16 Weeks, Take Two

You know, I don't care how long you've been blogging, or how many entries have been accidentally eaten by a crashed browser window, or how many times you've SWORN you'll remember to save as a draft more often, or how many times you've typed something along the lines of FUCK FUCK FUCK instead of attempting to rewrite the thoughtful think-piece that just went *poof* into nothingness, IT IS REALLY REALLY FRUSTRATING WHEN THAT HAPPENS, FUCK FUCK FUCK. GAH.

"Hilariously" enough, my browser crashed when I opened up another tab to conduct a Google Image Search for treble clefs so I could have a point of reference before drawing one on Noah's magnadoodle, which he then promptly erased. Oh, the "irony."

(He then asked that I draw Steve, but was bitterly disappointed with my stick-figure depiction, even though I think I did a pretty good job on the striped polo shirt, especially, you know, ON A MAGNADOODLE, but WHATEVER, kid.)

Eh. I think the entry kind of sucked anyway, and was mostly a lot of filler leading up to some belly photos. So...let's just say filler filler run-on sentence CAPS LOCK filler and...photo time!

So the crazy sick bloating of the first trimester finally settled down, leaving me with a perfectly reasonable 16-week belly. Unless I eat French fries. Those things still inflate me up like a bike pump. A delicious, golden-brown bike pump. I'm mostly wearing maternity clothes because hell fucking yeah, I've been waiting for an excuse to slip back into elastic waistbands for two whole years now. Sure, I can still pretty much suck that gut back in to nothingness, but why should I? You wanna fight about it?

Some days, though, it really isn't until I catch a glimpse of my profile in the mirror that I even remember hey! Right! Wow. I'm not unwieldy or too terribly uncomfortable yet, nor am I getting regular kicks to the kidneys. I still occasionally gag on a smell or taste and size up the distance to the nearest plumbing receptacle and I could sleep for 36 hours straight and still whine about how goddamn early it is, but mostly I feel pretty good. In other words, not very pregnant.

Jason has taken a turn for the superstitious and still thinks it's too early to think about names or onesies or what the hell we ever did with the crib screws. I started a half-hearted Amazon list for the stuff we gave away or broke or left behind on a curb in DC during a prolonged fit of Moving Hysteria, but I have no urge to buy anything because...what? I just peed on that stick three weeks ago, slow dowwwwn, Mabel. The conflicting ultrasound measurements and multiple due dates haven't helped either, but have instead left me with a vague feeling that this whole "infant coming to live at my house" thing is still a fluid, hypothetical event. Tour dates yet TBA, check with your local ticket agent.

But then every night, I squirt my belly with ultrasound goo and gently swirl the doppler microphone through it, and within seconds, there it is. The baby. My baby. Our baby. I can tell when it's sleeping by the slower, quiet rhythm, and when it's awake everything is faster and punctuated with a lot of static and interference from tiny flailing limbs. Every night, the heartbeat is loud and steady and reminds me of a freight train, barreling down the tracks, ready or not, here it comes.

The Treble With Clef

Noah has never had a singular attachment to a particular toy. He has no blankie or lovey or cribby or boobedyoopedy or whatever it is that kids have. He's gotten vaguely attached to several toys and carried them around for awhile before moving on -- he's really fond of Grover right now, but if one day Grover happens to get wedged under the couch or dropped in a parking lot somewhere Noah will most likely pay no mind. This is the fate that has befallen several stuffed toys -- and one oversized novelty crayon bank -- who have all been loved intensely for a week here and there before being tossed on the metaphorical Scarlett Fever pile without a second thought.

So at least I have reasonable hope that Noah's current fixation with the dust jacket of Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends will be similarly temporary, because that one is just fucking weird.

He's not even attached to the dust jacket itself -- he's actually enamored with the curly cursive S in the title and on the back cover. And not because it's the letter S. It's because he's decided that it's actually a treble clef, and that...well, that just makes it fucking weirder.

