the pieces of my life

…would stink. Really. Try it. Call it cabbage. It just doesn’t work. Which is why this name thing is so important. Forget the first name. What about the last name? Baby Brown? Baby Medros? Baby Brown Medros? Baby Brown-as-middle-name Medros? Baby Medros-as-middle-name Brown? Baby with other middle name and Brown-as-middle-name Medros? You can see the difficulties. I thought about asking you guys, and then realized if I didn’t care what Adam thought on the situation, why would I care what you think? (Well, in all fairness, I do care a little what Adam thinks–it’s just that he really doesn’t seem to care, which means he really doesn’t care or this is one of the most cleverly played out reverse psychology tactics I’ve ever seen.) So tonight, I suggested Brown as a first name. I mean, why not? And he said that would have been fine, if UPS hadn’t gotten to it first. Now, I know I’m not the one in b-school, but isn’t that just more incentive? I mean UPS has already gone through the branding exercise, so our son would just reap the benefits. The company claims loud and clear, Brown and a Better Life. They say, “Brown is more than a color — it’s a tangible asset that people associate with all the things that are good….” Would you rather have your kid associated with all the things that are bad? I rest my case. Although, that still doesn’t solve the last name issue (Baby Brown Brown? Baby Brown Medros? Baby Brown Brown-Medros…).

We went in yesterday for our ultrasound. I thought it would be about a fifteen-minute affair, but we were there for about an hour. Very thorough. Checking the kidneys, the heart, the brain, the spine, the bone structure. All there. Ten fingers, two nostrils, one mouth, and a brain. At least that’s what I was told. Really, to me, it just looked like one alien blob. (The technician said, “There’s the heart. And there’s the brain,” to which, of course, both Adam and I had the same thought: “All we need now is courage,” I said, and Adam continued, “And we’d have the entire The Wizard of Oz cast.”) They said the spine looks terrific, and I made sure there was no tail on the kid. The feet are nice and straight (this was necessary to check as the Tweedle Twirp was born with little club feet and had to spend her first years of life in casts and braces). But there was one odd mutant factor that I’m not quite sure how to deal with. My daughter—my beautiful, feminist daughter who will travel the world three times over, have Martha tendencies, and yet be the first female NFL player (as a kicker, of course, for the Miami Dolphins)—my wonderful daughter is a mutant. Apparently, my daughter has a penis. (Which reminds me of the Mel Brooks/Marlo Thomas skit from Free To Be … You And Me in which Mel Brooks says [or something awfully close to it], “Don’t look! Ugggh. A girl with a penis. Yuck. Disgusting.” Now, don’t worry, I’ll love my mutant just as much as I would love my non-mutant. This will just take some mental adjustments, but I think I can make this hurdle. Babies with penises can be feminists, too, you know.

By the way, we are not 100 percent sure about our name choices (last name included) and we are no longer going to discuss them with anyone. You may refer to him as Baby Brown Medros for the time being or by the nickname we’ve been calling him, if you happen to know what that is. The baby name will be announced when he makes his first actual appearance.

My eternal thanks to Jennifer (aka Beene-Baby) for brightening a very gray day with the oh-so exciting news that the Peeps Fun Bus is going to be in my part of the world! They’ve even mentioned me by name (well they say “Attention all Peeps Fanatics,” which is pretty darn close). How much more fun can it get than this: “The buses will be filled with Peep-tastic games and activities. Get a chance to make fun Peeps crafts, win some Peeps prizes and take a tour of the Peeps Fun Bus.” You people think I’m kidding. But it’s going into my calendar right now. Anyone in the Boston area who wants to come with me is invited. Just don’t stand between the fat pregnant lady and the peeps if you don’t want to get waddled over as I trample anything in my way to the bus.

For those of you who live in cold-weather states where people drive (I don’t want to hear from the NYC crowd), you know how there’s always that one asshole on the road who was too lazy to clean the snow off his car, so when he drives down the highway, the snow goes flying off, into your windshield, and it’s just so darn annoying? Well, today that asshole was me. No, the snow was not too heavy to clear off. No, I was not late to work. I just felt like being an asshole because I was so pissed that it’s friggin’ April 8th–yes, a full two and a half weeks into spring–and we had about two inches of snow last night that I decided to take it out on the world. And let me tell you, I feel much better for it now.

The pregnancy brain is already starting to set in. Among the misplaced keys and cell phone, I walked out of two–count ’em two–places this weekend, blithesomely leaving my purse (with wallet, Handspring, keys, etc.) behind. Then yesterday, I got out of the shower, feeling like something was off. I realized what it was when I began to towel off–I had forgotten to rinse the conditioner out of my hair. And it’s only going to get worse, folks.

Let’s just admit that flattery gets you everywhere in this world. And so I am adding a link to Michael, a soon-to-be Wharton student who also shall wear the badge of “an ok MBA,” a term I’m sure he deserves because it sounds like his wife (and I use the term wife, because he does not mention her by name) is just the type of woman to start the Anti-CWIT club at Wharton, spreading the news that we spouses have actual identities and that pussy power is not a force to be reckoned with. (I know, I know, you’re thinking what’s up with that? I won’t say the procedure-that-shall-not-be-named, but I’ll use the word “pussy.” It’s my blog, dammit, I make the rules. You don’t like them, go start your own blog.) Good luck, Michael. You’re going to need it, big time.

