Funny Surprise

Today is the first day of ICLW, so welcome one and all who may stop by for that. My history is on the sidebar, but the long and short of it is that we are 10 weeks pregnant after two long years of trying and not trying and things not working out, in general.

Now on to the surprise. . .

T. and I agreed when we first found out that we are pregnant that we wouldn't tell anyone until we were through the first trimester. Despite my best intentions, however, a very close friend figured it out. She is the only person that I have talked to IRL about TTC, because as I've mentioned many times before, I just have no interest in bearing the burden of other people's expectations; it's all I can do to deal with my own. So anyway, my friend figured it out, and has been extremely excited for us, which has been really great. It is so nice to have someone excited for us. Because of our ages, I have every expectation that there are going to be people who tell us that we are screwing up our lives by having kids now, and I am dreading dealing with those people. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, a mother of two teenagers told me that she thinks we are doing the right thing by not having kids, because we have so much freedom, and we aren't missing anything. But I digress. . .

My friend is very excited every time I talk to her. We were at her house the other night, and she was asking a million questions, and then busted out with the following:

"When are you going to tell people? Oooh, can I give you a present? Will that freak you out??? I totally found the best thing at the dump!"

At which point, she disappeared into her garage. A present? The DUMP? Wuh???

She returned two seconds later with something very similar to this:



a giant activity cube, with letters and animals and colored beads. I totally cracked up. I told her that I couldn't wait to write in the baby's baby book that the first baby present we received came from the dump*.

*Perhaps I should explain that here in my little corner of New England, there is no curbside trash pickup (in fact, there aren't really any curbs, since there are no sidewalks in most places). Everyone has to bring their own trash to the dump, so the dump becomes a busy place on the weekends, which everyone by necessity frequents. Because of this, many towns have little rooms at the dump where people can leave items they no longer want, and other people can take them for free. It's sort of like having a little thrift store at the dump. There is often really good stuff there, especially in some of the wealthier towns. My friend got her baby jogger there, and now this. So, it's not like she pulled it out of the trash bin. And of course, I will thoroughly disinfect it.