a note on the next few weeks

or, sometimes life laughs in your face

Forgive me for sending out an unscheduled email, but I just wanted to let everyone know that the next few weeks may look a bit different here for a few reasons. If all goes according to plan, you won’t even notice.

I had ambitious plans for this year, as outlined in a previous post, so it’s fitting that my year be a bit turned upside down.

As you may already be aware, my wife is pregnant. She had a subchorionic hemorrhage a few months ago. I wrote about that from the hospital room. This also happened during her third pregnancy, which is the one that she carried to term. She had no other complications back then. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case for this pregnancy.

Her water broke this morning, which was not ideal. We got someone to watch our son, then rushed Chelsea to the hospital. They’ve told us that she needs to remain at the hospital until she gives birth.

She’s 32 weeks tomorrow and they’re hoping she can stay pregnant until she’s 34 weeks. Which, if you’re doing the math, is six weeks early. Not the worst outcome, but it is currently our best possible outcome. Our doctor told us that the baby has a decent likelihood of coming in the next 72 hours, which puts us at eight weeks early. If we make it past that, there’s a decent chance of making it to 34 weeks. But the reality is that this baby could come at any time between now and then. If she reaches 34 weeks, they’re going to induce the baby, due to a host of different risk factors.

So best case scenario is baby stays in for a few more weeks and then we’ll be looking at something like days or weeks in the NICU.

So, yeah, life got real hectic real fast! Chelsea’s at the hospital, my son is at my parents’ house, and I’m sort of bouncing between. Of course, things being what they are, we’re expecting a blizzard today and tomorrow here in Minneapolis. Oh, and we sold our house earlier this month, so we also need to move out the first week of March.

The good news is that baby appears to be healthy and happy. No distress or anything like that. Chelsea’s about as calm and collected as someone can be given the circumstances. Her mom is hoping to fly up from Tennessee in the next few days, which will be a great help, as she brings decades of NICU Nurse experience wherever she goes. Her being a lactation consultant also ain’t bad.

We were also meant to see Swan Lake on March 4th and then Tig Notaro on March 17th, so if anyone in the Twin Cities needs tickets, I, uh, got a few that I won’t be using.

But, yeah, what to expect for the next few weeks?

I have several posts scheduled and several other posts in various stages of completion, so you hopefully won’t notice any blips. Essays will be going out Tuesdays and Fridays, as usual. My plans for revisiting my Ghibli column already hit a snag, and the snags just got snaggier, so I’ll use Fridays mostly to repost the old column. Later this year, I’ll write the new essays in dialogue with these old ones.

So it goes.

But if a Tuesday or Friday comes and you don’t get an email in your inbox…just chill? Probably I’m either with my wife at the hospital or packing up my house or with my son or maybe watching my new son be born.

Ideally, you won’t even notice!

Anyrate, tomorrow there’s an excerpt from J David Osborne’s new book, which you can preorder now. Next week is a guest essay about Lao Gan Ma chili sauce, and then I’ll figure out which essays I want to fit in where after that.

As for my own publishing ventures: big delays! I was hoping to publish the first book in April, but probably I won’t get anything out until autumn. I’ll keep everyone updated.

Be well and take care. I’ll be checking in here and there between whatever else I’m doing. Probably when I’m up at 3am googling things that I shouldn’t be.

Wolf.

Howl.