On Wednesday, I had a long and interesting day.
Michael and I had two doctor’s appointments in the morning: a checkup with Dr. Taylor and a meet-and-greet appointment with our chosen pediatrician, Dr. Bellah. Both appointments went great. No problems and “the two of us” are still doing very well. Baby Franco is growing very rapidly and so has been somewhat of a pain-in-the-ab-domen lately (pun intended :), but I’m OK.
I have recently stopped looking at the scale. It’s just too unbelievable.There is absolutely no way that any normal person can miss that I’m a very pregnant young woman these days.
It was great to meet Dr. Bellah. His office is five minutes from our apartment, and he practices alone with one nurse and one receptionist. There is almost never a wait to see him apparently, and the office is a children’s playground, complete with climb-through walls, bright colors, beautiful children’s murals, toys and a jungle gym. The exam rooms are stocked with wrinkled, well-used little books with names like Franklin Visits the Doctor.
Both Dr. Bellah and his nurse, Angelle, are extraordinarily friendly, look-you-in-eye people. Michael and I felt comfortable with both of them. We were too shy to verify the following information with Dr. Bellah on this visit, but a yes-I’m-an-OCD new-mom Google search on him brought up the fact that he is a 1st degree black belt and martial arts instructor in Clear Lake. Our pediatrician is a ninja, just like Michael and I’s rowdy in-utero little baby. In other words, we both think Dr. Bellah will be able to handle whatever Baby Franco can throw at him.
After the morning of doctor’s visits, I headed out with LP to meetings downtown and then to work a client event, a fitness fashion show, at Champps Americana. I haven’t been out on meetings with LP in a while, and I normally don’t see anyone but my friends, LP, Michael and grocery store clerks during the week. So, I had a little bit of a hard time with how conspicuous I felt all day.
Our meeting with a law firm client was fairly quiet and uneventful, but when we headed out for coffee with a networking contact at the fashionable Uptown Park Starbucks, I got a lot of double takes. I wore a black maternity dress all day that I now realize probably makes me stand out even more, considering my pale white skin, above-average height and enormous belly.
I haven’t yet mentioned that my curse of badly burning myself has sneaked back to haunt me again: My piping hot peppermint tea burst all over my hand while I was trying to take off the top at the Starbucks condiment station. I have a big, angry red splotch on my left hand now. Goodness gracious.
Now for the fitness fashion show. We’ve been helping our client promote the event for a few weeks now, and last night was the big event. Champps Americana is a big sports bar with a delicious-but-will-swiftly-clog-your-heart menu and exceedingly large televisions placed every few feet along the walls. The clientele seemed to be mostly 20s to 40s businessmen and guys-night-out groups.
I would know because I got sent around to ask for business cards and names to put in the jar for event door prizes.
Oh yes. They sent ME. This young, very pregnant girl had to walk around the restaurant for 30min and walk up to large tables of men and ask for business cards or names for the door prize drawings. Of course, very few of the plentiful tables of men at Champps knew there was even a fashion show about to happen. SURE THEY DIDN’T.
Anyway, anyone who knows me can probably guess how much I LOVED that particular little task last night, but I hope they also can guess that I made the best of it. The good news is that I quickly learned to pull out my sense of humor. Once I started making fun of my obviously-pregnant belly and having good comebacks for the “why did they send you out to do this” comments that I got from nearly every table, I got many more people to agree to put in their names or cards.
I haven’t mentioned the models for the event. There were ex-pro football cheerleaders, top triathlete competitors, and some swimsuit models. The funny thing is that I was taller, much taller, than every single one of them. Most of the girls looked like they were between 18 and 21, and they were all 5’6″ or shorter from what I could tell. No runway models among them for sure. Most of them were promotional models for beer and alcohol companies and fitness magazines. They were all very nice, but just didn’t fit the “tall” requirement that I often think of from my brief New York modeling experiences. Apparently, all of them do well with modeling gigs around Houston and Dallas though.
I liked the guys a lot. The four male models were much older and more “seasoned” than the girls. All were very nice and gentlemanly, and I liked them a lot. In fact, most of the guys working and behind-the-scenes on this event were absolute gentlemen.
The fashion show wasn’t all that bad. It was just tiring and challenged my vanity a little.
Oh, I forgot to mention my annoying photographer friend. I am changing his name on my blog in case he does regular Good searches on himself, which I am sure he does. I will try to preserve the uniqueness of his chosen name, however.
His name is Belgium Patriot. He is a Clear Lake-based event photographer of Asian descent . He has a long black ponytail all the way to his waist, and wears an ill-fitted black suit and an art car t-shirt wherever he goes. He talks 100 miles a minute, sometimes spits when he talks, and has no conversations less than 25min. He is “friends” with everybody–especially if they are female and very good looking. He also has little sense of personal space and will share his personal history with just about anyone.
He has shown up at several events I have worked for Pennino and Partners and for my Houston internship at bareCommunication. I don’t think he is ever invited to these events–he just finds them on the Internet and shows up. Another problem is that he is actually a decent event photographer.
Anyway, Laura and I were sitting down to order some food after the show when Belgium came up to Laura and me to take a picture of us. He actually sat down with us at the booth, right next to me, and proceeded to sit with us for 40min while talking nonstop to me about 100 different things and progressively “spreading out” with his gear and posture in his seat so that I was crushed against the wall of the booth, trying not to touch him and trying not to let my face get too close to his spit-spurting mouth.
I feel really and truly like an ugly person to dislike this poor guy, but I did pray for him a lot while he was talking to me. Somebody who doesn’t know they are that obnoxious and annoying needs prayers. God loves Belgium Patriot just as much as He loves me. Besides, I couldn’t understand three quarters of what he was saying because of the noise in the room and how fast he was talking.
Wow! This is quite a long post, but again yesterday was a long day. At least LP told me to sleep in and work from home today, so I got to rest and work on my blog this morning.
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