You know how when you're 8 months pregnant and you're driving to work and you're stopped at a stop sign sipping your coffee and some enormous car SLAMS INTO THE BACK OF YOUR CAR? 

Oh, you don't? 

Oh, ok.

Well, let's talk about what happens.

The first thing that happens is that your coffee spills all over your face and all over the ceiling of your car. Next, you feel every inch of a brand-new headache creeping from the back of your neck to the front of your head.  As you realize what just happened to you, you think: Hey, my belly just hit the steering wheel. Then you begin to think, like an endless tape loop, my unborn child my unborn child my unborn child...

But even as you think about your unborn child - and you will consciously think about nothing else until you get to the hospital to later learn that all is fine -- you will subconsciously notice other things.  You won't remember those things until later, when you and your husband and your unborn child are home safe and warm, and you begin blogging. 

Here are some of the other things you notice:

First, it's clear that just like in the flight attendant industry, there appear to be some physical requirements for getting a job at my local fire department, police station, or ambulance--- um, ambulance house (?), because everyone who arrived at the scene was sporting some variation of this fashion theme. 
 
Now, when they place you in an ambulance -- and I will admit this only to you, you my closest friends from the global Internet --  you WILL note the strain in the faces of the ambulance men as they lift the stretcher to load you into the ambulance.  And you will want, with every fiber of your being, to say the following to these men:  Heh-heh, yeah, it's because I'm so pregnant. Normally you wouldn't be straining at all.  It's funny because you get to lift me on a day when I am really pregnant, and not on,  like, a normal day for me which would be like lifting, you know, a normal sized person.

Once you're inside the ambulance, you notice that the inside of an ambulance is remarkably shiny.  It's all red and chrome, like the inside of a teeny, tiny firehouse. (Who knew?) Another thing you'll notice is how freaky it is to be lying on a rolling stretcher in a vehicle not knowing whether the men have actually strapped the rolly legs to the ambulance floor, or whether you're going to go flying back out the way you came in when the ambulance takes off.  Another interesting fact:  the ambulance does not take off for urgent care immediately.  The ambulance waits until the ambulance people take your blood pressure & heart rate, and then it takes off for the hospital.  It is so NOT anything like the speedy 1-Adam-12 television scenes you may remember.  And when you are concerned about the vital signs of your UNBORN CHILD, all you can think about is how much freaking faster you would have been able to drive your own damn self to the hospital. 

Another thing to note is that in my town it would appear that the ambulance men probably don't treat pregnant women very often, because if they did they would know that the only thing we care about is hearing the heartbeat of our unborn child.  As I'm lying in the non-moving ambulance getting my bloodpressure taken I casually mentioned to the blood pressure man how wouldn't it would be a good idea to find the heart beat of my unborn child while we are all in here fishing around for vital signs?  The blood pressure man casually agrees.  He takes his stethoscope and proceeds to place it timidly just below my right breast for about 2 seconds. Finding nothing (of course) he moves it just underneath my left breast. Again finding nothing, he moves it directly next to my belly button for about 2 seconds. 

I am sweating now, trying to be a good ambulance patient; trying to restrain myself from being woman that I really am which is THE KIND OF WOMAN WHO MUST TAKE OVER THIS ACTIVITY IMMEDIATELY. 

But I have to take over. I have to.  I have to, because even with the dolphin-sonar-sensitive machine that my obstetrician uses to locate to the baby's heartbeat, it generally takes her some time to do so and furthermore she usually locates it way below my belly button. So I stop thinking about polite ways in which to inform ambulance man that no matter what he has heard about babies needing milk that the baby has not, in fact, pitched fetal camp underneath my breasts and instead I just take the end of the stethoscope out of his hand and place it down where it should be.  And believe me it's all I can do not to grab the ear-thingers off his head and listen for the heartbeat myself, but instead of ripping the earphones off his head  -- I stopped myself there, determined not to become his dinner party anecdote -- I implored him with my eyes to listen hard.  After a while he takes the ear-thingers off his head, claiming that he is "pretty sure" he can hear something, and I am pretty sure he is lying. 

