One of my Favorites

I know I owe you pictures. Today there is lots of snow and everything I had on my to do list is getting set aside, schools are closed, and you can't imagine how frustrated and helpless that makes me feel. But I will get pictues of boys in snow.
The following are a few highlights from a chapter in Shirley Jackson's Life Among the Savages. For some reason I found this chapter funnier than usual these past few days. Please remember that the book was published in 1953, and things were a bit different back then...

Everyone always says the third baby is the easiest one to have, and now I know why. It's the easiest because it's the funniest, because you've been there twice, and you know....

... for the last two weeks before I went to the hospital almost everyone I know called me almost once a day and said "Haven't you gone yet?"

...Everything was, as I say, perfectly normal, up to and including the frightful moment when I leaped out of bed at two in the morning as though there had been a pea under the mattress... my husband said sleepily, "Having baby?"
"I really don't know," I said nervously. I was looking for the clock... It was hard to find without the alarm ringing... "I can't find the clock," I said.
"Clock?" my husband said. "Clock. Wake me five minutes apart."

"How soon do you think we ought to leave?"
"Around noon, probably." I said. "Everything is fine, really."
My husband asked politely, "May I help you with breakfast?"
"No, indeed," I said..."I feel so well," I said.
"Would you be offended," he said, still very politely, "if I took this egg out of my glass?"

The taxi arrived and suddenly I was saying goodbye to the children. "See you later," Laurie said casually. "Have a good time."
"Bring me a present," Jannie added.

"Name?" the desk clerk said to me politely, her pencil poised.
"Name," I said vaguely. I remembered, and told her.
"Age?" she asked. "Sex? Occupation?"
"Writer," I said.
"Housewife," she said.
"Writer," I said.
"I'll just put down housewife," she said. "Doctor? How many children?"
"Two." I said. "Up to now."
"Husband's name?" she said. "Address? Occupation?"
"Just put down housewife," I said. "I don't remember his name, really."
"Is your husband the father of this child? Do you have a husband?"
"Please," I said plaintively, "can I go upstairs?"
"Well, really," she sniffed. "You're only having a baby."

"Call me if you want me," the doctor said to the nurses as he left, "I'll be downstairs in the coffee shop."
"I'll call you if I need you," I told him ominously, and one of the nurses said in a honeyed voice, "Now, look, we don't want our husband to get all worried."
I opened one eye; my husband was sitting, suddenly, beside the bed. He looked as though he were trying not to scream. "They told me to come in here," he said. "I was trying to find the waiting room."
"Other end of the hall," I told him grimly. "Get him out of here, "I said, waving my head at my husband."
"They told me - " my husband began, looking miserably at the nurse.
"It's allllll right," the nurse said. "Hubby belongs right here."
"Either he goes or I go," I said.

"Well, well," I said to the nurse. "Sure am glad to see you."
"Sissy," she said distinctly, and jabbed me in the arm.
"How soon will this wear off?" I asked her with a deep suspicion...
"You won't even notice," she said enigmatically, and left.

"Doctor," I said, and I believe that my voice was a little louder than I intended it should be, "you better give me - "
He patted me on the hand and it was my husband instead of the doctor. "Stop yelling," he said.
"I'm not yelling," I said. "I don't like this any more. I've changed my mind, I don't want any baby, I want to go home and forget the whole thing."
"I know just how you feel," he said.
My only answer was a word which certainly I knew that I knew, although I had never honestly expected to hear it spoken in my own ladylike voice.
"Stop yelling," my husband said urgently. "Please stop saying that."
"Who is doing this?" I asked. "You or me?"

"Had it yet?" I asked her.
"No," she said. "You?"
"Yep," I said. "You going home again?"
"Listen," she said. "I been thinking. Home, the kids all yelling and my mother looking sad like she's disappointed in me. Like I did something. My husband, every time he sees me jump he reaches for the car keys. My sister, she calls me every day and if I answer the phone she hangs up. Here, I get three meals a day I don't cook, I know all the nurses, and I meet a lot of people going in and out. I figure I'd be a fool to go home."