Baby Gorilla & the Uninhabitable House

Here in Ali’s inaugural Fritzwinkle posting. As Ali explains, it has been a long time since the last post for various reasons…

Many times Fred receives a phone call when I’m with him. All phone calls begin the same way, “Hi. How are you doing?……Not much….” I am here to tell you that if you are asking him what’s going on with him, “not much,” is a complete lie. There is too much going on. In fact, Fred has been so busy with the end of his school year, fixing up the new house, playing soccer once per week, attending childbirth classes once per week, serving on my company’s human rights committee, and then de-stressing with Playstation 2 FIFA soccer for hours on end that I finally tired of waiting for an updated Fritzwinkle (She forgets to mention that I created and also maintained two class websites for my students in the last few months during the Fritwinkle slowdown.). So I am going to write it. I have threatened Fred several times with this before, but this time I did it!

First of all…it’s all about me this time, so I’ll give the baby update. I have about two and a half months until D-day. So far so good. I mostly have back pain to complain about, but I’m sure Fred would have more complaints about my behavior than I do. We call the baby “Baby Gorilla” because it has strong kicks, it is making me HUGE and it goes through growth spurts that makes it so I am hungry ALL the time, especially for meat – beef. We have successfully completed 3 out of 5 childbirth classes. Fred is being a good sport about the whole thing considering he doesn’t even want to be in the delivery room. He jokes with the teacher and other guys in the class so much that when our teacher needs a victim for any demonstrations, she grabs Fred first. He was the first dad-to-be to have to wear the pregnancy suit. It was a weighted vest with a heavy stomach and large breasts. The vest even came with a sandbag to put pressure on his bladder. Fred’s least favorite parts of the classes are the videos. He calls them his “own personal hell” because he doesn’t like to see babies come out of women.

Photo: Ali and Me Belly-to-Belly

As for the house….what can I say? It is currently uninhabitable. We still don’t have real locking doors. Just a padlock on the front door and a slab of wood wedged in the back sliding patio door. We should have our doors installed by Friday (knock on wood). Fred ripped up all of the carpeting from the second floor. That made the place smell better at least. Keri and my dad spent two days last week mowing the lawn that hadn’t seen a mower since last year some time. I got to go in after my dad removed some tree stumps and plant some flowers in front to make the place look lived in. Keri spent her Saturday this week pulling out every carpet staple from the 15 stairs leading to the second floor. Fred is now in the more satisfying phase of priming and painting. Once we paint, we get to have carpet installed on the second floor. We also need windows, a water heater, and we will gut and redo the bathroom. It’s a good thing that Fred’s a teacher. This house is his full time job this summer. He’s under a bit of a crunch to make the place move-in ready before the baby arrives on September 7th.

Photo: Fred Cutting Carpet

Photo: Keri Cutting Grass

Photo: Me with Carpet Rolls

Photo: Keri with Remnants of the Lawn

One thought on “Baby Gorilla & the Uninhabitable House

  1. Thanks for the update. Since you are the only members of the family that have any communication genes, I’ve been checking the fritzwinkle regularly and been feeling out of touch and depressed with the lack of news.
    Uncle Dimbo

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