Chapter 14) Family Addition

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
~Henry David Thoreau

Blaine and I had been able to buy my old childhood home, maybe I should say ours, since Blaine had spent the majority of his childhood days living with us.
The house was in bad shape and not exactly what I had dreamed of, I love modern architecture and had hoped to move into a small suburbia somewhere.

This home was well outside the city center of Windenburg, a tourist trap in summer and nearly abandoned in winter. Blaine was dead-set on making this our home and raise our family here, so I humored him. It took a lot of manual labor and even more money, eating up all our reserves again especially after we added the nursery, which we kept neutral since we didn’t know the gender. There were some early tests, but they were pricey, so we went with finding out eventually.

We came up with various ways to make money, I worked from home taking writing commissions, I learned how to grow vegetables, while Blaine produced tracks for himself and other artists and had kept his job bar-tending at the Skyline five nights a week, of course still occasionally performing there and wherever else he could get engagements.

One night, I was waiting up for Blaine to return from his shift at the Skyline, when finally the door opened.

“Thank God you’re home, you’re so late I got worried and you forgot your damn cell phone on the charger again! Don’t tell me you had to fight through herds of grabby pawed female fans once more, I swear I will tattoo “MARRIED WITH CHILD ON THE WAY” on your forehead some day! Blaine, what the heck is that now?” I pointed at something in his arms.

I had gotten up off the couch to go greet him in the hallway where I found him – with a tiny puppy in his arms.

“A dog, I think, at least it’s trying to be one some day.”

“Blaine, please tell me we are just watching it for a friend …”

“Nope. We just got a pet. Yay us! Pets are said to be calming, maybe you should hold him.”

“BLAINE CAMERON! Baby, are you insane? We are basically out of cash again after buying the home and fixing it up. Have you forgotten we are going to have a child?! Puppies need vet visits and shots. How and when are we to train a dog?! Or did you think I am up puking and peeing all night anyway, might as well take the dog and both go in the yard?! Also – has it EVER occurred to you to maybe take me with you when you decide to go buy a dog?!”

“Didn’t buy him, he was free and like our baby, very much unplanned. His owner was gonna drown him, I saw it and – shall we call it: ‘quickly talked some serious sense’ into that fucker. Well, and now we are proud dog owners.”

“That man tried what?!?! Dafuq’s wrong with people?! Never heard of a shelter?! That poor little puppy!” my anger now directed at the previous owner. Oh yeah, I was a big animal lover and I would have killed that man on the spot, especially with my hormones not what they used to be due to the pregnancy.

“See, I knew you would understand.”

“Blaine, what are the chances that there will be police coming knocking on our door looking for you anytime soon?”

“Hmm … there may be a small chance, but I hope not.”

“What exactly did you do to that guy?”

“Nothing he wasn’t trying to do to this pup. Figured that wasn’t gonna happen on my watch, and since he was so eager to have something swimming late at night in the cold water below a steep drop off a bridge on a very chilly Autumn night, thought I’d help him out after taking the puppy from him. If he can swim and didn’t hit anything important on his way down, he should be okay. That’ll teach him to treat helpless creatures with respect, I hope.”

“Oh Blaine. You are too much.” I said, and couldn’t help feeling like he had done something heroic in my book.

“So, not in the dog house, pun fully intended?”

“No, you are not. Just gimme that puppy already.”

As soon as I held it I knew it had a new forever home.
Blaine and I were dog lovers. Big time!

“Oh, Blaine, what am I going to do with you?”

“I have a few suggestions …”

“You are definitely my hero, baby, but I can tell you right now, you can cross at least half your suggestions off that list.”

We named the little puppy ‘Charlie’, his big paws foretold he would be a larger size dog one day and what looked to be a shepherd mix.

He was shy at first and easily scared, but with our nurture, love, care and attention soon turned out to be feisty, spunky, unbelievably cute, incredibly sweet and adorable, especially when he got in trouble again. Like a four legged Blaine, who gave the two legged human version a run for his money, as he was determined to train and care for the dog, which in turn amused me to no end.

Then the big day came.

The appointment at the ob/gyn. No, nothing out of the ordinary per se, I had been to lots of appointments by now, each of them with Blaine right there with me. Yeah, my bigmouthed rebel bad boy moved heaven and earth to go to sit in uncomfortable exam rooms with me.

But today we would have the sonogram, the ultrasound to find out our baby’s gender. We both were nervous as could be.

Dr. Adams, my ob/gyn who would hopefully also deliver our baby, was a very nice and super-calm man, who had a calming effect on me, even though the idea of having another man occasionally – and I quote – ‘rummaging around down there in my private area’ took Blaine a bit to get acclimated to.

Anyway, here we were.

The cold gel had been spread on my swollen stomach, the odd sounds we had heard before of the baby’s heartbeat and it moving around.

“Well, there we go, clear as day, thank you baby. So, do you guys want to know the gender or are you doing one of those gender reveal things?”

“Nah, we’re not the type for that hippie shit. Just tell us, doc.” Blaine told Dr. Adams in his usual too blunt way.

“Very well then, congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Cameron, you are going to have a little girl. Here she is, even looking at you right now, like a good lil girl.”

Blaine and I looked at each other and for a second I thought Blaine was going to cry. No, not for disappointment, the way he stared at the image of the sonogram he was realizing this was gonna get real in just a few more months, we were almost half way there.

Dr. Adams talked to us about planning the birth, the options and such and whether or not the father would be present during birth..

“Of course I will be there! I am not going to be my parents, I will be there every second of every day of that little girl’s life.”

There you have it. Why would a free spirited bad boy who used to not want to settle down if his life depended be so into having a wife and child you wondered? No, not because I was that special, or maybe in a way I was to Blaine, since I had always been the one constant in his life. He loved the way my mom had always treated him like her own when he was little, she even punished him like she would have me and Blaine enjoyed that, even though he always tried hard not to disappoint my mom.

He wanted so badly to be the exact opposite of his own broken home, yet he was mortified by even the slightest chance of him becoming like his own parents he almost got a little too much sometimes. I already felt sorry for any boy – or girl – ever wanting to date our little girl.

Finding the right name for her proved to be more complicated than anticipated, but Blaine and I finally found the perfect one.

Which name we chose, you will find out soon.