not that you asked...

More demands from the author of this blog!

So were you all bored to tears on Tuesday with that last post? Yes, so it was dull, so shoot me. Today I’m in BARBADOS and you’re not.

Ok, so that was mean. Forgive me Internet? Because it is time for another poll and I am anxious for your input.

When I was a kid, all I did was read. I read EVERYWHERE. I read ALL THE TIME. I read in the bathtub, under the covers, on the toilet, on the school bus, during commercial breaks. I basically read until my EYES FELL OUT OF MY HEAD. Now that’s a trip to Urgent Care you never want to have to make! So!

As a child, what were your favorite books? And then let’s say, hypothetically, that you were gestating your very own baby. What five books would you be certain to include in their library?

Stick with your basic, run-of-the-mill children’s picture books for now. I personally have always loved The Velveteen Rabbit, but I am probably never going to be able to read it to my own kid because I can’t get all the way through without blubbering like an idiot and needing an entire box of tissues to wipe the snot off my face. I also loved books by Leo Lionni, especially Swimmy and Frederick. And I really really loved Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. And oh! Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs! And not that I've ever read it, but this book seems to be right up my alley. Mmmmm, hot dogs!

And anyways, I could go on and on and on and ON, both about children's books AND hot dogs, but I’m in Barbados and I need another virgin daiquiri and a good slathering of SPF 15. So you’ll have to carry on yourselves! And of course, I’ll thank you for it when I get back. Perhaps with some delicious Barbados rum? Hmmm?

What I am doing this very afternoon

Doesn't this look like SO MUCH FUN?

I will be sure to let you know if is actually not fun at all and more like cover-your-ears-and-poop-your-pants scary.

I didn't even give you time to miss me!

So just because I happen to be away—sunning myself on an exotic island, eating myself up a few pants sizes and napping like it’s my new occupation—it doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about you! Except that doesn’t mean that I’ve prepared by writing loads of witty posts with which to entertain you this week. Er, sorry if that’s what you were expecting. I don’t have THAT much free time.

What I did have time for was to put together a few quick poll questions that I’ll put up every couple of days. I’d love to get your comments on them, not just so I can get ideas, but because you guys throw the weirdest freaking stories out there sometimes, and I get a huge kick out of reading them. Which irritates my co-workers, but that’s ok with me because I suffer through my day hearing them burping and farting through the cube walls.

EXCEPT NOT RIGHT NOW! Because right now I’m on VACATION.

Anyways, so today’s Fun Informative Poll involves the very insightful question:

As a child, what did you call your grandparents? And what do your children call theirs? And also, do you know anyone who called their grandparents something really really weird? Because we all could use a good laugh.

I ask you this because I cannot get my mother to consider having the baby call her anything but “Goddess.” Yes, Goddess. I am not kidding. There must be something out there to inspire her to think otherwise. Please, Internet, save my child! Save it from the wretched hell that is a grandmother called Goddess!

And in terms of weird grandparent names, I do have a friend who called his grandparents (I seriously, SERIOUSLY, am not making this up) Grandpa Dick and Nana PP. Honest to God.

Week 13

Dear Gestating Baby,

Welcome to the second trimester! It appears that you and I are now in this thing together for good. And before I get into anything else, I must take the time right now to thank you for your excellent behavior lately. With the exception of some minor back pain in the morning, for the most part I can usually forget I’m even in this special and terribly delicate condition. Well, at least when I’m alone, that is. It’s getting really hard to forget that I’m pregnant when your father points out each morning how much my breasts grew overnight or when every single co-worker I come into contact with wants to know how I’m feeling or when the nice woman who waxes stray hairs from my more personal regions wants to know if she should take a little more off and I just blurt out this whole dramatic thing about how I’m getting a little too fat to really care what I look like in a bathing suit so, eh, don’t bother. But really, other than that? I hardly know you’re in there!

Next week will be your first family vacation with your grandparents and your aunt and uncle, and let me be the first to tell you that I think you’ll be pleased with the fact that your ears and eyes aren’t developed yet. Your extended family is, to be frank, loud and obnoxious and argumentative. Also we enjoy discussing adult themes during meals, themes that could really turn a weak, young stomach like yours. So it’s probably best that you’ll be experiencing the wonders of the Caribbean from inside your little padded uterus room. I promise to take lots of pictures that you can enjoy once you’re old enough: pictures of your grandfather snorkeling with the aid of a kickboard, and of your uncle’s long and ratty hair after a long day sailing on a catamaran and of the second-degree burn your aunt will most likely develop with that porcelain and blemish-free Scandinavian skin she continues to deny she has. And I’ll make sure to capture a few classic portraits of your father, too. You’ll love seeing him in a wetsuit, and I’m sure everyone else will want to see him in his formal attire. In order to save space in the suitcase, I have agreed to let him wear his ratty old Tevas with his suit and tie. Say it with me, your mother is both resourceful AND flexible! And also, tired of arguing about it. Special note to you: This is exactly how you will win your battles.

