Because You're Weak

There is no way for me to adequately convey my irritation at my upcoming baby shower. On a purely rational level it is illogical and hypocritical of me to complain because a group of people want to get together and give me gifts. I should quit whining. I agree.

But as J succinctly put it, when I whined “why did I agree to this?”

“Because you're weak”.

On an emotional level, the fact that I agreed to participate in this charade in the purely mercenary hope of getting one or two necessary items leaves me wishing that someone had smacked me upside the head hard before I agreed to participate in such a venture, if only to rid me of the high delusion that I would receive anything useful out of this party. I'm getting a great deal of passive-aggressive pleasure out of the fact that we decided not to gender the alien before birth, as it will marginally decrease the atrociously gendered clothing and crib sets that may be coming my way. (1)

My first objection to this ritual, aside from the fact that I hate showers of all stripes on general principle, is that my input on the type of party I would like to have ended when I submitted my guest list to my MIL. I would have been happy, nay thrilled, to have gathered in a back room at Dino's, where the guests could munch on semi-stale popcorn, order garlic wings and cheese fries, and had themselves a beer and a good chat in between the opening of gifts and watching college football on the enormous, flat screen televisions. I could have eaten cheese fries and snuck sips of beer.

Instead it is being held at the same venue as my bridal shower and will be a semi-formal, catered lunch with soup or salad, a quiche of some sorts accompanied with coffee, iced tea or water, capped with a yellow cake with vanilla icing sporting storks, baby booties and Congratulations!, all in alternating blue and pink icing because J and I have the nerve to refuse to find out the alien's gender or theme the nursery.

I also have trouble understanding what is so entertaining about watching someone else open a pile of gifts in such a public fashion, as both the gift giver and the recipient. I enjoy giving gifts to other people, but I could care less if they open it in front of me or not. (2) I don't fake enthusiasm for bad gifts very well, my sense of humor is such that it takes a mammoth amount of self control to put off making fun of truly heinous items until the giver is two states over and to the left from where I am standing.

Then there is the growing panic that I am going to be forced to participate in shower games, specifically a popular and truly atrocious one called Let-Us-Humiliate-the-Guest-of-Honor-by-Guessing-How-Fat-She-Is-! which requires party guests to cut a piece of string into what they think is the circumference of the MTB waist. The strings are wrapped around the MTB and the winner is the individual with the most accurate string length.

Why the panic? Because the hosting duties have transferred from my normally sane (other than her heavy hand with the guilt trips) MIL to a sister-in-law, one of J's older (in their 40's) female cousins, my mother, J's sister and her two daughters, aged five and seven.

A five year old and a seven year old are co-hosting my baby shower. I know these little girls well. They are lovely, bright, outspoken (which I quietly encourage as much as possible) mostly well behaved children who would nonetheless thoroughly enjoy measuring their aunt's expanding waistline and would not understand, egged on by the older cousins who find such games amusing, why their aunt would be bothered by such entertainment. The shower is scheduled to last three hours. A lot can happen in a three hour period.

Over fifty women have been invited to my shower. Out of those fifty, thirty-five of the invitees are either friends or family of J's mother. My mother and I have a combined list of around twenty and I can think of at least three off hand from my list who will be unable to attend for one reason or another. I am completely outnumbered in the moral support department on this one. If I refuse to participate, then I shall be labeled as unreasonable and can hear, clearly, the voice of my mother instructing me to stop making a scene.

I am weak.

(1) I'm still reeling from the pink crib set that a neighbor dropped off at our house. There is pink and then there is pink. This is pink.
(2) I openly admit that I'm still a bit bitter that I was forced to open our wedding gifts in front of a mob instead of in the quiet of our home, just J and myself, with some soft music and a glass of wine as a way of winding down from a weekend of non-stop activity.