The waiting continues. I’m still pregnant. My back hurts, my hips hurt, I can’t walk straight - it’s almost comically annoying and awful at times, especially at 3am when I wake up with an OMG NOW urge to pee and wonder if I can actually walk to the bathroom or if I should pray to grow a penis instead so I can aim at the wall or something. (Hey, it’s not like I am actually awake during these thoughts.)

Otherwise, l’shanah tovah - may you have a new year of sweetness and joy. 

1. I need QVC in HD.

2. I want to have every nook and cranny of my house customized and compartmentalized by California Closets. Including and especially my junk drawer.

3. I have far too many candles.

4. Why is QVC NOT in HD?

5. I love my new dryer so much I want to do MORE LAUNDRY. Good thing I’m 39.5 weeks pregnant. I’ll be making plenty of laundry soon.

6. I should NOT go to the grocery store while nesting. I am drawn to the baking aisle and the cleaning supply aisle and am unable to tear myself away.  I bought a 5lb chicken, a 6lb brisket, a box of brownie mix, pancake mix, and barely escaped before buying 2 bottles of Febreze.

7. QVC needs to (a) broadcast in HD and (b) stop selling handbags I don’t want.

Hubby and I have been talking with Freebird a lot about the “baby.” So far, Freebird knows that my belly has a baby, and that the baby is probably somewhere in my belly button. Hubby also has a belly button but obviously doesn’t have a baby behind it. Freebird will pat the baby in my belly, and will kiss my belly, but I don’t think he realizes that the baby is going to (a) not live in there forever and (b) will be moving in with us.

Last night I was talking with Freebird while had dinner about the word “brother,” since Freebird will be a “big brother,” and the baby will be “small” and “little,” and being a “big brother” is an important job, etc etc. Freebird happily repeated the words “big brother” and “brother,” and then said, “Baby with yogurt?”

This stumped me until I realized that Freebird’s favorite brand of yogurt is “Yo Baby.” And while we’ve been talking about the baby, Freebird apparently thinks we’re talking about yogurt. A lot of yogurt will be moving into the house, apparently. I hope the yogurt will let us sleep in longer than 2-hour intervals. 

Baba O’Riley is officially a low rider. I waddle like nothing else, and having had Freebird in much the same position the last month I was pregnant with him, I remember the feeling. The low rider drives a little slower, and so do I.

Meanwhile, we’ve actually made Noticeable Progress with the office/Baba’s room. It’s fully cleaned out, though there are boxes of books that are to be donated still in the room. I found a bureau on Craig’s List that will work, and we already have the basinette from when Freebird was a baby. The basinette in my family was used by me, my sister, and my two cousins, and by my father and aunt when they were babies, and by my grandmother when SHE was a baby. It’s made out of a laundry basket from the hotel my family used to own, and I believe my great-grandfather made it. They were hoteliers back in Atlantic City when going to AC was The Thing To Do.

Anyway, it’s awesome. My grandmother, who passed away last summer, sewed two sets of linens for it, one in yellow plaid that my sister and I had, and one in a really jazzy red fabric for my cousins. We have both sets, and I’ll probably hold on to the whole kit and caboodle since my cousins are probably the next to have children, and both of them live in apartments. But it makes me really happy to use the family heirloom basinette.

So we have a room, a bureau, a basinette, and I ordered a light fixture to replace the broken one - for $10 from Amazon.com. Go me!

The absolutely funny thing about all this is: none of it, save the light fixture, will go IN the room. We are too superstitious, and will not furnish the room until after delivery. The bureau will be under a sheet in the basement, and the basinette is packed up in cloth and paper in the basement as well. The items will be in the house, but they won’t be in the room - a very important distinction.

So we have all this stuff, but it won’t be seen for awhile. 

You know something is wrong when at 8am, there are hundreds of people standing around on the city streets, talking on cell phones. Something is especially wrong when people are streaming out of the subway stations but no one is going in. No one is running or screaming and there’s no smell of badness so it’s not seriously, oh-shit wrong, but no one’s hurrying? Everyone is...standing around? At 8am? In Manhattan?

That ain’t right.

Seems there was a huge rainstorm (which I knew) and there was flooding all over New York and New Jersey (which I knew) and as a result of the storm and the water, the subways were not running.

The subways. Not running. At rush hour. This is bad.

So there’s hundreds of people on the street, it’s already 85 and humid, and there’s no subways. There’s also no cabs because they’re all taken. And the bus? Fuggedabahdit. Packed to the gills, and people were still prying the doors open to squeeze in after the driver shut them to try to drive away. If you saw the pileup of fans going after Barry Bonds’ homerun ball last night? It was kind of like that, only people were fighting over air conditioning.

Me? I ended up walking. Yes, I’m 36+ weeks pregnant, and yes, it’s hot and humid. It took me an hour and twenty minutes to go from 41st street and 8th Ave to my office on the east side in the 60s. I tried to get on buses and couldn’t fit, and I even tried to get on an express bus hoping the driver would take pity on me, but no. I wasn’t allowed on. Seriously. It was awful.

