I don't understand it.  For the length of the pregnancy I have been waiting for all of this to "hit me."   I remember when I bought my wife's engagement ring was when it "hit me" that I was getting married.  We've bought a crib.  A dresser.  A car seat.  A stroller.  Lots and lots of clothes (OK, some of these things have been bought by others, obviously), etc. etc. etc.  Everything is ready.  We just need a baby.  So when will this "hit me"?

This baby boy is going to be here within a few weeks (he's due the 22nd, but if he waits that long his mother may never speak to him).  From the middle of summer I have said December 14th, which is six days away.  Six days.  Holy schnikies.  We are about to become parents.

Every time I see the empty crib, when I see all the clothes in the closet, the bottles in the pantry I find myself wondering how much longer?  I haven't been in a position like this in a long time, where I have to wait and wait for something and I have no control over it.  I can't remember how long it has been since I've had to deal with something like this.  It certainly has returned the anticipatory feeling of Christmas that I used to have as a kid.  But this is the birth of my first child, one of those "never again" events.  I might have more kids, but only one gets born first.  This is an event, man.  Why aren't I going more insane?

I was on the train a week or so ago heading into the city when a woman with a baby boy got on and sat a few seats in front of me.  The kid was maybe six months old, and once he saw my face, he never stopped staring at me.  At first I thought his smile was cute, then I thought it sinister, like he knew what was coming soon and was saying "Ha!  You have no idea what you are in for!"  God, he was adorable.  And for the rest of the afternoon I kept telling myself that I get to have one of these soon.

If he ever decides to get here.  He can take his time.  My fingernails will grow back.

Time for a hurry-up-and-wait random eleven:

1. "Some Days Are Better Than Others"-U2.  Great.  Cryptic messages right off the bat.

2. "When the Levee Breaks"-Led Zeppelin.  I couldn't make this up.  Maybe I should change the lyrics: "If he keeps on pushing the water's going to break..."

3. "Promenade"-U2.  I have a cousin who is a U2 freak.  She once tried to scale the giant fence outside his home in Killeney (I was there-she didn't get a foot off the ground).  Her name is Teri.  This song has a moment where Bono sings "Oh, tell me, tell me that you will dance with me" except it sounds like he says "Teri will you dance with me?"  I'll never forget her reaction when I finally got her to understand this.  We had to listen to it fifty-seven times.

4. "Ain't So Easy"-David + David.  More parental advice from a group that disappeared faster tham Amelia Earhart.

5. "Readymade"-Beck.  Hmm.  At the beginning some is singing through one of those voice things that make you sound like a robot. It sounds like "baby boy."  Let's see if I get the truth when I google the lyrics: nope. Nobody knows.

6. "Is It Any Wonder?"-Keane.  I suppose you can twist the title of any song to fit a baby scenario, but this is starting to freak me out just a bit.  I swear I am not altering anything.  This is all random.  I always think about Barcelona, Spain when I hear this song because of the line "nothing left in this old cathedral/just these sad lonely spires."  Makes me think of the Sagrada Familia (it's a fascinating building, and the Wikipedia page has a video tout towards the end).

7. "Come Talk To Me"-Peter Gabriel.  The first and only song that I have seen sung in a telephone booth live in concert.  There's a great story about a hobo giving my the eye later that night, but I ain't telling that here.

8. "The Rebels"-The Cranberries.  No group has more songs with lyrics that I can't decipher than the Cranberries.  Dolores O'Riordan wails like a Banshee.  There's a part here when she sings "it wasn't often/that we fought at all."  I didn't get it until the ten-thousandth time I listened to it.  That reminds me of another story (which I can tell here): when I was six I bought a cartoon book at a garage sale, and in one of them, a mother buffalo was admonishing her young buffalo, looking down at him and saying"did I just hear a discouraging word?"  I didn't get it.  More than twenty years later I was at work when all of the sudden it hit me, it's because of the lyric from "Home on the Range."  I wasn't even thinking about it, it just decided to pop up into my head.  I was so excited that I told the story to my boss.  She thought I was nuts.

9. "When I Want You"-Del Amitri.  This band is vacationing with David + David somewhere.  And I just did this again: I misspelled a word early within it, and instead of clicking the cursor over the error I deleted everything back to the error.  What a colossal waste of time.

10. "The Heart of the Matter"-Don Henley.  Probably a good candidate to delete from the 'pod since I always skip over it.  The Eagles have turned into Wal-Mart whores anyway.

11. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World."-Tears for Fears.  Yes they do.  Mitt Romney even gives religious speeches about it.  I've done so well to avoid politics here, because both sides make me insane (tell me who is more qualified among the candidates then Bill Richardson?  He's been a successful governor, an ambassador to the UN (hello, foreign policy) and an energy secretary.  He also has a distinguished record in diplomacy, which will be the most important thing that the next president of the US will need).  I'll have to address this eventually, of course, but for now it makes my head spin.  It's bad enough my son has to be born under GW, but he might have to live his first four years under Guiliani, Clinton or Romney?  Whoa.