The story continues...by stepping back.

So in order to understand how I wound up sitting in the public assistance office between the angry mother and the smelly raggedy gentile, you have to rewind a little bit. Not quite as far as my college graduation. Actually, it's about a month after graduation. This is where things get hazy as I stare into space with a far off look in my eye.

I had been out of college about a month. It had been one hell of a month. I was desperately searching for a job -- which, thanks to my alcoholic high school guidance counselor, who told me journalism was a "great career path," I was totally unaware of the nearly nonexistent job market til I was post-graduation -- and in the meantime was paying the bills and the rent with my nearly-full time job as a waitress at a higher-end Italian restaurant. It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't where I thought I'd be at 22 with a college degree in hand. But I was in the process of moving in with my boyfriend, A, so I figured by splitting bills and mortgage payments, at the very least, my financial situation wouldn't be an absolute disaster.

As busy as I'd been, I'd failed to notice one particularly important missing aspect of my monthly to-do list: my period. It wasn't until I actually had five seconds to myself to stop and think that I realized, I hadn't had one in... well, shit... had it been two months? I looked at the calendar in desperation. I should've been on my period at graduation. Thiking back, I remembered feeling incredibly uncomfortable, sweaty, sticky, and unhappy... unfortunately, vaginal bleeding was not in that equation of discomfort. Now, a month past graduation, I still had not had a period to speak of. I had been so busy that I had forgotten to notice.

Fuck.

I sat in denial for a few days. It occurred to me to stop by the Wal-Mart a few days later to pick up a pregnancy test, but denial is a tricky bitch. I drove past the Wal-Mart and thought... "Maybe tomorrow, if I still haven't started." Tomorrow came. My period did not. So after spending a sleepless night of stressing over it -- and thoroughly pissing off early-rising A with my tossing and turning -- I went to Wal-Mart at 7 a.m. and bought a pregnancy test.

It's a strange feeling, sitting in your bathroom, peeing on a stick and realizing that what you're peeing on could very well determine your next course in life. Your pee is dictating your life in that split second. Pee. Urine. Waste. Then you start thinking about things too much and realize you just peed on your hand, and in doing so, dropped the pregnancy test in the toilet.

That's why they put two in the package, in case you were wondering.

So I tried it again. I put the now peed-on pregnancy test on the side of the bathtub and I went into the living room. And I paced. I watched The People's Court and I rearranged the shit on the coffee table about four times before I decided that it had been long enough. I went into the bathroom and stared down the ominous little white stick, which was now covered in my pee (I had washed my hands, if you were curious).

It was positive.

Holy fuck. I'm pregnant. Holy fucking shit. A's fertile. How the hell were we to know? As much pot as the two of us had smoked, along with his little bout with testicular cancer years ago, common logic (and the fact I really didn't pay much attention in sex ed in high school) would have dictated the fact that his little guys probably didn't swim well. And I remembered back to a very drunken night where we'd gone condomless...which wasn't entirely unusual for us, I was on birth control after all and that's foolproof, right?... and remembering a drunken exchange of, "In or out? Do you want me to come in or out?" and before I could slur out a response... well... you know.

He was at work. I was home alone. It was me and the dog, and Judge Marilyn Milian. And now there was this thing inside of me, apparently. Me, the dog, People's Court, and this thing. So I did what any rational human being in my situation would do: I went to Wal-Mart and bought six more pregnancy tests.

They all came out positive. Statistics couldn't be wrong.

And so I called A at work. Told him to come home as soon as he could -- he was known for taking off early. He thought I'd either found his porn collection (which I found about a month into our courtship and couldn't care less) or that I was leaving him. Much against my own intentions, he dragged it out of me on the phone, and when he came home, it was a strange and awkward silence. It wasn't just us. Or the dog. Or Maury. (Maury was on by the time he came home.) There was now this THING. This future person. Inside of me. Part me, part him, part Long Island Iced Tea and whiskey.

Once the "fuck" and the "wow" calmed down, "fuck" settled back in when the sad realization came about that waitresses don't have health coverage. And because we were not married, he and I could not collect his health insurance. Which left little option besides paying out of pocket, which between a waitress and a retail manager was less than swingable.

And so... three weeks later (that's how long the stages of denial and acceptance take, if you're curious)... here I was, in the public assistance office for the third time (after being denied the first time, being told I didn't have enough information the second time), having now waited 20 minutes for my appointment with my as-yet-unknown caseworker, just trying to get the great State to tell me it was okay to have a kid on their dime. I mean, let's be honest, as least I was working and paying into the system.

The system, by the way... is shit. I realized this as I was sitting sandwiched among the unemployed and the disabled and the over-spawned. It made me rethink being a Democrat, quite honestly. And as I was sitting there, admittedly with an air of slight, and I still feel warranted, superiority, I could feel the angry stares at me. I just kept thinking to myself, "I'm a nice girl. I come from a nice family. I'm smart. I just need health coverage."

(Which on a side note it's interesting to note that when I went to the neighborhood free clinic for my pregnancy test for official medical confirmation that I was pregnant -- which meant more peeing on things -- I was offered information on getting my GED. They seemed both surprised and awestruck as I carefully mentioned I had just graduated with my bachelor's degree.)

So now you know why I was sitting here in a place where I was so obviously fish out of water. I wasn't even fish out of water. I was fish in the middle of the damn Sahara.

I'm a nice girl. I come from a nice family. I'm a smart girl. I am above this. I am... hey, where'd my purse go?