After two long weeks, another week of pregnancy has passed, and I have nine weeks left. This makes me eight months pregnant. Holy crap. This is what I look like in my underwear.

Discomfort is setting in, it is hard to breathe unless I am sitting in what I call the "full body cast" upright position. I tell myself that this will improve posture in the future. It is hard to sleep unless I pump myself full of Tums, which is okay because it provides me with calcium to prevent osteoporosis.

I get kicked so hard that I sometimes wince, but I guess that is what people refer to as a good kind of pain. Unlike the bad kind, which doesn't feel much different but isn't caused by an incubating spawn.

Aside from this, pregnancy isn't too physically bad at this point. I am keeping up with workouts to provide stamina and endurance for D-day and eating healthy, nutrient packed foods. My sense of taste is coming back a little, but oddly enough it is really in tune to sweets. I don't even like sweets, but it is so nice to taste something other than milk and pepper again. As the baby gets fat, I want fatty foods. I have been sticking with peanut butter, avocados, cheese, and a weekly treat of ice cream on the weekend. I wouldn't call it a craving, but it feels similar to the need for water after salt. I am really surprised how hard it is to eat more than a few bites at once, and how I am never hungry. I eat by the clock, and usually take a bite of something every twenty minutes or half an hour. It is a little taxing and getting kind of old. I'm a proverbial fat girl, dammit, and fat girls need mass amounts of sustince all at once. Preferably washed down with beer or a KFC bucket sized coffee from Wawa. I know all my eatin' sistas out there feel my pain. Word.

Mentally and emotionally things are starting to fall apart upstairs. Anyone who knows me has probably been exposed to my charming preoccupation with order and symmetry, and the reduction of all things too big for that which they contain. Famous examples of the reduction thing are my rolled and secured with a paperclip toothpaste tubes and trimmed bread bags, or the way that bags of chips and popcorn must, at any cost, be cut and taped into a vessel that perfectly encases the product inside. What you may not know is that this is actually a diagnosed mental condition that I live with. Every. Day. Of. My. Life. I am not a neurotic handwasher or lock checker, yet, and I rather enjoy my neuroses. OCD actually worsens with pregnancy because of hormones and other instincts that kick in. Luckily, and obviously, I don't have any issues with dirt, real or perceived. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of peeking at my shower curtain or under my furniture knows that I live in peace with mildew (a mere form of houseplants) and liberated hairs, gumwrappers turned cat toys and spider webs (they don't sweep away my home, why should I sweep away theirs? Plus spiders eat other bugs).

Back to my issues... I spent twenty minutes arranging my Mr. Coffee, coffee tin, tea tin, sugar bowl and spoon, and coffee-scented candle yesterday. Perfectly reasonable timespan to me. I knew the maker and the tea tin had to be on opposite ends of the coffee tray because they are both black, and it took awhile trying to figure out of the maker should go next to the black microwave or away from it. The coffee tin looked better in front of the sugar bowl, but the sugar bowl is prettier and was my grandmother's, so I felt that should go in front. The candle should have gone in front so the smoke can't rise into the cabinets, but it looked best beside the copper coffee tin, which was put in the back. Then the rim of the coffee tray is gold, not copper, so I didn't want the tin and the rim to clash. The little sugar spoon is silver, totally throwing off the mix. Or does it make it better, so now all metals are represented?

See how much sense this all makes when I break it down for you? Sometimes this so-called obsessive behavior really benefits the world. Have you seen my decorating abilities? Do you remember how all Christmas tree decorations were PERFECTLY spaced? I counted branches and used my hand-span so you could all have a merrier, well-balanced holiday season. And remember the garland all over the house? That wasn't placed in haste or by chance. Berries were meticulously intertwined with evergreen, which was accented with holly sprigs. There were exactly the same number of jingle bells as pine cones on the banister, and they were alternated so they wouldn't look bunched, but still placed so they looked haphazardly scattered. I made sure that all red, white, and green candles were subject to the same amount of burn time so you wouldn't have to look at a stubby, waxy mess next to a beautiful column of glowing good tidings.

Food is not immune to the madness. I am not ashamed that I can't eat a bag of M&M's without emptying it and making a pretty quiltish pattern with all the colors, then eat them one by one. And DO NOT try to take a few green ones if I haven't finished eating the red, orange, and yellow ones. ROY G. BIV presides in eating all candy, no matter the make or model. I haven't eaten any M&M's since becoming pregnant, because I'm afraid it would be stressful. The same rules apply for Reese's Pieces. Why would you eat them out of order (orange yellow brown)? That is a total dis to E.T. and peanut butter.

