the underwear drawer

37 weeks

I know this is a bad time to be too busy for frequent updates, but believe me, if I'd had the baby already, YOU'D KNOW. I'm looking forward to my maternity leave like a kid looks forward to summer vacation, not just because of, you know, the baby and everything, but because dude, I'M GOING TO HAVE SO MUCH FREE TIME. So until then, you can interpret no news as a sign that Ling Ling is still percolating, though, having reached 37 weeks this weekend, I am at kind of the ticking time bomb stage of things. I should have also explained to those childless/non-medical among us that being dilated to 2cm and 50% effaced (as I was at my last OB exam) doesn't actually give any temporal indication of the immediacy of labor, but it certainly is not a bad sign that if, at worst, I need to be induced, we will not be starting from scratch.

Earlier this weekend, I saw a frontal view of myself in the bathroom mirror, and thought, despite my ungainly waddle and the (new! fun!) shooting lumbar plexus pain originating, I assume, from the HUMAN BEING inside me who insists on rolling around luxuriously on my bed of nerve fibers, I didn't look that huge, really. And then I turned to the side...

...and realized that I looked like the world's most un-subtle thief trying to casually shoplift a volleyball from Modell's. Here is another view:

Biology in action! Though the real question I have is: where did all those veins on my stomach come from, and could I start an IV in one of them if I needed to?

Things around here are going well. Cal is now officially on The World's Longest Christmas Break, the length of which was only compounded by the fact that he was out sick from school for two days the week beforehand with some mysterious though apparently completely asymptomatic fever. How dare he get sick? Doesn't he know he's using up all our child-entertainment strategies? HOW MANY GINGERBREAD HOUSE-MAKING KITS DOES HE THINK WE HAVE?

Anyhoo, not much new to report here, as you can clearly tell from the utter lack of content, but rest assured that when there is, you will definitely, definitely know. And look forward (or dread, whichever) an increase in frequency and substance of updates once I am actually on maternity leave, and have a chance to, you know, breathe.