Babies smell.

I'm twenty four years old and I've been married for three and a half years. I have one husband, one dog, one cat, three guppies and an eel and we all live in an apartment in Indiana. I have two jobs. Neither one pays me anything close to "enough". I have no children. There are several reasons for this:

I may be twenty four, but I have all the emotional characteristics of a twelve year old 75% of the time.

I have crazy, week-long, incapacitating panic attacks

I have obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Rituals. Mind games. If you don't rip that post-it into exactly five pieces, something terrible will happen to you. Are you SURE you ripped it into FIVE pieces? Better dig through the trash and make sure. Wait. Dump it out. What if there's six? Jesusgod, what are you going to do?

I take medication for above facts. An every-day normalization pill and the occasional the-world-is-beautiful-let's-frolic-through-fields-of-daisies horse tranquilizer.

My husband will be thirty in April. His brother just had the family's first baby. Tony's been crying since fucking Friday. Isn't he beautiful. Isn't he wonderful. I can't believe how small he is. Oh look, Ralph, you made that. Oh, he sneezed. He blinked. He crapped himself. How lovely. Everyone has babies up here. Everywhere we go, Tony's got somebody's baby in his arms and he's rocking it and smiling like he just won the fucking lottery and he says things like 'I can't wait until my baby cries.' and 'I can't wait for my kids to grow up with my brother's and sister's kids. All together'.

Except. WAIT. HOLD ON.

He asks about hospitals. He asks for recommendations. I growl that I'm NOT having a baby in Canada where my mom ISN'T. I am going to have one where she IS. IF I have one at all. He says he's "making small talk". So. Every time he makes small talk it's like a hot knife in my chest. Knocks the breath out of me. I feel like I am in a constant state of having to choose between my mother [subsequently my home, my family, my peace of mind] and Canada [Tony's family, dirty hospitals, more immigration proceedings and very possibly more Total Emotional Shutdowns]. He gives me these long, searching looks and it makes me want to run into traffic - I'm miserable because I know I can put off the inevitable for a while longer, but sooner or later I'm going to have to come up with a Final Decision.

I want to go to one of those old Sanitariums in the mountains where you just sit in a rocking chair on the porch with a plaid blanket in your lap all day. And I want to take my tranquilizers.

Babies are slow.

Yesterday we spent six and a half hours at the hospital. There was no waiting room in the labor and delivery unit, so Tony and I camped out on the floor next to the registration desk. He did eight crosswords. I read an entire book. Every once in a while, Ralph [the Dad-to-Be] would come out, looking haggard and worn down and say something like, 'No change' or 'She's sleeping' or 'Dear fucking god she's been at six centimeters for THREE HOURS'. Well. I screamed that last one myself. It echoed in the dingy hallways.

Here's my thing: So Canadians have free healthcare. Good for you guys. But. Seriously. Do you think maybe your hospitals could at some point acquire a BROOM? Or some FUCKING CHAIRS? How about a couple of BEDS? Sarah finally had the baby despite the fact that his middle name was never changed. He's over eight pounds and twenty two inches long. While he appears to be beautiful, I cannot say this for sure as I have not been allowed to actually SEE the baby yet. Because. We're not allowed into the sterile delivery room, but that's the only place the hospital HAS BEDS. We camped out in the hallway, hoping that at some point, Ralph would be able to sneak the baby out for us to see. Under his shirt or something. I offered him my purse. Every once in a while this nurse in a red shirt would walk past and say, 'Guys, it's going to be a while. We don't have any beds. Maybe you should try tomorrow [sympathetic smile, giggle, tilt head]. She started repeating this at about ten o'clock, which was two hours after visiting hours were officially over. BUT. She NEVER ASKED US TO LEAVE. I figured that the hallway was a safety zone. Like in freeze tag.

SO, she finally had the baby. At 10:30. Tony and I paced and paced and paced and waited for Ralph to come running out the doors, Zachary held high above his head, followed by a small army of angry, Canadian nurses. It never happened. He did, however, take my camera in the delivery room and return with some of the cutest damn baby pictures I've ever seen.

We were winding down, hugging and looking at the pictures when the nurse in the red shirt walked past us, stopped and turned around. She'd been so nice and honest and smiley all night, I was about to thank her. Before I could say anything, though, her mouth opened and she yelled: 'SERIOUSLY LEAVE WE HAVE SECURITY FOR THIS KIND OF THING GO NOW.'

...And then she trotted down to her semi-private room in the psych ward, turned on some nice music and called it a night.

'Canada' in American spells 'P-O-R-K'.

Ohmygod, all we do up here is eat bacon and sausage and homemade salami. I don't feel so good.

We drove up to Canada on Sunday after I got off work at four. Two Big Things are happening: My brother-in-law and his wife are having a baby - she was due nine days ago and if it doesn't peek out anytime between now and Thursday they're going to yank him. His name is supposed to be Zachary Cosmo, after Tony's uberItalian father. Being the early-thirties-arty-hipsters that they are, though, his parents-in-waiting have decided to name him 'Cosmos'...'You know. Because it's a little bit of dad, and...it's like the universe...and everything.' Tony and I are maintaining that he has launched a silent, solitary protest of his middle name and is refusing to come out until they come to their senses and change it.

