I have two horrible, mean, and evil thoughts while watching Antiques Roadshow:

1. Hubby is going to be 1% less manly for every minute I have this on while he’s in the room.

2. People who talk about the origin of the stuff in their homes are unspeakably, horribly boring. I seriously don’t care about the provenance of your great-great-great grandmother’s toothpick collection. But if it’s worth a lot, I better see your eyes fall out of your boring head. Because damn, some random piece of stuff is worth a crapton of money? That’s kinda cool.

EDITED TO ADD:

Anyone else who watches these shows just get dumbfounded when someone lugs something flipping HUGE into the showroom? Like, here’s a woman with weird hair and a busted up leg and she’s got her big ass dining room table and it’s only worth three grand.

And alllright! It’s not Antiques Roadshow without a Indian Head. And a guitar.

With my extensive medical knowledge (aka Dr. Google) I’ve decided that my problems are, in order, and relatedly, 1. Sciatica being a right bitch, 2. nausea and 3. Fatigue. The fatigue is definitely related to #1 since I didn’t sleep well, having dreamt off and on that people were chasing me and stabbing me in the back. Ow. The sciatica is pregnancy related since I had similar problems when pregnant with Freebird. And the nausea, who the hell knows. Maybe its all related, maybe not.

But seriously, not being able to say, “I have a problem and my problem is _____” is very frustrating because I can’t really DO anything to fix my problems. I can keep my back straight but I can’t take any medication that would reduce the inflammation because I’m allergic to any over the counter medicines that would do that. I certainly can’t take muscle relaxers. I can apply cold but not heat too much, and unfortunately I can’t avoid sitting in a chair, either.

Whine whine whine. I want Dr. Google to spit out a perfect solution to my problems. And Dr. Google is telling me that either I have sciatica (duh) or malaria. Why is it that any searches for symptoms and disease result in malaria from Dr. Google?

Shit, maybe I have malaria. 

Last night I felt like so much doody that I was in bed, in my jammies, by 7pm. Hubby was nice enough to bring me a bowl of cereal to eat, and I chilled out for the evening, moving around as little as possible. I went to sleep at 830.

Around 11pm I woke up having a full blown panic because I’d had some vivid wackass dream. I calmed down, went back to sleep… and had the same freaking dream! I woke up every few hours, not sure if I was awake or not, unable to get comfortable because by this time my sciatic nerves were having bad dreams, too. Seriously. It was miserable.

As I said to Hubby this morning: I like to eat, I like my bed, and I like to sleep. I can’t eat much because I’m nauseous, and I can’t lie in bed because my back hurts, and I can’t sleep because I have scary dreams. Seriously. THIS SUCKS.

Last night Hubby and I tried a new kind of ravioli that we found at Costco - a smoked mozzarella and herb filling. It was not good - I barely ate four pieces. So my dinner last night consisted of a bottle of water, 3.5 pieces of ravioli, and a small cookie.

This was DUMB. Not because I was hungry and decided to starve myself or anything like that - I actually wasn’t that hungry and that mozzarella filling turned me off totally.

No, I woke up this morning feeling like dookie because I hadn’t eaten enough last night. I was past the point of hungry into spinningly nauseated, and driving through the Lincoln Tunnel at 30 mph in a bus with the lights ... from… the… walls… going… by… one… by… one… past my peripheral vision didn’t help in the least. I ended up with sunglasses on in the dark tunnel with my hands over my eyes to keep the moving lights out of my vision, and staggered to my office to consume anything I could get my hands on.

Now I’m focused on ignoring my stomach’s threats of “I’m going to throw up and I’m not kidding” and feeding it anyway, kind of like when Freebird says he doesn’t want his cup but when I give it to him, he starts chugging on it like he’s never had milk before - even while saying, “NO!” with his mouth around the cup. My stomach is being a toddler and I won’t put up with it - the belly gets food whether the belly likes it or not. I have too much to do today to be feeling ill.

Meanwhile, Baba O’Riley has been practicing for Cirque du Soleil tryouts, so at least someone is enjoying my array of small breakfast sample foods. 

I just got an email from Apple’s Store, saying that with my “educational discount” I can “save big” before summer vacation starts.

The big savings? “Up to $100.00.”

