I am not one to normally get all mushy over cute shit. I love my cat. I am great with babies and kids. But I don’t babytalk much, or get too overly… girly, for lack of a better word, about stuff. But holy hell, my diapers arrived, and OH MY GOD they are cute.  So tiny! And fluffy! I mean, the kissaluvs are. The prefolds have all the charm of a institutional dining hall dinner napkin at this point, but I’m assured that they get cuter once you wash them a billion times.

Be forewarned: I may post pictures.

I went back to the pool last week, and was the only one there, which was fine, and yesterday one of the SVTs and a new girl were there.  Now, I am not an athlete. I’m just.. not. But I love the class, and the water, and all that, even if I feel/look like a walrus as I work my way around the pool. In addition to my walrusness, the lungs are still fucked up.  My asthma has gotten worse in pregnancy, the bronchitis didn’t help, but I’m figuring out how to work things out. For instance, I’ve found that walking around and breathing in cold air (IE, between buildings, to my car, etc) sets off a coughing spell and starts to close up the lungs. So, I’ve been zipping my coat up past my nose and breathing into my jacket to keep my lungs warm, and that totally helps. ANYWAY.

Yesterda, the other women had basically lapped me, and I a) didn’t want to make them wait for me to get around the pool again, and b) needed to breathe anyway. I tend to get really competitive with myself in situations like that, but I recognize that being pregnant, and the reduced lung function and all is a big part of it, and I can’t fight it or stress over it like I normally would. Ineed to, you know, breathe. I pulled over after muy first lap (with that GODDAMN KICKBOARD, I swear, I’m an IDIOT with that thing) and just told the isntructor I needed to breathe a bit. (She knows of my asthma/bronchitis/lack of coordination issues anyway). But then, she had us go to the wall for strength exercises. Now Ifeel all guilty, wodnering if she did that so that I wouldn’t feel bad or pass out or whatever. But I don’t want to drag down the others, you know? The SVT is a former PE teacher (and is actually super nice, we spent about 20 minutes flaoting in the pool after class talking about the bullshit of teaching in Maine — even PE teaching in Maine has bullshit, apparently — and then swapping stories about kids we’d both had, since she taught some of the kids I had my first year, because we send to that school) and the other girl is REALLY young and teeny tiny, except for her belly. I DON’T want to slow down the others, and I am very aware of my own limitations and will  modify as necessary, you know? I don’t want it to be "oh, god, there goes gretchen with the breathing again, now we have to hang out on the wall and do group kegels again." (And no, I’m not making that up.)

I don’t know. I don’t want to be the lead weight of the class, you know? But I stillw ant to GO, and WILL, and that’s all good.

The cat’s vet appointment went well — she hasn’t gained or lost since she was last there, almost 2 years ago, so she’smaintaining at 17 lbs. (Whcih is down fromher all time high of 22 lbs 4 years ago!)  She had her shots, and we talked about the increased thirst, and I splurged for a $38 blood test to check her for diabetes and thyroid issues. I could’ve chased her around and tried to get her to piss in a cup for that, but decided that it was worththe 38 bucks for the stick, and Dave agreed. Of course, I’m all emotional from being all pregnant and shit, so the needles were making me tearup, and I said to the vet and tech "so, is this practice for watching my baby get shots?" They were like "uhh, that’ll probably be worse." FUCK.

A big pet peeve of mine is when people try to have conversations withparents about how their pet is "just like" a baby. It’s not. It really isn’t, and I totally, completely recognize that. However, we really love our cat, and hate to think about her eventual demise, but we’re really hoping that we have the baby before the cat dies. I mean,she’s only ELEVEN, but she’s fat, and we worry. Once the baby is here, though, our sensitivity will probably be recalibrated, which is a good thing. Because if she died now? HOLY CHRIST, we’d be wrecks.

Um, other randomnews — I broke down and ordered maternity overalls, because I am just SO SICK of the pants that keep sliding down, and they DIDN’T FIT. Everywhere but the belly, they did. But the belly? No go.WTF?  MATERNITY OVERALLS should accomodate a belly! I’m only almost 26 weeks! How can they NOT FIT? So depressing. ALso, I got really excited thinking that the fridge was dying last night, because I really want a new fridge (ours is the oldest appliance in the house, about 15-20 years old) but this morning, it was cold again. Sigh. I don’t even want a crazy ass internet-enabled fridge! Just a basic model, no water, icemaker or anything, because I’m sure our power bill would go down if we got one. But I guess if it aint broke, I can’t get a new one. Sigh.