When we get back from vacation and back to reality (BOOOOOO!), it will be all hands on deck for Project Your Arrival. We will start by painting your room and getting the bathroom renovation started, and your father has made plans with some of his less-than-reliable friends to replace the back deck so that when you’re old enough to crawl, you won’t end up with gigantic splinters in your hands and knees and a severe case of tetanus. And I suppose that at some point, I should start purchasing the things you’ll need to survive in this world. Like blankets and socks and clothes and burp cloths and a rectal thermometer and a nipple brush and it’s becoming quite clear that your father won’t be coming with me to register because of the names of those last two things, isn’t it?

But most importantly, the big countdown to Finding Out What You Are has begun, and by my estimates, we are now only about 5 weeks away. The general populace vote is still leaning heavily towards “penis,” but really I have no feeling one way or the other. I am also a little disappointed in my subconscious, as I have not had ONE SINGLE DREAM about you or your birth or anything remotely related to my belly for this entire pregnancy. Instead I have been dreaming about my co-workers getting engaged and rodeo clowns and Las Vegas and plane crashes. Your father, on the other hand, woke up the other morning in a sweaty puddle, looking panicked, and revealed that he had dreamt that there was not just one, but SIX of you. To which I replied that at least if there were six, someone would give us a free minivan. Truthfully, I suppose I am a wee bit jealous that your father has acquired some kind of vivid mental and spiritual connection with you and yet, as your mother, all I am connecting with are some infrequent bouts of constipation. Can we do SOMETHING about this please?

Now try to get some sleep so that we’re both appropriately rested and ready for next week’s midnight buffet. I think we’re both going to love it!

Love,

Your Mom

I am the fastest meme responder in the world but now I'm thinking that perhaps it makes me look a bit pathetic

So Holly tagged me for a meme, and although I think I did something relatively similar for Carly a few months ago, I’m willing to give it another shot, if for no other reason but the fact that I have nothing else to write about that is of even mild interest to any of you. Unless, of course, you want to be regaled with paragraph after paragraph of elegant prose about my newly pouchy stomach or my favorite packing and organization techniques (brought to the forefront of my brain thanks to a vacation that starts in FOUR MORE DAYS) but my best guess is that no, no you do NOT want to hear about such things, instead you want photos of my bad haircut and of the baby’s room and maybe of Hambone if he is looking particularly fetching and windswept after our evening jog.

Actually, although it is true that I don’t have anything else really great to entertain you with, the truth is that I’m really doing this meme because I’m absolutely honored that Holly tagged me. I adore Holly. She’s British, but with good teeth! And she’s stylish and gutsy and clumsy and if those three qualities aren’t tragically endearing then I can’t even begin to pretend to know why Dave is with me. Ok, ok, so truthfully, “clumsy” is the only one of those three that I can personally claim. The haircut and the newly pouchy pregnant stomach eliminate me from the “stylish” category (not that I was ever truly there) and the last time I can remember being “gutsy” is probably that time in third grade when I pushed my next door neighbor off her bike because she had refused to grant me a second turn at Chinese jump rope. But Holly? She yells at rude strangers in Wal-Mart so they’ll acknowledge their bad behavior and gets away with it! If I even yell at Dave I start to cry.

Gah! I’ve written two huge bumbling paragraphs already and I haven’t even gotten started in on my actual assignment. I’ll go ahead and get right to it.

SIX THINGS ABOUT ME THAT I HAVE NEVER REVEALED ON THIS WEBSITE SO SAYETH ME

ONE

For 10 whole years, I was addicted to Afrin Nasal Spray. I got hooked after a series of terrible sinus infections and after a while, my nasal passages could not function without it. And if for some Godforsaken reason I happened to find myself outside of the house without a bottle? COMPLETE ANXIETY ATTACK. The squirting and snorting became a running joke with all of my friends but I didn’t think of it as a really big deal until Dave told me that there was a place on his life insurance form where he had to check off whether he had used nasal spray for an extended period of time. That got me thinking, so I did the most responsible thing I could think of at the time and that was to order a non-FDA-approved product off some website that guaranteed it would break my drug habit in just a few weeks for the low low introductory price of just $50. Thankfully it worked and I have been Afrin-free for more than five years now. Isn’t that lame? Of all the addictions available out there in the world, I choose a dorky one that helps me breathe freely. I am such a loser.

