Adventures in Easy Living

Justin has been in Vancouver since Wednesday and in an effort to keep my mind off of the possibility that I might go into early labor and have to ride MARTA to the hospital, I decided to go see a movie on Friday afternoon. A matinee. So luxurious. I belong to the group of people who love to go to the cinema by themselves. I can sit where I please (back row, nobody bouncing on my seat), buy whatever I want from concessions, and get there early so I have time to watch the previews. I also had a birthday party to attend on Saturday night and figured I'd pick up the gift while I was in this particular shopping center.

This little area I am visiting was supposed to be the next big thing in Atlanta urban living. Underground parking garage, movie theater, upscale restaurants and shopping and lots and lots of condos for those young urban professionals. It looks just like you think it would look. A little too landscaped and developed, sort of Disney-esque, a body in search of a soul. It never really caught on the way it was supposed to after several drug related crimes and a murder took place here. Atlanta has so many places like this. Cookie cutter clean, but with a seedy underbelly. I could never live here and actually hate shopping here, but the theater has great stadium seating and comfortable chairs, a plus for me and B the G.

Before the movie, I head over to Dillard's (comparable to Macy's) to buy my friend the coffee grinder she asked for. And while I'm there I poke my head into the lingerie department to check out the bras. There's a Seinfeld episode where Jerry talks about moving and how you become obsessed with finding boxes in the weeks prior to the move. In grocery stores, out with friends, everywhere you go you're thinking "Hmmm, I wonder if they have any boxes they aren't using..."

I am going through something similar with bras while I am pregnant. My breasts continue to astound me in their sheer magnitude, especially as they are now starting to rest across my belly, similar to my great Aunt Helen. My brother and sister and I used to laugh about this when we were young and I guess maybe that karma wasn't so instant, because now that I am fighting the same war, it's not so funny. I wonder where Aunt Helen's old bras went to...

Back at Dillard's, I do a quick sweep through and find some sports bras and a helpful sales assistant who doesn't mind telling me that the ones I am trying on are way too small and brings me back a slew of new selections that really do look like Aunt Helen already wore them. No sweet pink triangles and a single dose of hook and eye. These bras are like giant boob socks with fat, padded shoulder straps and a mammoth back strap with four (four!) hooks in the back. Not even a relative of pretty, but oh the relief when I tried them on. I bought two on the spot and thanked my lovely helper.

So I hustle on over to the theater where I watch the light and fluffy new Sex and the City movie which makes me simultaneously nostalgic for New York and snarky over the ridiculously breezy way the movie makes New York living look. I hope no starry-eyed upstarts head up there after watching this, looking for beautiful, airy apartments, endless available taxi rides and how incredibly easy it is to navigate the Meatpacking District in 4 inch heels. But I give it a thumbs up for the sheer scale of the fashion in it that is like the fifth character in the movie and for Kim Cattrall's amazing figure at 50. Inspirational.

Satisfied and tired, I head back to the garage and realize as I approach my car that my keys aren't in my bag. Ugh. I never lose my keys. But since I've been pregnant I seem to be losing everything, forgetting everything, dropping everything. People say it goes with the turf, but it makes me crazy to lose things under the best of circumstances. When I'm hot, tired and pregnant it makes me want to kill someone. And with Justin out of town, it could potentially get fairly complicated.

So, trying to put a hopeful spin on it, I figure I must have left them in the dressing room at Dillard's which was my only real protracted stop anyway. I head back over there and ask a different sales assistant if any keys were turned in. Sadly, she tells me no, but we search the dressing room I used anyway and I leave my name and number in case they turn up. I go to appliances next to check if they are there and again it's a dead end. Back out into the heat, wondering if I locked them in the car, which is even more unlike me, but being pregnant and water-headed, not impossible. I check back in the car as far as I can see in the darkness of the garage, around the car, at security in the garage and come up empty.

Only one place left to check and that's the movie theater, which I am not looking forward to. Once there, I ask the young, disaffected manager if anyone found any keys and get a shruggy sort of no. At this point I figured it's time to take matters into my own hands and I sneak back into the Sex and the City theater to look around the seat where I was sitting. Previews are playing for the next showing and the theater is dark, but still fairly empty. I go back to my first seat (of course I switched midway through the previews) and bend down as far as I can in the narrow aisles to look under the seat. I can't see a damn thing. I get down on one knee with the various "oofs" and "ughs" that accompany this sort of movement combined with my big belly and try to get a better view. The gum-popping teenage girls further down the same row give me that eye-rolling, lip-pursed look that only African-American women can do right, though I've seen many a white girl try. It screams "Whatever..." without saying a thing.

Yes, whatever, because I am now crawling around the chair I occupied on my hands and knees feeling the sticky, disgusting movie theater floor with the flat of my palms to see if I can grope my way to discovering my keys. I am beginning to feel a little desperate now, not to mention gross. I try the same routine again at the seat I switched over to before the movie started. Getting up and down is harder here as I am further down the aisle, starting to huff and puff a little because I am winded and emotional, and of course I am still hanging on to my two bags of purchases from before as well as my purse . Again no luck and I hoist myself up again from the ground with a loud old-person groan, using the back of someone's chair for leverage. I hate people like me in the previews and it only makes me feel worse about myself and my predicament. "I'm sorry" I stage whisper to the person sitting there. I have old popcorn stuck to my knees and my hands feel like I just licked them and then ate an enormous batch of cotton candy. I can't begin to tell you how pathetic and sorry for myself I feel.