Big Thing Number Two is the Godfather-style wedding of my husband's sister. There will be 260 people in attendance and the hall they rented for the reception is costing the family four thousand dollars LESS than what I make in AN ENTIRE YEAR. They saved money on the wedding planner, though, in that they didn't hire one. My sister in law has planned the whole thing herself. She even made all the centerpieces and nameplates. I'm a little nervous. The last time I was a witness to the planning of a wedding of this magnitude, it was an ex-boyfriend's sister who was getting married. She stayed so busy, running around, arranging the flowers, arranging the pictures, the sanctuary, planning the menu. She was so hectic and stressed out and sleep-deprived that it hardly surprised me at all when, at the rehearsal dinner, she hiked up her dress and flashed the minister - revealing to many that she'd forgotten her underwear. A little more surprising was the total and complete emotional breakdown that followed. They never made it on their honeymoon. At the airport, she kept running away from her new husband and flinging herself at strangers' feet, telling them tearful stories from her childhood. It took months to get her corralled in and on enough meds to control her outburts - an arrest to keep her from spending all night swimming half a mile across the lake in her underwear to use the neighbor's phone at 3am.

So. Since Monday morning I have been perched on the couch - the Banana at my feet, a cheesy Minette Walters mystery in one hand and a piece of bacon in the other. I'm listening for the phone call that will inform us that Zach has decided to grace us with his presence, and also for the sounds of emotional strain/panic/angry paranoia in my sister-in-law's voice. So far there has been no breakdown. BUT. We still have four days to go. At least she's the type who would never go without underwear.

Dangerous waters.

Right outside our patio there is a lake. Or a pond/drainage area/unofficial waste treatment center. Whatever you want to call it. It's nice, especially at night, when I can sit on my patio and watch the lights reflect on the water. Very relaxing. The Banana adores it, as the Pond provides her with a near-endless supply of ducks and geese to bark her little [it IS a little undersized] head off and occasionally rush right through the screen door, taking it all the way off of its little track-wheels. We even have a couple herons who live on the pond. SO WHATEVER, IT'S NICE. Anyways. I was somewhat disturbed to come home after running errands to find what appears to be a disembodied floating crocodile head with glowing eyes on a string hanging out in the middle of the water. It doesn't really look like a toy, so I can only assume that it's a tool of some sort, but I can't even begin to fathom what its purpose could be. I mean. It could be one of those floating pool-cleaners, or something, but. It would take about a million of those to clean the scuzzy, moss-green waters of our beloved pond. And. As I can deduce by a quick glance at the bottom of my shoes, it sure as hell isn't scaring the geese away.

It's Me vs. Mandi.

The manager of our apartment complex used to be an old woman. She wore readers on a chain around her neck and sweaters tied around her shoulders. She was afraid of dogs and had soft white/blond hair and soft, glowy pinkish skin. She looked like a walking glamour shot - sans the mall hair and turquoise sequined low-cut gown. Most importantly: She was nice. She understood that the little things...our furnace leaking carbon monoxide, all of our kitchen appliances breaking simultaneously...were not our fault. They were our APARTMENT'S fault. And it was her job to fix them. We had a nice agreement.

We have a new manager now. HER name is Mandi-With-An-I. Her very name makes my soul ache. When they flooded our apartment, she didn't do anything to help us. When we asked about mold, she was condescending and snotty. When we asked to move, she lead us on for a week and a half and then basically told us no in the nasal, eleven-year-old-girl-whiny message she left on our answering machine. I don't like Mandi. When our apartment flooded, I had to move some wet things outside to the patio to dry. Two days later, I got a letter informing me that I was breaking my lease agreement and needed to move the things off my patio under threat of "repercussions". I am 78% sure that she hovers outside our patio fence, waiting for the one time we let the Banana use the outdoor facilities without cleaning it up RIGHT AWAY. Because we get letters. Oh, the letters. Misspelled, poor grammar on fluorescent paper. Short and to the point, always signed 'Sincerely, Mandi' and promising us fines or eviction or Chinese water torture or whatever the hell it is, exactly, that she means by "repercussions".

Anyways. We have two cars: One that runs, one that doesn't. We haven't had enough money to fix the dead one and it's been sitting in the same spot for about three months now. We're also leaving for Canada on Saturday, which is stressfull and expensive. We have so many bills to pay right now I'm not really sure how we're going to pay rent, let alone gas to fucking Canada. Stress. Lots of it.

My bright yellow letter delivered today informed me that maintenance is repaving my lot and I need to make sure my cars are moved to the other side of the complex by tomorrow night. Or else. You know. She'll just have to have it towed at my expense.

YOU'D LIKE THAT, WOULDN'T YOU MANDI.

Ahem.

THANKS FOR THE FUCKING NOTICE, MANDI.

Please someone send me a house.
Or a car.
Or. Something.
Save me from Mandi.