Okay, fine, I'll be positive.

Things I like about pregnancy:

(1) The aforementioned men with babies thing. They're super nice to me. It turns them all squishy and sweet and empathetic as soon as they realize I'm pregnant. They use sweet voices and cock their heads and ask me how I've been feeling. So far, these have all been hardened scientists who typically make people cry about how bad their research is.

(2) I don't have to go to the gym. I go for walks with my friends and people think I'm doing a bang-up job getting plenty of exercise. Thanks everyone, it's really been a challenge ;)

(3) Guilt-free new clothes. If I buy them from a consignment shop, I've actually behaved in a very conscientious way. Something I apparently should not do is purchase lawn care equipment for my husband. He says it's as if he bought me a vacuum cleaner. Fair enough.

(4) I have substituted booze for desert. It's a switch I'm thinking of sticking with, even after the baby comes and I'm allowed booze again. The calories are sort of comparable, depending on how much booze you were going to have. I had a delicious cookie with ice cream and raspberries last night and Kevin drank beers like a sucker.

There, see? Positive. I now get an award for not being a complainer. I'll put it next to the big red "C" I got for yesterday's tirade.

That's right, I said I'm pregnant, would you like to offer me your seat?

I tried to find an internet image to plug in here and it just made me even more annoyed. My annoyance is something I've just uncovered, having posted on my friend's blog. I'm annoyed about a list of social aspects of pregnancy I've just discovered. I'm going to use list form since I don't have an image and I need to hold your interest:

(1) People are more concerned about my safety than they used to be. I've decided that it's probably because small injuries can result in dramatic repercussions. This is my decision. What I'm having trouble resisting is the idea that this baby's life is more important than my life was, before he/she existed. Alternatively, that I've suddenly become the blameless Madonna, since becoming pregnant, and, hence, don't deserve accident or injury. I've got news for you people, almost all pregnant women got that way from sex. They are the same slutty potty-mouth jerk-faces they were before, although sometimes married and, hence, again, blameless, for some reason.

(2) Related to my search for an internet image: The juxtaposition of pregnancy and sexuality seems to endlessly titillate people, thus, the media is filled with these ridiculously sexual pregnant ladies. Let me tell you one more thing: She just farted. And it smelled terrible. Just so you know. Also, she feels a little like eating an entire pizza but also a little like throwing up. She's exhausted and cranky and probably doesn't have anything nice to say about you or your mother.

(3) I can not handle one more person's reaction to this news. Why is that? Why did I spend my entire childhood imagining what it would be like to be pregnant (that's right, I did) only to feel completely out-of-place, confused, and embarassed by the whole thing? I thought I would be someone glee-fully shouting things out to the world as soon as the stick turned pink and, instead, I want the various friends and loved ones in my life to just magically know, so that I don't have to have the appropriate response to their resounding joy. Do they realize how hard this is going to be? Why so un-abashedly happy? My life is about to change dramatically and, while I'm excited and happy, I'm also terrified...and I'm probably uncomfortably gassy.

Okay, that's done. Phew. I feel somewhat better. I'm happy about all of this, I really am. And I don't want to be labeled as a complainer (since another thing about pregnancy is that #4 people like to rank the women they know in terms of how well they handled the whole thing). I just sort of needed to say some things. Maybe that's why my blog has been so vacant for so long, since this is the only thing I think about...not really...that's item #5 that annoys me about the social understanding of pregnancy.