Ice! December 18, 2008

My life currently has a bit of  a theme.

 

Our first birthing class was on Monday (and I’m just now writing about it, yes. Sigh.) and guess who ended up having to coach a game on Monday night? My darling love, that’s who.  He was going to try and get someone else to coach for him, but I didn’t want the guys demoralized on my account, so Kanga went with me instead. I get wife points for this. Lots and lots of wife points.

 

The class was great… I hear. Out of the two and a half hours of class, we were present for about thirty minutes. Why, you ask? Not because of poor planning or procrastination, but because of ice. Driving through the Metroplex usually takes us about thirty minutes. Forty-five in traffic. Since we were going out past the Metroplex, we gave ourselves a good solid hour. And it took two and a half. Not kidding even a little bit!

Every. Single. Bridge. Had. Ice.

And by “bridge” I mean overpass. Which, there are kind of a lot.

 

So not only did everyone have to slow down quite a bit to avoid wrecking, but also had to stop for those who did NOT slow down and therefore wrecked. Which, I think, was the majority. There was also a lot of insane people driving on the shoulder THE WRONG WAY, making up lanes and shooting ahead, then shoving back into a real lane, and generally causing mayhem. This is not an area with much experience in winter weather, you can easily tell. This is one of those areas where if there is a forty percent chance that there MIGHT be some light snowfall, all bread and milk turns instantly to gold, then vanishes. Having lived in Colorado, this annoys me a bit.

 

As does being late, as you know. But this was so ridiculous that Kanga and I had not option but to laugh. What else is there to do? We sat in trafic and listened to the classical music station and mocked the impatient people who were spazzing out. And threatened them with dire consequences if they recklessly slid into us, or tried to cheat the rules of good traffic manners.

 

Finally, we got there, and I got over being embarassed at being VERY late and also husband-less. Everyone was very nice, and we hadn’t missed the relaxation and breathing techniques part of the lesson. I was sad that Joey missed a basic rundown of pregnancy physiology, though. It took me nearly an hour to explain to the man what a placenta is. I also got our books and assignments for next class (I never thought I would be so excited to have homework again, but it is kind of making me happy!) one of which is for the moms to give the dads a twenty minute backrub every evening. I asked the instructor if this applied to labor coaches who weren’t present for class.

But I AM giving him his backrubs. For the sake of doing our homework properly. And also because I wouldn’t be able to figure out most of these Bradley exercises without his help. There is a serious lack of bodily-kinesthetic intelligence in my brain. A really serious one. So once again, the wonder couple compliments each other’s deficits!

 

Because we didn’t have that pleasant of an experience with ice on Monday, we decided to try again the next day!

My mamma gave Kanga her Christmas present early  – tickets to ICE. ICE is an ice scuplture display thing at a big hotel here, and we hadn’t been before, so we made an afternoon of it. Basically, you get to borrow some huge North Pole looking parkas, and then wander freely through a 4 degree winter wonderland. Until your toes fall off. Joey swears that the snot in his nose froze solid. Which is disgusting, yes, but demonstrates how COLD it was!

It was also a lot of fun, and parts of it were extremely pretty.

 

Look! I found the cable-thingy that connects the camera to the computer! To celebrate, I will put an ACTUAL picture of our real selves on this blog. Which I will probably edit out later, so quick! See what we look like in real life!

 

Please note that in this picture I am about 60% parka.

 

Scout was particularly cute in hers, being so tiny.  Her arms were a good six inches shorter than her parka, which came down to her shoes and had more backbone than she does. She loved the ice slide, but was cold and crabby most of the time. When mamma asked her afterwards if she had even a LITTLE bit of fun, she sniffled, “No! I had a lot of fun. But I don’t like to be so much cold.” Which is kind of how I felt about it, too.