Crab Legs & Baby Stuff
Monday, March 19, 2007
Yet another doctor’s appointment that day.
And there were storms in the sky.
It was a quiet day. Rose had one last day to work at Subway after her Spanish class, which meant that there would be no time for tutoring that day. So Collette saw to the mundane duties: dishes, laundry, paperwork, etc., until the afternoon rolled around.
The appointment went well again.
“Blood pressure looks great,” Dr. Brazil said enthusiastically, and then spoke briefly about visiting Japan once, while he checked the baby’s heart beat.
“34 centimeters…” He said, putting the measuring tape back in his pocket. “Head down. Looks good.”
Dr. Brazil was a fun fellow; the stress of the job did not seem to have a great effect on his attitude. At the previous appointment he had even sat down and spent several minutes discussing OLeif’s tattoos with him.
Dinner time saw OLeif and Collette at Red Lobster for the very first time. They were still using up gift cards from Christmas. OLeif ordered what was labeled “the feast” on the menu – a large dish full of lobster, shrimp, crab, and vegetables.
“That does it,” OLeif said half-way through the meal, crushing through one of the crab legs, “we’re moving to the coast to learn how to eat this stuff. I’m not even kidding.”
Collette, however, had no desire to sample the crab leg and tried to finish her Cajun chicken linguine Alfredo, cheddar bay biscuits, part of her Caesar salad, and a wedge of key lime pie. In the end, however, OLeif was obliged to finish most of her chicken. It was too much.
“Do you think anyone ever died of overeating?” Collette asked him, leaning back into the booth seat, feeling more than very full.
OLeif laughed and reached over to the last of the key lime pie where a red berry sauce had been drizzled on the plate by its side. Also lying there were two small lime wedges, which OLeif popped into his mouth, rinds and all.
Dinner was followed with another class at the hospital from 6:30 to nearly 9:30, where the majority of the other eight women present talked about infections and tests and contractions and other baby things before the class began while the five husbands who had come to the class mostly pretended not to listen to the in-between chatter.
One of the young girls sitting there Collette later recognized as having been in the older high school group when her family had moved from Kirk eight years before to start the church plant. She couldn’t remember her name or anything about her, but she remembered her face.
And as if they hadn’t already had enough to eat, the cheerful little instructor, a kind woman in her 50’s, had brought lemonade and homemade pumpkin bread for the class which she served during the break. So they shared a slice and each had a lemonade. OLeif was obliged to gulp his own lemonade at a furious rate due to the before-unnoticed hole in the bottom of the cup.
On the way home, OLeif visualized out loud his brainstorms for where to take Joe and Magnus for their senior pictures, and how he would arrange the shoots.