What the Shit China? 9: Towels

HOOOOLYYYYY SHHHHIIIIIIT! I wanted to start writing this a week ago, and I wanted to write another story the week before that. As it turns out, I have an interesting little quirk. Every day, I do the same thing That's a lie. I do different shit every day. Not terribly different, but different. But on the way to work, I typically do the same thing. I get in the car, send a text message or email, start the car, and go to work. I listen to a 30-minute, Chinese Rosetta Stone lesson, I start talking to a voice-recorder, and then I start cussing at the slow-ass motherfuckers that drive in the right lane, when there is clearly room to merge into the left lane, so that I can merge onto the highway and not wonder if my son will see his father's picture on a roadside memorial. Then I get to work and start doing whatever it is that I am supposed to do.

Now I know what you are thinking, "He speaks Chinese?" To answer your question, the answer is no. No I do not. That's a lie. I speak some. I will say that I will rarely speak Chinese to someone that is from China. Even talking to my wife, I am cautious. Why? Because it is so easy to fuck up. I was learning a lesson and there was a word that I just could not understand. Of course, I did the rational thing and checked with Google Translate.

Now, for those that don't know, Chinese is tonal; the way you say the word will change the meaning of the word. And Google Translate is drunk at 6:45 AM. And so, when I am driving into the office, I am talking to Google and trying to figure out this fucking word. I said the word once, and the Google voice-over person translates the word to, "period". Okay, well that does not seem to fit the theme of kitchen and bedding. So I try it again. Google says, "ejaculation". Wow. That's a bit extreme. I try again. Google: "menstruation". Alright Google, I quit.

I asked my wife and it turns out that the word translates to "towel". On the one hand, why are those words all so similar!? On the other hand, it makes sense now about how the word for towel was derived. And with that, I can never say the word "towel" in Chinese. After all, what if I fuck it up when I go to China? Finish washing the dishes, turn to my mother-in-law, and say, "excuse me, can you please pass the ejaculation?" Get out of a pool and ask my father-in-law, "can you please pass some menstruation?" No! Fuck that! That is a sure fire way for me to "disappear" in China. Or for my wife to divorce. Either way, no.

Moral of the Story: If I talk into a voice-recorder, I forget to write stories. Also, I will never ask for a towel in Chinese. Oh yeah, and fuck that one car with the TRUMP 2016 bumper sticker, janky-ass tail-light, and the NRA sticker, who refuses to get into the left lane EVERY GODDAMN DAY. Jerk.

Baby Daddy 31/What the Shit China 7: Grumpy Pigs and Movies

So it has come to this. Over the weekend, we saw every single sign that the baby was coming. There was dropping. There were plugs. There were contractions. There was everything. I actually thought the day was going to be on Saturday. At one point, my wife called her mother because she was grumpy. In fact, she was borderline mega-pissed. That's a lie. But she was incredibly irritable. When she asked my mother-in-law about it, my wife learned that the baby was close to coming. Evidently, when pigs become mothers, they have a tendency to be aggressive towards other pigs.

Now I know what you may be thinking. One, that ain't kosha. Two, how the shit does my mother-in-law know this? Well, as it turns out, this is common knowledge in China. Evidently, during the cultural revolution, Chairman Mao decided to make all of the educated people work and study on the farms. As a result, my mother-in-law had to leave college for a brief time and work on a farm that had pigs. That's how a lot of Chinese people learned about the "bird and the bees". Except it was "pigs in heat". Because China. And Communism. Also, I wrote that as a direct quote, but I just made it up. I really want to make a pun about pigs in a blanket, but that makes me hungry for hot dogs. Beef, of course.

But this allows me to lead to the next part, which is the desperation. My wife and I have started scheduling shit so that it may tempt Murphy's Law into triggering labor. On Friday, we went to see Logan. It's a great movie. Without too many spoilers, I will say that it is very clearly Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart's last X-Men movie. I can also say that I saw a great deal of my parenting style in Logan. Some of our friends asked if I intend to raise our child to be a weapon and I very immediately said, "Yes".

