I’m having a little bit of a baby naming crisis.

In theory, I love the name Nicolaus (Nicolas, Nicholas, Nikolaus, spell it however you want). But anytime anyone calls him that, I have no idea who they’re talking about. It just doesn’t fit anywhere in my brain, and it definitely isn’t the name of a tiny family member. Maybe calling him Pico de Gallo all this time has messed me up. What I’m hoping is that Pico is just the name of the fetus, and that once I actually see him it’ll make more sense to call him Nicolaus. But what if it doesn’t? What if I take one look at him and realize that I have no idea what his name should be?

Apparently “Baby boy” is on the list of 100 most popular names every year because a lot of people can’t decide what to put on the birth certificate and have to bring home a no-name baby. A name like Baby Boy would probably make it hard for him to ever find a girlfriend, so I better figure this out soon.

Ideas are welcome, including suggestions of therapy or medication.

Did you know that health clubs are freakishly expensive? Especially for people who hate exercise of any kind.

So I didn’t make it into the pool but every day I get a little bit closer. Tuesday I found a bathing suit, and today we went to LA Fitness and politely listened to their sales pitch to get the free 2-week pass. During the tour i got all the way upto the pool, but the place was full of all these like exercisey people, so we decided to come back tomorrow during the slow part of the day. So hopefully tomorrow I can get all the way in the pool. Woohoo!

The manager expressed very real concern that I might have the baby in his health club. I tried to reassure him by telling him that would be great publicity, but he didn’t seem at all excited about it. I decided not to mention that I was right at that moment having contractions.

Ever since this damn hip started hurting I have really become aware of how poorly adapted pregnant women are to walking around on land. I’m obsessed with the idea of going swimming.

Obviously though, with highs of, like, seven degrees, diving into our community pool is not an option. Call me a crybaby, but that’s just too cold. We have a one-day pass to the YMCA where there is a nice indoor pool but it seems stupid to spend $30 or more on a maternity bathing suit just for one swim. There have been days lately when I was tempted, but no, it’s just too silly.

I’ve tried taking baths as an alternative but we aren’t special enough to have a garden tub so there really isn’t room to get comfortable. My back just ends up hurting, which kind of defeats the whole purpose.

So last night I was tossing and turning and having stupid fake contractions (well, they don’t always feel fake but since they don’t produce any babies, I have to presume that they are) and decided damn it there has to be a swimming pool around here somewhere that a big fat girl could use for a couple of weeks. I got online and searched for “alpharetta indoor pool” and found hundreds of sites, all of them hotels. Hmmm I thought How inconspicuously could I sneak in and out of a hotel’s swimming pool?

The vision of me trying to sneak anywhere was just too ridiculous though. So I searched for “indoor pool health club”… and again found nothing useful. A lot of hotels have health clubs too. Finally I searched for “pregnant help swim atlanta” and found this wonderful message board for pregnant atlanta chicks with a wonderful posting from two years ago: “It’s hell finding this out on the internet, but LA Fitness has terrific indoor pools”

Yippie! I called LA Fitness this morning and yes, they have a pool and a jacuzzi and … free 2-week trial memberships. At this point I would have paid, but free is a great word! And 2 weeks is perfect! And there’s one just a few miles from here. Woohoo!

So the quest for the day is to find a maternity bathing suit in the middle of winter. As cheap as possible. I don’t care how ugly it is, although i’d prefer that it not require any miraculous, acrobatic acts of shaving.

You may recall that MFC (My *Favorite* Client) contacted me yesterday to ask if we could launch a site before the baby was born. We traded emails and decided to talk on the phone to figure out exactly what she has in mind and see what’s possible.

So today she called at 2:30. We talked for 15 seconds before she got another call. “Ooh I need to grab that. Can I call you back in two minutes?” she says.

“No problem” I say.

It is now 4:00. Not that I actually have anything more important to do than to watch Dr.Phil and wait by the phone for her to call me back, but she doesn’t know that.

I’ve only been working with her again for one day and it’s already getting old.

So this isn’t going to be an eloquent post or even a particularly interesting one. I’m just bitching because I’m huge and pregnant and you can’t stop me because if you try to I’ll cry and then you’ll feel like an insensitive asshole, and there’s just no sense in that.

First of all, it is unfuckingbelievably cold and windy outside. So I’m hiding inside. I even turned down a nifty lunch with a cool friend I haven’t seen in ages just so I could hide from the weather. I want to get out but if you knew how cold and windy it was here you would stay inside too. Especially if you didn’t have a coat that would close around your enormous gut.

Second, my hip has been hurting all the time lately because brains makes these hormones that start relaxing your hip muscles during the last month of the pregnancy. That plus Pico leaning all of his weight on my right side makes for some seriously no fun hip pain. I figured out that sleeping or sitting on the couch helps a little because the couch cushions are squishy. The better to sink a big tummy into, my dear. So it’s 3:30 pm and I’ve spent a total of 1 hour out of the last 14 off of this couch.

Third, my client from hell contacted me today to ask if we could launch a web site in a few weeks. Ummm… yeah. This week she finally paid me for the work I did in early November, so I’m willing to do it I guess. It’s just annoying timing since I’ve told her since October that there’s this parasite in my stomach scheduled to be removed in February. Argh. I need the money too much to tell her to go away, but I can’t really commit to getting it done in her timeframe either. So I’m telling her I’ll do my best, no promises. Sigh.

Fourth, I’m sad for the stupidest reason. I had to get a new driver’s license this week and they wouldn’t use my old picture. I felt like crap that day and looked awful so I had to trade in my cute picture for one that looks like Owen’s ass. I know it’s ridiculous to care but I feel so frumpy these days and carrying around photographic evidence doesn’t help.

Finally, I went to the doctor yesterday. They claim that I haven’t gained any weight in almost 6 weeks but I think they’re lying. That or maybe brain matter is migrating to my stomach. I definitely feel like my stomach is suddenly much heavier and I know I’m getting stupider. I’ve gotten most of my exercise this month walking around parking lots looking for my fucking car.

I’ve been having contractions all week, which I hoped meant I was like about to have a baby or something, but apparently not. The doctor said those are just for practice and she didn’t think I was making much progress… I won’t go into the details because it involves body parts we just shouldn’t discuss until we know eachother a whole lot better. I didn’t even give Kevin the details, so don’t feel bad.

They also said that they don’t use anesthetic for circumcision because the topical kind was causing some kids’ blood pressure to drop. They said I shouldn’t feel bad for doing it without any anesthetic. Well, I shouldn’t care about my driver’s license picture either, so you see how much what I should or shouldn’t worry about plays into my reality.

OK time to get up and accomplish something.
Boogaboogabooga