TwoBusy: Bad things don't always happen in threes

May 07, 2008

Bad things don't always happen in threes

Two of the friends I visited down in DC the other weekend were Mr and MrsAngus, who recently discovered that sometime this fall they would be supplementing their 2ish BabyAngus with - take a deep breath - twins.

As several of you know, I've long felt that it's not just my divine right but, in fact, my obligation to greet the news of "I've been knocked up/I knocked my wife up!" with a response of "Congratulations! I hereby curse you with twins." But this is the first time it's ever worked. And I have to admit: I spent almost our entire time together cackling evilly at the Anguses. (Which I'm now realizing, as a pseudonym, makes them sound like beef. Oh, well. Good thing they're not vegetarians.)

They kept asking me the nervous questions of expectant parents: How big did TheWife get before she delivered? (Answer: Pretty fuckin' huge, dude.) How long did it take her to recover? (Answer: I'll let you know when it happens.) How did you get sleep? (Answer: We slept in shifts, except that I decided that I was expendable and TheWife wasn't, so I basically spent the first several months living - and working full-time - on about 2 hours of sleep a night. By the end, my coworkers were taking bets on when I would fall over and die. (That's not a joke, btw.)) How screwed are we? (Answer: Pretty screwed. Congratulations!)

All of which sent me to my iPhoto archives after I returned home. TheWife wandered in, and together we looked through shots of her during her pregnancy, and marveled at how we'd forgotten that once she was a subcontinent. We poured through volumes of twinfant shots, and I was forced to admit - when looking at them as newborns - that I could no longer tell, at that stage, which was which. (Which is no different from the way it was at the time. Thank god for hospital bracelets, is all I can say.) We looked at lots of pictures of a very young Rabbit screaming, and recalled how for at least the first nine months we could only describe her personality as "pretty pissed off." We reminisced, realized just how much of a horrifying blur that first year was, and savored what terrific little girls the twins have since become. And we talked about all that our dear friends the Anguses would experience in the years to come.

At the end, sitting there in the dark, bathed in the soft electric glow of the computer screen, we shared a special moment in which our eyes met - full of love, and shared experience, and understanding - and said as one: "Thank god it's not us."

09:41 AM | Permalink

Comments

Heh - "Thank God it's not us."

Indeed.

I'm thankful that we're only expecting one. Yes, I know that ups us to three, but we decided we enjoyed the smaller, incremental steps rather than the "holy shit" onslaught of a litter.

Posted by:mr. big dubya | May 07, 2008 at 10:10 AM

I don't even think it would be a remote possibility in my famil tree, and I still think "thank God it's not/wasn't me."

(good book choices over there, btw...)

Posted by:foradifferentkindofgirl | May 07, 2008 at 01:23 PM

Oh, I LOVE that picture! My husband and I are weak, weak people and would never have survived two at once. I salute you both.

Posted by:Pam | May 07, 2008 at 07:31 PM

Holy crap, i couldn't even imagine. One at a time is hard enough. Pretty screwed, heh.

Posted by:claire | May 09, 2008 at 11:00 AM

Dubs: I still say you're a sucker.

KOG: As you'll recall from my 2/13 post, we didn't have any family history either. Nevertheless: twins happen.

Pam: Thanks... I'd forgotten about that photo, and was happy to find it again. It pretty neatly encapsulates a time in my life that I now like to pretend happened to someone else.

Claire: It's not the kind of thing you can really wrap your head around, even if/when it's happening to you.