Treble clefs. I am not lying. He sees them everywhere -- our copy of Boynton's Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs! is permanently opened to Di-No-Saurs Sing-Ing A Di-No-Saur Song, so much that the spine of the book is cracked and about to separate; a piece of sheet music at a friend's house caused a goddamn conniption because CLEF! CLEF! HIIIII CLEF!; there's constantly an imaginary treble clef stuck in a closet or in need of rescue (DON'T WORRY CLEF! I COMING!); and God help us all, he's in bed spooning a dust jacket right now, as I type this.

The owner of the aforementioned sheet music declared him a goddamn genius, and more than one non-related adult has marveled at his clearly superior and natural musical talent, but that is because these people do not have children and thus have no way of knowing the truth, which is this:

Or more specifically, this dude:

That's G-Clef, voiced by Ray Charles, and the love of my son's life. We'd own the bedsheets and the lunchbox and probably the G-Clef Funtime Adventure Princess Castle, if they only made any of that stuff. Seriously, if this character came printed on underoos, Noah would be potty-trained already.

But instead, he's forced to make due with this:

I mean, I guess I see it, sort of. I guess in a sea of licensed-character crap it's sweet that he's decided to invent his own little character and its related accessories (also currently much beloved: a Target receipt upon which I hastily scribbled a treble clef in order to distract him at a restaurant, and I'm not sure it's any closer to the real thing than ol' Shel up there), but at the same time...no, baby, we're so not taking a dust jacket to the playground, I don't care how badly Clef wants to ride the swings.

Still. Just because it would totally figure that THIS would be the lovey that sticks around until grade school, I'm a little relieved by the presence of a back-up, in the form of the 30th Anniversary edition that someone gave us.

He won't notice the different color, I'm sure. What matters is that the S/Clef thing is the same, I'm sure.

You really don't get me yet, do you, woman?

The Cider Fridge Rules

Camera status: saved! A dry micro-shammy thing that was probably purchased off an infomercial many moons ago, back when I used to stumble home from bars and watch infomercials 'til morning -- damn, what a wild, crazy diamond I was back then -- lifted the crayon off the screen in about two minutes flat. The viewfinder was a tad more difficult, since Noah managed to really mash the crayon in there, but with a little help from a revolutionary new product (order now and get DOUBLE YOUR ORDER!) called a Q-tip, I was able to clean that up as well.

I possibly should have tried this, or you know, ANYTHING AT ALL before turning to the Internet, but...well, problem-solving is not my forte. I am not an Everyday Household Products As Practical Solutions Viking. I prefer to 1) panic, and 2) leave the problem for someone else to solve, lest I grab the Goof Off and allow it to leak into some tiny yet highly-sensitive electronic crevice and have the whole camera blow up in my hands like the Death Star, faster than you can bullseye a womprat.

Case in point: the rising levels of apple cider in our basement.

OK, so let me back up and explain that Jason and I operate our household firmly on a "smelt it/dealt it" system. You use the last of something, be it toilet paper or soap or whatever = you replace or refill it, right then and there. You toss a paper towel into the trash and it slides off the towering mound of garbage that's a good three inches past the brim of the can = put your shoes on; it's your turn to take it outside.

It's a fair system, but easily manipulated. Mostly by me. I will happily wander off to toss my paper towels into the powder room wastebasket for days on end if I suspect the kitchen trash is getting especially full and/or smelly. I will never admit that I actually don't understand how the under-the-sink soap-dispenser works and will wash my hands with dish detergent instead, I will then dry my hands on the ass of my jeans rather than retrieve a fresh hand towel from the dryer, and when confronted with a leaking gallon of apple cider in the basement refrigerator door I will just straight up ignore that shit until someone else figures out how to sponge up the three inches' worth of apple cider that has pooled into the shelf because seriously, that seems like it's going to take a LOT of paper towels.

