Rambling Rhodes

Hooray! We're Screwed!

One evening, about a month or so ago, my wife experienced some extreme abdominal pain. I can't profess to understand exactly what she was feeling, but I kept flinching and dodging, expecting an alien to burst forth from her chest at any moment.

The pain was so great, in fact, we loaded the family into the car and drove to the emergency room. However, as soon as we pulled up in front of the emergency room door, the pain vanished. With non-existent, non-specific pain, we knew going into the emergency room at that point could be a marathon-length affair, and we already had a toddler wailing away in his car seat because it was almost an hour past his bedtime. The solution? Go back home.

As a precaution, my wife made an appointment the next day to have everything checked out. You see, she had taken a pregnancy test the week before, which came back positive, so we just wanted to ensure everything was okay. Modern medicine being the marvel it is, that initial check-up simply involved a pregnancy test, so we weren't particularly surprised to receive results a couple days later confirming exactly what peeing on a stick had already confirmed in less than a minute.

Having re-confirmed her pregnancy, the hospital asked her to come back in to determine if everything was okay following our almost-emergency-room visit from the previous week. As part of the examination, they performed an ultrasound.

Now, I have a 13-month-old son, so I saw quite a few ultrasound images during his formative womb months. Therefore, when my wife placed the ultrasound image on the coffee table, I could tell from 12 feet away something was different this time around.

Instead of a familiar single circle, there were two distinct circles, almost as if my wife's uterus was wearing a pair of cheap, thick novelty glasses.

"Well, that's twins," I said in a surprisingly zen voice.

"Yeah, twins!" my wife confirmed.

"So, like, we're going to have three babies in diapers," I calculated correctly.

"Hooray! We're SCREWED!" we both exclaimed.

And, we are screwed. I mean, we're very happy and excited, but we're also very screwed. There's really no getting around the fact we're screwed. We're already drowning in diapers and sleep deprivation with one child. We figured we could adequately function with one more baby in the house, but this whole twins development basically has us freaking out.

For example, my wife and I came to a sudden conclusion shortly after the ultrasound doomed--I mean, enriched--our lives. She called me one afternoon, and it was like our brains had sparked the exact same thought at the exact same time.

"We're gonna need a new vehicle!" we said, almost simultaneously.

And we totally need a new vehicle. During our son's entire first year, I had to ride in the back seat of my wife's VW Jetta, because the rear-facing car seat pushed the front seat so far forward, I practically had to kiss the windshield if I sat up front. To put it mildly, such a vehicle is not equipped to transport three babies in car seats, in addition to two adults. And don't even get me started on my Cadillac Eldorado. It's a two door, for crying out loud--ADULTS have trouble getting into that back seat.

So, we've been kinda, sorta shopping around for a minivan. I say "kinda, sorta" because, in the back of our minds, we both have no idea how we're going to pay for a minivan. I keep checking the ultrasound to see if maybe there's a briefcase of cash floating around with the twins. So far, no dice.

And so begins the next iteration of "Rambling Rhodes"--or "Coated Scrotum," as it currently stands--which may just as well be re-named "Minnesota Twins," or "Dead Man Walking." Regardless, this ThunderJournal could become a lot more. . . interesting. . . in the coming months and years.

Posted by Ryan at November 10, 2010 02:15 PM | TrackBack