With this countdown running down in my head, I feel like Jack Bauer.

At least once a week now, if not every other day, I am faced with some new experience that serves as a stark reminder of just how close I am to the birth of my son, aka “The Day The Music (and the drinking and the sleeping and the going-to-the-movies and the not-having-feces-and-puke-on-my-hands-and-clothes-and-walls-all-the-time) Died.”

Two weekends ago we had a baby shower. It was delightful; good friends, good gifts, good times. At least I assume it was delightful; I was at the bar. But the entire time, like the foreboding tuba in Jaws or Edgar Allen Poe’s telltale heart, I swear I could hear the faint cries of a baby growing in volume.

This past weekend I painted the nursery. I could have sworn that I could make out, hidden behind the strong odor of fresh paint, the vague scent of a dirty diaper.

Last night we took a tour of the hospital where the magic will happen. So many wars had been fought in that delivery room that it felt like the beach at Normandy. I am not lying when I say that I saw, scratched on the side of the delivery bed, the phrase “Kilroy Was Here” scribbled in what looked like a baby’s shaky handwriting. Damn those babies and their illegible penmanship!

The writing is on the wall, and the sides of delivery beds as well, apparently, and B-Day is approaching. Rapidly. It’s actually getting quite scary.

Soon enough those imagined cries and smells and poorly scribbled messages will be all too real. I’ll no longer be writing about fears and anxieties; I’ll be writing about realities and escape plans.

But at least I’m done with the painting.

(Right, honey?)