and then i bit his head off

Neither one of us was in a particularly swell mood this morning. I didn’t quite notice the signs at first. Or rather, the one BIG sign. He didn’t make my cup of “mother-to-be tea.”

I once read an article once about relationships and longevity and one woman talked about how her husband always made her tea, every morning. Not that this is the only thing that glued them together, but it’s a nice thing. And Scott has almost always made my tea — used to be black tea with milk and honey, but now we do herbal. So I nodded to myself while I read that article. Yes.

Then the toilet backed up. The kind of back up you really really don’t want to face in the morning. I’m screaming (f- f- f-) and trying to reach under the tank to get my hand around that little silver valve/knob, not even sure if this IS the way one stops the water or not and as the level rises to the danger point, I just run out of the bathroom. Still screaming.

I run to the kitchen sink, fold over, drop my head onto my arms, and cry.

Scott is in the bathroom with a pile of towels and a plunger. He takes care of business, and throws the towels in the washing machine. I go in behind him and change the wash from warm/cold to warm/warm.

We proceed to fight about whether it is better to shut off the valve and plunge, or plunge and then shut off the valve if needed.

We barely speak to each other all day. I work in my office. He’s working in the basement or out on errands. Finally, after our early evening meditation, we check in.

The tea WAS a sign, he says. He’d woken up feeling irritated about everything, and put upon. And my yelling didn’t help. I tell him how, even in the moment, I knew it was crazy to shriek, but I couldn’t stop myself. Was this pregnancy hormones?

I apologize. He apologizes.

Some days, I think the whole prospect of becoming parents is completely overwhelming. Everything is under a microscope AND a magnifying glass: our feelings, our actions, our fears; who we are separately and together.

At least it only took us eight hours to get to the détente.

And then I had my mommy’s group over and he went out to see the new Fantastic Four movie. And everyone was happy.