
sad downtown statue
Originally uploaded by ericandkatherine
No pregnant woman, no matter how great a sense of humor she has, wants to hear any joke/compliment/random observation that indicates that she is somehow larger than she was before she became pregnant.
I learned this, in full effect, after my wife spent dinner expressing her dissatisfaction at not being able to fit into any of her clothes. After dinner I was standing behind her and said, "Oh honey, your butt doesn't look that big."
I meant it as a compliment.
She did not hear it quite that way.
Every Tuesday we take a picture of Katherine's belly. At their request, we email this photo to our parents so they can follow along with Katherine's progress. Since we were in Iceland on vacation this past Tuesday, we posed Katherine on a glacier for her photo. After struggling with a Nordic keyboard in an Internet cafe (not only is everything in Icelandic, but you have to do weird combos like CRT-ALT-Q to get an "@" symbol), I sent out the weekly picture.
The next day I got an email from my father-in-law, saying "The picture looks more like the 'Bog Man.' What happened to my lovely daughter?"
Katherine noticed me wincing while reading his email (of course, I had announced to her that I got an email from her dad) and took the phone from my hand to read it.
She was not pleased.
I know this because she told me so...a few times. "My Dad thinks I look like a Bog Man!" She said...a few times.
Several hours later we were filling out postcards to send back home. At the bottom of the one sent to her parents she added "Thanks for the Bog Man comment, Dad." I think she even added a smiley face. If given another minute with that card, she probably would have traced the outline of her middle finger on it as well.
So we send off the postcard. Later that night I was back at the Internet cafe when I got an email back from my Dad, saying "I think you attached the wrong photo." It seems that while struggling with the Nordic keyboard and Icelandic menu prompts, I had mistakenly attached Photo 1119 instead of Photo 1199.
So instead of sending off the photo of my pregnant wife on a glacier, I sent the picture above on the right--one of several forlorn statues littered around downtown Reykjavik.
It does kind of look like a Bog Man.
So I wrote back to my father-in-law, starting the email off with "This isn't funny now, but probably will be funny later..." I then explained the whole situation and gave him a heads up about the coming postcard.
He wrote back, "Actually, I think it's very funny now. It isn't the first time your wife has been angry at me for something I didn't do."


