I left had this up on my laptop and left it open on the dining room table. A few hours later I found my wife giggling over it. A bit of background is in order: you couldn’t pay my wife to read anything I or anyone else posts on what she so beneficently refers to as “your gay website”. But here she was laughing at my story of how I nearly started a street fight with our then two-month old boy strapped to my chest. Aha! I thought to myself. I need to print these out for her as some sort of “thanks-for-giving-birth-to-our-second-baby” gift. And so I have, and so she loves them. Last night, after reading the first ten or so she said, “These make me happy.” Sorry fellow Everythingians, but all your chings! And upvotes can’t hold the world’s tiniest candle to that.
So on I filibuster, for reasons of love, hubris, anxiety and stubbornness, roughly in that order of importance.
Hours later. Heather’s been to the doctor for another so-called “non-stress test” for the baby. The baby’s fine.
Well, duh! Of course the baby isn’t stressed! It’s living la vida bonita in there. I’d hang on for dear life too if I could.
Anyway, the inducing discussion was had, and we’re tentatively scheduled to go in next Tuesday morning. Now if the labor and delivery triage is overfull for some reason-- i.e. there are too many women in natural labor or with problemsu—- then we’ll get bumped to Friday. On Friday Heather will be officially 42 weeks, or two weeks overdue. Then she’ll bump up to a higher priority, and it’s pretty certain the baby will be born on that day at the very latest.
So what does that mean for you, gentle reader? It means you have to endure this interminable daylog filibuster for probably only four more days, a week at the longest. I know, I know! After so long you, like me, never expected hard numbers, did you?
Thanks to Swap who recommended The Death Clock, I found out my personal death date is Thursday, June 21, 2040. A Solstice death. Can’t beat that!
Now, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I hope the kid is a girl, though a boy would obviously be just as welcome. So . . . for the sake of experiment, let’s just plug her as a female being born on Tuesday, and see what we get, shall we? . . .
My daughter will die on Saturday, August 19, 2084 .
My heart literally lifted when I saw how far off this is.
Reminds me of Zen story.
The Emperor called in a famous Zen master to give his newborn son a blessing. The monk held the child in his arms and said to the great man: “You die. Your son dies. His son dies.”
The emperor was furious. He had the guards seize the monk and seriously considered executing him on the spot, but before he had him killed the Emperor asked the master to explain himself. (And both men were lucky the monk did, since Zen Masters aren’t always so cooperative.)
“It’s simple”, said the monk. “It’s what we all hope for. To die before our children and for them to die before theirs. It is the natural order of things. A blessing, like you asked for. Anything different would be the worst curse imaginable.”
Ah, my fishy! Live! Live on past the date the stupid death clock predicts. Live on into that newer century. I’ll be long gone and right there with you.