Welcome to Friday Open Thread, a parallel universe where only the sexy people (all you fly mothers) can get on out there and dance and Salt-N-Pepa never had to stoop to stumping for Geico to stay relevant. Also, a place for you to release your woes and triumphs into the queer abyss, share cute pics of your furbabes and your human babes and your cyborg babes, and just, like, a place to hang out on a Friday night with some chill friends.
If you have not been following my social media closely, which I assume you haven’t, you may have missed my most significant life update. I — yes, I, KaeLyn Elizabeth Lee Rich — am officially knocked up with my very own Baby T. Rex. Some of you know that my spouse and I have been trying to conceive since last year and over-processing about it for almost two years before that. We finally did the thing. Or, rather, we bought some swimmers and paid a medical professional at a fertility practice to do the thing. After a few rounds of what I (to Waffle’s dismay) liked to call the “hot beef injection,” we found out we were preggers in December. We started letting the rest of the world know a few weeks ago.
It’s pretty major, you all. Like, we’re going to be responsible for another human life… for the rest of our lives! WHAT DID WE DO?!
So that’s happening. Pretty cool, pretty cool. We’re not finding out the assigned sex. We have a gender neutral name picked out and we don’t want to start putting gender stuff on our baby before it’s even born into the world. We also don’t want an all-pink or all-blue explosion, so not finding out kind of forces our well-meaning loved ones into gender neutral gifts and hand-me-downs. Until the baby gets born and then there will probably be a mini-explosion of pink or blue, but we can at least put that off for a while. For now, we’re having fun planning for a dino-themed nursery and emotionally preparing our fragile and sensitive cat for a new little sibling.
Also, it’s kind of fun to mess with people, I have to admit. It absolutely boggles people’s minds that we’re not finding out, particularly salespeople when we buy baby clothes. Even though we’re in our mid-thirties, people think we look younger. Plus, I’m not showing too much yet and we look very, very gay, so we confuse them right off the bat. And then the gender stuff comes in. Here’s a convo I’ve had several times over the past couple weeks (which is when we finally let ourselves start buying some fun stuff like clothes):
Salesperson: “Oh, these are cute! Do you need a gift receipt?”
Me: “No, thanks. They’re not a gift.”
S: …
Me: “They’re for us. We’re expecting”
S: “Oh, congratulations, ladies! You’re having a boy! How exciting!”
Me: “No, we don’t know the gender.”
S: “So you have a little boy at home?”
Me: “No, this is our first.”
S: “Oh… Are you going to find out?”
Me: “No.”
S: “Why not?”
Me: “We just want to be surprised!”
Smile and run away.
Separate topic, I really wish that gender-neutral baby clothes didn’t just mean some boy clothes. Every store is distinctly separated by gender and the girl side is just, like, uber uber pink and frilly. Not that a boy can’t wear pink and frilly, but, like… can I get another color choice? If T. Rex likes pink and wants to wear it when they’re old enough to express these things, that’s cool, but I don’t really like the idea of forcing it on them. And then on the boy side there’s a lot of like, “Mommy’s Heartbreaker” and “Cool Dude” and “Daddy’s Little Guy” and stuff like that. So we end up buying the neutral-est stuff we can find, typically on the “boy side,” mostly dinosaurs and monsters and animals.
In other news, I recently saw Zootopia and love-love-loved it! You should go see it right now. I laughed. I cried. I listened to the children around me in the theatre squeal, which made me squeal. I mean, it touched on sexism, tokenism, institutional racism, has a female protagonist, and Shakira plays a peace-loving pop artist names Gazelle. (She’s a gazelle.) It’s good. Really good. Would I lie to you? No, no I wouldn’t.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqeHCNojuQ4
Also, we procured a waffle maker, so that has improved our lives 100%. I’m really interested in making savory waffles. Has anyone ever tried that? How did it work? Any recipe or topping suggestions?
Tell me, tell me, tell me what’s going on with you! What are you eating? What are you cooking? Are you on spring break? Are you cramming for midterms? Do you have wise parenting advice for me? Have you seen any good movies lately? What’s in your Netflix queue? Did your cat vomit on the stairs and then you stepped in it before you even had your coffee (because boi oh boi have I been there)?
I wanna know what’s up, you sexy people! Push it, push it real good!
How To Post A Photo In The Comments:
1. Find a photo! This is the easy part. Find a photo on the web, right click (on a Mac, control+click), hit “Copy Image URL” and then…
2. Code it in to your comment! Use the following code, and use a DIRECT LINK to the image. Your image link should end in .JPG or .GIF or .PNG or .CallMeWhateverYouWant even. I don’t care, but it should be an image suffix! KINDA LIKE THIS:
If you need to upload the photo you love from your computer, try using imgur. To learn more about posting photos, check out Ali’s step-by-step guide.
How To Post A Video In The Comments, Too:
Find a video on YouTube or Vimeo or WHATEVER and click “embed.” Copy that code, paste it.
