Rachael is pregnant!

     Ladies and gentlemen, the rumors are true: my tackle works. I know everyone was sooooo worried, well, you can rest assured now.
     Oh yeah, Rachael's tackle works as well. Do you call that tackle? Tackled?
     How did this all come about, you ask? The technical aspects of the whole ordeal can be found here; for those with more experience and less time, suffice it to say, some monkey business occurred during the excellent honeymoon Grace and my dad sent us on.

...so blame them!

      Allow me now to dispel one of the myriad myths surrounding birth control: regardless of how long a woman has been on it, her reproductive system needs no time to cycle back up; once she ceases taking it, she is actually at her most fertile (assuming of course, she stops taking it before reaching menopause.) Rachael had been on hormonal birth control in one form or another for more than a decade. When I imagined her reproductive system, I envisioned an old abandoned factory, dusty from disuse, with rusted "WARNING: CONDEMNED" signs all over the place.

Foreplay was actually just a tetanus shot.

     It was this image that made me shrug and say, "yeah, sure," when Rachael suggested abstaining from birth control during the honeymoon, for reasons spelled out here. Besides, I reasoned, I could further lessen our chances of conception by employing the birth control method of "coitus interruptus."
     That didn't work out, for reasons spelled out here.
     And so Rachael is almost four months pregnant. Over the course of the last 17 weeks, she has conveyed the size of the fetus to me in terms of various spherical foods, starting with a blueberry, moving up to a raspberry, then a kiwi, a peach, this week it's apparently a navel orange. Throw a banana in her and she'd have a delicious smoothie center (Just add rum and voila: human daquiri!) Though I must admit, throwing a banana in her is pretty much what got us here in the first place.
     We're still waiting to find out the sex, although Rachael's sister Jonna guided us through two thoroughly scientific tests during our recent trip to Maine to visit her and Donovan.

     Accordingly, our next ultrasound appointment will reveal the baby's sex, and people have asked if we'll wait until birth to find out. Being the fan of instant gratification that I am, the answer is a resounding "HELL NO." I'm the guy who'll read a plot synopsis on Wikipedia for a movie if it looks like I won't get to see it as soon as I'd like. I do NOT have the will power to wait this one out. For that matter, why wait? I've yet to hear a convincing argument for it, other than to start a penis/vagina betting pool, and if your eyes lit up at the thought of that, click here.

     Every time Rachael and I sit down to think up names, we invariably descend to coming up with embarrassing or comical names for either gender. For instance, if we have a boy, I could name him Toby, and teach him to tell every stranger who asks him in my presence what his name is, "Kunta Kinte." Then I can look down at him and remind him condescendingly, "We've been over this a thousand times, your name is TOBY."

     Too obscure? My second choice was to name him Jesus Christ Hopkins, so that when people come to the door and ask "Have you heard the news about Jesus Christ?" I can say, "Aww dammit, what has that little turd done now?" Or for that matter, when people utter the phrase, "Jesus H. Christ," I can correct them, "Jesus Christ H."

     You HAVE to get THAT one...

     So what has pregnant Rachael been like? Mostly this:

For fuck's sake woman, who do you think you are, me?

     Not sure about the reading material in that picture (The Contortionists' Handbook, by Craig Clevenger;) my assumption is it's some natural birth stuff. She hasn't been any crazier than normal, other than referring to our unborn child in terms of food (over which I can't decide whether I should be alarmed or not. I guess she can't eat what's already inside of her.) She has been using the phrase "I don't know why I bother" a lot, and if I remember correctly, amnesia can be indicative of a neurological disorder. I'll keep an eye on it. Other than that, she's just had a tendency to nap. I assume that's something she's passed to the baby, as it's a quiet little sucker. Let's hope that persists.

     I took out a second mortgage on my man card and went to one of those horseshit "what will my baby look like?" websites, and though I was sorely tempted by their offer to splice my visage with that of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Snookie, I declined and uploaded some photos of Rachael and I. The first result was an abomination, which the internet mercifully deleted for me of its own accord. I guess it got mostly Rachael's genes. I had put in a call to the Kennedy's, and they informed me they were out of room in their basement, so let's hope that one was a fluke. I tried again with some more head-on shots, and got this:

I'll take it.

     At least it looks more like a baby.

     That's probably adequate news for now, I'll keep updating as we get more information.