TWO

My parents took my cat to be euthanized while I was at a slumber party in seventh grade. They did not tell me until I came home from the slumber party the next morning, which is when my mother broke the news by dangling her little blue bell-adorned collar in front of me and asking, “Would you like to keep it to remember her?” Yes, it is true that the cat had resorted to taking dumps on my parents’ bed because she was no longer “with it” and yes, she had regrown a tumor the size of a lime that we had already had to have surgically removed once, but WHILE I’M AT A BIRTHDAY PARTY WATCHING THE AMITYVILLE HORROR FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME? I am still bitter. I never got to say goodbye. Tragically, I never said goodbye to our previous pet either, since she was run over by a car in front of our house when I was six by MY GYM TEACHER. True story. Also, the Amityville Horror was much less scary when viewed for a second time in tenth grade. Embarrassingly unscary, in fact.

THREE

The summer after my junior year in college, I went out to Lake Tahoe on a summer project with Campus Crusade, a Christian ministry, and lived with around 70 other college students from all around the country for three whole blissful months. We all got jobs and worked during our days out there, but I was the only person who attained gainful employment as a bartender. A BARTENDER! On a Christian mission trip! I know! I worked at the now defunct Ponderosa Ranch, which is the actual site where the old Bonanza series was filmed hundred of years ago and which was subsequently turned into a tourist trap where you could tour the old Cartwright ranch house, get your old-timey picture taken, pet some goats at the petting zoo and watch the blacksmith make you a horseshoe personalized with your name. Then you’d stop by the bar and order a little afternoon pick-me-up from the bartender (me) who was wearing a gigantic white plastic cowboy hat and a red and white gingham button-down shirt and who had never drank much since I’d only just turned 21 and I was very much a rule-follower and that includes the law and therefore didn’t know exactly how to prepare the drink you were requesting, could you pretty please tell me exactly what goes in it and how much? There was also a daily shoot-em-up show, with real guns and horses and cowboys and occasionally I was required to participate by dressing up as a prostitute and screaming a lot. And then I would fire a gun with blanks in it and as a result would be completely useless in the bar the rest of the afternoon because I couldn’t hear a freaking thing, including the drink orders of our patrons. And that’s when they would put me on slot machine cleaning duty.

FOUR

I do not eat cereal. I cannot stand cereal because I am very very strongly opposed to the idea of something floating in my milk. It would not be ok if something were floating in a glass, so what makes the idea of things floating in milk in a BOWL okay? It doesn’t. Cereal totally, like, icks me out. And don’t think this doesn’t disappoint me, as it does seem like such a convenient and easy to love food. But I don’t love it, and I haven’t even gotten to the part about how it gets soggy and that makes the texture of the flakes and the bran and the oats or whatever all mushy and pardon me, but where is your trash can? BECAUSE I AM GOING TO VOMIT JUST THINKING ABOUT IT.

FIVE

While we’re on the subject of food, I should mention that although I am a huge fan of peanut butter, I would rather lick someone’s sweaty feet than eat peanuts in their natural state. This irks Dave to no end. Other things that bother him about my general culinary tastes: I chew everything, EVERYTHING, including soft foods like ice cream, mashed potatoes and, yes, I swear, soup. I cannot handle the slimy/chewy/crunchy texture overload of Thai food. I think anything you can eat off a stick is genius. And probably most offensive to my husband: I don’t do broccoli without cheese sauce. No exceptions! Well, except for when my mother-in-law is present. Then I put the broccoli on my plate and cover it up with an extra helping of rice. Ha ha, just kidding Phyllis!

SIX

I never, ever, ever use Spellcheck. Never. Not even for work projects. A big part of the reason why is just because I have always been a strong speller, ever since I can remember, probably as a result of all the reading I did as a kid, which was at ALL WAKING HOURS, and during many many hours when I was supposed to be sleeping. But the other reason is that the class I took in college to qualify to enter the journalism program required that I pass a 500-word spelling test. And these weren’t just any 500 words, these were the 500 most commonly misspelled words in the English language. Then, once we’d passed that class, we took the rest of our journalism classes in these ancient classrooms with these ancient Macs that didn’t even have dictionaries loaded onto them and we were expected to spell everything correctly. And if we didn’t, then we got a five-point deduction for each word we spelled wrong. The same went for punctuation and grammar. And all of this served to make me nothing more than a really annoying person to watch TV with because all I can do is look for typos in the fine print and credits of television shows and commercials. And God forbid I should get a hold of your church bulletin with a red pen in my purse, because it ain’t pretty. I'm just saying.

