Being pregnant now feels like I've hit that point in Super Mario Brothers where you know you're going to lose, but you won't stop playing. There's just no possible way to clear the level before the timer runs out, and yet you keep on, jumping for coins and stomping mushrooms, stubbornly unwilling to reset since you've already beaten the Nausea Boss and the Glucose Boss and the SPD Boss, and anyway you forgot to save.
I guess what my little metaphor is saying is the demands on my time and energy have far, far outpaced my ability to keep up. There are the home improvements coming in the next two weeks -- paint and carpet and oh, yeah, fixing that hole in the floor and all of the utter rearranging of furniture and other worldly goods that all of this will require -- and I need to somehow focus on getting ahead at work, I have writing and revisions to do for the white paper I'm working on for my SIG, we need to adequately equip Sasha for school and the school for Sasha, we need to do some massive decluttery purging of the house so we actually have a place to put the baby and baby paraphernalia when the time comes, plus the never-ending cycle of medical appointments is stepping up in frequency, and did I mention that my family stubbornly refuses to take my advice and has failed to cultivate a robot-like ability to take nourishment from only corn oil and uncooked pasta? So the, you know, ongoing feeding and bathing and other dreary physical necessities continue unabated.
Oh, and kind, helpful people keep telling me that I really need to remember that I'm pregnant, after all, and I should just rest more. Yeah, thanks for that, I hadn't noticed.
I suppose it isn't helping matters that those easily manageable and summarily-dismissed aches and pains got together a week or so ago and decided to form some kind of union on me, and so my personal and ongoing pain level is no longer simply controlled by peremptory measures such as rest and strategic shifts in posture; no, now I must consider such factors as tenure and collective contract terms. You may tell me this is natural and to be expected at this point. I am sure you will forgive me as I hobble in your direction and kindly invite you to bite me. I am led to believe that a foul temper is equally natural and to be expected, so I am confident you will not mind.
And they tell me there are people who do, in fact, enjoy being pregnant. I know some who make this outrageous claim personally. I do wonder if there is some magnificent hallucinatory hormone that makes the process pleasant that I am missing due to some cruel joke of genetics.
Oh, and my kitchen? You weren't really going to ask, were you?
...I didn't think so.