pregnant

WDP — Favorite Car

Fandango11 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What is your all time favorite automobile?
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Without question, my favorite car was one I owned from the time I was 28 to 33. It was a 1963 Austin Healey 3000 Mk III exactly like the one in the picture above.

Why was this my favorite car? Well, for one thing, it was a blast to drive. Fast, low to the ground, and great handling. And because it was a roadster, as long as the weather was half way decent, the top was down.

My Healey was also a chick magnet. All the other “cool” guys were driving around in American muscle cars, I was the guy with the sleek and sexy British roadster. I took my car to a bunch of road rallies with some fine young ladies as my navigators. I didn’t win any rallies but I was very successful with my navigators. I loved that car.

I got married in 1978 and my wife got pregnant right away. My Healey didn’t have what could reasonably be called a back seat, and with a baby on the way, I needed a family car. Unfortunately, I was not in a position at the time to afford a new car and to keep my beloved Austin Healey. Regrettably, I sold it.

About ten years ago I looked into finding and buying a 1963 Austin Healey 3000 Mk III in good shape, but they were asking in the $50,000-$60,000 range. (I bought mine in 1974 for $2,200 and sold it for $3,000 in 1979.) If only I could have afforded to keep that classic car.

One Minute Fiction — Out of Stock

Fandango14 Comments

She said she was tired and was going to take a nap while he went to the grocery store to pick up the items she had asked for.

Isadore stood in front of the counter where one of the items was supposed to be. But it wasn’t there. It was out of stock. He looked down at his iPhone on which he had diligently created the list of items his pregnant wife had rattled off before sending him out. He was hoping there would be something to tell him what to do if they were out of stock of anything on her list. But nothing jumped out at him.

He thought about asking Siri for help in finding a viable substitute, but he knew that wouldn’t work. Then he thought about calling her and asking what he should do, but he feared that waking up his napping, pregnant, tired, and hormonal wife would not be a great idea.

So Isadore double-checked his iPhone to make sure he had everything else on the list, and then went to the checkout line. Maybe she wouldn’t notice the missing item when he came home.

Written for Cyranny’s One-Minute Fiction Challenge.

WDP — Risky Business

Fandango7 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.
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I had a decent job, for decent pay, at a decent company, and I liked what I was doing. I’d been there for almost ten years and I was not looking for a change.

Then, out of the blue, I got a call from a headhunter — an executive recruiter is what he called himself. He wanted to talk with me about “an exciting opportunity.” I wasn’t playing hard to get, but as I said, I wasn’t looking for a career change, so I told him I wasn’t interested.

He said, “Let me overnight some information to you. Take a look, read it over, and I’ll call you the day after tomorrow.”

I said, “Yeah, sure, whatever.” The next day I received a package that contained information about a small, relatively new start-up technology company in the same field I was in, health benefits administration. The company was looking for someone who could lead the design and development of automated health benefits claims adjudication systems. The compensation was good. The benefits were good. And the offer included equity (i.e., stock) in a privately held entity.

I had a few concerns, though. (1) We lived in the Washington, DC area and the job was in Manhattan, so we’d need to relocate. (2) My wife was pregnant. (3) Going to work at a small, start-up company was risky business.

My wife and I talked about the opportunity, the risk, the rewards, and the timing. She said it was my decision to make. I met with the headhunter to review some details. The owner of the small company and two of his associates flew to DC to meet with me.

Long story short, I took the risk of leaving a decent job at a well-established company that I’d been with for a decade, and I moved from DC to a Jersey suburb of Manhattan with my pregnant wife for a job with an entrepreneurial technology start-up.

Fortunately, as I look back at that risky decision, I have no regrets at all.

The Age of Fertility

Fandango12 Comments

She always seemed to be so fastidious, and I must admit, I had a huge crush on her back in the day. But the last time I saw her, she looked uncharacteristically fat and flabby. Taken aback by her appearance, I was not very nice to her at the time, shaming her for how she let her body swell up like it did. But I immediately felt bad because at that encounter she became quite melancholy and began to cry.

I later found out that she was pregnant, not fat and flabby, and what upset her that day was not so much what I had said, as much as it was that her boyfriend abandoned her shortly after she became pregnant.

I was ashamed for what I said to her, and I have since instituted a new personal policy to never comment on a woman’s appearance, especially if a woman is of the age of fertility.

Written for these daily prompts: E.M.’s Random Word Prompt (fastidious), Ragtag Daily Prompt (crush), Your Daily Word Prompt (flabby), Word of the Day Challenge (shaming), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (swell), My Vivid Blog (melancholy), and The Daily Spur (policy).

And for the record, this post is pure fiction. I would never mistake a pregnant woman for a fat woman, but I admit that I once congratulated a woman on her pregnancy. She became very indignant when she informed me that she was not pregnant.

The Shy Princess

Fandango13 Comments

The beautiful princess lived in a beautiful palace and everyone assumed she lived a beautiful life. But in fact, she was such an introvert that she spent most of her time alone in her room journaling, writing sad, heartbreaking poems about how lonely she was. She never shared her feelings of loneliness with anyone else, even with her parents, the king and the queen.

She was reticent to carry out the duties of a princess and often went to great lengths to come up with excuses for her absence. But ultimately, she didn’t want to worry her parents, so she would attend the various functions of the state. But her reserve gave many of the domain’s subjects the sense that she was snooty and was snubbing them.

At one of the events, a young, handsome prince approached the shy princess. She demurely blushed as he said hello and reached out to shake her hand. The princess started to feel a tingling sensation all over her body, and suddenly it was as if bells started to jingle inside her heart. The princess squeezed the prince’s hand and led him to her chamber, where the two made mad, passionate love together all night long.

After that night, the previously shy princess came out of her shell and blossomed into a social butterfly. The king and queen were delighted by the change in their daughter’s demeanor and were thrilled when, nine months later, she delivered a new, male heir.

The dashing young prince who impregnated the princess that fateful night was nowhere to be found. Rumor had it that the king had offered the prince a princely sum to get his daughter pregnant, and once he had fulfilled his stud services, the prince was was castrated and put out to pasture, literally.

Written for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (palace), E.M.’s Random Word Prompt (introvert), My Vivid Blog (journaling), Your Daily Word Prompt (reticent), The Daily Spur (length/snub/reserve), Ragtag Daily Prompt (worry), and Word of the Day Challenge (jingle).