Week 12

Dear Gestating Baby,

According to several reputable Internet pregnancy resources, you are now fully formed and are weighing in at around half an ounce. You now have separate fingers and toes, your hair and nails have begun to grow, and amazingly, your kidneys are producing urine that is being excreted into my accumulating amniotic fluid. And so, not surprisingly, this completely disgusts your father. “Gross!” he exclaims often. “That kid is PEEING INSIDE YOU!” I have not yet revealed to him that in order for you to be doing this “peeing,” you also need to be ingesting something, and that you are, in fact, swallowing the very same stuff you’re marinating in all day long. This would most certainly send him right over the edge. His own child, drinking its own PEE!

This week we finally managed to agree on the perfect crib for you. It turns out your father is much more opinionated about such things than he originally let on. He was very picky about colors and styles, but often couldn’t quite put a finger on exactly why he didn’t like a particular model except to say that, “It just doesn’t look like something you would put a baby in.” I’m not sure what that means, really, it’s not like I’ve been dragging him around and showing him pet carriers or coffins. It turns out that after visiting five different stores in the area, we’ll actually be ordering the very first crib we saw that we both liked, though for completely different reasons. I liked the reputation of the manufacturer and the more traditional style; your father liked that the mattress is supported by wooden slats and not springs. It seems that he is already thoughtfully concerned about the health of your spine and neck, and rightly so, since your mother is a virtual hotbed of scoliosis and other twisty back-related ailments.

I’ll just go ahead and tell you, Fetus, I was always required to visit a second, more thorough nurse on scoliosis screening day, and chances are, you’ll have to as well. Look on the bright side! I’m sure it will really help us to bond with each other, mother and child with equally screwy spines, each equipped with fond memories of wandering around the junior high school locker room in just our gym shorts (and possibly bras, if you turn out to be a girl… or perhaps even a heavyset boy) wondering if perhaps we would soon be the lucky, lucky recipients of an enormous and embarrassing back brace. Don’t think I don’t know what I’m talking about! I read Deenie. Although, after perusing some of the Amazon reviews of Deenie, I’m quite sure I read it before I was old enough to catch on to the “adult themes” that Judy Blume wove cleverly throughout the book, so I guess either you’ll be reading it when you’re seven (did I mention I have no doubt that you’ll be a very advanced reader?) and letting it scare the crap out of you, or else you’ll have to wait until you’re 16 and everything of a questionable nature has already been explained to you responsibly in “health class” at school. I say “health class” because I cannot imagine your father explaining anything of a reproductive nature to you in any kind of responsible manner. This is a man who would probably refuse to purchase condoms despite being the one out of the two of us who owns the appendage that THEY ARE MADE FOR.

In other symptom-related news, I do believe your little warm habitat inside me has been growing by leaps and bounds in the last few days. At times I can feel my ligaments stretching to accommodate you and all of the stuff you’ve accumulated, and I’ve noticed that my belly is a getting a little bit more rounded lately. Your father has noticed it too, and he often pats me and asks me how his girls are doing (he is still riding the “it’s a girl” bandwagon). It really is kind of sweet, almost makes me a little bit melty. But in the big, bad world of pregnancy symptoms, I remain rather surprised that at this point in the process—almost exactly a third of the way through—that I have yet to go on any kind of hormone-fueled, kicking aand screaming rampage against your father DESPITE THE FACT that he continues to refuse to rinse remaining particles of food down the drain once he has finished doing the dinner dishes, the big jerk. I actually have been mild-mannered and rather pleasant, for the most part, and I think both of us have been happily surprised by that. Perhaps you DO have a chance at being born into a loving and nurturing family after all!

Honestly, I think your father is so adorably attached to you at this point that he won’t even mind finding out that you’re a pee drinker. So bottoms up! That kind of thing doesn't fly once you're out of the womb.

Love,

Your Mom

Jhirmack bounce back...

