“Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion.” 
-Spike Milligan, The Last Goon Show of All

I was rushed on Friday so I didn’t get to share the full glory of my anti-pregnancy adventures.  Let me tell you about the ghetto fabulous place I went to!  I had a couple of friends recommend Planned Parenthood as a convenient and relatively inexpensive place to go for birth control consults, but I very nearly backed out when I saw the “clinic” (and I use that term very loosely). 

It was housed in an old apartment complex place that I would go nowhere near after dark, if it had even been cloudy outside it would have looked like a set from a slasher movie.  Dark and crumbly are two words that spring to mind, with just a dash of menace.  What really almost cinched it was the sign on the front that said, “No Cell Phones Allowed, Please Leave in Car.” 

“So no one can hear you scream?” I thought, “Oh hell no!” 

I just put mine on silent and nervously walked in.  Thankfully the inside was much better and my panic abated somewhat, but still I will laugh in the face of anyone who recommends PP to anyone else.  Upside is the pill there is about $10-15 cheaper than a pharmacy. 

The rest of my weekend was taken up with family planning of a different variety.  My little godniece Elle’s blessing was on Sunday and the preparation for the whole shindig took the better part of two days!  GS and GBIL moved into their new apartment while she was heavily pregnant and never really got settled in before baby came.  So come Saturday Fairy, Brando, Pieter and his girlfriend Benz, and I all decamped to GS’s house for a major overhaul.  Painting, washing, hanging drapes, you name it we did it.  And then on Sunday, after the blessing in church, what seemed like half the population of this side of the Rockies descended on us ALL bearing food.  It was a sight to behold!  Little kids, cousins, second-cousins-a-couple-dozen-times-removed, grandparents, great-grandparents, friends, and almost-family were everywhere, we eventually had to spill into the front yard to clear room in the house for people to eat.

And then on Sunday night, we had dinner with J.’s family at his sister’s house.  Two parents, three kids, two in-laws, five grandkids (with one more on the way), more Tickle-Me-Elmo dolls than I have ever seen at once in my life, and me: incumbent daughter-in-law.  It was fun, but a little weird.  My family doesn’t really have a relationship with grandparents etc., I can count the times I’ve seen my cousins on one hand and here I’m going to be an aunt half a dozen time over the second I say, “I do.”  I don’t even know how to be a grand-daughter, how am I supposed to be a daughter-in-law without horribly offending someone?!