You'll never guess whom I ran into in Memphis...

Friend and lover Justin Timberlake is a Memphis native. A Memphian is the term they use. (Also the name of the mysterious sea creature who wanders the Mississippi and sticks his neck up from time to time or so it sounds.)

One last note on this picture: OH MY GAWD, THE HANDS! It almost made me lose my crush. JT's fingers are Gollum-esque (or Memphibious) and seem like they have some sort of vampirish/Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt fingernails going on. (Creepier still is Jessica Biel's, I mean my...fe fi fo fum giant hand.) Still we shared quite a night.

One other thing, the title of this blog: "You'll never guess whom..." Whom? Who? Normally when faced with such a conundrum I would look it up avoid the word completely (the alternative post title was "He's from Memphis and I love him") but I wanted to go for it. Anyone want to weigh in? I am the subject of the sentence (as I did the running into)and my lovah Justin is the object (to whom I ran...and gave head---pretty sure that's the example they use in the grammar textbooks) so I think it should be whom. But, I've never seen nor heard someone say, "You'll never guess whom I ran into." (Or is it that you are the subject as you're the one never guessing and Justin's the object?) What say you? (Yous?)

It was a week of nieces pieces. Had a wonderful few days with Mollusk (Molly, who has infinite nicknames including Maldred, Molly Moo, Lou, Louie, Fally Molly and Dan's latest creation: Cerebral Malsy) last week while Bec was away. We made apple pie and banana bread, laughed our tired faces off, and when she asked to sleep in my bed at night I, of course, said yes. She had a pretty hacking cough going on and one night at 4:30am I had to set up a makeshift pillow-bed and have her camp out in the bathroom with me while I ran a hot shower in an attempt to loosen up her cough. It worked and it felt good to have some sense that after six years of watching this kid, I know what I'm doing.

Then there was Savvy J. whom (other than being completely ineffective as a food source) I felt pretty capable of managing. (I would have her on my lap facing me and the kid would go from a wide gummy smile to staring like a locked laser gun at my chest. Then she would execute a slow and controlled---she's got abs for a near four-month-old---descent to my jugs into which she would smoosh her face and eventually cry. Not the first tears of disappointment my rack has absorbed.) But I was able to walk her to sleep in my arms, and had her listening to her first notes of a musical, Carol Burnett's "Little Girls" off the Annie soundtrack and logged some rocking chair time with her in front of a fire. Effing bliss.

All this QT with the nieces gave me a little baby buzz. The same ol' thoughts and questions start creeping in: Should we? Could we? Would drinking through a pregnancy cause that much harm? Knowing that my age and circumstances are somewhat conducive to baby-making (married, health insurance, a bathroom I could lock myself in), the idea is a little exciting at times. It's interesting to feel adult enough that a surprise pregnancy is no longer at the top of my things-to-be-avoided list. (The wet spot Bikinis have taken that honor.) We could do this if we wanted to. (Well, I've learned that's not actually a given but I choose to still think somewhat positively.)

Anyway, it was interesting that as all these thoughts whirled about, I realized I was a few days late. So yesterday I bought a box of pregnancy tests (picked up with a prescription medicine which felt ironic and then concerning and then bad before inspiring its own line of questioning and angst) and I took the test this morning. Always a strange experience, as any woman who has ever taken one knows. It's a feminine rite of passage, taking a pregnancy test. Some women do it with a friend, one person to be there for support. Some, I imagine, do it with their significant other. I've always done it alone. Whether or not I'm taking on a tenant is something I prefer to process by myself. It's all so commonplace and casual for such a momentous change. This little plastic stick that looks like a urine paintbrush makes all the big decisions. It's like a fortune cookie with really high stakes. Some women look right away. Some endure the two-minute wait period. I like to watch as the urine passes over the indication windows and the stripes, plus signs or minus signs surface like images on a Polaroid picture.

I'm not pregnant. NOT pregnant. And I have to admit that before relief washed over me, I felt a faint disappointment. I was surprised by this. Maybe it's possibility in its purest form that is so intoxicating and the drabness of certainty that comes with one line (rather than two life-affirming ones) that is such a buzzkill. Maybe I just sorta wanted to be pregnant in some far off place in my brain. Still, disappointment turned to relief pretty quickly.

Last night as Dan and I lay (were laying? Lain? got laid?) on the couch, we talked about what would come from whatever results this morning's test showed. We both agreed that the timing was not ideal. We both agreed that timing is rarely, if ever, ideal. (Though this would probably measure as the lowest level of ideal if I was making a bar graph. I just met Justin...) Still, if it happened, we'd have to do some serious thinking.

But it didn't happen (as far as the test shows) so we're off the serious-thinking-hook for a minute. We can resist full-blown maturity for a while longer. Thank gawd because right this minute, I don't think I have it in me.

That's what she said.

See?