At this stage I really want to yell up to the front of the ambulance "HEE-YAH! HEE-YAH!" and make a whip-cracking sound, like, maybe with my teeth or something but again, I restrain my instincts because I need for them to take me to a place where a white-coated expert will listen for the heartbeat of my unborn child instead of taking me to the nearest mental institution. 

So a couple of other things you notice include the fact that you need to be dripping large pools of blood in order to be looked at within 30 minutes of arriving at the emergency room.  Even stroking a pregnant belly does not speed things along, like it might if you were waiting in line to use a public bathroom (Note: I have not done that. Not yet.).  And everyone who sees you will ask your age. If you are like me and can never remember exactly how old you are, any pause in your response causes them to immediately reach forward, touch your arm, and ask if you feel dizzy or light- headed. (Note: a good response at this point is not Wait - for Godsakes I'm doing math without a pencil!).

That's all I've got for now.  Stay tuned for more suburban observations, as we report our findings from today's attendance at a Childbirth Education Class given from deep within the liberal heart of Massachusetts.  

One of my guilty pleasures is watching Lifetime's made-for-TV movies.  I know, I know. They're dumb, but come on.  On a rainy afternoon with nothing else to do, how can you not get sucked into watching them?  I love their over-the-top titles, their predictable plots, and the surprise of seeing once-popular actors now relegated to performing in this genre.

First, the titles.  The following list contains actual made-for Lifetime TV movie titles that appeared or were promoted just this week.  With titles like these, what's not to love? 

   Baby for Sale 
   Deadly Vows 
   Lies My Mother Told Me
   Deadly Deception
   A Time Of Hope
   She's Too Young
   Sleeping with the Devil

Baby for Sale?  I mean, that is so all-kinds-of-wrong that who doesn't need to know what is going on there?  And She's Too Young? We-eell, too young for what? I need to know!  Sleeping with the Devil?  Could I, too be sleeping with the Devil? I'd better watch and find out!

And the plots!  They're silly, they're predictable, and they're stupid.  So I love them.  You can always figure out the entire story within the first five minutes of the movie, and the plots are almost always "based on a true story" -- yes, Lifetime lies to me, but like one of her bad husbands, I believe her, and I can't resist watching.

How can you figure out the plot?  It's easy. Once you've identified the main characters, you simply apply one of the formulas listed below:    

If the main characters are a husband and wife the husband is always bad (nay, evil), the wife is always good (nay, angelic) and the plot will outline the wife's struggle to continue to be good, good, good for the sake of saving the marriage, while the husband continues to be bad, bad, bad because he is the spawn of Satan.  Through a series of her flashbacks we learn that he was not always so black-hearted; that in fact he was once charming but once the 'I do's' were said his pupils turned red and he began his campaign of evil-doing for reasons viewers will never learn and don't generally care about.  Various manifestations of good vs. evil ensue in between commercial breaks for 2 hours, until she is either forced to kill him in self-defense or until he is finally prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  And we are glad, glad, glad that good has prevailed over evil.  The last scene occurs in the courtroom, or on the courtroom steps as she gives a tearful but strong statement to the media. In most cases, her best friend stands by her side. 

If the main character is a single, childless woman then she is a kind-hearted, cheerful, good citizen who works for pennies at a puppy adoption center and she will be either assaulted or marked for stalking within the first 15 minutes of the movie. The rest of the movie will chronicle her struggle for justice against a misogynistic and/or paternalistic legal system.  The townspeople will turn against her. At the end of the movie the perpetrator will be in jail and she will either end up working at a battered women's shelter (with the adopted puppies, because they will be the catalysts that help heal the women at the shelter) OR she will have single-handedly instigated some important preventative legislation.  The townspeople will welcome her back into their social circles.  In many cases, she finds true love with her attorney who always admired her moxie, but it's more likely that she will find true love with a down-to-earth, blue-collar character such as her organic farmer neighbor or with the police officer who investigated the case.

