Day 1. The Morning After and What We Are Doing About It.

Notes From a Reluctant Love Nest.

Day 1. The Morning After and What We Are Doing About It.

She told me yesterday over the phone. The fourth quarter of the game had just started. The Steelers were down 13 to 6 to the Raiders. I was three for eight on my picks for the day. We gotta talk she said.

She picked up the home pregnancy test at the drug store after she dropped me off. She was four days late and she'd been hinting around a bit. I pretended like I didn't hear her.

I did it twice she said. It's pretty positive.

During a commercial I went online to look at the reliability of these tests. I called her back. Did you check the expiration date?

She told me that she followed the directions exactly after the first result came back positive and she realized that she'd been holding the strip upside down.

I wondered if she wasn't being a little hopeful. Not that the body could wishfully make gonadtropin hormone, but operator error counted for a lot and already I'd read about the sort of fade impression you get if you wait too long to read the result strips.

Besides, we barely had sex this month. Especially during her window. And I'm pretty sure we used condoms. It doesn't really add up when I go to the calendar.

I fought back through the days of October. We had pretty lame sex on my birthday and we used protection. I remember because I picked them up afterwards and hid them away in kleenex so the maids at the hotel wouldn't have to deal with them.

Then she had the yeast infection....a sign she said. But what are the chances? I'm forty-one and she's thirty-seven and we've been sloppy at best. We certainly haven't been trying. And it was a low month too.

Last night I started a list in my head when I couldn't sleep:

Reasons for: It happened and time/chances may be running out. She wants to.

Reasons against: We didn't plan it and neither of us have been very healthy lately. I'm pretty sure I don't want to. I've gone this far unscathed and I don't want to be an old man trying to connect with a teenager in a future that's already passing me by. Her finances are a mess. She has some issues with regards to anxiety/depression. I'm pretty free and clear financially and that's how I want to keep it. I want to work less, not more. I'm selfish about my time and I'm not even sure I want to be in a relationship six months or six years from now, let alone have a family.

It seems pretty straightforward when you put it like that. Granted, we've made a mistake. At least I know I have. She might think of it differently. I'm pretty sure she does. In fact, she might have helped it along, at least in spirit. So what are we going to do? Logically, it doesn't make sense to correct one mistake with another, and that's how I see things I guess.

I think I'm pretty flexible generally. I bend a lot. I'm very gracious, generous even and considerate. I went to the desert two days ago so that she wouldn't have to drive alone to her parent's house for her father's birthday. She gets vertigo lately on the freeways and has panic attacks. I volunteered to go along and drive and spend the night. I didn't really want to - we had just gotten back from a four day trip to San Francisco earlier in the week. I wanted to stay home and work and watch football. But what if something happened?

We're not talking yet on day two - just doing our separate thinking. But yesterday at breakfast, with her folks, we got on to the general subject of welfare and pregnancy and abortion. A coincidence rather that a few hours later she would be taking a pregnancy test in her bathroom.

Not that we're teenagers or on the public dole obviously but the point is, you should be prepared to deal with the issue financially and emotionally, ideally before you stick it in, but hopefully at least before you add another mouth to the population problem. And here we are, we haven't even lived together yet. Why would we? We've only known each other for six months.