First off, I am apologizing in advance for the nerdy style of speech that I am using. I am apologizing mostly to my family – many of my family are not nerds and I suppose they just have to put up with it. I am also apologizing to my friends, but I think if you are still my friend, then I already know that you will excuse my language, which can be very over-the-top sometimes. I love analogy, metaphor, and other flowery ways of saying things that are just downright overdone.
One way or the other: please read the whole post. I like to write, and you reading it will encourage that. Also this is a much better way of communicating things to people en masse.
That being said, I am not exactly the sort of person that will put their kitchen remodel on Facebook. Or their cat, dog, lizard, or hell, even family. That’s right – I don’t like to put my family on Facebook, because I’ve noticed how little I like seeing your family on Facebook. I’m not going to tell you not to put it up there, because I suppose that is what Facebook is for. Probably not a popular opinion that I hold, but hey, there you go. But considering this blog is for me what Facebook is for seemingly everyone else, I also don’t plan on putting them up here.
Oh, except for a few that help me to effectively communicate things. I will be doing my best to keep posts on-topic. So…this post is about my family…
Congratulations, Seth. It’s a potato. It’s an on-topic potato.
I will, however, talk about important things that happen to me. Things of cyclopean import that shake the very foundations of my existence and make my brain all fuzzy for days on end. The things that sweep through my life like a flood from some divine spring, scouring the landscape inside my head down to the bedrock. Things that throw all other things against the wall to become shadows in the glaring importance of this new-found truth. Things that, when the light finally dims from my new perspective, the shadows will have etched themselves upon the wall in bas-relief, while this new thing stands as a fully-realized sculpture within my mental vaults, an altar to a transformed state of mind.
And it’s not like this event was not somewhere on the horizon. Amanda and I were actually talking about having kids, considering that her stomach issues were getting figured out and we’ve had a few years to figure out stumble blindly through marriage. I mean, right now this event is only just visible below the line of the horizon, it is so far off. But it has separated itself from the ‘distant future’ and can now be faithfully predicted, firmly in what I understand to be called the ‘middle future’. That is – not tomorrow and not next week, but so frighteningly close that I need to start planning things that have to do with it. With a date – even one given to me by experts in the matter!
That date is March 11. On this date, I’m going to be a father. My brain has not been able to wrap itself around that fact.
We are not entirely sure how this will all look when we get to it, either. We may move (doing a pregnant waddle up and down icy stairs all day might not be what Amanda wants to do in the final month or so). We may get different jobs, more attuned to our new responsibilities (i.e. making more money because kids are hella expensive). We may turn into odd caterpillar-like things, wrapped in a cocoon of stress, unsure of the specific form that we will take upon breaking out into the rest of the world, but – just like the hypothetical butterfly in question, we are totally convinced that everyone will want to see and hold and make adorable noises at the product of our regeneration and stress – and they will probably take pictures of this product like mad, as well.
SO I figure you want to know some details:
First off: if you want ongoing details and updates about the littlest Kleinpaste, then email me [seth.kleinpaste@stumblestoryinn.com] and put “SUBSCRIPTION TO BABY” in the subject bar. If you use the form to the left, you will not get a subscription to baby. The form to the left is for a much more nerdy things.
Detail 1: As I said above, March 11th is the due date. This puts this post (that you are reading, right now!) at the very beginning of the 2nd trimester (specifically, 13 weeks and 6 days), which we have heard is the beginning of the more ‘out of the woods’ area of pregnancy in regards to danger.
Detail 2: Some people have known for a while, and they are either family or married/already-have-kids folks that are part of our regular lives (as in, we see them at least once a week). There are a few other people that know – but it was leaked to them on accident or they were just in a place where we had to be talking about it. I am not 100% sure what Amanda thinks, but I for one have been extremely excited and I am just done with my poker face – people have even asked me about ‘hypothetical children’ in the last month where I almost burst out laughing.
Detail 3: This was a surprise to us, as well as you. If Amanda and I would choose, we would probably wait at least until we get a solid extra set of wheels. Down one car is already time-consuming enough, now we need to pay various baby-related medical bills while trying to save for a car/find a loan that fits our budget. Considering this is a surprise, we are probably going to become very creative in our baby-supply-procuring-endeavors. We don’t want to put people out, but we may cleverly disguise ‘begging for free diapers’ with a ‘contest where you get a bottle of booze if you bring the most diapers to an event’.
Detail 4: Not as related as the other details, I have a website! You are on it right now! I am actually using this post as a sort of ‘stress test’ to see how my webhost does. I am using this website for a few different things, and they may or may not be of interest to you. Please check back often, especially if you care about nerdy things or if you want to know my thoughts about parentage, etc.
I still don’t know what the whole ‘baby’ business means for this website, but as of the time of writing, I already have a few posts planned that deal with the philosophy of parenthood and fatherhood (which I think are slightly different in… important ways).
If you want to comment on this post, I invite you to do so here on this website (you probably won’t see your post at first – the system I have in place requires me to moderate each one). Responding on facebook is also cool.