"It's not easy being a mother. If it were easy, fathers would do it." *

Oh people. My brain has decided it’s time for this parasi—er, baby to win.

I spent HOURS yesterday formatting an APA bibliography for a new client, only to realize at 10 pm that she needed it in MLA. Which incidentally is NOT a format I can do in my sleep. And her fellowship proposal is due tomorrow. I nearly vomited. I am terrified to hear from her. No news is good news, and all that. Fortunately, she had already done most of the hard work and really did not even need me, except for some hand-holding. Needless to say, I will NOT be charging her.

But it’s time for me to put my editing empire on hold and concentrate on getting through this pregnancy and those sleep-deprived first months without losing any old clients. Someday my brain will function again. I think.

In the meantime, the boys are in their new room, more or less. No bunkbeds yet, which means Terzo is still in a room by himself. But we are moving the office/computer room upstairs, as soon as the cable company comes to move the data line, and H is moving his bed downstairs into the smaller back bedroom where his guitars can live comfortably in the closet year-round, and the baby will sleep in the front bedroom, when s/he gets around to actually sleeping in his/her own room. I am recycling and Freecycling and throwing stuff out, and giving stuff to Goodwill, and generally just clearing clutter. Maternity clothes – mostly gone. Class notes from undergrad AND grad school – gone. Reams of crinkled paper and used coloring books – gone.

Oh, and I did ten loads of laundry yesterday. I am woman, hear me whimper.

On a happier note, I have been reading some awesome books, dudes.

What I Loved - Siri Hustvedt. This book took an unexpected turn at the end, but it worked out all right. Mostly I loved the first half, and read the second half to find out what happened to everyone. It was worth it.

The Solace of Leaving Early - Haven Kimmel. It would be hyperbolic for me to say that Kimmel is one of today’s most underrated writers. But my personal opinion is that it would be verging on truth. Her writing is considered (without being painful or self-conscious), intelligent, and multilayered. Her characters are wonderfully real. I look forward to reading anything she writes next, and to what she’ll be writing in twenty years. Like David Mitchell, her early work is exciting and inventive (Kimmel isn’t as quirky as Mitchell, though), and I can’t wait to see what they come up with after a decade or two of writing under their belts.

The Ivy Chronicles - This was a throwaway I picked up at Goodwill for a buck, about a woman who launches a kindergarten-prep business for the millionaires of Manhattan. It was funny and light and entertaining. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday night.

I am still plodding along with What Was She Thinking? (Notes on a Scandal), and read almost half of the quiet but engrossing Septembers of Shiraz last night (after the MLA/APA debacle was fixed). I have some requests waiting at the library, and just requested Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockhart series, too. I have to have books on hand for when I go into labor – gotta have stuff to read at the hospital. I am as excited for this hospital time as I used to be for vacations to the shore or to Paris. Ok, well maybe not Paris.

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* Dorothy (Bea Arthur), on "The Golden Girls"

"Chicken. Which is so ironic, considering that I'm a vegetarian." *

They say bad things happen in threes.
Let's hope it's not fours.
I really don't think I can cope with more right now.Maybe next week...

Bad Thing #1:
On Wednesday evening Primo got the staples out of his scalp. Two came easily; the third had been put in incorrectly at the ER, and so his ped had to shoot his scalp full of Novocaine to wrench the damn thing out. That's one white uniform shirt that will go directly into the rag pile, do not pass Oxy-Clean, do not collect two hundred dollars. It was NOT a pleasant evening, much as I adore my pediatrician.

Bad Thing #2:
Stupid male OB/GYN freaking me out about the fetus. See here.

Bad Thing #3:
Chicken pox.
Yes, you heard me correctly.
Chicken. Pox.
For which all three of my children have been vaccinated, per the AAP's recommended vaccination guidelines. And which are required for Pittsburgh public schools.

This was not a break-through case, like you might have a month or so after your vaccine. No, this was a bona fide case. Seems the vaccine has about a 3% failure rate. And Seg just got lucky. Lucky middle child syndrome, we call it around here.

So now he is in the bathtub full of warm water and baking soda, and daily ingesting huge amounts of some antiviral stuff that is meant to stop the pox in their trax (see how I did that? Clever, huh?)

And everyone we know is freaking out.
Do you remember how when WE were small, your parents WANTED you to get chicken pox, to get it the hell out of the way?
I never actually attended one, but I have heard tell of "chicken pox parties," thrown by the lucky first victim, to infect all the other kids and get it over with. I recall having chicken pox in my mouth and up my nose and in my ears and between my toes; I was miserable and itchy, but that's about it. My brother had it even worse; he had pox, um, up his butt.

Now though? I mean, I am not sending Seg to school or anything crazy, but seriously, I am sorta shocked no one's come to fly the plague flag from our porch. Sheesh. Everybody's been vaccinated, and most people my age have had chicken pox, and still you'd think we were infected with bubonic plague or worse. So we are just hunkering down and keeping Seg comfy, and waiting for his pox to scab up; Primo and Terzo had boosters, just in case.

If you aren't itching by now, just from power of suggestion, you are probably the only one.

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* Phoebe, on "Friends," episode: "The One with the Chickenpox"