Lol thanks everyone for your enthusiasm! Your comments are appreciated.
6
The scan gun beeped as Piper added another pack of swaddle blankets to their registry.
"Honestly though where in the hell are we going to put all of this? The spare already has a full dresser, so we don't need this," she points to the dresser on the scanned items list and deletes it, "and a Diaper Genie is disgusting, it's like a lazy Susan of dirty diaper storage, no thanks," she says as she removes that item as well. "I will personally walk each smelly diaper down the hall and throw it down the compactor, Vause's honor," she swears with two fingers slightly above her forehead.
"It's just to store them for a few days. I want to get the cloth diapers and look into getting a service to pick them up twice a week to launder them, it's better for the environment," Piper ranted on, as Alex looked at her over the top of her glasses, "but that might get really expensive, maybe we could just do it ourselves." Alex slid her glasses on top of her head and motioned with her hand that she was slitting her throat, "heck no, that's disgusting, throwing shitty diapers into the washing machine, no freaking way Pipes, and what the heck is a co-sleeper?" She widens her hands to about the size of a loaf of bread. "How does a person this big require all of this stuff?" She runs a nervous hand through her raven colored shoulder length hair.
Piper replies annoyed, "the co-sleeper is so that I can nurse in the middle of the night and that we can sleep restfully without having to worry about one of us rolling over and crushing Mookie
alright?" Alex facepalmed and rubbed her eyes hard before replacing her glasses. She walked slowly down the aisle and read the tags for the various co-sleepers. There were some that looked like foam covered boats, others that resembled a playpen. Piper walked further down the aisle, while Alex grabbed tags from 3 different products and sat cross legged on the floor behind her. When the blonde turned around she saw Alex sitting on the floor,
"Are you protesting? Is this your way of telling me you've had enough? Because we can always come back another time or add items online."
Alex silently read through the stats on the tags.
"Al?," she nudged her knee with her toe, "please don't make me bend down, it's too much right now."
The brunette pulled out her phone and started sliding her finger around the screen, "I just want to read some of the consumer reports for these. Keep going I'll find you in a minute. Add whatever you want to the list, except that Diaper Genie or cloth diapers, I have to have some standards." Piper caressed her wife's head and walked a few aisles over to the carriages. A little while later, Alex found her,
"I like this one. Its safety rating is really high and it's supposed to be really easy to move the kid next to you without crowding the bed, and look," she said excitedly, "it's portable so we can collapse it and it can turn into a play pen if we go to visit your folks."
"That's great, add it," she passed the laser gun to Alex. "Don't you want to look through and compare the stats?" "No, I trust you, just add it."
"What if I picked the wrong one?"
"You didn't, you wouldn't pick the wrong one. And if you did, well then, you did." She turned back toward the carriages, rolling a couple a few feet around the aisle.
Alex took a step closer, placed her hand on her shoulder, turning Piper toward her,
"But what if I did!? Piper every decision we make now impacts this kid," she said walking through the cramped aisle without direction. The look of panic in her eyes, was not one Piper saw in her often, but recognized her own face through her wife's eyes. Piper released the bit of tension she felt moments earlier and spoke,
"Al?," she asked with a tone getting the brunette to stop her pacing. "It hits me sometimes like this too; just breathe for a second." She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
"Look at me." She opened her eyes and stared at her wife with a look that said, nothing you can say right now is going to change the way I feel. "I have to pep talk myself every time I take a Tylenol or the days I skip morning yoga on the fitness channel. Sometimes were going to just do things that are not the best and that's okay. Sometimes we consciously know it's not the best, and sometimes we really don't know what we're doing, like everyone else who did this before us. This is a normal process, were going to be fine. Mookie is going to be fine. Yes we need to read about stuff, I don't want to go into this in a completely moronic fashion, but I don't want to obsess over everything either, we're going to burn ourselves out."
Alex continued to look at her not convinced. "That's great and all but ..."
"Alex, if my mother and your mother raised two girls that are happy and successful members of society, you don't think we can too?"
Alex gritted her teeth "yeah and we both ended up in prison, Piper."
"And we'll make sure we use our experience to make sure that doesn't happen to our kid."
Alex rolled her eyes and shook her head. She placed her hands on the grips of the carriage and nervously wheeled it back and forth, "sometimes I just want to scream 'c'mon kid, move your ass, what's taking so long?' and other times this wave of fear just kind of consumes me and makes me realize how much I'm really not ready at the same time."
Piper nodded her head in complete understanding, "I know Alex I do too. There are days where my body is sore and I just want to be done. But then I say okay maybe we're supposed to go through this for 40 weeks because we need the time. We really are so desperate to meet our child by then that all the doubt and anxiety just kind of stops mattering, you know?"
"I just want the kid to be ok. I don't want to screw it up."