Before I get into anything else, I should confess to you that I’m sitting here today writing this with a bad haircut. At first, when I left the salon, I wasn’t sure if I had been given some sort of premature Mom haircut (I did confess to my stylist during the appointment that I was pregnant), but now, after four solid days of hair wrangling and frustration, I am convinced that I have been given a wee shorter version of “The Rachel,” which would have been delightfully trendy, say, oh, TEN YEARS AGO. This morning, at my wit’s end and while disastrously attempting to use two heated hair irons simultaneously, I decided I just needed some of that sticky product that would make it look a little more “piecey,” but then I remembered that two weeks ago, while cleaning out the bathroom, I threw away this very product simply because I couldn’t picture myself ever getting a haircut that required the piecey look ever again. Also? It took me three full days to figure out that if I wanted it to stop being so friggin’ poufy, I should discontinue using the mousse. The very mousse that comes out of the can that reads quite blatantly, “for body and lift.” I am not kidding.

All I can say is thank God for prenatal vitamins and that this major head trauma will hopefully grow out a bit in a few weeks. I can say that the very worst part about having a haircut like this is that it feels like I have to dress to accommodate my hairstyle now. It has a STYLE. It can’t be pulled back into a ponytail with any amount of ease. As a result, this hair doesn’t really “go” with sweatpants and t-shirts and a smear of Burt’s Bees lip balm. This is the kind of hair goes with nicely coordinated outfits and jewelry and makeup, all of which I am not a big fan of outside of the hours of 8am to 5pm and an office building.

I am beginning to think that if I just hadn’t lied to my boss about how it was a doctor’s appointment I was leaving early for on Thursday…

Anyways, so by now most of you probably realize I skipped out on posting a Week 11 review. I totally meant to on Friday, in fact, I had one all written out and everything, but then I did myself a quick favor and read through it again and realized it made no sense. It wasn’t funny, it wasn’t informative, it was the farthest thing from “touching” that I could have possibly imagined. It sounded like I had just written it to write it and be done with it, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do that to all of you. So there will be no Week 11 update and Fetus, you can just get over yourself if this is any kind of problem. I have now spent a total of 35 hours, both in person and online, looking for the perfect cage crib with which to house you in when you arrive, so SUCK IT.

Last week’s appointment was incredible, really. Hearing the heartbeat was wonderful and reassuring and a huge relief. And that was in addition to the general feeling of amazement and awe. But meeting the doctor registered on some other kind of scale altogether. Dave and I were waiting alone in the room together after I had donated my urine sample (I still have no idea how to collect such samples without peeing all over my arm or my pant leg, suggestions appreciated) and we could hear her voice barreling down the hall, even with the heavy exam room door closed. We barely had time to raise our eyebrows at each other before she burst into the room, much less grab a couple of cotton balls out of the jar on the counter and shove them deep into our ear canals for protection.

The doctor apparently has absolutely no use for knocking, and instead FLUNG the door open to make a grand, sweeping entrance in a floor-length, floral purple dress. I guess, in all honesty, what’s the point of knocking if you’re clearly making yourself known from more than 15 feet away? It took me a while before I could identify her celebrity look-a-like: Star Jones. But definitely the Star Jones before her secret weight loss techniques and life-threatening boob lift, though I must tell you that I have heard from reputable sources that BOTH versions of Star Jones are equally rude and horrible people.

Dave backed himself right up against the wall, not because he was frightened of her, but because it literally didn’t feel like there was enough space in the room to accommodate her enormous energy and presence and booming voice along with us at the same time. There was also much laughter and arm waving and the occasional deafening shout of genuine excitement about FINDING THAT HEARTBEAT! TODAY WE HEAR THAT BABY’S HEARTBEAT! SO PULL THOSE PANTS DOWN! LOWER! LOWER! C’MON GIRL, GO LOWER! It was absolutely fabulous to be examined by a provider who really and truly loves doing her job. I loved every minute of the appointment, and am looking forward to our next one with her as well.

That was the most excitement we had all week, except for the part where I stuffed my face with the homemade macaroni and cheese I made last night. Otherwise, the weekend was pretty tame. The real loser in me is really looking forward to the upcoming weekend, which will be spent packing for our vacation. I personally enjoy the packing process almost as much as I do the vacation. I know how dorky that is. Dorky and lame and ridiculous.

But that’s ok. Because, have you seen my hair lately?

Pants status: Still unbuttoned

So, yesterday? I was really really tired. Again. All the pregnancy books call this “fatigue,” but doesn’t that sound a little bit haughty? Oh, Internet! I am so fatigued!

Part of my exhaustion stemmed from the action-packed weekend we had—dinner out on Friday night (I stayed up until 11!), errands all day Saturday, a big neighborhood barbecue party on Saturday night, and on Sunday, an early morning 5k run and an afternoon trip to Home Depot to purchase mulching and general spring lawn preparation supplies. Which we then used to mulch and prepare our lawn.

