*kendraspondence*

If you’re reading this, Mom, pretend you’re not reading this and pretend to be out-of-skull surprised when you receive the call from Baby Daddy…

Two days ago, my father left me a message regarding a reliable way to induce labor. My father is a bona fide EXPERT on birth, so much that when I was born, he was likely so sicked out by even the thought of watching a wrinkled kewpie doll crown that he went to the cafeteria and ate a tuna sandwich.

So clearly his counsel was to be taken seriously as the tried, true words of a man who’s BEEN THERE.

“Just remember this: Balsamic. Dressing,” he said effusively, over voicemail.

Last night I had a delicious green salad, cheffed up by the hands of Lovey Loverpants. Walnuts. Red peppers. Cheese. Drizzled with balsamic dressing.

Four hours later and Hoover Dam broke.

Stay tuned…

We’re waiting for you, little one. This is not a desperate plea – just a warm entreaty for you to come and join us.

You’ve been a twinkle in our eye for so long now. We’ve watched your roundhouse kicks and felt your violent hiccups. Now, we can see you mooning us as your wee little rump roves back and forth along the top hemisphere of Mama’s belly.

We’ve got the names picked out, our CPR skills polished, and every night we tell you how much we love you and how excited we are to take care of you.

We also have very, very bad singing voices as you’ve noticed and we suspect this may indeed be the reason for your delayed entrance.

But I also wanted to show you that we’ve prepared in other ways for you, too.

So, first, here’s ‘da crib:

Some feathered friends:

If you’re a girl, you’ll appreciate this closet…

full of clothes!

Speaking of drawers, we’ve got some clean ones for ya:

Even Mr. Frogman is eager for your arrival, and for your first bathtime.

I even baked…you like Funfetti, don’t you?

Well, whatever your plans may be, we’ll leave the light on for ya….

There are many excellent reasons to see “U2: 3D,” aside from shifting your gaze for 85 minutes from that big red circle on the calendar marking WEE LEE’S DUE DATE.

If you are not still carrying a hot air balloon under your shirt a day after WEE LEE’S DUE DATE, there are other valid reasons to go see The First Live Action 3D Concert Movie, for which National Geographic has not paid me to endorse, but probably should, because when I’m not working to will this hot air balloon out from under my shirt, I’m going to be playing Rah-Rah girl for U2 over the course of the next month. With or without you.

Whether or not this concert is playing in a theatre near you, the point is that you get to count Bono’s eyelashes in a theatre! In cushy chairs! With no hairy backed guy standing in front of you blocking your view, and no guy singing off key and spilling his beer on you from behind. I know that sounds really white girl bougie, like “Yeahhh! Let’s go rage at a concert and sit back and drink our slurpees and get home at a decent hour!” PART-AY! But this is the closest I’m going to feel as though I’m standing on the edge, staring up at The Edge, for twelve moneys, and I’m not too proud to say that this was a pretty good Saturday night for me.

The concert itself mainly takes place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and as the cameras pan the stadium, I’m pretty sure that there is no one left outside of the stadium in Buenos Aires. They are all there singing “One” with Bono, and that’s probably one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in the last year – a whole South American city swaying and singing “One” in a language that is not its first.

There are some great moments on stage that are the stuff of live music’s wonder. Bono is as much a passionate believer of his lyrics as he is a complete nutbar who appears to be doing an interpretive dance that no one can interpret. The Edge is the coolest Irish man alive. Larry Mullen Jr. is given his due spotlight as the enduring drummer of the set. Adam Clayton’s hair is outrageous and his facial expressions always cause you to wonder if he is amused by the fact that he is still rocking with a band that was once known as the Larry Mullen Band.

You might be overcome with the urge to throw your 3D glasses off and hold up your cellphone and keen over Sunday, Bloody Sunday, or suddenly mash faces with the person next to you, and you might just leave a little blissed out. It’s a powerful show from a powerful band. Let me know if you go.

Consumerism causes us to want certain things that we don’t always question but which are pretty downright wacky, no? Take, for example, shampoo commercials. They peddle products that purport to renew our hair and give us a “healthy cuticle.” You want a healthy hair cuticle, don’t you? Of course you do. Healthy cu–DUDE. Isn’t hair pretty much dead? Isn’t that the point, that when we cut it, we’re not slaughtering live fibers but hocking off some dead mop?

Today, in New Adventures in Cooch Probing, the mid-wife took a peak at my cervix and concluded it was not yet ripe. You could not believe my indignation. How dare she say that about my cervix?! I mean, it’s good that it wasn’t rotting, either, but I was so sad. After all, when a woman allows you such access to her Lady Land, the least you can do is tell her something nice. I don’t know what that would be. The furniture is pretty? Love what you’ve done with the place? Hearing my unripe cervix was not yet “a laboring cervix,” I felt so depressed. Go ahead. Just take all my lunch money and tell me my hair is one big pile of unhealthy cuticle while you’re at it….

***

But then I got home and discovered some brilliant spoils had arrived from Matilda Sue and company. All thoughts of the unripe were dashed when I beheld this package. I really got all wobbly-lipped when I saw the bracelet. I’m ga-ga for the handmade jewels, but when I noticed the MOM charm (seen below in blurry format) and realized I was soon going to be a person worthy of wearing a MOM charm, I really got the shivers. The time was ripe for such a feel-good gift, and I’m thankful to my friends who might otherwise never know the perfect timing of their kindnesses.

Saturday night – when I was not otherwise predisposed to snarking at the punks next to me in the theatre who insisted that “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout Willis?” came from a show called “Webster” from the ’70s – I was busy allowing the movie “Juno” to inch its way into my Top Ten Favorite Movies of All Time.

If you’ve ever been sixteen, or pregnant, or both, you must see this movie.

It’s very wise in a way that films about adolescence only sometimes succeed. Juno, played by the brilliant Ellen Page, is spectacularly snide, clever, and self-assured. She has a plan, always, it seems. She probably even planned to wear her cherry underoos when she goes to pop Paulie Bleaker’s cherry. But then there is a moment when she confesses to her father and stepmother that she’s pregnant, and her father says, “I thought you were the kind of girl who would have known when to say when.”

And then Juno says, hesitantly, “I don’t really know what kind of girl I am.”

Here we begin to realize that she is not so wise. She does not always have a plan. She is sixteen, she is pregnant. She is very confused.

There’s a courage in her concession. I don’t really know what kind of a girl I am.

When I was sixteen, I was very busy overachieving and not eating and covering my notebooks with aphorisms and “Proud to be a virgin” buttons. I thought I knew what kind of girl I was. I thought I had a plan, always. Now, I realize that I was a chickenbone. I was the wilted pickle on Juno’s hamburger phone. I didn’t know what kind of girl I was and this was evidenced in how I treated those around me, and how I treated myself. I should note that one of my old neighbors told her kids that Juno reminded her of me. And I can only hope it was because she once knew me in high school when I dressed androgynously and wore a perma-ponytail, and not because I was someone who always seemed to have a plan. Because that would just be too painful to know.

I’ve been thinking about “Juno” for a few days now, and I’ve watched every interview with “Juno” screenwriter Diablo Cody on youtube, and I’ve listened to a few tracks from the soundtrack eleventy four times a piece, and when I am not otherwise sobbing from all the beautiful scenes these rewinds trigger, I am thinking that I hope Ellen Page wins the Oscar. I think she’s the kind of girl who should win.

Photo from Oscars.com