We then had a friend over on Saturday. Why? One, we didn't actually expect the person to show up. Two, we figured it might trigger labor. Instead, I learned boxing technique and taught the person how to go through a gun disarm. I also learned that this person will very likely get shot during a mugging. Evidently they are highly combative. Around this time, my wife started struggling with the whole "get this baby out" mentality and started Googling foods that would either trigger labor or trigger an abortion. As it turns out, they are pretty much the same. It just depends on the trimester. Who knew? Also, I made that last part up.

And then we decided to see Get Out. One, everyone should see it. I have not seen a truly great suspense thriller like that in years. I don't know if there as been one so perfectly executed since the 90's. It didn't even require an extreme level of gore. We also thought it would scare the baby out, and make for a funny story. My wife was tired though, so she took a nap instead.

Moral of the Story: China's sex education program was based on pigs. Also, go see Logan and Get Out. Great movies that awkwardly summarize our feelings toward the pending birth of our child.

(If I used this meme before, then fuck you. It's still true.)

Baby Daddy 30: Nesting as Fuck

Alright! Time for a story. As you know, it's the final countdown. And as a result, everybody...everybody...is nesting as fuck right now. I mean, holy shit. My mother-in-law has flown into town. She has been so incredibly worried about missing the birth of the baby that she has stopped sleeping. She's got that cracked out grandma look in her eye. If her flight had been delayed at all, she'd have gone into a proper grandma rage. In order to prepare our child for learning Chinese, my in-laws bought several books.

One is an animal book. The only problem is that it is a Chinese animal book. Don't get me wrong, it's great. It has animals like "lion", "cow", "zebra", and "Chinese crested tern". That's right. This book has the basic animals, and all ornithological classifications. Then there is another book that is literally titled, "You Can't Tear or Rip This Book". I don't even know what the fuck is in it, but they pride themselves on being indestructible. Naturally, I plan to train our boy to rip that shit apart.

There was a third book, which had plastic wrapping all over. My wife asked her mother why she bought that book, and the mother said that other kids had touched all of the other books. My wife said, "of course they did. Those other books were good. You never buy the thing that nobody wants to play with." I can't argue. It would be like kids rubbing their dirty little paws all over the cookies, and so you decide to give your child broccoli. Yes, it's clean and untouched. It's also bitter with the taste of disappointment.

The final book was one that had a bunch of colors. Evidently my in-laws have friends that use that shake that book when the kid is crying, so that the child will be transfixed. To be fair, it would not take a ton of drugs for me to be hooked on it. It looks like Picasso tripped some acid and started drawing fruit.  That's okay, though. The important thing is that our kids are going to know how to say "apple" in Chinese. (Hint: it's pronounced: 'ping guo').

My wife, on the other hand, is nesting in a very different way. I got home last Thursday, and my wife had come home from the store. Not just any store, but Costco. She bought 24 blueberry muffins, as a buy-one-get-one sale. Her logic was, "When baby comes out, I will not be able to bake muffins for breakfast, so I bought blueberry muffins for breakfast, because we need to have breakfast and I will not be able to bake the muffins. I also bought muffins for my mom, so that she can have muffins, because she wants to take care of me and cannot cook her own muffins." Keep in mind that my wife hasn't baked muffins for breakfast in her entire goddamn life. I don't know if they even have muffins in China, let alone blueberry muffins.

My folks, on the other hand, have been relatively mild. Short of starting each call with, "No baby?", they don't seem to be too anxious for this child. On the other hand, they did leave a conference in New Orleans to drive home. Three days early. They hadn't even unpacked their bags. I'm not sure if they even stopped to use the restroom on their drive back. Come to think of it, I'm fairly impressed that they didn't end up with kidney stones.

As for me? I got all of my work done a month in advance, so that I can leave the office any time and go straight to the hospital.

(I just thought this meme was funny. Because Superman.)

Moral of the Story: Everyone is excited for this child, and he's still not born yet. Oh, and I now have picture books to help me learn Chinese.