Wow. Knock me down with those big savings, given how overall expensive Apples are.

Sheesh.

Dear Lands’ End:

Since you’ve decided to eliminate your maternity line, I thought I would update you on the horrors I’ve endured trying to find comfortable, well-made, elegant, and appropriate maternity clothing. I’ve written to you before expressing my dismay that you’d eliminated that line of wonderful garments, but since my struggles to clothe a second pregnancy continue, I thought it only fair to share my experiences with you.

First, your clothing? Superb. The seams stay sewn! The fabric doesn’t pull, wear, shred, or fall apart. The prices are reasonable, and the designs are flattering. It was heaven on a website, shopping in your maternity department.

Sadly, this is not true of other maternity lines. Somehow, it’s become standard to manufacture poorly constructed clothing for pregnant ladies, and mark that clothing up to astronomical prices, so I end up paying $50 for a shirt that I wear about four times before it starts to look like I ought to have paid $5.00 for it.

Monday I went to Destination Maternity, where the service was superb and the employees were beyond wonderful to me, but alas, the clothing was not always as wonderful. I had a very generous and wonderful gift card (Yay gift card! WOO!) that allowed me to have a great deal of fun while I shopped, but shopping in person and trying on clothes and taking them off is tiring when I’m not pregnant. At 5 months along, I was ready for a nap after two shirts and a pair of pants. But since this is my very best and most varied option for clothing, I am forced to shop in person for my maternity clothes instead of at your online store - have I mentioned my despair that you canceled your maternity line? Despair, I tell you - and I have had a very difficult time recently finding clothing that is appropriate for work.

Here, in convenient list form, are my problems with every other line of maternity clothing except yours:

I have the World’s Worst Memory for all things numerical. What date is it? I have no idea. And even if I look it up, if I ask myself the same question ten minutes later I’ll have to look up the date again. Numbers? Forget it. The date? Please. There are definite moments wherein I have to think really hard and deliberately as to what YEAR it is. I think it’s 2007 but I might have to look that up, too.

I exist in a happy fog of my daily routine, and I forget what day, month, year, whatever it is because unless I’m writing a check (which hardly ever happens) I have no idea what day it is.

Enter the digital planner. I’ve had a palm since the Handspring Deluxe was released in 1997. Before that I had a Casio Cassiopeia, which was very very nice but weighed very very much. If I don’t have a digital device or even a paper calendar telling me what all I have to do, I’m screwed - because I don’t even know what year it is, much less what date and if anything happens on that date that I should probably be aware of.

Right now I have a Blackberry, which I’m liking a bit more than my Treo 650, though I haven’t made up my mind which one to use and which one to retire/sell on eBay. The Blackberry is lighter and faster, but the Treo has a better agenda/calendar display. And since I don’t know what millennium it is, I need the digital agenda to tell me where and in what time zone I’m currently located.

Hubby also has a Blackberry, has had a Treo 600 and 650 (until it got fried because I let Freebird eat it) and also possess the ability to know not only what day it is, what year, what month, and what’s the interstate route to take from point A to point B, but also what time it is right this second without having to look at a clock or his watch. He’s in tune with the universe in some weird way that he can also tell you the entire batting order from the 1991 Pirates or the 1993 Mets. There are random facts in his brain, like the birth dates of his deceased cats, that will never, ever vacate the brain cells.

Enter today: Hubby’s grandmothers 90th birthday. I mentioned it last night, and he said he’d take care of it.

Snort.

Guess who just placed a same-day flower delivery order for said Granny when I reminded Hubby that her birthday was (a) today and (b) a Big Milestone Birthday celebrating 90 (holy shit) years on the earth?

That would be me. And you know what really burns my toast? If he and I had forgotten altogether, despite the knowledge that Hubby is the almanac and I’m the space cadet, guess who would have been subtly blamed for having forgotten? Me. Because that kind of thing is the “girl’s job.” Thank God I have a digital planner and a calendar that beeps at me if I forget to look at it.

You’d think it’d be a one-sided battle - the person who can’t remember what YEAR IT IS right now vs. the person who knows what date, time, and second it is without having to look, and who takes care of business. But either way, the flowers are ordered, and all will be well. 

Now I have to figure out what year it is. I think it’s 2007. Isn’t it?