Three Days to Go

Until I'm officially pissed off that this baby isn't born yet.

I am hurting, y'all.  The latest discovery is a shooting pain in my left wrist.  Like a sciatic spasm of my carpal tunnel.  It has been happening all night.  

This is in addition to the true sciatica pain that shoots down my left leg upon occasion, those occasions growing ever frequent these last few days.  The pain is so sharp, so intense, it causes me to do a silly John Cleese walk when it happens.  

I guess that's all.  The baby pains are either not bad, not present or so familiar that they now go unnoticed.  

A couple of things I've been thinking about lately:

Memo to everyone:  Starbucks is NOT good coffee.  I'm coming from Seattle, where they first brewed their burnt version of coffee beans and made the word "latte" common in our vernacular.  But they are the WORST coffee roaster in Seattle.  They were ubiquitous, on every streetcorner, muscling out the independent roasters and building a huge administrative complex near the sports arenas (football and baseball) with their signature mermaid looking over the city.  But the smaller roasting shops were where the truly great coffee was.  Where the baristas took the time to talk to you about their life, their dreams, all while making a latte that made your toes curl, with taste and strength.  They would draw flowers in the foam on top, and the foam was something you could eat like custard, not the fluffy nothing taste of Starbucks' foam.  Once you went indie, you never went back.  For me to stop at a Starbucks, I am slumming it.  McDonald's has better tasting lattes than Starbucks.  It is true!  Do a taste test.  

At least in Seattle the Starbucks baristas were consistent in their drinks.  Down here in Sacramento, you've got essentially teenagers trying to make coffee, and the drinks are all over the place.  Some have 1/3 cup of foam on top, some have too much milk, others are lukewarm, others that I've ordered with some seasonal spicing (which is rare for me) have the spicing all down at the bottom, not having been stirred.  That's a gross discovery.  I got a hot chocolate the other day at a Starbucks inside Safeway, which is still the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of, like who needs a huge ass latte while you're grocery shopping?   Or who is going to sit at a grocery store and tap away on their laptop?  The ambiance is horrendous.  Anyway, this hot chocolate was so chocolately that it made my eyes cross.  Almost undrinkable.  Don't they have standards of how a drink should be prepared and taste?   At those indie shops in Seattle you may have waited an extra 3 minutes while someone took care to prepare your drink, but in the end you got something worth waiting for!   Down here you get rude service and a poor quality drink.  It is disgusting.

Conspicuous Consumption:  I will admit to being as bad as everyone else when it comes to shopping.  For the last several years, at least 5, I've been in a financial position to buy almost anything I wanted.  I've never been wealthy, and my tastes are pretty simple, but I rarely worried about money, never really went without something I wanted, and generally bought something every time I went to a store.  Well.  That has, shall we say, changed.   Now I am shocked at the consumption everywhere.  In this time of a serious recession, a man was killed at WalMart so that people could get in to get deals on 50" television sets.  This on Black Friday, the biggest Christmas shopping day of the year.  But who buys 50" television sets as gifts?  These were people buying things for themselves, killing someone to do it.  It was shocking.  

A side note, about the shooting of the two men at a Toys R' Us in California.  The shooting occurred as a result of a fight between the dates of the two men.  The women got in a verbal argument, then there was a shoving match, and then both of the men pulled out guns and shot each other dead.  I was telling the Pope about this one morning and he said, succinctly, "glad they're out of the gene pool, I suppose."  

This is the wild world we bring our baby into, with every intention of raising it to be a good human being.  Not many visible examples in the world today.  

I was going to rant more, I've had a few things that have been bothering me lately, but my wrists are hurting, and the three nuts I just ate have given me raging heartburn.  You'll excuse me while I go sit my lard ass on the couch and cry.  

Wish me labor,

Salome