Chocolate and jalapenos

Yesterday I dreamt a waitress in a fancy restaurant showed me the dessert walk-in fridge. She crouched, her traditional Bavarian dirndl skirt and corset bunching a little at the waist, to look on the walk-in's bottom shelf. "Well, it looks like we're out of the three-layer carrot cake with cream cheese frosting," she said regretfully. "Buuut," and she pulled out a tray of German chocolate cake (was this why she was in a Bavarian costume?) and also a tray of brownies. "What we can do is this..." she continued, and she put a square of brownie on top of a piece of German chocolate cake. They both instantly became warm and melty and delicious because she had the power to send microwaves through her fingers. Then she drizzled warm chocolate ganache over the top. In the dream, I said something I will never, ever say in real life: "Me like-y! Me love-y! Me want some more of-y!"

Then my pregnant stomach began growling and woke me up. It was morning, and Clara was rustling around next door. Wondering if we had anything decadent in the cupboard I could have for breakfast, I went to get her.

"Hi, Baby," I said, as she jumped off her bed and into my arms.

"I'm not a baby, Mommy," she said. This after months of insisting we call her just that.

Glory be! I thought. She's embraced the winds of change!

"I'm a cat."

Wrong direction.

She stuck out her tongue and licked my cheek.

"Honey," I said, grimacing."Please don't do that. There's all sorts of germies on my cheek." And on your tongue, I added to myself.

She took my face in her hands and examined it closely.

"Mommy has two polka-dots," she said, touching her baby index finger to the rosacea spots on my cheek. For my rosacea I apply a thin layer of a prescription drug called Metrogel to my face every night (That's right, Metrogel is not a hair pomade for people of indeterminate sexual orientation, but a topical ointment for people with, "adult acne"). It occurred to me that Clara now had some of last night's Metrogel on her tongue. But since the Metrogel apparently doesn't do jack for my rosacea, I was pretty sure it wouldn't strip her tongue of its taste buds or anything horrible like that, either.

"And an ouchie," Clara continued, pressing the mole by my mouth. Her inspection over, I took her downstairs and sat her down in her booster seat.

"Did you have any dreams last night?" I asked her, rummaging through the cupboard. Bananas Foster would have been an ideal breakfast, but what pregnant lady keeps a bottle of rum on hand?

"Yes. I dreamed about baby doggies and little, tiny baby kitties." Her voice got squeaky high when she talked about the little, tiny baby kitties, and she brought her hands together, making her fingers wiggle with anticipation. Like she was getting ready to eat something delicious.

"Did they have names?" I asked, pouring her a bowl of Trix.

"Ummmmmm....YES. Names are Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail."

"Oh, like in Peter Rabbit?"

"No. Just in my dream."

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This pregnancy, besides decadent desserts, I've been craving anything spicy. I put jalapenos on everything: pizza, scrambled eggs, ham sandwiches. Two nights ago I had jalapenos on a tuna melt. Then I went to a Mexican restaurant called The Matador with some friends. We had chips and hot salsa. And I had a bowl of chicken soup that our server called, "The spiciest thing on the menu." And how. It was so spicy I couldn't finish it.

That night I woke at two am. My belly clenched. It felt like flames were making a circuit of my stomach and intestines. This is what Johnny Cash meant when he wrote "Ring of Fire," I thought. I was up half the night, praying for deliverance from that bowl of spicy chicken soup.

In the morning I had to take Clara to daycare. As we walked up to the daycare's front door, a strange feeling came over me.

Please don't let this happen, I thought. But it was happening. I ran to the flowerbeds beside the daycare's driveway and dropped to one knee like a football player conceding ground. Stirred by the morning breeze, multi-colored pinwheels whirred cheerfully in the grass beside me. A stone garden bunny looked on with amusement.

Clara has never seen anyone throw up. She herself has only done it a couple times. A baby throwing up is not like an adult barfing. Clara always seems surprised when the detritus of her last few meals comes flying out her mouth. And there are no real sound effects with babies, just the gurgle of fluid leaving a vessel. As with most things, barfing gets much uglier as you become an adult. There's the pre-vomit sagging face, as the barfer anticipates the roiling stomach spasms to come. There's the guttural retching and the bowed torso, like an alien giving birth.

As cars whizzed by, I tried my best to be discreet about it.

Clara bent over next to me and spat gratuitously in the grass. She pretend-coughed and imitated my retches. Whatever...I thought. As long as she's not wandering in the street while I'm emptying my stomach.

My glasses slipped off my nose and fell into the pile of vomit.

Luckily, I had wipes on hand in my purse. Otherwise I might have had to spend the next several minutes viewing the world through puke-streaked lenses.

Thankfully, I don't think anyone from inside the daycare saw me hurl. I wondered, as I spoke with Clara's daycare provider, if I had flecks of tomato on my teeth from last night's salsa.

I called my OB afterwards just to apprise him of the situation and to reassure myself that I hadn't inadvertently marinated my gestating baby in a napalm-like slurry of chili pepper.

"Well," he said, after I told him of the situation, "I think now we can safely say you understand the boundary between enough spiciness and too much." In other words, I thought "We're not going to do this again, are we?"

Perhaps. But even as I write this, the idea of jalapeno-encrusted nachos makes my mouth water.