Don't panic, don't panic. People lose their keys everyday. But already I'm thinking about paying for replacement keys on these stupid electronic remote locks that all cars have now. And how am I going to get in the house? I'll have to break a window and crawl in. Oh god. I head back over to Dillard's to retrace my steps one last time before I kick into full-blown melt-down. I can feel myself truly waddling now, because I am exhausted, hot and broken. I hate the cute, tan 20 year-olds I see chatting on their cell phones and walking into H & M. The Pixies' "Where is my Mind" plays over and over in my head as I plow across the street. Again.

Security is starting to eye me funny there. Is that really a baby in her belly or is she going back and forth to her car with stashes of socks and underwear stuffed in her pants? I walk carefully back through appliances checking all the surfaces I was near. Nothing. Back to lingerie where, a little more wild-eyed now, I begin digging like a terrier through the sales bins I was gently perusing just four hours before. My original sales assistant turns up and asks if she can help. I tell her about my keys and explain I already spoke with the other assistant and they didn't have them, but that I was there just double-checking.

Then I see her recognize me, (could she really be helping that many crazed-looking pregnant women in one afternoon?) and she says "Of course I found your keys. You left them on the chair in your dressing room. I put them here in the drawer."

And voila! she pulls out my ring of precious, underrated metal forms that mean the difference between life and death for me at this point. I've spent half the day in this stupid shopping center and while I'm elated to get my keys and high-tail it outta there, I can't help but want to throttle the second ill-informed sales girl who sent me back to crawl through the sticky, popcorn encrusted floors of the movie theaters and stagger through the stupefying heat of a parking garage in Atlanta at 4:00 PM in June. As I drive home, I try to channel gratitude instead of blame because ultimately it was my pathetic self that left the keys there in the first place. It doesn't come easy and instead I vow not to leave my house again until B the G makes her entry into the world.

Is It Hot In Here?

I've always been the warm-blooded type, possibly due to being a member of the GRITS club (Girls Raised In The South). I used to love to walk to the beach in my bare feet trying to burn the soles to a leathery toughness so I could do away with shoes for the rest of the summer. I loved the way I could feel the heat pulsing off of my scalp like I could see it radiating off of cars, loved the drips of sweat running in pools down my belly. To some it sounds like hell, but to me it was invigorating. Cleansing.

I suffered through ten northeast winters, shivering constantly and never really feeling warm until I got that first full blast of summer heat. Justin and I have totally different thermal settings and I prefer the house at 80 or 81 in the summer while he is quietly turning the AC thermostat down when I'm in the other room. I crank my electric blanket to 10 in the winter and he slides a foot over to my side and claims third degree burns.

Cue pregnancy. I understand the whole bun-in-the-oven metaphor now. Because that's what I am - a walking, breathing oven that isn't allowed to drink a cold, frosty beer to cool down in this god-forsaken heat. I admit, I feel a little betrayed by this southern heat. Like we used to be partners, pals from way back and that we understood each other. But as happens in so many good relationships, I've changed, evolved, developed new interests and heat isn't the forgiving kind.

I went to Busch Gardens in Tampa with the whole fam-damily last week. As corny as it sounds, Busch Gardens is one of my favorite spots to visit. Ever. The roller coasters are some of the best I've ever been on, they have wonderful water rides that let you get soaked and cool off, a beautiful nature preserve with large, rolling landscapes for the animals instead of tight, depressing cages, it's pristinely clean and not too big that you feel like you've missed something if you spend the entire day there. And cold, frosty Anhauser is served anywhere you turn. Whether you're 4 or 44 it's pretty Mecca-ish, no matter what you like to do.

Oh but this time, I am a mobile Betty Crocker not-so-easy-bake oven and the heat has turned against me. It's well into the high 90's when we arrive and probably hits 100 degrees by 1:00 PM. I am forbidden from going on any water rides to cool off as most of them post signs warning expectant mothers to stay off or their baby will be jolted right out of their uterus. I can't go on the roller coasters for same reason and god knows I can't have a beer with Justin the Security Guard monitoring everything I put in my mouth.

I ride the Sky Lift, a boring, but cooling, bucket ride over the park and sip my fourth frozen lemonade. I do a lot of waiting. Mostly for my nephews to enjoy all the rides they are now old enough to enter and ironically, now that they are tall enough I can't join them. I feel the sweat run down my back, my breasts, my legs, my temples. But it's not the same heat I loved and coveted. It's attacking me from the inside now. It surges up from the sidewalks in blasts and lingers under my skirt like a pervert. It pounds down on my head like a fist from above, demanding, draining.

I feel like a combustion engine chugging past the water flume ride, the tiger exhibit, the food stands. I think I see pity in the eyes of some mothers with young children and I bet they are wondering what on earth I was thinking of, coming here pregnant in this heat. I want to tell them it wasn't always like this. That we used to be a team, the heat and me. I didn't think my feelings could change so heartlessly, so easily. But all I want now is movie theater air conditioning and a cherry Icee for B the G. I would welcome a blast of arctic air or a cooling thunderstorm. My needs have changed and I've had to move on.