OK, so let me back up some more. I did not buy the apple cider. I did not put the apple cider in the door of the basement refrigerator. I don't know why we had a gallon of apple cider in the door of the basement refrigerator and why it had sat there unused for six solid months. Thus, I ignored it. Jason likes to buy odd ingredients for recipes he finds online that he will never actually cook, but I am usually forbidden from finding an alternative use for them because NOOOO I WAS GONNA MAKE THAT TOMORROW I MEAN IT THIS TIME I SWEAR, even though I know he'll come home tomorrow and order a pizza instead.

(10 years of marriage this August, folks. We really should hit the how-to self-help circuit, since I'm sure we could be a real inspiration to dozens.)

Sooooo, our fridge tends to be littered with stray stalks of lemongrass and four distinct kinds of kale and smelly cheeses and the last time I looked closely in the freezer I spotted something that still seemed to have its head and neck and possibly an eyeball. Thus, I IGNORE THINGS. YOU CANNOT BLAME ME TOO MUCH.

And I ignored the cider at first. And then one day, about two months ago, when I opened the door to retrieve some bottled water, I realized that it was leaking. The rogue liquid was contained by a mercifully solid plastic shelf, but it was enough to pose a bit of a logistical problem, at least to me. Should I bail the shelf out, like with a cup? Would I need some sort of bucket? And what happened if I picked up the actual container of cider, only to discover that the shelf itself was stemming a total gush of the contents and it went everywhere? I have a lot of important piles of dirty laundry in that immediate area!

So I came up with my stop-gap solution: close the fridge door and go back upstairs, and then hope that Jason needed a bottle of water soon.

But then a problem arose -- Jason made trips to the basement fridge and said nothing about the cider, and the cider problem remained solidly un-taken-care-of. So I assumed we'd moved on to Phase Two of Operation Smelt It/Dealt It, which is a two-way battle of wills to see who can ignore a problem the longest. I tend to win these battles, especially when they are about clutter or dog poop or general squalor.

(I tend to lose the battles that involve insects inside the house and anything that requires the use of a power tool, because those are things JASON IS SUPPOSED TO DO FOR ME, AM GIRL, and he gets a tremendous kick out of watching me slowly wig out, yellow-wallpaper style, over a crooked curtain rod or OMFG THAT SPIDER OVER THERE DO SOMETHING DOOOOOO SOMETHING.)

(10 years! I believe the traditional gift is tin!)

Ahem. So. Cider. Rising. Leaking. Three inches of liquid slowly turned to four, and then last weekend I opened the door and a small amount of cider splashed up and over the side of the shelf and dripped on the floor, narrowly missing my pile of sweaters that have been waiting for the Dryel bag since...hmm...some of them are kind of cropped so I'm gonna have to guess mid-2004-ish.

I went upstairs and announced to Jason that I was Crying Uncle, it was time to break down and do something about the cider.

"What cider?" he asked.

I stared at him. "Please. You are not saying that you simply have not NOTICED the rising levels of apple cider in the refrigerator door? That has been there for TWO MONTHS?"

He stared back. "So...you're saying that there has been some kind of leaking liquid in our fridge for two months, and you've...just...IGNORED it?"

"I...uh...I thought you were ignoring it too. Isn't that the rule?"

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? WHAT RULE? JESUS CHRIST." And then he stormed down the basement steps while I stammered excuses about not knowing what to do and I figured he would because he's the engineer and I didn't know what towels to use because what if I used his good shop towels and the shelf/pressure/dam theory I had and I kind of thought maybe I could vacuum it up but that's probably not good for the vacuum, right? Right? Baby? You love me, baby, right?

Jason opened the refrigerator and looked at the cider. He gently picked up the half-empty container and swiftly placed it in the utility sink. Which is about two feet away from the refrigerator.

"OH!" I said.

And then he gently detached the entire shelf from the door and dumped the contents down the drain.

"OHHH!" I said again.

He rinsed the shelf out and snapped it back into place. He stared at me for a few seconds while I pulled a Lucille Ball face and sensed the years of feminist progress washing down that utility sink drain, and then he kissed me very sweetly and went back upstairs without another word.

