2.1. Hello Baby.

Hey there friends and fiends! Sorry I haven't written in a while - I guess a few months have passed. It kind of feels like a new chapter here in Chicago. I guess you could say I'm now in my second season with Balki. We both still work at Ritz Discount, and live in the apartment upstairs. Balki still sleeps on the couch like he's just crashing for the night. And we have continued to build on our dysfunctional relationship wherein I enable Balki's childish behavior and he drives my blood pressure closer and closer to quadruple digits, and we can both barely contain our disgust for each other. In other news, Balki has taken to wearing extremely ornate vests and dress shirts.

So anyway big week, lot if hijinks. Witnessed the miracle of life, NBD. Here's the scene: Balki and I were negotiating a refrigerator in to the store on a hand truck, and along with the fridge Balki was dragging another 165 pounds of sass. I was doing an expert - AN EXPERT - job directing Balki where to push the fridge, how to avoid steps, and where to swing it in while he just openly glared at me and questioned why he was "doing all the work." How about because the hand truck only has one set of handles, and I have a perfect sense of spatial navigation and a bad back, all right?

I explained to Balki in no uncertain terms that "somebody has to be in charge. Somebody has to have a plan. That's me. Somebody has to carry out the plan. That's you." I've decided to take a new, more direct and less compromising approach with Balki this year. Like most untrained animals, he acts up because he lacks discipline - and I'm going to bring this puppy in line. Also, I've really discovered lately just how much I love having plans. God, having plans feels good.

Makes me feel taller.

But I digress. The Ritz now sells exactly one refrigerator, which I would consider an odd business model if I wasn't 100 percent positive that everything we sell in this store is just stuff that Twinkacetti's nephews stole. Balki followed my directions to where we were going to park it, and then all passive-aggressively pinned me up against the wall with the fridge and pretended he didn't notice.

Before I could even tell him not to ever - EVER - do that again, a very pregnant woman ran panicking into the store calling his name and OH MY LORD BALKI GOT SOMEONE PREGNANT. My heart stopped as I slipped into a walking nightmare, imagining Balki attempting to raise a child in our apartment and committing a line of parenting offenses so long that Child Services would have to rename their manual the "Balki." I don't need that shit. I held out hope that she was just going to shake him down for money and split; if I hadn't been trapped behind the fridge I would have reached for my wallet to chip in if it would help make this problem go away.

Any way she wants.

The good news was, it turns out it's not Balki's kid after all. The woman was Gina Morelli, an Italian immigrant from his citizen class. Gina realized I was being crushed by a refrigerator and freed me, instantly engendering more goodwill with old Cousin Larry than Balki has in months. I would have traded him for this complete stranger and her anchor baby right now, straight up, no returns.

The good vibes of course didn't last. Gina broke into tears immediately, saying that her husband was a truck driver currently crossing the empty plains of Texas and she couldn't get a hold of him, and she'd just been evicted from their apartment and had no money and nowhere to go. She said that Balki is her only friend in this country, so she came to the Ritz.

This sounds suspicious.

Of course Balki drank up every syllable like a baby sheep (for God's sake, now I'm dropping shepherd analogies) and offered to let Gina stay with us until her husband gets back without even discussing it with me for like, one second privately first. I don't know this woman at all. She just dragged a fridge across the room while supposedly nine months pregnant. Can we do just a little bit of homework first, Balki? I tried to hedge a little, just to MAYBE get the briefest of asides with my roommate before we make agreements about long term guests, but he wasn't having it.

I asked where she'd sleep. Balki said he'd give her the couch, but I pointed out that she would have no privacy and would need her own room.

Balki of course interpreted this back to Gina as me offering up my own bedroom to her for the length of her stay. So now I'm not only agreeing to let another perfect stranger live in my apartment, but I've also given her my bedroom? Are these two working in tandem? Is this Balki's secret wife? Has the plan finally been put into motion?

Gina called me a saint and kissed my hand, which, well, finally someone is treating me with the right level of respect around here. Off they went to collect her things, leaving me alone and feeling played for the 100th time since last spring. This entire sequence took approximately 90 seconds.

Later that night, Balki was tucking Gina into bed while I was kind of storming around the apartment. I was angrily pacing back and forth in front of the foldout couch, which was ominously made up all nice with two sets of pillows. That's correct, dear readers; for some length of time Balki and I would be sharing a bed.

