November 2012 – The UnderToad

Pregnant Review

I am t-minus five days until official due date and so freaking restless I looked at both the plunger and some long handled kitchen tongs in a new light this week. I can’t say there is a lot of difference this time, from the first two. I had the same kind and the same length of morning sickness with all three (exactly sixteen weeks). I probably have generally gained about the same amount of weight and look basically the same as I did with the first two.

I’m not sure why I’m so restless. Have definitely had more general pain this time around (back pain, mostly, but also that kind of pain that feels like you’ve fallen on the cross bar of your bike, only from the inside out). But otherwise, this isn’t like the worst pregnancy in the world.

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Confessions

Ongoing Target Saga (Updates)

Thursday November 15th

11:35am: Hang up customer service phone call.

3:25pm: Email
Directions for your recent return: please select from one of the following methods for returning merchandise [Eddie Bauer Carseat Protectors (2)]: (1.) Print this confirmation email and make return in store. (2.) Follow the link below to print your return shipping label. Note: shipping charges will be deducted from your return total and applied to your original method of payment.

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Confessions

Why Only Half of Us will Be Shopping at Target in the Afterlife

Alternate title: Why Target Can Go to Hell

I do this every single time I have a baby.

Curse, this store, I mean.

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Confessions

Monday Grammar Lesson

Today’s pet peeves are brought to you by radio interviews with allegedly “educated” individuals, as well as actual published print material edited by people who claim to have degrees in things like English and journalism. I can’t take it anymore.

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Confessions

The Village

You could let me out now. This is my church, and I can always find my way home from here. -Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies

I often envy many of my friends here in the south, who chose to go to college close to home, and have since settled and are raising their children within mere miles of family and life-long friends. Though John and I are both somewhat adventurous by nature, and moving far from home has not been difficult for us (socially or otherwise), there are times when it is easy to throw myself miniature pity-parties in the name of access to free family babysitting, holiday visitations that require getting together for a big meal then promptly returning to our very own beds the same night, or simply the ease of conversation that comes in the presence of someone who knew me before I was Mrs. John Wait, or Eliott’s mom.

This is why, it does not cease to amaze me, that in the seven years we have been married, and in the three different cities we have lived, somehow John and I have managed to find ourselves among people who embrace us like they do their own family.

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Confessions

Are You Shopping Online this Christmas?

I have just about made the full switch to absolute and total mall avoidance at the holiday season. It could be Hanes Mall itself that has finally done me in, what with it being the most major retail shopping center in Winston-Salem, and ever so stupidly placed less than a mile down the road from all things non-department store (aka: Target, Kohl’s, Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, and Sam’s Club).

It could also be the fact that I lack compassion for most people, generally speaking, but especially high concentrations of stupid people. Driving cars.

Not sure what our city planners were thinking when they decided to put everything you might ever need in a holiday shopping trip at the single crossroads of two main streets (and just off the highway for that matter), but I’d put money on the fact that it’s enough to cause Mother Theresa herself to mutter four letter words under her breath.

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