I'm Not Quitting My Blog, I'm Just Sparing You Posts Like This One

Despite the long periods of blog silence, things are actually quite normal over here at hypochondria central. Would you like to hear about it?

And would you like to hear about it in run-on-sentence form with no discernible punctuation?

WELL OF COURSE YOU WOULD.

First of all, you should know that every other week or so I wake up at night feeling a sharp stabbing pain in the front of my calf, kind of like a really ticked off hornet is messing with me. I always reach down to brush it away, then realize there's nothing there, then start to say "SON OF A -," then I realize the pain is gone, and then I go back to sleep.

I keep meaning to talk it over with the doctor, but whenever I go to see her I completely forget to mention it, so distracted am I by our regular monthly discussion/game of "so when exactly do you think my uterus might rupture?"

Her standard response is some variation on "there's really no way of knowing if it will, or when it will, but let me know if you have sudden sharp uterine pain," and then I ask her to quantify what she means by pain, exactly. The sharp pain I sometimes get when I sneeze, is that a rupture? Or when the baby kicks an internal organ really hard and I have pain, is that a rupture? Or when I feel this sharp stabbing pain in my leg, is THAT a rupture? And could she possibly give me her cell phone number so that I can call her late at night when I feel a pain that might be a rupture?

By the time we finish having this discussion, she is usually giving me this look (this look like, who referred you to my practice again?) and I've completely forgotten about the leg thing because I'm busy rocking back and forth on the exam table imagining my own death.

Most likely the pain in my leg is from a (non-imaginary) blood clot, and probably I will die. (Farewell, internet.) The good news is that I'm so forgetful lately that most days I don't remember my impending death and life proceeds quite normally.

The first real day of summer vacation for the kids was Monday. I've been busy reading things like Last Child in the Woods and Free Range Kids (which I LOVED and made my book club pick this month), and I'm determined to make sure my kids spend their summer out exploring NATURE, dagnabbit. We have a perfectly good gully across the street with a stream in it, and a park down the road with a stream in it, and mountains five minutes from our doorstep, so in theory we are all set. Now all I need is a non-pregnant friend to con into taking them on all of these nature adventures while I lie on the couch.

Yesterday I took the kids swimming at a completely fantastic pool down the road (complete with water slides, a lazy river, play structures, and water shallow enough to keep my non-swimmers from drowning). They loved it, and I loved it too - as long as I stayed in the water. Since I am not one of those adorable little pocket-sized pregnant women with a cute baby bump, I don't look pregnant - I just look incredibly fat.

I'm fighting the urge to iron a patch onto my swimsuit, something about baby on board, something that will make it obvious to everyone that YES, I'm fat, but at least some of it is virtuous baby-related fat (as opposed to my regular slothful, doughnut-related fat). It turns out that all this time I thought it was obvious I was pregnant, what with my shirts stretched against my baby belly, but a few of my real life friends had no idea because apparently that's JUST WHAT I USUALLY LOOK LIKE. Egads.

By the way, thanks so much to everyone who so sweetly and generously offered to send me baby and maternity stuff after my last post. Hormonal as I am, I sniffled my way through most of those comments. Whoever says blogging friends aren't real friends - well, the maternity shirt on my back is here to tell you otherwise.