If the story is about a single woman with one or more children then one of the children will either have a debilitating disease requiring crutches, agonizingly long hospital stays and/or a plastic bubble, OR they will struggle with One Of The Vices such as drug addition, alcoholism, prostitution, or gambling.  Sometimes the woman herself is a Vice-Ridden woman with handicapped and/or terminally ill child/children.  In any case the story will chronicle the woman's struggle to achieve wellness for her child/children, and in the process she gains critical self-insight by being forced to explore her own troubled past.  The final, back-to-normal scene occurs over a kitchen table at dinner, or at Christmas.  Uplifting piano music will play during the closing credits.

And the actors.  Ah, yes, the actors.  Just when you thought you'd seen the last of Tracy Gold, Meredith Baxter-Birney, Tim Mattheson, John Ritter, Richard Thomas, even Tracy Lords...   A Lifetime made-for-TV movie is one of the rungs you hit on the way down, after a stint in Branson, Mo. but before you're brought up on real-life charges for drug trafficking or indecent assault with a minor.

My most favorite Lifetime TV movie is called Frequent Flyer.  I've probably seen it about 5 times over the past few years.  (My mom likes this one, too.)  The fact that it is on right now is what inspired me to write this post.  In this based-on-a-true-story movie, Jack Wagner (yes, the 1980's singer of All I Need, thanks SuzanH) plays an airline pilot who juggles 3 angelic wives.  One of the wives discovers his polygamous secret, and most of the movie documents her orchestration of the crescendo scene, wherein after she has closed his bank accounts and sold his convertible, all three of them confront him at the same time.  Lots of face-slapping and admonitions ensue, they all divorce him at once, and we are glad, glad, glad that good has prevailed once again.  The rolling credits report that the man is still a pilot today, and that he currently has only one wife ("...or so he says").    

Look, it's not like I TiVo these movies (we don't even have TiVo), and it's not like I plan to watch these movies ahead of time.  And it's not like I don't try to read all the Booker Prize literary award books.  It's not like we don't see a ton of original theatre and independent films.  Lifetime's made-for-TV movies are my guilty pleasure.  And I'm not giving it up.

The dish is called Blackened Salmon.  I made it on purpose, but clearly my new oven is not sophisticated enough to grasp the underlying culinary concept in the term "blackened".

I just have one question about Blackened Salmon: why, for the love of God almighty, is the smoke alarm system in our house SO DAMN LOUD?  I'm telling you, it's abusively loud; it's approximately the same decibel level of a WWII air raid siren.  Seriously, why was this alarm system built with the assumption that the general public is deaf?

Oh, don't answer me really. I know why.

It is so loud because obviously our house hates me and wants to embarrass me in front of the neighbors.  And it hates Fab Husband too, since he had a headache and was fast asleep at the time the siren began to wail. 

Our smoke alarm system is not one of those benign, 9-volt battery systems, either, but I did not know this until I dragged (drug?) the footstool over to the screeching alarm and yanked its little hat-thinger from the ceiling in a frantic attempt to permanently cork it's screaming buzz-hole. 

But did I see the 9-volt, Duracell battery, sleeping in its little battery nest, a-ripe for the pluckin'?

No.

No, I did not.

Instead of a battery, when I removed the alarm cover I was instead assaulted by a pile of red and black WIRES that came tumbling out of the system from within the ceiling, like the guts of a damaged airplane. 

In the meantime the alarm, which is squealing SO DAMN LOUDLY that is is probably causing our unborn child to leap under her little wooden desk for cover in-utero, is attracting the attention of our very nice & normal neighbors and there I am standing in the front hallway on the footstool, with tears in my eyes, multi-colored nest of wires in my hands, barefoot and enormous with dinner BLACKENING (not burning) and smoke pouring out of the cracks of the oven yelling up to Fab Husband and to my neighbors with tears in my eyes, "I can't make it stop! I can't make it stop!".

And that is when my Fabulous, engineer husband came flying down the stairs in his superhero cape (a green plaid bathrobe with the household alias "The Turtle Suit"), grabbed the wires, did something engineery with them and ultimately Silenced the Alarm. For. Good.

And now?

Now I am sitting on the couch looking at the hole in the ceiling with wires hanging out and I am laughing and laughing at the impotent smoke alarm that once mocked my superior cooking skills.

Ha.