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October 17, 2001

Oh God, Whitley and Dwayne are kissing on "A Different World" and it's a really big, gross kiss.

I don't know if that's making me queasy, or if it's the fact that tomorrow...at this time...I'm going to be somebody's mother.

I have to report to the local hospital here in McHenry at 6:00 a.m. to check in for my c-section. All of this was decided at my doctor's appointment yesterday, and to say that I'm nervous would be a bit of an understatement.

I keep walking into Quinn's room to get things ready, but they already are. Her bed is made. Her receiving blankets are washed and folded. She has an obscene amount of clothing in her closet--until she gets to be about one, at which point she will have to go naked--and that's all washed too. Her t-shirts and sleepers are folded and stored by size. Her bath products are arranged nicely. She has a comb and brush. I don't know what else to do. So I stand there and sniff the Dreft in the air and hope everything will be to her liking and then I go back to adding tasks that won't get done to my list of things to do.

Andy claims to not be nervous, but he was up at 6:20 this morning (whereas I usually have to forcibly remove him from bed at 8:00) and off to work shortly after. He came home at lunch to get my suitcase down from a shelf in the garage and kissed me goodbye about sixteen times. When he got back to work he called just to say hi.

I think he's a little jerked up.

Baxter is even clingier and needier than usual. He doesn't just follow me from room to room--he follows me INTO rooms and tries to stay right behind me. If I'm going around opening or closing windows, or putting things away, he thinks nothing of getting so in my way that I am constantly tripping over him. I think he'd like to be turned into a (very large) belt or perhaps a necklace and be worn around my person at all times. I tell him to GO LAY DOWN when it gets to be too much, but he can't stay away. He settles down for about ten seconds, then gets up and slinks after me slowly, his eyes pleading.

"OH GOD. CAN'T WE JUST BE TOGETHER IN THE BATHROOM? COME ON. JUST LET ME IN THERE WITH YOU. JESUS, I JUST NEED TO BE NEAR YOU."

I can't believe I'm going to have a baby tomorrow. I don't know how to work a baby. Do they know this?

Hoooooooo, Lawdy. I feel like I need to go sing spirituals or something.

I'll be in the hospital until Sunday, but I'll have Andy update my page before that so y'all know Quinn arrived safely.

WWND*?

*Natalie Green