The scene of my dark shame. Somebody should really carry that out to the recycle bin, don't you think?

No, You Cannot Has Nice Things

So...does anybody happen to have any tips for removing orange crayon from a brand-new camera's optical viewfinder and live-preview screen thing?

Just wondering.

(KILLMURDERHEADSMACK!)

Swag in Action

I took approximately 40,982 pictures of this bee. I do not like bees. I do not like pictures of bees. But here, look at this picture of this bee, and be grateful that I'm not making you look at all pictures where the bee is a little blurry blob because I WAS VERY OBSESSED WITH THIS BEE FOR SOME REASON.

New-found camera skills aside (I should have increased the shutter speed, since I wanted to capture freeze-frame bee wings because I had it in my head at the time that freeze-frame bee wings were the ultimate in photographic accomplishment), there's a reason I should stay away from "arty" shots and photos of boring things like flowers.

For example, my eye for composition is so keen that when aiming my camera at an entire garden of gorgeous blooms, the only one I managed to keep in focus was the dead and wilted one.

It's a metaphor, man. You wouldn't get it.

What does this button do? Oh.

That one was snapped during our initial demo of all the cameras, when we were all particularly giddy and snap-happy, even though there really wasn't much to take photos of, besides the carpet and the chandeliers and oh look! A chandelier!

Okay, clearly it was time to turn the cameras around on our own dork asses.

Tracey, by the way, performed admirably as the group's go-to photography guinea pig, and at one point had about seven different people aiming a barrage of Cyber-shots and Alpha DSLR cameras at her, ordering her to help them test out their metering modes and the Cyber-shot's creepy robot Smile Shutter function, which allows you TOTALLY PWN your bratty, ungrateful child who only smiles two seconds AFTER you've snapped the picture. Because it waits until your kid actually smiles to actually take the picture. The Sony people claim it's an "algorithm," but you and I know it's actually very small hamsters who will one day arise and enslave us all.

Anyway, Tracey handled the mommyblogger paparazzi admirably, and didn't roll her eyes too badly when I made the obvious LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE joke, since I am very Hip and With It when it comes to the kids today and their YouTubes.

Hey, speaking of high-definition video cameras! And dorks!

DORKS from amalah on Vimeo.

You stay classy, La Jolla.

And...that was my trip to California. While I'm not under any obligation to write about the event or Sony or the swag (HAVE I MENTIONED THE SWAG), hats off to Sony, man. I've had some baaaaaad experiences with accepting even the smallest gift or sample from big corporations -- sample arrives, sample gets boxed back up and shipped back on my own dollar because nooooo, I won't sign away the rights to my child's image for your marketing stock photography library in exchange for a photo printer, THANKS THOUGH -- but I'm really glad I went.

I mean, the whole point of squeezing my increasingly pregnant ass on a cross-country flight was originally just to get some quality Sweetney time <insert some mid-90s Bryan Adams here, in your head, on repeat play FOREVER>, and other than that I was secretly expecting the whole thing to suck and be all kinds of eye-rolly. And then everybody there was so nice and laid-back and I got a massage and fresh strawberries in my room and a giant bed that I took up as many inches as possible with my giant body. Plus Tracey gave me chocolate and this body cream that smells like cupcakes and I got to share a limo with PlainJaneMom (confidential to Erika: do I owe you $400? I'm a little afraid to look, frankly) and talked about my boobs with Jenny and HAVE I SCREAMED At YOU ENOUGH ABOUT APERTURE. AND THE FACT THAT I KNOW WHAT IT IS NOW.

<breathes>

Okay. That's really it about California. And aperture. I'm done now. I promise.

