Pseudo Sumo

Yosh and I were freshly graduated from the BYU and ready to make our entrance into the real world. Yosh had accepted a job in Beverly Hills and we had found ourselves a killer apartment in Studio City. One with an attached garage and washer/dryer hook-ups. Can you say dumb luck? For those of you that don't know the LA housing market, let me tell you.....DUMB LUCK. And all this for only $1425/mo. I almost feel like we robbed the poor landlord blind. He was a somewhat vulnerable target. After all, he saw my maiden name- Pope- and made me swear up and down I wasn't related to the Pope. How could I have known he was posing a serious question?!

Anyways, I digress. So we were all types of jazzed up as we were making our road trip down to Southern California a couple days after graduation. A moving truck on it's way to meet us there, a car fully loaded, and a belly over loaded. I was T- 3 weeks on the due date for baby numero 1. And that whole ride down he jammed his little toes up just as high as they would go until he had one of my ribs wedged between each toesie wosie, much to my discomfort. I would physically push that little baby down, battling for position the whole 11 hour drive. We made it to the Courtyard Marriott, you know the one in Encino, giddily awaiting the warm welcome into our new apartment. 

So it goes without saying that I was a big girl during this trek. There is no way to disguise, manipulate, or bargain with 9 months pregnant. It takes over. It takes over your body, it takes over corners, it takes over conversations, it takes over tablecloths, it takes over gravity. A force not to be reckoned with. Just put your head down and accept it. But..........I'm always a little slow to pay the deserved respect to the 9 month body. And this time, it was not slow to enforce respect and put me in my place.

I was laying on the hotel bed and went to make that seamless move I'd practiced a thousand times before- the roll where you get that belly moving from left to right with enough momentum to roll you all the way over, simultaneously rotating the hips where it brings your feet to the ground and leaves you standing up all in one swift motion. Ya'll, this moves loves GOOD. And I had it down pat. But.........something went wrong that day. I got my belly rocking from left to right until I'd built up the necessary momentum to initiate the roll. I went for it, assuming my hips were following suit. Which they were. The hips put the lower extremities into motion, swinging my legs off the bed, ready for my feet to catch them and execute another successful descent. But the legs were slow on the draw. They were not there to catch me. Was it the leverage? Was I so top heavy that a few extra seconds were needed to complete the range of motion to have my feet soundly planted on the ground? I don't know you guys, I just don't know exactly what happened. All I know is the end predicament.........

There I lay on my back on a pile of pillows, belly in the air, legs just a floundering still searching for that sound ground, not willing to accept the recent betrayal that had left us all in this awkward predicament. I was pinned between the bed and the wall, in a fit of laughter that threatened to water the whole scene without permission. 

I might as well have been alone in this struggle as my husband was rendered useless on the sidelines. I was yelling out desperate pleas of help- desperate pleas of help that weren't heeded because he is paralyzed with laughter. I was like that poor helpless bug that has bellied up and can't carry on til someone takes mercy on him and flips him back over. I looked no less entertaining than a fallen soul in one of those sumo suits, helpless on their back as onlookers just stare and laugh and watch and point fingers and sing praises that they were lucky enough to stumble upon this impromptu comedy.  Take your pick of which picture to paint in your mind, but paint it clear so that you understand I was in desperate straights- struggling for air, flailing my legs frantically, completely unable to free myself.

And all the while shocked at the manner in which my pregnant body had demanded respect. I said it before- not a force to be reckoned with. And now I knew. Yosh finally responded to his fallen wife and introduced my feet to that steady ground they'd spent the last 3 minutes looking for. 

FYI: this story will NEVER die, it's part of the family.

{when I sat down to write today, I was drawing a blank so I referred to an email Yosh sent a while back about posts he'd like me to do. I read down to the last suggestion that I had somehow overlooked originally............."being pregnant, the time you fell between the bed and the wall and couldn't move." Now truth be told it made me LOL. Now what makes me laugh even more is the fact that Yosh refuses to let me write about his funny stories on the blog {sorry, kids, I swear your dad is a real funny guy with lots of interesting story....he just refuses to share them}, yet suggests MY embarrassing stories without apology.}

And as if the story alone wasn't enough, the humiliation comes in the fact that this all happened while I was not only pregnant but........NAKED.

{Don't you think we should start ganging up on Yosh and pressuring him into letting me share a little something about him??!! I have this one particular story I'm DYING to share.......! You all need to help me out!}