Although another largely contributing factor is that Dave and I stayed up way past my 9pm bedtime Sunday night reading through the Girl Names section of a borrowed baby names book (he is still convinced) and drawing tattoos on each other. And then we took pictures of them for the baby book. I don’t know where we’ll paste them, perhaps behind the tab “Reasons You Should Be Embarrassed That We Are Your Parents.” That is the same tab behind which we are also keeping record of the amount of money we have earmarked for the children to someday inherit. (Current inheritance status: laughable, at best.)

My first tattoo attempt was inspired by the name Renee. Dave loves the name Renee, but I told him that somehow it makes me think of a poodle. And even though it isn’t really funny now, we almost had to close our bedroom windows for fear of waking up the neighbors because I laughed so loudly and uncontrollably when Dave asked, “So you actually knew a poodle named Renee?” No, the name Renee only makes me think of A poodle. Not THE poodle. Okay, so it really isn’t so funny now. But the picture of the tattoo is! Because is that really a poodle? Or a lion with only two legs? Dave was just really happy it washed off with soap and water the next morning.

   

Dave’s first and only attempt was this tiny tribute to the minivans of suburbia, placed delicately upon my upper arm.

But then we had to stop tattooing altogether because I created a masterpiece upon Dave’s chest and neither of us was going to be able to top it at 11:30pm.

I mean, could we be any weirder? Our kid doesn’t stand a chance. NOT A CHANCE.

But then yesterday I was EVEN MORE TIRED, so tired that I didn’t even go to work yesterday, and that’s because on Monday night I had to ask Dave to go to CVS around 10:30pm so he could have a delightful conversation with the pharmacist that resulted the purchase and subsequent transportation home of an entire bottle of stool softeners. DAVE. MY HUSBAND. Brought me STOOL SOFTENERS. Disgusting and yet somewhat heartening when you are aware (as you all are) of his squeamish tendencies towards things like tampons and adult diapers and dog excrement. Obviously you know what was wrong with me if I was in desperate, weeping, sobbing, wretched need of stool softeners. And since those things can work for 72 hours, I had to stay home from work yesterday to allow myself the Home Toilet Advantage. There are just some pleasures in life that I refuse to deny myself, and the comfort of my own bathroom during pooping emergencies is one of them.

In other exciting news, I witnessed the lovely, blooming and very famous cherry blossoms over the weekend. I am ashamed to admit that, although Dave and I have lived in the greater Washington, DC area for a combined 47 years, neither of us have ever seen the cherry blossoms. Not even once. Actually, one year we did go down and see them, but we were all of a few weeks too late and the blossoms were no longer on the trees. So technically, I guess we did SEE them, though not in the state in which everyone raves about them.

And anyways, this year would have once again gone by without a trip downtown to see them while they are actually on the trees, except that in December I signed up for the Cherry Blossom 10-Mile Race and was determined to participate, even if it meant downgrading my running experience to the paltry 5k. I was worried about not participating since I had agreed to run it with my friend Christie and I didn’t want her to have to go it alone (running 10 miles, though it is something to be proud of, is not actually FUN). But it turns out that while my excuse not to participate was that I was growing a human baby inside me that didn’t enjoy my heart rate to go above 140, hers was that her week-long vacation in Italy resulted in the gestation of a food baby and so she didn’t feel like running it either. But you can’t tell that there are any babies gestating in this photo! What you can tell is where I went to college. I am like a giant orange walking advertisement.

We did enjoy a good, hearty laugh as we were standing outside the port-a-potty section awaiting the start. Since the 10-mile race had already started, we tried to let as many runners go ahead of us as possible—a truly heroic feat with a pregnancy bladder, might I add. We waved one girl to the head of the line and she immediately ran to a port-a-potty and opened it to find some guy mid-pee already inside. And then everyone standing around almost died laughing when she slammed the door and screamed, “Sorry! Sorry! Don’t worry, I’m a health professional and I’ve seen everything before!”

I know you’re just dying to see photos of the splendor of your nation’s capital, especially when I am all sweatily posed in front of the gorgeous scenery.

 

I have lots of other exciting updates for you as we had our second doctor appointment yesterday and all is well. But that’s not the important part. The real reason I can’t wait to update you is because I am now aware that it is completely and entirely possible that my baby may be delivered into this world by some sort of mutant cross between Nell Carter and the fat version of Star Jones. I could not possibly make something like that up.