He had dragged the TV into the bedroom for Gina to watch, so we couldn't even count on basic cable to distract us from how weird it was that we were going to be sleeping five inches apart from each other for the next several days. I quipped that I would put Gina in my will, but she already has everything I own - BOOM SOLID GOLD JOKE, COUSIN LARRY! RIMSHOT! - which finally tipped Balki off that I wasn't especially thrilled with our current predicament. At least it was out in the open. Also out in the open? Balki's Spiderman pajamas. The pajamas really upset me; but part of me was relieved that they were a one-piece. God knows what Balki does in his sleep.

Now you're going to live through every detail of Balki and I going to bed together in writing, because I had to in real life; and I understand it's therapeutic to write these things down. I was irate. I tried to get in bed, but apparently had taken Balki's regular side of the bed. After an instant shouting match that would normally estrange two non-related roommates for days but was just kind of status quo around here, I agreed to take the other side of the bed.

In an attempt to smooth things over, Balki told me how much he admires me for giving up my bedroom to a woman he hardly knows. You read that right: He and Gina barely know each other! Although he's never mentioned her before now, I had just assumed these two really connected in the hours that Balki and I are apart, but it turns out she's just some lady! He also told me what a great guy I am for taking "the hot side of the bed." Apparently it's the hot side because the sun breaks through a hole in the curtains at 6 am and shines on the space where my head was with the concentration of a laser beam.

EFFFFF THAT. I'd put up with a lot already, but I wasn't sleeping on the hot side of the bed. This was all Balki's fault! So we switched sides, and I rolled over to find myself nuzzled into the ass end of Balki's stuffed sheep, Dmitri. I unceremoniously tossed the sheep off the bed, which sent Balki into a complete tailspin. He shuffled off the bed to "say his prayers," - which I've never seen before, and up to now had been pretty certain the Christians hadn't found Mypos yet - to protect Dmitri down there all scared and cold and exposed on the apartment floor, and then he hid under the covers and started sobbing loudly.

Sure enough I broke like I always do, almost entirely because I just wanted to sleep and couldn't hear myself think over Balki's loud crying. So I recovered the sheep, and of course Balki had to punish me with humiliation by making me apologize. To Dmitri.

This is one of those examples we run into a lot around here where Balki uses his Myposian heritage as an excuse to act like a spoiled four year-old. There's a big difference between cultural eccentricities and behaving like a bratty toddler; and I have to assume that life on a dirt poor, agrarian driven small island would force you to grow up early, not the other way around. Balki is full of shit with this act. Anyway, rant over.

There we were, in bed on a pullout couch. We appeared to be settled for the night, if not comfortable, and I finally accepted that we were doing a good thing and should be proud of ourselves. That's when Balki decided to tell me that the baby was due two weeks ago, and this lady was going to go into labor any second.

Balki is so buying me new sheets.

There would be no sleep in our apartment that night. Look, I come from a big-ass family, all right? I've seen enough child births to know how often things don't go according to plan.

And you know how much I love plans.

I wasn't going to let this child birth go off the rails. Not on my watch! I dragged Balki and Gina out of their respective beds and initiated a rigorous training schedule that would get her out the door in a matter of seconds when the contractions started. Stopwatch in hand, I ran them through drills for hours and hours, until Gina finally passed out in the armchair from exhaustion and Balki started whining.

I just couldn't get him there on why this is a big deal. Balki said they didn't even bother going to the hospital when they have babies on Mypos. Here's how he said it works, word for word: "The woman is working in a field. She takes a short break. She has the baby. And then she cooks dinner for eleven men."

Mypos is starting to come into clearer focus now, and it does NOT sound like a very friendly place for women.

I let him know that in America, women have to go to the hospital, and to get to the hospital you have to have a PLAN. Balki does not have a PLAN! How can he LIVE like that?

We went back to square one and ran through the cycle again, and left Gina out of it for expediency's sake. Balki was responsible for getting the suitcase while I was responsible for calling the hospital, and he did NOT agree with that workshare. I tried to gently explain to him that people at the hospital won't have the first damn clue what he's talking about, what with his bizarre verb confusion and limited vocabulary; and for the second time tonight, Balki started to cry. So I decided to just let him prove me right and do a dry run where he calls the hospital.

Here's how that went: he picked up the receiver, yelled, "hospital, baby coming!" And hung up.

Whatever. It's not my kid. Anyway we decided to give the run-through a break for the night, and I offered to stay awake all night on watch. I told Balki that "this must have been how Eisenhower felt just before D-Day." A short time later, I was fast asleep.