And now for some extremely boring camera talk, for the two of you who might be interested:

My Canon Digital Rebel, for now, probably beats the Sony Alpha, but only because I already own some really excellent lenses for it. Lenses that are just plain better than the one that comes with the Alpha, but hey. We paid a lot for them, they sure as hell better be better. HOWEVER, for someone just moving away from point-and-shoot and learning how to use a DSLR, I think the Sony is MUCH easier to use. I like the menus better, I feel like I can get to the different settings faster, and the adjustable liveview screen just flat-out rocks. (Although I'm so used to looking through the viewfinder on the Canon that I find myself turning it off more often than I thought I would, but that's probably just habit. When I first got the Canon I couldn't BELIEVE I couldn't just hold the camera out in front of me and get a preview of what I was shooting.) I'm very, VERY interested in getting a better lens for the Sony, especially since I don't have to pay extra for image-stabilization (it's built right into the body of the Sony) (image stabilization = the reason your no-flash pictures on a point-and-click camera look all blurry, Ms. 5 PM Alcohol Shakes).

(Taken with the Cyber-shot in the low-light ISO setting.)

(APERTURE!)

A Businesswoman, a Tibetan Monk & a Mommyblogger Get on an Airplane

The next night I went to bed at 9:22. Party up! Or on, or whatever it is that people who party usually say.

And then the next night was spent watching hours and hours of my life vanish into the time zone map as my very delayed flight home from California turned into an impromptu red-eye (HELPFUL AIRLINE MONITOR: Reason for Aircraft Delay: Aircraft Delayed), during which I really did share a row with a businesswoman and a Tibetan monk, although there is absolutely no punchline to that story, except that the businesswoman was very kind and filled me in on what I'd missed on the in-flight movie during each and every one of my 439 trips to the lavatory, and the monk brought along about 15 chicken snack wraps from McDonald's and you know what? I don't think those things are really designed to be kept in a paper bag for six hours before consuming.

And now I am back on the East Coast, where I remain solidly on West Coast time, going to bed at 3 am and feeding my child breakfast at 11ish and not updating my blog at all, just like all those California bloggers. With their laid-back attitudes and bean sprouts and whatnot.

(Last night I hallucinated that I heard the garbage truck outside at 4 am and shook Jason awake and ordered him to chase after it with our trash and mixed recyclables, which he did not, and my point is, everything coming out of my mouth at this point is a big, steaming, sleep-deprived lie.)

ANYWAY!

I went to California, and all I got was a lousy four metric tons of fancy digital imaging equipment.

We had to move our PILES O' SWAG to the floor because they were substantial enough to mess with the hotel's wifi signal.

I have to admit that I am generally a cranky old bastard when it comes to anything that stinks of Bloggers! We Here At <Corporation Name> Really Get and Dig What You Do PR tactics. (A lot of those PR tactics tend to be something like GIVE US VALUABLE MARKET RESEARCH AND FREE ADVERTISING IN EXCHANGE FOR...UH...THIS T-SHIRT! THAT IS NOT ACTUALLY IN YOUR SIZE! NO? HOW ABOUT ONE OF THOSE SQUEEZY STRESS BALL THINGS?) And I got the sense that several of the other attendees were expecting to be similarly annoyed by the whole thing, but then the boxes of cameras and camcorders and lenses and camera accessories starting piling up and everybody started ripping things open and the air was full of bubble wrap and packing peanuts and we all looked at each other, frantically trying to get unspoken permission from the crowd to OMFG SQUEEEEEEEE????

For some reason, I think the view from my hotel room helped improve my usual curmudgeonly demeanor.

At one point, I returned from my 230,293 trip to the lavatory and noticed that almost everybody had been given silver travel coffee mugs. EXCEPT FOR EVERYBODY AT MY SIDE OF THE TABLE. And our eyes got big and ugly and Bilbo-Baggins-like because WE DIDN'T GET TRAVEL MUGS. WHERE'D EVERYBODY GET THOSE TRAVEL MUGS! GAR! SWAG! MINE! NOW!

(The travel mugs were still in the process of being unpacked and distributed. I did indeed get a travel mug, although it's hard to look at, since the polished metal only seems to reflect the blackness of my soul.)

