Request

When Julie calls, I come running. Always in the back of my mind is the possibility that she's saying "Daaaan!" because there's a head poking out of her. Generally, she just needs me to pick up a purse from the floor so that she can transfer its contents to another purse that matches her outfit better.

Just now I came down the stairs after folding laundry, sat at the computer, and heard the most blood-curdling "DAAAAAAAAAN!!!" in the entire pregnancy. It came from the shower, and my first thought was that I hope the cord doesn't wrap around its neck on the way out. Well seriously. Janet Leigh did not scream nearly as frantically in Psycho as she was hacked to death.

So I ran, sliding across the floor, slamming my hand on the wall for support, and burst into the bathroom, tasting my own heart as it pounded in my throat.

"What?! What is it?!"

"Can you get my body wash from the Target bag?" Calm as can be.

I politely explained through the shower curtain that such a scream for body wash left no way to properly convey an actual emergency like labor or murder. She replied that she had been calling for the last ten minutes and had decided to go for broke on her final attempt.

"I was upstairs folding clothes."

"Well the last place I saw you was the living room. You didn't hear me?"

"No, not until--wait, do you think that when you leave a room, I stay there to field any requests that might come up?"

"Body wash, please. Then you may go."

I think we'll buy our baby monitor today. That way we can use it until the birth as a Julie monitor.