Sure enough, Gina came tottering out of the room and woke Balki up with the news that she was in labor. They woke me up, and I was so friggin out of it that I didn't know who Gina even was or what baby everyone was talking about until Balki hit the right trigger word - "Cousin, remember the PLAN?" And it all came rushing back in an instant. I sprung from the bed and into action. I attempted to calm Gina by telling her that first babies take a long time, and she responded that she'd been in labor for a long time but didn't want to bother us. Also of note: in this moment, Gina's accent sounded a lot more like it it hailed from Florence, New Jersey than Florence, Italy. If she is running a con, she's not doing a very good job staying in character.

I'll admit I got pretty wound up at this point. We had to move. There would not be a childbirth in my apartment, nosiree. I sprinted across the room toward the phone, cleaning out a lamp in the process. Balki beat me there, but I reminded him that he failed his test to be "the guy who calls the hospital" instead of "the guy who carries heavy shit." I pounded away at the keys on the phone, dialing up the hospital and then yelling, "hello, hospital? The baby is coming!" Click. Whoops.

I of course Blame Balki for planting that line in my head during our last run through. But at least I got in the greeting and articles in my panicked scream-dial (hello, the, is) so I did better than Balki. Jersey Gina, now making no attempt to sound like she was from Italy at all, assured me that the hospital would know why she was there when we arrived and out the door she went. I, meanwhile, could not find my keys. I couldn't find them because they were in my pants, which I couldn't find because my pants were in the closet. I could not find the closet.

Looking back now, I was pretty much a hot mess. While I was in full meltdown Balki found my keys, and that made me madder than ever. I was circling the drain when Balki finally full on slapped me across the face, and we both acted all shocked like he doesn't beat me regularly, as I've detailed thoroughly in this journal. The slap brought me back to reality though, at least enough that I was able to get out the door and follow Balki and Gina to the hospital. We were all still in our pajamas, but I stopped caring about that stuff a long time ago.

Because the plan had me driving and we were not deviating from the plan regardless of my mental state, I drove like a wildman through the dark and empty streets of Chicago toward the hospital while Balki tried to chill Gina out. Some cop who must have been driving drunk or something almost let me crash into him, but fortunately my feline reflexes kicked in and I swerved just in time.

Balki, who was supposed to be my navigator, was riding me from the back seat about how I needed to drive faster and in the process of dealing with him I missed the turn for the hospital. We hit a big bump, and apparently in that moment the little bugger started crowning because Balki said he was going to have to deliver the baby in the backseat of the moving car. I told him that wasn't a good idea, and then for no reason Gina grabbed my head and pulled it backwards.

She was not letting go. I was looking straight up at the ceiling while the car careened forward. I had no control. I begged Gina to let go, and told her in the calmest voice possible that we were all about to die. Balki finally did something useful and got her to let go, allowing me to recover from another imminent accident at the very last second.

Balki told me to stop the car, so I hit the brakes in the middle of a busy intersection. Next thing, I hear a baby crying. She'd had the kid in the backseat of the 'Stang. I saw the video in health class; the resale value of my classic car has just dropped to nil, those stains don't come out.

I turned around and saw the baby, and the mess, and then things just went fuzzy. I passed out.

Balki got me home, and I started to have my little moment. I was feeling pretty crappy about how much I'd panicked when the shit hit the fan and to make matters worse, Balki did everything right. I told him I always panic - hence the relentless rehearsals, maybe now Balki gets it - and that I'm worthless.

As I trudged off to bed, Balki told me he was going to help Gina find an apartment and they were going to start on Delaney Street.

I stopped in my tracks. "Delaney street is all wrong!" I said. "Gina needs to be in a neighborhood with good public transportation! She has to be within walking distance from a supermarket! What about a daycare center?" I told him I'd have to go with him so he didn't drop Gina in the middle of some gang turf war, when he took his little ruse too far by being way too effusive about how smart I was and I figured out that he was just trying to make me feel better. He recited some saying in Myposian, which sounds more like a racist impression of Chinese (some of the words sounded like "bing bong"). The gist of which was that "if everyone learned how to herd sheep, there would be no one to write poetry."

Wise words.

With all that settled, we decided to change out of our PJs, put on our pants and go get shitfaced to celebrate what we'd just experienced together. It had been quite the night. Gina had a baby, and I gained some respect for Balki's ability to perform under pressure.

But seriously, Delaney Street?

Idiot.