The best part of the trip, hands down, was the fact that Sony did not just hand us complicated A/V equipment and expect us to like, read the manuals. They also gave us the gift of KNOWLEDGE, by bringing in someone who could explain DSLR cameras and aperture and ISO to us in a way we could understand. Also known as drawings on a chalkboard and makeup analogies. (You know how your makeup looks awesome in the bathroom mirror and then looks like ass outside? THAT'S WHITE BALANCE, LADIES.)

(Me Ra, by the way, will be speaking at BlogHer this summer, so if you're as camera-challenged as I am was, she's TOTALLY worth the price of admission, for real.)

It was jaw-droppingly awesome for this blogger/influencer/opinion-maker, who prior to this weekend had never taken her fancy camera out of the green box mode, but who now desperately needs like, seven different lenses and a wireless flash and sent her husband the following email from the conference:

HI GUESS WHAT! I KNOW HOW TO WORK OUR CAMERA NOW! I KNOW ABOUT SHUTTER SPEED! AND ISO! AND APPERATURE! APPEARATURE? APPATURE? I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SPELL IT BUT IT'S THE THINGIE THAT CONTROLS THE SIZE OF THE THINGIE THAT LIGHT SHINES THROUGH AND I THINK MY LIFE IS CHANGED FOREVER.

(Yes. I send emails in all caps sometimes. I also call people sometimes just to scream into their voicemail when I am very excited about something.)

(HI GUESS WHAT I AM AT THE MALL AND I GOT THE GREATEST PARKING SPACE IN THE WORLD! I WILL PROBABLY NEVER LEAVE BECAUSE IT'S JUST THAT GREAT! CALL ME BACK, WHORE!)

Did it just get really smelly in here?

So...at some point I do plan to post something other than camera phone photos. You know, maybe some photos with some of the new cameras that really demonstrate just how far I've come as a photographer and as a person. I will. Just as soon as I get over my current bout of hyper-perfectionism ("well, this photo is lovely, but I just didn't really fill the frame with my subject as well as I'd like") and go back to not really caring about whether Noah is really "in focus" or "not covered with yams."

This was the sign on the inside of the bathroom door at the hotel's meeting room. I spent a lot of time looking at it (fetus vs. bladder = rock vs. small defenseless insects), and pondering just what are these "other alcoholic beverages" that are not 1) distilled spirits, 2) beer, 3) coolers, or 4) wine. Cough syrup? Xanaxaritas?

I still have so much to learn about so many things. Including how to get all the pretty photos off of my new cameras, and how to stop staring at the camcorder in bafflement because you don't a tape in it. So how does it record? Where do the videos go? Does it involve some sort of gnome? Does this mean I will be significantly less likely to accidentally record over the birth of my second child like I did with my first? Huh!

It's 11:22 in Newark, at least

You know what is kind of embarrassing? When the hotel maid shows up for the nightly turn-down service and you are already in bed.

Oh right. Bye.

I'm going to California! Today! Right now! The car service is outside honking pointedly.

("CAR SERVICE" will soon be blogger code for "ALL-EXPENSES PAID CORPORATE JUNKET TRIP THING." Mark my words.)

I was unfortunately unable to attend that Johnson & Johnson Camp Baby thing from a few weeks back, and afterwards I felt really left out so when an invite for a smaller shindig came from Sony I basically whined and whined until Jason agreed to take a couple days off from work so I could go listen to Powerpoint presentations and call him every 15 minutes to screech about how pretty my hotel room was and IT'S SO QUIET! NO ONE IS SHRIEKING IN MY EAR ABOUT CLUES AND PAWPRINTS AND SUPER GROVER! PLUS THERE'S FREE SHAMPOO! I AM SMELLING THE FREE SHAMPOO NOW AND YOU KNOW WHAT? THE FREE SHAMPOO SMELLS PRETTY. OK, PUT NOAH ON THE PHONE. I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED ON BLUE'S CLUES.

