A good man is hard to find.

Six days to go before my official due date and predictably, our world is showing tiny, worrisome cracks at the seams. A high-spirited trip to the commissary for chicken to throw on the grill ended in five men standing in a ring around the popped hood of my ancient Honda, hands on hips and taking the occasional swipe at the season's last stubborn flies, and floating fantastical theories about what the hell could be wrong with the starter relay. Various folklore fixes were employed ("Put it in park and we'll rock it back and forth-- that might kick the fly-wheel into motion," "Yank the gear shift through all its stations a couple of times"), until finally Pants and I were offered a consolation ride home in a very nice man's intimidatingly nice Tundra. (The cab of his truck was like a cockpit and I half expected a silky, English accented female voice to inquire if she could reprogram our destination.)

This is OK, I guess. I mean, it's well within the realm of we-can-handle-this minor emergencies, and we do have alternate vehicles, though our back-ups are Floyd, a finnicky pink and white sedan from 1955 and Babe the Blue Ox, a 1995 workhorse Ford pick-up, whose gearshift handily offered up a big, ominous snap this morning and now hangs limply when not slammed into position. All good and comforting atmospheric details to mix into my imaginings of one of the most important, albeit mercifully short, car trips I will take in a matter of days... or weeks, because, as one of my smirking docs reminded me, "Babies can't read calendars."

(Oh, the hilarity! The baby sits with his feet propped on his amniotic desk, helplessly paging through a desk calendar before tossing it over his shoulder and screaming into his Blue Tooth headset, "I can't read this shit! Tell them I'll get there when I get there! Jesus!" [Rubs his temples and sighs loudly]. I think doctors dream this stuff up in the half hour I spend shivering naked in a paper gown.)

So, sketchy transportation. OK. Manageable.

Next: the pets are acting out. Yes, I say "acting out," in that overly concerned, I-watch-pet-psychology-TV-shows kind of way. Linus peed on the futon a week ago for the first time in over a year, despite the fact that the last time he pulled this stunt I came dangerously close to cat-punching, and this morning, while Pants and I tried to choreograph the Ballad of the Abandoned Honda, Abby decided it was a good time to mix up some hot chocolate. She accomplished this by nosing open the sliding pantry door, selecting a packet of instant mix off one of the shelves, and retiring to the living room, where she shredded it and licked a giant Rorschach pattern of powdered chocolate deep into the grains of the carpet. Diabolical checkmate: I can't spray spot cleaner on this or add water unless I want an even stickier, larger mess-- plus the carpet already had some pet stains-- SO, in between taking the car battery in for a series of WTF tests, Pants took on the additional chore of renting a steam cleaner.

I feel for him now, I really do. He's got that mouth where his lips purse into a puffy line and then purse some more so it looks like he might be chewing on something but it's gotten impossibly stuck. He just spent the entire weekend sanding, staining, polishing, and wiping down salvaged antique furniture into something we can store baby clothes and blankets in (his mute protest against my love of all things IKEA, and therefore cheap and easy). On top of that, he's put up with my grunting and limping and chugging around the house like some kind of farm animal, and far from being put off by it, he's even gone out of his way to cook meals and then put up with the shocking volley of farts that results, enough to put an entire boys' basketball team to shame.

In other words, if anybody is nesting right now, it's Pants, and the sheer force of his preparatory energy is bringing out this crushing tenderness for him in me, crushing enough to make itself known over all the heartburn and gas, and this weird numb patch I'm getting just below the boob line from where baby spine abuts rib and cuts off circulation. This tenderness is enough, thank God, for me to see over the pee and the hot chocolate/dog spit combo and the mysterious vehicular ailments (turns out the battery's fine and now we're looking at the effects of a massive oil leak just behind the distributor cap, which may be leaking into and plugging the starter relay-- whatever the fuck that all means), and my growing inability to lever myself out of the couch, to see what's really there: a good man, the father of my child.