"You're not going to screw up our child Alex, we're both going to make mistakes but both of us can't be type A about everything. I need you to forgive me when I make a bad call and I'll be able to do the same for you."
"You just take really good care of yourself, and I really appreciate it because you're giving our baby the best chance at being healthy. It's a lot of pressure to keep it going."
"Don't give me all of the credit, you take good care of me and you'll do the same with Mookie. Yes sometimes you hover over me and it makes me feel pathetic and you drive me crazy..."
"I drive you crazy? What about your ridiculous snoring on the nights you actually manage to fall asleep on your back or the way your ass is all over my side of the bed because of that ridiculous body pillow that replaced me- taking up your whole side... we might as well sell tickets for people to vacation on top of that thing!"
Piper pecked her and thanked her for her endurance. They agreed to continue shopping another day when Alex insisted on needing more time to compare user satisfaction and product recalls.
Piper dragged each hanger over the horizontal metal pole in the bedroom closet, looking for her cardigan.
"You ready Pipes?," Alex folded the page with measurements and put it in her bag.
"Yep, can't believe you convinced Nicky to go in exchange for food," she laughed, slipping on a pair of ballet flats.
"She wants to help, she just tries to suppress how thrilled she is to be an aunt, must be the baboon heart."
Alex waited near the door with Piper's coat draped over her arm as the blonde struggled with her second shoe.
"Ah, I can't it's too hot for that," she says motioning toward the coat. Chills ran over Alex's body, "Piper it's November, just take it at least."
"I'll just wear the cardigan," she said and headed through the door. "Where is the cardigan?"
Piper's eyes looked over the pale skin of her arms and laughed, "placenta brain, I must've left it in the room."
They picked up Nicky on the way to the hardware store to pick out a paint color and some light fixtures to start to transform the guest room into a nursery. Alex enlisted in Nicky's help to paint and make a day of friendly bonding which Nicky agreed to under the condition that Piper made her homemade chili.
After laying out 20 somewhat variations of the same color swatch, they settled on a Tiffany blue color and got to work in the early afternoon. Alex and Nicky spread the drop cloths throughout
the room and started opening the paint cans while Piper brought in some brushes, paint rollers and blue tape.
"C'mon Pipes out, it's not good to be breathing in all these fumes, you'll help with the finer details of decorating another day after the paint had time to dry and the room can air out."
The blonde pouted slightly and turned her back away from the two women and walked out.
She returned with a mask fashioned from a maxi pad and hair ties, dunked a brush in the paint can and painted near the baseboard moldings around the circumference of the room.
"Oh oh, owned, as usual Vause," retorted the wild haired blonde slapping Piper easily on the back. As the first layer was near dry, Piper sat on the floor, while Alex went around and touched up missed spots. Nicky moved the ladder to the center of the room, uninstalling the light fixture in the center.
"Hey Chapman, how many lesbians does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
Piper smiled through her mask and raised her shoulders, "I don't know Nicky, how many?"
"Four. One to change it, two to organize the potluck and one to write a folk song about the empowering experience."
Piper laughed out loud and leaned back on her hands admiring their afternoon's work. Alex grabbed her hands to hoist her up, and she went out to the kitchen to start working on their chili for dinner.
A few hours later, with paint splotches over their ears, cheeks and in their hair, Alex and Nicky, washed up and made their way into the kitchen. Nicky had a seat at their new yet small dining room table and Alex brought out some bowls and tortilla chips, she set the pot of chili in the center.
"Ooooh, I can use my new cloth napkins!," Piper headed down toward the linen cabinet to retrieve paisley printed fabric.
"Oh goody!," Nicky mocked her sarcastically earning her a kick in the shin from Alex."Eh, what the fuck?! I'm just messing with her."
Piper returned and handed them each a napkin, sat down and placed one over her lap.
Nicky inhaled the aroma of the chili, and pointed to it snapping her fingers. Piper ladled a few scoops into each bowl; Alex sprinkled some shredded cheddar over the top, while letting out a series of moans and hastily shoved a spoonful in her mouth burning the roof, having tasted it too soon. Nicky dove in, it was one of her favorite dishes that Piper made. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, ignoring the napkin. Piper stared at her with a slight frown.
"Hey blondie, why do lesbians suck at cooking?"
Piper hardened her stare and Alex pulled her foot back ready to re-launch another kick when Nicky answered,
"because they always eat out."
All three women laughed in hysterics.
"No but seriously College you are a beast when it comes to this chili, what the hell is in this? Crack cocaine?"
"Nah, maybe some LSD, the list is long believe you me," she said spooning a mouthful of hearty beans and vegetables into her mouth. "Hey Nicky you think you can call me Piper?"
Nicky mulled the thought over for a split second, "Pipe-her? I hardly knew'er!" she said, slapping her leg, Alex almost choked on her chili laughing.
"Oh my gad am I on a roll today or what?"