My parents are coming to visit this weekend, and we’re finally going to tell them Sarah’s pregnant. Their visits are stressful enough under normal circumstances; at the moment, a three-night stay in our guest room seems like a monumentally stupid idea. I was a wreck all day today. Wasn’t really paying attention on the el platform and almost fell onto the tracks. Good going, Jeff.

Then, 15 minutes before my folks arrived, Sarah and I had our dumbest argument ever. On the surface, it had nothing to do with my parents; it was over the rice dish that I was supposed to prepare for dinner 24 hours later. She insisted for some reason that I begin making it at that moment, and when I told her I would make it tomorrow night since it was for TOMORROW NIGHT’S DINNER, she went all Russell Crowe on me. I started screaming back. She said I was being an asshole; I said she was being a bitch.

While she disappeared into the bedroom crying hysterically, I seethed in the kitchen. A few minutes later, she came out, all red-faced. “I’m going to read in bed,” she sniffed. “Do you want me to come out and say hello to your parents when they get here?” I’m not sure why, but I told her not to bother.

My folks were happy when they walked in. Dad gave me one of his long, bone-crunching hugs where he doesn’t want to let go because letting go is what he did when he sent me off to college, and he doesn’t like letting go. When he finally released me, he wanted to know where my lovely wife was.

“She had a long day,” I said.  “She went to bed early.”

He took this information at face value and asked if we had anything sweet to eat. My mom kissed my face sadly. While never a girly-girl, she was still a female, and she wasn’t buying the “she went to bed early” line. It had been an argument, and she knew it. We three sat down with a bowl of M&M’s, which my dad emptied, and we talked for a couple of hours. It felt good to get caught up, and I slowly cooled off.

But when I finally crawled into bed and saw Sarah sleeping peacefully, I felt a twinge of anger. When we have an argument, I’m so full of adrenaline, a million sleeping pills couldn’t put me out. She was over there hugging her teddy bear and drooling on her pillow.

When she was leaving for work in the morning, I felt a kiss on my cheek. “I’m sorry for being a butthead last night,” she said.

“I’m sorry for reacting the way I did.” We kissed again and that was that. It was a weird feeling, partially because it was our first argument in years in which she had been the irrational one and admitted as much.

Some of the vaguely misogynistic guys on the expectant dads message boards called such episodes enounters with “Wifezilla,” when a rational woman suddenly, inexplicably breathes fire and spews bile, then shortly goes back to being the woman you fell in love with. (Of course, that doesn’t explain my out-of-whack reaction.)

Duff, one of my old college buddies, has an eight-months pregnant wife, Sukoshi, who is having dangerous mood swings. One day, Duff noticed that Sukoshi’s car was running on empty. Three times, he offered to fill the tank; three times, she said no. The last time she snapped, “I don’t need any favors from you! You did this to me!”

Next thing Duff knows, Sukoshi is calling him from a pay phone and screaming at the top of her lungs that she’s run out of gas and had to walk. Oh, and on top of that, it was also his fault that her cell phone was at work and she couldn’t call him from the car. Duff went to pick her up, at which point there was presumably more yelling.

The original Godzilla was an allegory for the devastating effects of the hydrogen bomb in Japan. The way things are going, by the end of Sukoshi’s pregnancy, it will be 1945 and Duff will be Hiroshima.