Ginormous Belly

25ish weeks.

I'm very proud of my stretchmarklessness.

It takes much hard work to cultivate a stomach this large.

I realized the other day that I have 4 arms and 4 legs in there (along with some heads and torsos and the like, of course) so basically I'm gestating an octopus... I'm sure all gestators of octopi get double chins, so I'm going to not stress about mine and assume it'll go away soon enough. Right? Right. (And I'll find a way to punch you in the face if you point out that it'll only get worse before it gets better.)

Well... We'll Call It Nesting

... Yeah.... because "nesting" sounds LOADS better than "psychotic". My random project du jour is painting my downstairs bathroom (well, "water closet" since it's about 3'x5' and holds a toilet and a sink smaller than your Nalgene bottle). Why? Well, I got tired to trying to convince myself that the grime in the 102-year-old bathroom is on the Historic Register and that I should respect that it has adorned the pure-white walls for longer than I've been potty-trained. Honestly, I was in that bathroom scrubbing a different surface every other day and every time I sat down to pee, I stewed over the dingy walls and how the glaring white made everything else look all the more gross. So I decided to give up on bleach and toss in the (paper) towel and paint it instead.

So that's what I'm doing. My back is killing me and my fat stomach has smears of paint on the very front of it because the room is too small to accommodate my mass without touching the walls, but with enough coats, I'll get there.

If only I weren't obsessive about cleanliness.

We'll just chalk it up to nesting...

Coherent? Probably not.

Oh wow, I had no idea how tired a person could be without running a marathon or climbing a mountain. It's absurd, but I'm struggling to even walk to the kitchen to get coffee. The Gaz fam got in the other night at like 3 am and the girls wouldn't let me sleep between bedtime and then thanks to their decision to have a multi-hour fist-fight, and then Justin's alarm clock and Jack wouldn't let me sleep after that so I lost a full night's sleep. I got a decent one last night but apparently it wasn't enough...

My college-self would be ashamed. I could function so much better after two all-nighters back then than I am now. Am I that old?

So right now Jack is destroying the play room by evenly coating the floor with his 8,000 pieces of wooden train track and all the corresponding trains while Toy Story plays in the background. It looks like Hurricane Katrina hit the Island of Sodor. Oh, what, too soon with the Katrina joke? Whatever.

I got Jack's hair cut at the barber shop at the NEX today and it looks horrendous. My poor little surfer kiddo with a Jim Halpert-like shag has been transformed into a geek who got into a losing fight with rogue weed-whacker. The dude cut the hair over the cow-lick(s) to a scant 1 mm or so... can't wait to see what THAT looks like as it grows out... and the rest of his hair is in varying length chunks with no regard to the nuances of blond in his hair. The effect makes him look... kinda... calico. Or patchwork. Not sure which. It's a little sad in a funny sort of way. At least it'll appease Justin for long enough for me to a) let it grow back out and b) find another place to take him that has some sense of style... or at least some sense of quality over quantity which was probably my biggest mistake in choosing the barbershop on the largest Naval Base on the Atlantic coast. Hm... Possibly a lapse of judgment resulting from the aforementioned exhaustion.

Note to self: get sufficient rest before I attempt to get my hair styled.

Oh well, at least we have the Gazareks here!

My $405.10 Toilet Flush

Today is just one of those days... you know - the ones where nothing goes right? It's a huge bummer, too, because I actually started it off thinking it would be a productive, happy, efficient day. I mean, I got up at a decent hour, ate my breakfast, did my web-stalking, and went up to shower - all before Jack got up! And I even shaved my legs for the first time in about 5 weeks (feeling a bit guilty with every stroke of the razor that I didn't call Locks of Love before I started...) for no special reason other than I wanted to put a little extra effort (okay, a LOT... I'm not very good at reaching my legs anymore) into my getting-ready routine. I mean, I'm not going to subject the world to my white, somewhat bloated-looking legs anytime soon (unless, of course, there is a massive power-outage and someone needs a self-contained source of illumination, in which case my frighteningly white skin would be much-appreciated) but I figured I'd feel better for having smooth legs. After that, I even put lotion on my feet. And that's almost a bigger deal than the leg-shaving considering I basically have no relationship with my feet at all any longer. Really. I'd say what we have going is a sort of acquaintance-ship. I feel mild, occasional curiosity (as in: hm, feet, are you still down there?) mixed with slight distaste (oh, yes, there you are... looking... uuuugh) that never matures into enough of one or the other for me to do anything about the fact that they're perhaps more frightening than 5 weeks worth of leg fur. But anyway, I put lotion on them. After I shaved my legs. Monday was looking to be a banner day for me.

I had a whole to-do list (written in crayon on construction paper, but whatev) and I was excited about getting started on it... I worked through another chapter of school... I even got to go to the bathroom (big deal for us Preggo's)...

............and discovered that my water has been turned off.

WHAT?!

Okay it sucks that I couldn't flush. But I also chose last night to wash all of the pitchers that usually hold filtered drinking water in our fridge. They're all in the sink in soapy water, soaking. As in, NOT holding drinking water. And I'm pregnant AND I have a toddler who drinks cup after cup of water.

Again: WHAT?!

So the to-do list immediately got replaced by the pressing matter of straightening this mess out. Only thing I could do was march my be-lotioned feet into the city office and plunk down $70 to get it fixed. Well, when I discovered an outstanding bill at this address from 2007, $70 quickly turned into $380.10 because I had to clear the debt of $310.10 before I could start services again in my name.

WHAT?!

Additionally (and here's where I'm glad I shaved my legs because after enough tantrum-ing and stomping of feet, chafing does become an issue) absurd is that, in the ludicrous amount of time it took to get all of this nonsense figured out, I was issued a $25 parking ticket while I was in office because I couldn't leave to go re-up the meter and who would have thought that paying a $70 deposit would take more than 30 minutes?

So now we're up to $405.10.

It's 3:58 pm now and the water just got turned on and I basically drank a gallon of it as soon as I could, but I can assure you that I am entirely devoid of energy to devote to my to-do list right now. My anger and frustration and a fair degree of dehydration have crushed my drive, as has the realization that, smooth lower-body aside, today really is just another stupid Monday and I will make certain that in the future I refrain from espousing any kind of hope or joy on this particular day of the week. I had figured that, surely, since I don't work, there is no way that the fabled "Monday Blues" could affect me... just another day of the week, right? Well, apparently, Universe, I was wrong. And I am sorry. Next time I shave my legs, I will wait until Wednesday at the earliest.

I don't often just blog to vent about my crappy life because, really, I don't have a crappy life at all. But there are days when my frustration level gets so high that I really REALLY need to type it all out in hopes of making enough room to take a deep breath.

So I'm off to go make my chicken-noodle soup (which is a MUCH easier meal to prepare when I have water)... Tomorrow's another day.