Of cable & cliffs

Last night I think I caught a glimpse of how a pregnant man might act. At least, it is how I imagine a pregnant man might act. I was in a foul mood. I could feel it in myself; I knew I was just spitting mean. And all I wanted was to sit in a chair, unmolested, and watch TV. My TV. Not Ben 10. Not Tom & Jerry. Not Barbie in Mermaidia. Not Shark Tank or the news. Just mindless, mama TV, preferably something I've been loading up on the DVR in anticipation of many long hours of night nursing. I did not want to compromise. I did not want to share the clicker or have a kid or three crawling all over me. This may not sound like the most ambitious of dreams, but, believe me, for a mama of 4 and even a wife of 1, it isn't as easy as it sounds. So I ungraciously kicked out the cartooners and collapsed in the recliner. I got my show on, and in less than 30 seconds had 2 little girls on my lap--not just cuddling calmly (of course) but literally physically fighting on top of me and around my enormous belly. Then I had one child decide it made more sense just to perch near my shoulder on the recliner, like a cat. Or a parrot. Then Chad came in and started complaining about the show I had chosen. (He loves this "Shark Tank" show about business people and inventors trying to cut a deal with investors. In better moods, I can tolerate it, but as a liberal arts girl at heart stuck in the deepest bowels of corporate America for 45+ hours a week, I lose interest in topics of commerce and money by some Friday nights. Especially this Friday night). We do have other TVs in the house. But one is in the kitchen, which is not conducive to lounging, and one is in the basement and hooked up to the satellite receiver in the living room (which means you can only watch the same show -aka Shark Tank). In addition, since our basement flooded, there is no carpet and limited furniture down there (mostly stacked against one wall), so it isn't exactly pleasant. So, I made a decision. "That's it," I declared, lumbering to my feet and looking for my shoes. "I'm going to buy my own TV." Everyone looked up in surprise, both because I'm not much of a TV girl and because I'm not given to such spontaneous and expensive demands. I almost always prefer reading to channel surfing, and have been very noisy about my insistence that shrines not be built in our home to the almighty tube. But ever since we got back from visiting my sister over Thanksgiving, I've been taken with the idea of a small TV in my bedroom. Carrie has a little nook in her bedroom with her baby rocker, the DVR, and a DVD player where she can sit and nurse her baby away from the noise of the main house, or nestle her big boys in for a movie while she naps or reads on her bed. It seemed like a nice little arrangement. I have a rocker, and a bedroom, and even an extra DVD player somewhere. All I needed was a TV. I asked for one for Christmas, and it didn't happen (I did get my Kindle, which was higher on my list). And I've been halfheartedly wishing for one ever since, though I never put any action into it. So this wasn't altogether an unheard of demand. But at 8pm on a random Friday, it was a bit surprising. It occurred to me then, that this is the kind of thing a pregnant man would demand--and then go do. I, however, have made it through 4 pregnancies without insisting upon my own TV. So my family was a bit taken aback. Undeterred, I loaded up. Here is what a pregnant man would NOT do. Agree to take his 2 youngest daughters along on the errand (their request—not their dad’s). Grab the list of other WalMart necessities on the way out the door. Write down the spouse's instructions about price, brand, pixels, and also take his order for cold medicine. But, whatever. I was on a mission. I got to WalMart, got to the TVs and proceeded to look for the size and brand I had been encouraged to buy. Here's where it gets annoying. My phone rang. Claire climbed up on a shelf next to the teetering TVs. I answered the phone and Chad started telling me about the deals he was finding online, and babbling about resolutions and LCDs vs. LEDs. Claire fell face first off the shelf and Lucy started rummaging through my make up bag and pulled out a dark red lipstick delightedly. The WalMart guy came over to "help." Can you guess how this story ends? With a purchase of cold medicine and sippy cups, an aggravated stomp across a crowded parking lot with a screaming two year old under my arm (she did not take kindly to not being allowed to wear lipstick), and a fast, pissed off drive home. This is what I wanted to happen. I wanted to march into WalMart, gloriously, hormonally annoyed, and pick the first TV I saw off the shelf. I wanted to whip out my credit card and stomp back home, where Chad would meekly be waiting with his drill and cables in hand to hang it and hook it up for me. Then I wanted to crawl in my bed and watch some movie I’ve seen a thousand times but is NOT designed for children and just veg out, uninterrupted. I am a buyer. A decider. Chad is a noodler and a debater. We are good for each other (of course I realize this is one of those things that makes us make sense together). I’m a cliff jumper. Chad is a cliff ponderer. I see a cliff, decide to jump, climb up, and jump. Chad will sit looking at the cliff, measuring the height of the peak and the depth of the water below, gauging the weather and the wind, talking to others who have jumped and others who have not for months before actually, tentatively, approaching the cliff in consideration of a jump sometime in the future. His job is to stop me from jumping off cliffs into boulder strewn, shark infested waters. And my job is to keep him from staring too long at sunsets into which we could soar. I used to make purchases (even big ones) this way all the time. Emotionally. Quickly. I’ve never been rich, but I’ve never worried much about money. In all my hours of pondering my next meal, it has never been due to concern about how it would be paid for. And I’ve never enjoyed the process of shopping and comparing features and benefits and prices. If I want something, I want to go out and get it. End of story. This is endlessly frustrating to my penny pinching and detail obsessed husband. So I’ve acquiesced, in most cases, and, again, in this one. I’m not that into stuff, so I’m generally fine going without, or waiting for him to decide. But last night, I wanted my OWN DAMN TV. But, reason prevailed, of course. I’m still not convinced it would have hurt anything to spend a few hundred bucks on my own little TV. The other thing about me is I’m not one to grieve over missed opportunities in purchasing actions. If I saw the same TV for $50 less a week from now, it probably wouldn’t even register with me. If some fabulous new feature came out in TVs next week, I wouldn’t mourn its lack in my own set. But Chad would. And apparently I wasn’t quite irrational enough to decide it was worth 6 months worth of “should haves” from my beloved over a TV I would certainly be too tired to watch by the time I got it home and hooked up anyway. So this is what did happen. I came home and put 3 children to bed—one a weeping toddler who just couldn’t get over the lipstick incident. I brushed my teeth, prayed with my son, kissed my tween (who wasn’t a bit tired, of course), and collapsed, exhausted, in my own bed, to dream of the day when I could reign over my own clicker, completely supreme.