New Friends

So, here's the fun bit about socialism.

Since I had the Prawn, a "Health in Pregnancy" grant has been introduced that gives every pregnant women past the 25th week £190. To buy fruit, presumably. However, I think I'm not speaking out of turn when I say that most women don't, in fact, use the money on organic bananas.

Since we're fairly sure that the Squid will be a girl, there' s not a huge amount that needs buying. However, as soon as the £190 hit my account, I immediately bought everything that DID need buying. These essentials including new, PBA-free bottles, (while I intend to give breast feeding another shot, I want to be prepared) a moses basket that hasn't been sitting and moldering in the attic for 3 years, a new and more ergonomic baby sling instead of investing in a double buggy and lastly, the little fellow above.

It is difficult to explain the affection that I hold for the Prawn's favorite toy, the infamous Mr. Moo. He's like her little avatar; if you've ever read His Dark Materials, you could almost say I think of him as her Daemon. She is never without him, his tail or horns shoved up her nose or in her ear. (making frequent washings VERY necessary.) So, I suppose we're hoping on going two for two with Frank and Fischer toys, because two little pigs arrived in the post yesterday along with the more boring and practical things. Why two? Well, we've learned that you just don't screw with fate when it comes to favorite toys. Moo and his almost doppleganger, Moo Too, are in constant rotation (although we always have to go through "Moo's wearing his white hat today" when Moo Too comes out since he has different colored horns) so we thought getting two pigs was probably the best option.

And if the Squid isn't a fan...the other can go to some other lucky little person.

Headlines

Having spent two days over the last 8 or so on trans- Atlantic flights (WHICH, by the way are not exactly designed for the comfort of your average knocked up person), my levels of cranky are slightly elevated in any case. But then there are days when the universe says, "This day? Not so much for you."

It began with a total stranger in a car shouting at me that I was a "dippy tart" due to the fact that I couldn't move forward 2 inches in a traffic jam. I honestly couldn't. I was already vehicularly sodomizing the car in front of me on a treacherously slippery road and was not going to risk kissing their bumper, so I smiled a friendly smile at the gesticulating BMW driver and gave him the finger. I fantastized, of course, about rolling down my window and equating his need to abuse a pregnant woman on the way to a midwife appointment with his microscopic genitalia, but I refrained and simply turned up my radio instead to block out the torrent of abuse I could hear coming through both his and my window.

After said midwife appointment, (which went just dandy, thank you) I decided to brave the supermarket, which was obviously an idea that everyone else who has been stranded for days in their own homes due to the depraved indifference of the local councils during the recent snow had, because it was packed to pre-Christmas levels.

Being pregnant, does not, as you might believe, keep people from ramming shopping trolleys into you. In fact, I was run into no less than 4 times. The final ramming came from behind, made me jump and accidentally run into another woman. I profusely apologized, but was still treated to a "bitch" by my entirely able bodied victim as she rather exaggeratedly limped away.

By the time I arrived at the checkouts, I was biting my tongue and trying not to announce to the entire store that they were all bastards and I hoped they'd all get hemorrhoids when the woman behind me smiled sweetly and said, "Ooo! Not long now!"

"Pardon?" I said.

"When are you due?"

"Oh, right. March."

"NO. Really?? But you're so BIG!"

Oh.
My.
God.

But wait. There's more.

The checkout woman then followed this lovely observation with:

"How're you feeling? A bit fat and fed up?"

WHAT.
THE.
ACTUAL.
FUCK.

It was at this moment that the large jar of spaghetti sauce that I'd just purchased made a valiant bid for freedom and plummeted to it's rather messy doom on the floor, earning me withering looks from surrounding customers, who didn't know how lucky they were that, in my rage, I didn't pick up one of the large, jaggedly broken pieces of glass and become probably the most interesting newspaper headline of the year in the Aylesbury Vale.

Pregnant Slasher Rampage At Local Tesco

Not so much for me, with today.