Posted by:TwoBusy | May 09, 2008 at 10:55 PM

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Neilson Hubbard: I Love Your Muscles
A limp, wet noodle of an album, and a huge disappointment from one of my favorite singer-songwriter types. Admittedly, my expectations for this were high -- especially given that Hubbard had previously put out the quiet and beautifully meditative "Stars" and the often-wrenching "Why Men Fail," which is easily one of the best records you've never heard. What do we get instead? EZ listening, bland lyrics, unimaginative arrangements... by the time you reach his cover of "Lady in Red" (shudder) you may wonder what you ever saw in him in the first place.
Alcest: Souvenirs d'Un Autre Monde
This one's easy to describe -- kind of a folk/black metal hybrid that ends up sounding a lot like shoegaze. With French lyrics. Wait... where are you going? (Honestly, it's really quite lovely. And sad. Even with my dim recollection of high school-level French, I can figure out the sad part. Plus, it's pretty much a guarantee that you'll be the first kid on your block to hear it...)
Sigur Rós: Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust
Bliss. Just... bliss. And no, I don't know how to pronounce the title. And no, it couldn't possibly matter less. This is a sunnier version of Sigur Ros than we've encountered before, but no less breathtakingly gorgeous. Run, don't walk (naked, if necessary) to make this a part of your life.
Bob Mould: District Line
I picked this up when I saw him play live back in March, but it wasn't until earlier this week that it really caught and held my ear. Overall, this is a very solid album - with several songs that would sound perfectly in place with any of your favorite Sugar CDs - but two songs stand out head and shoulders above the rest. The first is "Again and Again," which I'd been mishearing (and enjoying) for months as a classic bitter Bob sendoff to an ex-lover, along the lines of "Explode and Make Up." Wrong: a closer examination (read: I started paying attention) shows that behind the gorgeous Richard Thompson-esque guitar solo and great ragged Bob voice lies nothing less than a heart-wrenching account of a life spiraling downward and out of control... in short, a suicide note. I can't remember suddenly hearing a song I've been half-listening to and GETTING it like this - and being so deeply moved - since the light turned on for me with Peter Gabriel's "Family Snapshot" back in high school. What's really impressive is that "Again and Again" bookends with "Old Highs New Lows," which is as lovely a song as he's ever recorded -- a love song, basically, to his life in music. The song blurs slightly into electronica (a relatively recent passion of Mr. Mould's, thoroughly explored on his never-to-be-heard-by-me album "Modulate"), but in the end it's just a gorgeous piece of work. Viva Bob!
The Autumns: Fake Noise From a Box of Toys
Here's the thing: I can see what they were trying to do, and I think they succeeded. But I just don't enjoy it. Over the past decade-plus, The Autumns have created some of the most strange, beautiful and drama-soaked music anywhere -- try listening to The Boy With Aluminum Stilts or Hush, Plain Girls and not be moved by the power of what you hear. That being said, it's clear they came at this new album with a different tactic... it's like they're trying to capture the dischordant sounds of a world coming apart at the seams. And they do it, with great skill. But. That strange beauty that characterized so much of their earlier music is gone... and with it, my ability to enjoy this album.

Reading is Fundamental

Koushun Takami: Battle Royale
A completely insane Japanese update on "Lord of the Flies." The writing (or the translation) is on the crude side, but there's no denying the visceral impact of a plot where, as part of a government program, 42 Japanese teenagers are dropped onto an island and told to start killing each other.
Boston Teran: Never Count Out the Dead
Another ferocious crime novel from the mysterious and psuedonymous Boston Teran -- this one featuring what may be the single most damaged mother-daughter relationship in literary history. Not for the weak of heart.
Suzanne Finnamore: Otherwise Engaged: A Novel
This was a Jonniker recommendation, and while I bought it for TheWife as a birthday gift I have to admit I was a little apprehensive about it -- most of the blurb reviews spotlighted this as chick lit in its most classic sense. Now, don't get me wrong: I enjoyed Bridget Jones' Diary (the movie, at least) as much as anyone else, and I definitely understand the appeal of the genre. But it's not something I usually stray into. Well, let me clarify: this isn't chick lit... this is fucking GOOD writing. The trappings of the plot - woman in her 30s gets engaged, has doubts, gets stressed, hurtles toward her wedding - scream chick lit, but the execution is waaaaaay beyond anything you'd associate with that diminutizing description. Finnamore has an eye for detail that is razor sharp in the sense that not only does she capture unexpected nuances in crystalline perfection, but in that the observations cut deep and true -- transforming her very funny scene-snippits into snapshots of a life gone numb with entitlement and pointless ambition and defensive sarcasm and, beneath it all, a deep and profound and nameless fear of the known and the unknown and everything in between. The fact that the novel manages to achieve all of this depth while simultaneously being funny and entertaining is just about the highest praise I can imagine. Screw genre categorization -- this is great writing.
Barry Eisler: The Last Assassin
Is it a bad sign when you're 110 pages into a theoretically fast-paced thriller and all you can think is that you wish you'd picked up something else instead? Probably. (Update: uh... yeah, that was a bad sign. What a disappointment from a usually reliable author.)
Kim Stanley Robinson: Antarctica
672 pages of ecopolitics. There's a lot to admire in this book - the in-depth portrayal of societies in microcosm, feng shui, geology/glaciology, the way global politics impact lives on a small scale, etc. - but in the end I think I admired it more than I enjoyed it. Although there was a span of about 200 pages or so where Robinson managed to weave in a pretty compelling adventure/survival story... if only more of the book had been that riveting.