But I’m here, I’m in the a/c, and I’m drinking water and Coke and eating whatever I can get my hands on. That sucked.

And what’s really alarming is that is was a STORM. And it’s happened on and off all summer: big rain, big floods, no trains, lots of mass annoyance and low level hysteria. I don’t get it. People worry about planes and shoes and bombs in backpacks and terrorism by explosives. If any terrorists are paying attention, clearly, all they need is water to force all of New York into a tizzy and completely knock out the transportation infrastructure. Water. That’s all.

I don’t like New York much today. 

I have written to letters to Lands’ End since they discontinued their maternity line just prior to my needing maternity clothes. Letter #1 and Letter #2 were written as I tried to find better clothing options. I’ve written them one last letter now that my entire wardrobe is pretty much everything I’ve bought from Lands’ End.

Dear Lands’ End:

I’ve written you nice folks twice before in response to your decision to discontinue your maternity line of clothing. Now that I’m in the last few weeks of pregnancy, I wanted to let you know that your decision, it continues to cause me great discomfort.

If I had to rank the discomfort on a scale of pregnancy ailments, I’d say the lack of Lands’ End maternity clothing ranks much, much higher than swollen feet, slightly higher than consistent heartburn, but is still less than the discomfort of being unable to roll over in my sleep without feeling like I’m trying to steer a cruise ship.

And speaking of cruise ship, I look like I have one attached to my abdomen. I am, depending on how you look at it, fortunate or unfortunate enough to carry this pregnancy exactly as I did my pregnancy with my son - all out front. I am as a big as a barn, if barns were large, round and stuck out a foot or more in front of you.

As a result, finding clothing that is comfortable, versatile, and appropriate for work, from Casual Fridays to The President is Here Mondays, is a challenge since most of the pants and tops that fit me a month or so ago will no longer stay pulled down or pulled up. I’m continually readjusting my clothing and my maternity wardrobe has been reduced again by half because I refuse to wear clothing that requires my constant attention. I can’t see my own feet and can’t tell if my socks and shoes match, so I’ll be darned if I’m going to worry as to whether my shirt has slid up to rest on my ribcage while I wasn’t looking.

I’m now a little over 32 weeks pregnant. In case you’re not familiar with pregnancy and the weekly status thereof, I’m about 7.5-8 months pregnant, depending on how you measure. I’m in the third trimester, I’m probably 6-8 weeks from delivering, and I’m as big as a barn.

I am carrying, as I did with Freebird, alllll out front, so from the back, you can’t really tell I’m pregnant. Then I swing the cruise ship around and HELLO, NURSE. I’m huge. The problem with being all out front is that I’m very unbalanced, and don’t have a lot of room for things like my internal organs, including my stomach and lungs. I tend to cough a lot because I’m short of breath.

The real fun starts when I try to do the dishes - my belly gets in the way so I’m too far away to reach the faucets, and I have to turn to the side and lean over to reach. This ultimately pulls at my back, which then starts to hurt - and I won’t even tell you how comical it is to see me try to reach the dishwasher.

I can’t see my feet, much less the dog if he’s right in front of my feet, which he always is, so I tend to stumble over Logan the Underfoot Dog, and anything else that’s on the floor in front of me, like a cat, the sofa, a table, my shoes, etc.

I am obsessive about my toes, however, since I can’t see them, and have a very nice pedicure. The next time I go get my toes painted, I’m going to beg the nice ladies to let me sit in the foot whirlpool for at least two hours because it’s the best part of the whole experience.

There’s other fun parts I’ve started to re-enjoy and remember from my pregnancy with Freebird, like the part where I have to do yoga and stand on my head to fully empty my bladder, or the part where I take four bites of dinner and feel like I ate the whole buffet in one sitting, only to be hungry ten minutes later.

But the very best part is the email I get reminding me how many weeks I am, and how much FUN STUFF will start happening. The last one I got was the biggest downer, and I nearly unsubscribed from the darn thing altogether. My blood volume will start to increase AGAIN to prepare for birth and the accompanying blood loss, so I need to make sure I drink plenty of fluids (duh). BUT all that blood will pool in my extremities when I rest, so if I stand up quickly, I have even more of a chance of seeing starts, getting light headed, and passing out. FUN! Heartburn and indigestion will increase, due to the increased pressure on my organs from the ever-growing fetus, whose job between now and birth is to pack on the weight as fast as possible, at a rate of up to a pound a week for me, with half of that for the fetus.

Ironically, I remember clearly that after Freebird was born - and he was a week and a day late so I was plenty huge when I delivered - I really missed having him with me in utero. For so long I’d had this spinning little being in my belly, hanging out with me all the time, and when I was in the hospital bed by myself for the first time in months, I missed him. Even though I’m wicked uncomfortable and tired and, as I said, as big as a freaking barn, I’m going to miss the amazing parts of being pregnant.