baby shower blues

Saturday was one of those perfectly grey and bitterly cold days that are so grey and so cold that they inspire a luxuriant and guiltless sloth. The kind of sloth that involves endless movies and take-out Chinese and the decadent three-hour long nap that upon waking leaves you with the non-too-vague sense that you've been hit over the head with a frying pan. (Hit over the head with a frying pan, but in a good way, of course.) It's the kind of day that might include a hot bubble bath, but more likely involves staying in your pajamas all day long, only rousing yourself to pick at your face in the bathroom mirror for countless minutes after your bladder forces you from your comfortable nest of blankets on the couch. The kind of day that even Fred prefers to spend under covers, only occasionally breaching from their depths for food or to gnaw on the foot of his favorite stuffed duck in a state of peri-catatonia.

It was that kind of day and I was SO excited. I was so excited for about three seconds, as I stretched and yawned, happy in the knowledge that I would be able to spend the day as a weather-dictated recluse. And then on the fourth I remembered. I had a baby shower to attend.

And not just any baby shower. A baby shower that happened to be Outside the Perimeter. For those of you not from Atlanta, people who live OTP are the equivalent of New York's Bridge and Tunnel crowd. Those of us who live inside the perimeter prefer not to cross the boundary that takes us outside of the perimeter lest we catch something itchy -- like Republicanism. Unless that is we're leaving the state via airplane. But even the airport is inside that line. Get it?

And this wasn't just on the other side of the Outside. This was like an HOUR on the Outside.

So rather than luxuriate in glorious lethargy, I was going to have to drag myself out of bed -- BATHE! -- DRESS! -- buy a gift and drive an hour each way in order to spend three hours in between drinking weirdly slimy, chunky punch*, playing ridiculously childish and yet often somewhat dangerous or disgusting games**, (devised, oh I don't know, say, circa 1806), before popping in my earplugs for the requisite high-pitched dolphin-squeal screams that accompany the unwrapping of very tiny clothes and the endless discussion of the perfect roundness of bellies and their comparative sizes to other bellies -- present bellies, bellies from generations past and occasionally even the immortalized bellies***. Anyway, there is never just one belly at the party, ergo they sort of dominate the conversation, much the same way they dominate the female figure at 8+ months.

Mein Gott im Himmel! Save me!

Truth be told, there's never a good day for a baby shower. Even if it's gorgeous out, spring-like and balmy. Even if it's next door or God forbid, in your very own house, it's a chunk of your Saturday spent participating in an event that can only be met with a certain grim determination. That is, if you're single and childless. If you're married and/or a parent it's an event at which you can spend time with people like yourself. So less grim determination. More oh-thank-god-people-who-speak-real-sentences-and-only- drool-when-drunk.

The older I get, the clearer that line becomes. The us and the them. The singletons and the married. The parents and the childless. The gap in conversation gets wider and wider. The common topics ever more narrow.

"What did we used to talk about," my college roommate (recently pregnant) asked the group of us after a prolonged conversation about the relative merits of different breast pumps, whether to rent or buy said breast pumps and the apparent act of abomination known as the "Pump-and-Dump" -- an occasionally necessary evil.

"I can't remember," someone else said.

"Sex and boys," I said, to a chorus of "Oh yeahs!" (Because, since I'm not married and have no children, that's what my girlfriends and I still talk about.)

"Well, if it makes anyone feel any better, I'm hung-over," a new mother declared with a note of pride.

"Me too!" said another, before adding, "Of course, I'm a total light weight now. One glass of wine. . . "

And I had to tune out. Because I'm not married and I don't have children. And I can go out whenever I want. And my body is still my own and pretty much looks like it did in college -- less a little turgidity, plus a few more wrinkles. And as much as I care about my friends and my friends' kids -- genuinely, truly love them even -- I really don't care-care about the details. The same way I don't care-care about the melting of the ice-caps, because it's something of which I have no real concrete grasp. It's important to me that my friends are happy. It's important to me that the ice caps stop melting. But just as I'm not going to measure oceanic water levels the next time I'm at the beach, I don't need the differential measurement of pre- and post-pregnancy nipple circumference. Thanks, anyway.

In the end, I guess it's not the baby shower. It's what the baby shower represents. And as a single girl in her 30s, with each passing shower****, it becomes increasingly clear that finally I'm the one who's OTP -- Outside the Pregnancy -- and there's just no true understanding across the line.

And given that, if you don't mind, I'd really much rather sleep in. *****

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* Okay, what is UP with the punch the penchant for punch? It's gross. Pastel colored with chunks of slimy, mystery fruit or jello and a skim of froth that typically looks as if it was transplanted from the frog pond out back. And nothing, nothing is worse than an unexpected chunk of bloated banana sliding down the back of your throat. Gack. Listen, punch was designed to distract from the flavor of cheap-ass liquor and without the alcohol, it's just as disgusting, but pointlessly so. Whatever happened to the nice mimosa? The comfort of a Bloody Mary? Heck, the common cup of coffee! I'm coming to your shower. . . at least give me a drinkable drink!

**For example, accidentally let the word "baby" slip from your lips and some ancient auntie is liable to make a screaming dive at you from across the room, practically ripping your shirt from your body with her age-spotted claws in an attempt to unhinge the diaper pin the hostess poked into your collar when you walked though the door. "YOU SAID 'BABY'! SHE SAID 'BABY'! I GET YOUR PIN! I GOT HER PIN!" she'll crow to the room, somehow making you feel suddenly very naked and very stupid and very much like cursing a blue streak at this blue hair whose demeanor is less the genteel old lady and more the street-thug in fake pearls.

It's a GD pin, woman, dial it back a notch!

Or then there's the game in which a blindfolded "volunteer" is forced to sniff a Hershey bar melted into a diaper. Oh. so. not. really. funny.

***A trend -- making a plaster cast of the pregnant belly for artistic display or even practical function. Turn it upside down and it makes a rather nice, if somewhat bizarre, bowl for chips and salsa.

****And honestly, it's been like 35 of them in the past 6 years. Really.

*****I know, if you're a mother or a father of a young child, you'd KILL to sleep in on a Saturday and you've got no sympathy. I know I'm lucky. I feel your pain. But comfort yourself with the knowledge that when you're old you've got a built-in someone to change YOUR diapers. And I'll be hiring strangers. So let me sleep!