I love this thing. It really is an outlet I haven’t had before, and I can’t imagine going through a lot of the things I go through without it.

For instance, talk of my pregnancy. Stuff from sympathetic women, or men who are generally polite or have had pregnant wives, is normally well tolerated. They ask questions like “Have you thought of names yet?” or “Do you have a theme for the room started?” They are sometimes mindless questions, I’ll admit, but they are targeted toward what they know to be an emotional mess of a human being, constantly in some kind of discomfort, and ready to lash out at the first thing that tips them over the edge (my brain is stuck on the nervous system lately, so if you know anything about action potentials, they closely resemble what goes on when I erupt on someone from being bothered too much).

Most others, however, just bug me. Just BUG me. They love to comment on how fat I was the first time, and I mean, I just DEAL with it, but should I? Or should I act like I’m a different person without a sense of humor and really BITE at them? Probably I should do what I am doing, because the latter would take too much energy and I don’t feel like giving them the satisfaction of knowing they’re bugging me. But geez, if you knew that someone had… let’s say… been in a car accident. And they had, at one time in your acquaintance with this person, been getting skin grafts or something equally painful, and maybe even it was on a visible part of their body, like their face, or ears, or arms. Ok, so now you have the vision of someone you deal with on a regular basis, going through something extremely uncomfortable, painful, and something you generally wouldn’t want to have happen to you at any point in time, so you try not to dwell on it too much when you see them.

Or you’re a jerk and you do dwell on it every time you see them, saying jackass things like “Hey, how’s it going Quasimodo?” and shit like that.

But say you’re not a HUGE jerk. That doesn’t exists here, but pretend it did. Then, that person SO unfortunately (this part of the analogy doesn’t quite correlate to my situation, because this second child definitely a blessing not a curse, but you get my point, right?) gets into another car accident, and they once again have to go through painful procedures to fix whatever it is that was hurt this time.

Where I’m going with this is that during my first pregnancy, through no fault of my own (and I tried EVERYTHING to stop it from happening), my ankles swelled from so much retained fluid that it literally felt like they were going to rip up the sides. Especially after a long day, I would wish that something catastrophic could happen and my legs could just be amputated, to prevent me from having to feel that pain anymore. It was not fun, it was not funny, it was not something I wanted to ever go outside and be seen with, but I did it every single fucking day until 3 days before I delivered. Once again, I coped.

So now, another miracle is about to happen, and Craig and I are having another baby. Well wouldn’t you know it, the total assholes that I worked with before are still my fucking coworkers. GOD. It’s funny, because they’re all like “uh oh, watch out, you’re gonna make her mad”, but it’s so obvious that it’s exactly what they want to see, and it’s just completely and utterly disrespectful and rude. But I’ll deal. I will deal, and I’ll do it as gracefully as possible, because like I mentioned in my conversation with Ravneet the other day – there is a light at the end of this tunnel. A bright light, a blinding light, and it is that we will soon have a beautiful addition to our family, and at the same time I’ll be out of this place.

I actually have work to do. The potluck was fun, but I don’t know that I liked the brief moments where focus was on my pregnancy, and instead of being nice and excited for me, they were jerks. That wasn’t fun.