Ahhh, peanut butter. I need it. Daily. I cried one time, yes, shed exactly one tear, because I forgot my pb&j on the counter. Dave laughed. I thought the world was over. The other day I actually came home at lunch, in the cold, to retrieve another forgotten sandwich. Even worse, I purposely left it near the coffee pot to remind myself to turn it off. And I still forgot it. Then I totally freaked. What if the pot was still on? Does it have an automatic shut off? What if the house was burned down? Where would the baby sleep? Where would I sleep? What about my cats? Did they get out? Will I find them? The neighbor has a son with a severe disability. Can his nurse lift him and run to safety? He's a grown man, is the nurse a lady? These are perfectly rational questions, and house fires have been a giant fear for me ever since fire safety in first grade when I realized that my family was horrible and irresponsible. I didn't have a fire ladder that would unfold out of my bedroom window and we didn't have a family meeting place. And no extinguishers. My God, how did we survive? But I digress.

I get home, and the pot is off, all was intact, and my sandwich was gone. Damn it Dave, why did you take my sandwich? What am I going to do? Cry. And eat 74% of a box of Thin Mints. (Go to hell you pre-pubescent purveyors of baked goods. I cannot say no to a cookie from an innocent. I pay the girls $5 instead of the suggested retail of $3.50 a box for those, in the interest of charity and girl camping, by the way.) And then feel really crappy as I got on the subway to go back downtown, back to work to get started on a field safety training I had to give in a few days. Low and behold, amid my safety papers, in my bag, was my pb&j. I cried again, one tear, and told the lady who asked me if I was okay that I am catching a cold and my eyes are watery because I was bent over. Sorry Dave, for thinking that you would take something of value. In my anxiety and panic that I did not have my daily ration, I was searching blindly for something that was right in front of my face.

The ethereal glow is my plastic Jesus, beacon of kitchen protection and quite possibly the reason why my pot was off.

Some issues have never been a problem until pregnancy. I loathe folding receiving blankets that aren't perfectly square. The bastards at Gerber claim that the blankets are 30"x30" when they are clearly 30"x28"x27.5"x29". All of them! Apparently the six year old Mexican who cuts these things isn't given a pattern. Try folding that into perfection.

Some compulsions are actually ordered by the doctor. Like the one that keeps my nose in my underwear, checking for the sweet smell of amniotic fluid. I often wonder if anyone is looking over the bathroom stall as I pull the crotch of my unders up to my face and take a deep breath.

I guess my allotted 50 minutes are up here. I haven't addressed my life long fears of severed heads, vampires, and giant clams although they have been haunting my dreams and sneaking into my waking life in the form of hairdresser dummies and goth chicks.

I'll tell you later about my increasing obsession that all containers must be kept full. Or I'll tell you now. I have five tubs of the same lotion, and replenish the tub I am currently using every three days with lotion from another tub, which stays hidden from my eyes in the linen closet. I bought small travel containers to transfer my shampoo and conditioner into, because I was gagging over the fact that the bottle was only half full. I felt it was truly half empty, and the planet might collapse on itself if I had to hear that farting noise that half empty bottles make while the product runs into the top.

I need to keep buying disposable goods like paper towels and toilet paper, just so my reserve is always full. This need is spreading to diapers, of which I have about 1000, in various sizes. I swear to God.

My fingernails and hair are getting increasingly shorter, as feeling a stray hair on my neck or getting as much as a scratch makes me disgusted. I have had this nail problem for as long as I can remember. It peaked when I was about four or five, I remember being in my grandparent's driveway, wearing pink Goody curlers in my hair, and I was able to feel that my nail had grown above my finger, and I puked a little in my mouth and spit it in the Black Eyed Susan's that lined the driveway and ran inside to have my mom cut my nails. I'm afraid this may make me puke again, and I haven't puked since becoming pregnant. I'd like to keep it that way.

This is enough for one day. Thank you for listening. I am going to figure out how to arrange my office supplies in a way that will hopefully get rid of my headache. And maybe get rid of my tape dispenser. Who uses that anyway? It is crap. My oft-used stapler and 2-hole puncher deserve a place here. I've had the same damn roll of tape since beginning my job in October of 2001. And it isn't even half gone. And what if the sand in the bottom of the dispenser starts to leak into my keyboard or gets in my mouse... or my sandwich? I can't deal.
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The baby's growth in height and weight will begin to slow from here on out (but the baby will still gain 2 pounds this month). The baby's brain is still growing rapidly, making connections and learning complicated functions it will need for the rest of its life.
Other changes that are happening:
The baby may have a callous on its thumb from sucking on it.
Unless there is a problem with the placenta, the baby's blood is its own and does not mix with yours.
Baby's Size (head to rump) this week: 11.75 inches
18 inches (head to toes)
Weight: 3.5 lbs
The baby's size is about the length of a Madeline doll (a who in the what now?)