Would you like some milk with your assvice?
Assvice Alert!
Okay. I’ll be 18 weeks pregnant exactly tomorrow. The first 18 weeks of gestating seem to have gone incredibly fast now that I look back, even though it seems like it takes ages to get to each Wednesday when I roll over to the new week.
I’m close to halfway through this thing, and am starting to show for real. Evidence of this includes:
-A guy on the el gave up his seat for me this morning, while staring at my abdomen (I’m surprised he could tell though my jacket, though I have to admit it is a maternity coat…), when there were various old ladies standing around as well. He was totally uninterested in giving up his seat for them, though, so obviously I’m more needy. Um, woo?
-Three people I work with have asked either me or one of my friends if I’m pregnant.
-The waitress at the very tasty Italian restaurant we went to last night (I highly recommend it, and if you go on a Monday you must get the soup of the day. It’s the best damn cream of chicken soup I’ve ever had.) was very extra loving and mentioned something about how I definitely needed some dessert since I couldn’t have the wine.
-I was asked if I have been drinking plenty of milk, and when I mentioned the mild lactose intolerance, lots of yogurt and cheese, plenty of calcium from green leafy veggies and vitamin supplements, etc. blah blah blah, I was told to drink Lactaid! Because it’s for people who can’t drink milk! I didn’t get into my desperate hatred for the way milk tastes, to the point where I won’t kiss my husband if he’s just been eating cereal (he absolutely DROWNS it in milk. It’s beyond nasty.), because I just really didn’t think it would help at that point. Instead, I put on my Nod and Smile Face and hoped it would be over quickly.
So now that I look pregnant fo’ real, it’s time for a little rant. Now, it’s not going to be anywhere near as awesome as Amalah’s rant on the same subject, but I just need to get a little bit of The Smack all nice and laid down. See, that way I’ll be able to refer people back to this post in case it’s necessary in the future! (i.e. “See? I already TOLD you to fuck off!”*)
Here’s how one should deal with assvice-givers:
1.) Nod.
2.) Smile.
3.) Allow assvice to flow from one ear to the other and back out to freedom in the wide wide world, where it dissipates into the air.
This makes the giver feel good (”She’s listening! I’m useful!”) and gives the receiver valuable mental wandering time (”Ooh, something shiny! Is she done talking yet I wonder?”).
Here’s how I deal with assvice-givers:
1.) Listen and feel horribly judged.
2.) Get really defensive because I spend a LOT of time and effort and brain cells researching decisions I make.
3.) Try to defend myself by explaining my position.
4.) Explain way too much and end up giving my entire life story to someone who neither needs, wants, nor deserves it. (”…and then when I was three I ate a hot pepper, thinking it was an onion, and I cried for days, but I still loved onions even so! Then I started liking spicy stuff again when I was older…”)
5.) Realize that I sound defensive and lame and trail off, leaving an awkward silence.
This confuses the assvice-giver (though generally those who give assvice are not empathetic enough to realize that the awkwardness is really their fault) and makes the receiver end up feeling awkward and crappy for days when she repeatedly realizes how much of her life story she told a complete stranger/casual acquaintance.
I think we can all agree that the way I deal is not the correct way.
However, since I can see a whole lot of assvice coming my way in the next 22 weeks, I’m going to work on treating each one as practice!
*Just a note — I really do think that ASSvice is totally different from ADvice. I don’t mind when people, say, tell me what worked for them. However, when you tell me to do something because that’s what worked for you and if I don’t I’m a horrible person and obviously don’t love my baby, that’s different.
Why I have a low tolerance for St. Patrick’s Day:
Here’s the thing.
I don’t hate the Irish, just Americans with a little Irish in them who think it gives them the right to get completely effing wasted and then talk about “…but I’m Irish! I can hold my liquor!” Um, no. You obviously can’t.
Also, the ones whose babies are named unpronouncable and unspellable things that they think are Irish and half the time are actually Welsh or something.
Oh, and whose houses are completely frighteningly decked out in celtic decorations none of which they actually know anything about or what they mean aside from what the catalog told them.
Now, I love plenty of people with Irish heritage who are not annoying. I’m fine with respecting and loving your heritage. I also love many Actual Irish People (many of whom have the
same issues I do with their American brethren). But in case I move to Beverly and have a couple of Tourettes-like moments where I spew hatred and pissed offedness toward Irish people, now you know a bit more of the backstory.
The deal with my free-market-ism:
I write about a pretty wide variety of stuff on this site. Some of you may be here for the sports, some for the political rants, some for the stories about just how stupid can she be for real?, some for the stories of life in Chicago, and some for the pregnancy tidbits.
Here’s a wee little bit for you if you’re interested in why I’m libertarian**. If you’re not interested, skip this part to your little heart’s content — I promise not to be offended.
Free market economics is much maligned by a lot of educated people in this country. It just doesn’t seem fair to have people who are in need surrounded by people who have everything they need and more. I’ve done a lot of casual research into this due to a weird and unexplainable interest in macroeconomics, and the simplest way I can explain it is as follows:
This is the way the world works. We have to work within the rules of how the world works, instead of trying to come up with new ways to get around the rules. Supply and demand, capitalism, and other dirty words to liberals are not so much ideas or theories anymore. These same liberals have temper tantrums when people want to refer to evolution as an unproven theory, but refuse to think that rules and laws of behavior can also govern the way money, ideas, and products are exchanged. Socialism and communism were failed experiments. We now know that they don’t work. So let’s just try to accept the rules, work within them, and go from there.
For instance (just to piss off conservatives now that I’ve thoroughly pissed off the liberals), let’s use the War on Drugs as an example. There is a demand for illegal drugs. People supply the illegal drugs. Because the War on Drugs creates dangers for people supplying the drugs, the price goes up giving them more incentive to supply the drugs. The high price leads to the high crime associated with drug users as they need more money to get their drugs. Legalizing drugs would increase the supply of drugs therefore driving the price down. It would also prevent a lot of the crime from sellers, buyers, and corrupt officials. Obviously, this is very oversimplified (for lots of great in depth info on this subject, head over to Drug War Rant), but it can give you an idea of how making laws against something doesn’t stop the rules of supply and demand from working. (the aforementioned “way the world works.”)
For a better, less convoluted explanation of why capitalism is necessary, check out this short yet wonderfully informative post.
**Generally defined by me as “Hatred for both political parties for different reasons.”
