For those of you who don’t follow me on Facebook:  I am too heavy to sit in my husband’s lap.

This would be grounds for utter devastation, were it not for the fact that I am 38 1/2 weeks pregnant with a baby that will probably make headlines and retaining enough water to fill Lake Superior.   It’s easy to be amused about outweighing your husband (yes, I really do) when you know that in a few days, you’ll be well on your way back to the status quo.  (Oh yeah; in my failure to update this blog regularly, I might have neglected to mention that we’re going to induce labor next Monday, a week ahead of my due date.  Because of the Lake Superior and 19-pound baby issues.)

My poor husband must be given credit where credit is due; he tried to let me sit on his lap.

He was browsing the interwebs for new computer desks (for his upcoming new work-from-home job, which I also really need to post about!) and I wanted to look with him but didn’t want to walk the whole six feet over to my desk to drag my chair over, so I asked if I could sit in his lap, as I often do when we want to look at stuff together.  The dear man didn’t even cast a wary eye over my gargantuan belly before un-crossing his legs to accommodate me in his lap.

So, certainly he can’t be blamed for letting out a quiet, “Uffda!” when I sat on him. Or even for adding, “You are kind of heavy,” because he was amused, not critical; my vanity wasn’t the least bit wounded, though I feared his lap was. I asked if I should get up and get my chair.

“No,” he sort of gritted out, shaking his head with determination — like a weight-lifter asked by his spotter if he needs a hand with his bench press. “You’re fine.”

I was fine for about three minutes longer.

Really, it’s a testament to what a sweet man he is that he can tell his wife she’s squashing him (and that he’s looking forward to the return of the status quo, too) without making her cry. (Of course, considering I have only had one melt-down during my entire pregnancy, I’m starting to think that instead of becoming hormonally unhinged, I have developed the emotional control of a Vulcan.  Eat your heart out, Mr. Spock.  I only hope this continues through those harrowing weeks of learning to live with a newborn.)

I’ve always liked my husband a lot.  Duh.  That’s why I married him.  But pregnancy has made me like him even more.

Probably I shouldn’t have said that.  Undoubtedly, he’ll remind me of these words at some crucial juncture Monday when I’m at the brink of screaming at him never to touch me again.

It dawned on me this morning that now I’ve got a car again (should have thought of this last week, when I acquired said motor vehicle; but I am pregnant, ergo, a little bit slow), I don’t have to do my grocery shopping on the weekends, when Walmart is a circus. If my grocery budget would allow it, I’d shop anywhere but Walmart, because even on weekday mornings, when it’s not busy, Walmart can be extremely annoying because there are certain items I buy that they don’t sell (or, more annoying, used to sell, but don’t any longer — most recently, Wolf hot dog chili).

So, before Walmart, I ran in Kroger for the express purpose of buying Ragu 7 Herb Tomato pasta sauce. Two jars of it.

I came out with six jars.

Plus six more in other varieties.

And nine boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch…

…five boxes of Lucky Charms…

…four boxes of Barilla pasta…

…three 8-roll packs of Bounty paper towels…

…and two packages of Oscar Mayer hot dogs.

It’s like The Very Hungry Caterpillar Goes Grocery Shopping.

I couldn’t help myself! They were all items I buy regularly, and they were on sale cheaper than Walmart ever has them, and in stock, and–

Well, you know you may have gone a little beyond taking advantage of a good sale when the cashier remarks, “Not planning on going out for a while?”

I gave a sheepish laugh and indicated my baby belly. I should have told her I was preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse and asked if she was ready (because nothing says preparedness for zombie attack like weenies, cereal, pasta sauce, and paper towels). But I never think of these things in the moment. Even when I’m not pregnant.

One of the things I’ve discovered about being pregnant is that everyone likes to make small talk with you.  (Once it’s obvious that you are, indeed, sporting a baby belly and not a spare tire.)  I think it’s one of those things in life that’s common to just about everyone:  either they, personally, have had a baby, or are in the process of having one, or they know someone who has had/is having a baby.  Also, I think people just like babies and pregnant women!

Sunday night, Mr. Burt and I went to dinner at Sweet Tomatoes (which is, by the way, a fantastic salad bar/buffet that caters to a younger, more health-conscious crowd than Golden Corral or Sirloin Stockade) because I was too tired to cook after a long previous day of shopping and decorating, a largely sleepless night, and a baby shower that afternoon.  As we were carrying our trays of salad to a table, one of the guys busing tables interrupted an animated conversation he was having with a table of ladies to shout to me, “Hey!  How many months are you?  Eight?”