So, I have a friend–who shall remain nameless–who I have referred to in this weblog as “my friend who is not a CWIT.” Last night, it became official. “My friend who is not a CWIT” shall now officially be known as “the CWIT who is my friend.” All evidence is pointing solidly in the direction that she has succumbed to the HBS ways and is now embracing her status as CWIT. The turning point in this transformation? When she said to me last night, “Well, if I get pregnant, I’ll have a planned c-section, because that way they can do a tummy tuck at the same time.” And after I laughed at her, she said, “Seriously, you’ll ask your doctor if that’s possible, right? I mean, it’s the same scar.” And I won’t put in the other CWIT comment as it referred to the procedure-that-shall-not-be-named (utter the word around me, and it will be the last word you’ll say to me–or to anyone for that matter), and I think most of my readers are too sensitive to read it.

For the record, no, I will not ask my doctor.

I need to first start off by saying that the performers at the HBS Show were truly fantastic. It’s impressive that a business school has so many terrific dancers and singers. And while all the dancers were just unbelievable, Meg was by far the best. And I’m not just saying that because I like her.

Now, let me tell you what I thought of the show. (And a little background: The HBS Show is to HBS what the Hasty Pudding is to Harvard undergraduates. It satirizes the glamorous life of the Hah-vahd business student.) Honestly, it was not that bad. The show was about reality television coming to HBS and the first half of it was somewhat amusing. The second half just dragged on. To quote Kara, to truly enjoy this production you would have to have drunk the HBS Kool-Aid, and as most of you know, I hate Kool-Aid. This was one of those ideas that couldn’t sustain itself over a two-hour (yes, two hour! or rather two hours and twenty minutes with the intermission) production. Interestingly, the songs all used the tunes of popular or Broadway songs, and not a one of them was credited. For example, “Used to Have a Billion Dollars” was sung to the Barenaked Ladies “If I Had a Million Dollars” and “Why, MBA?” to the tune of “YMCA” (“Young man, why be an MBA grad? I said, young man, who needs khakis and plaid, I said, young man, FRC just ain’t cool, There’s no need to stay in b-school”) although, by reading the program, you’d have thought HBSers wrote the all music themselves. The thing is, the show wasn’t all that different from the skits done at section dinners, at the Holidazzle Ball, and what I’m sure we’ll see at the Newport Ball. It’s just that the barbs are more general and the production value much higher. It was a lot of privileged students saying, “Look, we can make fun of ourselves, which is just even more proof that we’re better than everyone else!”

What really made the whole experience just ridiculous was the audience. Students are in the show. Students are watching the show. So the minute someone walks on stage, from throughout the room, you would hear, “Michael!! Michael!! Yeah, Michael! Whoo hoooo! Hi, Michael!” A variation of this is the section cheering, the “Hey Section Z! Yeah, Section Z!” A charming, quiet blonde sat behind us (yeah, right) who would drown out everything behind her as she tried to get the attention of people on the stage. “Michael! Michael! Over here! Yeah, Michael!”

I am so over the whole HBS experience.

Charity auctions are great. Really. But there’s something I just don’t get about a room full of ninety mostly twenty-something students (some with partners there) who are able to raise $33,000 dollars in an evening. Where are these people getting this money? And the things donated! I can’t recall a single person in my MFA graduate program who would have been able to donate tickets to the Olympics in Athens, lodging in Bermuda (or Aspen), or a weekend in Nantucket. Of course, those HBSers won’t let you down, even in a classy event like this. You could still bid on [grammar mistakes theirs, of course]: “Inflict punishment on your classmates. For every dollar you bid, X and Y will eat tacos at lunch on a three case day. Will eat one taco for every dollar bid up to $25. From $25 to $50, will eat 1 taco for every two dollars bid. Above $50, will eat 1 taco for every $5 bid. A and B, remember that X sits behind you.” For the record, they’ll be eating 139 tacos. Of course, I made a few bids myself, which I lost. Tennis lessons and snowboarding lessons (for after the baby is born, you dolts!) went out of my price range quickly. I did win my bid for four hours of manual labor, which I’m very excited about. I’m not sure the donor fully understands what he’s gotten himself into (ah, the backyard mess will finally be cleared out thanks to the work of my manual laborer and my slave laborer aka Adam). And Anupam, our auctioneer for much of the evening, saved himself tremendous publicly inflicted grief as he, at the last second, got my name right (I could hear “Jenny Medros” emerging from his lips before he quickly corrected himself with “Jenny Brown”) as I placed the winning bid. By the way, in case you were curious, the highest bid went for a party week for six in Ibiza for $5,400. And no, we didn’t buy it.

I subscribe, of course, to a number of pregnancy e-mails and visit sites that tell me all sorts of informative things about my fetus such as, “March 31: Early toenail development.” But today, I got the doozy of all e-mails from Baby Center that went through the normal list of “Do vaginal infections during pregnancy need treatment?” and “Find out what your baby’s doing right now” only to scroll down and be hit with “How can I protect myself and my unborn child against bioterrorist threats?” This is what I need to be worrying about now? I need to know that Anthrax is okay (penicillin is not dangerous to a fetus) but small pox a definite no-no? Gee thanks. I’ll add that to my list of things to obsess about.