I will most likely be one of the only sober attendees, so rest assured that I plan to take full advantage of my fellow bloggers' inebriated states. Mercilessly, with full photographic evidence and Sharpie markers. Or perhaps I shall go to bed at 8 pm instead. You just never know! I'm so crazy and unpredictable.

OK! Jesus. The car service has much to learn about how vitally important we mommybloggers are to the global economy, or whatever the fuck it is these corporations think we are. I am sure I will be online again soonish, and hopefully it will be in California, provided I don't screw something up and end up in Newark.

(Sadly, for me, that's a very real possibility I live with every day of my life.)

Eggplant Will Make Your Baby Addicted to Cigarettes & Other Important Lessons*

After digging around in my archives for Noah's first-trimester glamor shots (damn torso-only ultrasound shot! is no help! NO HELP AT ALL!), I stumbled across this entry. My first thought was, "wow, I used to make fun of people who weren't me? what a passive-aggressive little bitch I was!" And then my second thought was, "wait, I recently told the Internet about the time I peed my pants at work, I am sooooo going back to those message boards right this minute."

And so I did, but it was for research. For science. In search of the answer to a very burning science-y question: Has the Internet gotten one lick smarter in the past three years?

What about the radiation from photocopiers? Doesn't that pose a threat? I think I conceived on Monday and have been using a photocopier for eight hours in each of the last two days with the top up {I was copying large books, so I couldn't close it}. Could this harm the initial cell formation of the zygote as it is traveling to the uterus?

Fuck that, I think I conceived ON TOP of the photocopier. Could this cause me to give birth to a radioactive fire-breathing dragon of some sort?

PS On an unrelated note, I have some kind of embarrassing photocopies that I need to destroy, so is it safe to use a paper shredder while pregnant? What if my uterus gets caught in the blades?

r u suppose to cramp at 6 weeks

y. like ttly norml, accordin to my bff jill.

i used it all and did it all during my pregnancy. so long as you have fun and dont hurt yourself or your baby, go ahead and be a lady in the streets and a freak in the bed!!!!!!!!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, my new official expert and poet laureate for the Zero to Forty column.

If this is your first pregnancy, and you don't know if you your at risk for pre term labor, I would wait until your in the second trimester before having orgasms.

But I thought I was supposed to be a freak in the sheets bed! MAKE UP YOUR MIND, ANONYMOUS PEOPLE OF THE INTERNET!

I definitely don't think a pregnant woman has any business going to a rock concert. Not because of the noise but because of all the smoke from cigarettes and marijuana. Anyone who's been to a rock concert knows you almost always end up with a contact high especially if you're sitting close to the pit (it's not as bad if it's an outdoor concert). Not to mention if people start getting out of control and you get trampled.

This poster's nickname is LinkinParkChik3. Good Linkin Park nicknames get taken hella fast in the pregnancy forums, as I'm sure you all know.

My sister was told by a friend to not go look at double wide homes, has anyone heard of this?  Something about famoutahide?  (Don't know correct spelling, just heard it's this?)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!  She is 8 months pregnant and she is looking to buy a double wide in the next 3 months, she don't know if she should go with her husband to look at them anymore.  Last time she got dizzy and really hot she said.

So I originally thought that THIS, RIGHT HERE, may be the greatest message-board post in the history of message boards, but then I learned that 1) I needed Google's help for the correct spelling of formaldehyde too, and 2) FEMA gave a whole slew of Katrina victims formaldehyde-tainted trailers and they caused a shitload of health problems, and 3) I am a giant snobby mean ass, and should stick with the self-mockery from here on out. Amen. Cough.

*Eggplant contains NICOTINE, people. Nicotine! STEP AWAY FROM THE ALTRIA-BRANDED FROZEN EGGPLANT PARMESAN DINNER BEFORE IT KILLS US ALL.

Grateful

...for the first peanut-butter-and-jelly picnic of the season.

...for the little girls next door.

...for a warm deck and soft bellies.

...and for naptime. Especially naptime.