“Just about,” I replied.

He threw his hands up in the air like he’d just scored a touchdown.  “I knew it!”

“You’re having a boy,” chimed in one of the women, pointing at my belly.  “I can tell from how you’re carrying.”

“Oh yeah,” agreed the busboy.  “You’re totally having a boy.”

“It is a little boy,” I said.

Another victory dance.  I wondered how excited this guy would get if his own wife told him he was having a boy.  “Is he going to be a junior?” he asked Mr. Burt.

“Nah,” Mr. Burt answered.  “He’s my little dude, but we’re not naming him after me.”

The busboy’s jaw dropped.  “You have to name him after you!  Carry on the family name — all the kings did.  You know, like Henry VIII.”

Apparently the busboy missed the part where Henry VIII kept divorcing and beheading his wives because they weren’t having boys… (Though, to be fair, Henry VIII’s illegitimate son was a junior.)

“You should name him Kingston!” suggested the woman subscribing to the old wives’ tale that carrying low means a boy.

“As in, the capital of Jamaica?” I whispered to Mr. Burt as we left the busboy and the customer to continue their discussion about what to name baby boys.  Who knows?  Maybe a romance blossomed that night, and nine months from now the busboy will be the proud papa of Busboy, Jr.

Thankfully, the nurse who took my blood pressure yesterday at my OB appointment thinks Liam Alexander is a great name.  We concur.

You’d think that such a life-altering experience as pregnancy would be a subject a writer would eat up, wouldn’t you?  Yet this writer has made it six months into her first pregnancy without really blogging about it.

Several things can account for this, I think.  During the first part of my pregnancy (17 weeks, to be precise), I was too sick and tired to blog.  These days I’m feeling better physically, but I most often don’t feel I have the mental capacity or creativity to write; I’m preoccupied (gee, I can’t imagine with what), and I believe that my body is so busy making a tiny person that there’s not much left for making stories of words.

It doesn’t account for the slowdown in my novel work, but I think the biggest detriment to my blogging is Facebook.  When you can share any interesting news or amusing tidbits in one line, or upload a photo album to share with all your friends, why go to all the trouble of writing blog posts?  (Which is an entire blog topic in itself…)  But the writer in me resists this laziness – the less I write, the less I’ll be able to write.  And the sentimental part of me knows I’ll regret not having written anything but Facebook status updates about my pregnancy.

Though maybe there’s something to not chronicling pregnancy:  if I don’t write about my experiences, I won’t remember them as clearly, and will be more likely to consider a second pregnancy… Because I’m convinced there must be some sort of amnesia that sets in after birth, or women would never volunteer to do this more than once!  (I don’t know what to make of all these women who claim to love being pregnant…)

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Last week at my five-month checkup, despite the controversy surrounding the H1N1 flu shot, I submitted to be vaccinated.  Why?  Because my doctor strongly recommended it for all her patients, and I trust my doctor.  Also, because I’ve heard a lot more about pregnant women dying of swine flu than about pregnant women suffering complications from the vaccine, and while it’s not hugely likely I’d catch it, I’d really rather be safe than sorry.  I didn’t have the slightest side effect from the vaccination; my shoulder didn’t even get as sore as it did from the normal flu shot.  (Which I also got just as a precaution, even though I never get the flu, because I really don’t want to get it while dealing with being pregnant.)

Yesterday afternoon Mr. Burt and I went to Lowe’s, and while we were hemming and hawing over which winterizer to get for our lawn, an elderly man whom I’d just watched have a very confused conversation in broken English with one of the employees about garden plants versus sunroom plants, approached me and asked, “You have shot?”

Not sure I’d heard him right, or, if I had, what exactly he was asking me, I said, “Pardon me?”

“Shot,” he repeated, and gestured with his not-a-garden-plant to my shoulder.  “In shoulder.  Shot for you and baby.”

“Oh!” I said, realizing he must mean a flu vaccine.  “Yes, I just had one last week.”

“Good,” he said with a nod and a grin, and then walked away.

But a moment later, he came back.  “I not get shot so you and baby have one.”

Now, it’s very sweet (not to mention very random and very funny) that this guy wanted to do right by all the pregnant ladies out there this flu season (I wonder if he’s stopping all the pregnant women he sees to share this with them?) I’m pretty sure the FDA or whoever recommended that the first vaccinations go to pregnant women and the elderly!  I hope this man, whoever he is, makes it through flu season okay!  And that his not-a-garden-plant lives.