Steven's baby shower

We were out watching a t-ball game at the local park Thursday night when Steven remembered, "Hey, isn't there a baby shower today?" There's been an epidemic in our ward lately of prego bellies popping out all over the place, most of them in the young women's program. They actually just released half of the presidency a few weeks ago to be prepared for the deliveries that are going to happen within the next few weeks.

For not knowing too many people in our ward, we know a lot of these preggos and our door has continually been littered with baby shower invitations. I say our door because living in such a small town where the ward is physically located within a total of 3x3 blocks it's easier to go door-t0-door leaving papers than to spend time writing and addressing envelopes.

Now, I am not going to lie, I avoid baby showers like I used to avoid bridal showers. It just makes you crave something you don't have in your life yet. They're not what I enjoy and usually filled with knowledge and advice from those who have had kids before and this leaves no room for us novices to win any kind of prizes. Lame-o.

There is rarely an excuse to miss them and I just end up not going and feeling guilty about it for the remainder of the few hours that they last. But that day especially I wasn't feeling so hott and hadn't bothered to take a shower for the past three days and was feeling the effects. The baby shower was scheduled to end in 30 minutes and there was no way I was going to make myself presentable in that short of a time and still have time to go get a gift. I fained the card of not feeling well, in all honesty it was just too overwhelming to even think about setting foot in a house where everything was decked out in blue and yellow and everyone smelled nice and were so happy to be celebrating a baby.

"Do you want to go?" He asked. "No, I don't want to go by myself." "I would go with you." This made all my churning thoughts stop. Say what? He would go with me? That's kind of an unusual agreement. "You know you're not invited, right?" "What? It doesn't say anything like that. We'll just go together, say hi, and bounce back out. Where's it at?" I wasn't about to give out any information for fear that he would take us right there, so, again, I requested to go home. Besides, we didn't have a gift. All I had was a $10 dollar bill in my pocket leftover from grocery shopping. There was no stopping his curiosity.

Steven got us right home and made up a card from a piece of computer paper and scribbled on with a black sharpie something about congratulations and blah blah blah. And he was ready to go. He asked for the bill, which had literally been crumpled into a wad and stuffed in my pocket. There was no unfolding and flattening this thing. There was some difficulty in unwadding it and even then it was quite the crumpled piece of sorriness. But it went into the card anyways, refusing to lay flat.

Out the door he went, his destination one of the oldest houses in Farmington. It's actually just kiddie corner from us on main street so I wasn't surprised when he came back all of 10 minutes later.

"Woah. There were a lot of women there! I mean, I thought Jake or someone would be there, ya know, just hangin' out, taking gifts or whatever. Filling the punch bowl. There was no one. Just a lot of ladies and baby stuff. But I got some food and I told them all that you were sick and I was just there to represent and they insisted that I take something back for you."

And that was it. I doubt he'll be going to one again.