life this week

 Just within the last month, I feel like the mango has really started pushing her way out. Near as I can tell, she's still upside-down, so I guess she's wanting some extra leg-room, and who can blame her? With the two of us as parents, I'm sure she's going to have some long legs of her own.

I should note that having an active baby banging around in your abdomen feels a lot like how I always assumed the transformation after drinking polyjuice potion would feel. As a final note on the baby-front: I've officially had my first run-in with someone touching my stomach without permission. It was bound to happen eventually, but I'm still reeling a bit from her logic. While talking to her, I unconsciously put my hand on my stomach and she immediately reached and put a hand on it as well saying, "Oh, can I touch it too, since you are?" Apparently, touching my own stomach in public grants permission for anyone in the vicinity to touch it as well. The things you learn when you're pregnant.

As a reader, I'm a total sucker for a romantic subplot, so I've read many a version. Because romantic plots have such a wide range of quality, often we remember bits of them for less-than-flattering reasons, but occasionally you find gems even within average or mediocre writing. A few months ago I read Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee. Now, I enjoyed this book as a casual, easy read that was fun but not anything really spectacular, especially in the romantic subplot department. Except for this one line that I can't get out of my head: "That boy would pick the seeds off a strawberry if you asked him to." Have you guys ever read a line that is just satisfying? Even in my favorite books, such instances are rare for me, and I think that it's a kind of magic that just happens sometimes—and this is one of those for me. The idea of someone picking seeds off a strawberry somehow captures a certain level of devotion/infatuation without being melodramatic. Of course, this scenario wouldn't work in all stories, but it was perfect for this Oregon Trail-era story, and now I'm semi-obsessed with finding similar ways to phrase descriptions of affection. The stupid ideas I've come up with in pursuit of this goal prove that writing that flows and feels simple can be a good indicator of how much work a writer put into their story and how in-tune they are with its characters. It's truly an art, guys, and can take your breath away completely by surprise in the same wonderful way.

Today marks the official end of the semester [because let's be honest, who has finals on a Friday?], and work has already fallen off which leaves me with much-needed time to catch up on scanning and other projects. In the last two weeks I've wrapped up the office Christmas party [the last time I'll have to plan that!], the inaugural pre-production semester of the Journal of Student Leadership, the publication and launch of Intersections,

check out that cover!

provided the final moral support for Tim to finish his last assignment for the last class of his associates degree [can I get an AMEN], and made a greater effort to be something resembling an adult by setting the ball in motion to actually schedule dentist and eye appointments for both of us. I'm not sure if it's the season or the pregnancy that's amplifying my brain's natural inclination to get stuck in a loop, but more often than not I've felt bogged down and buried by a laundry list of things that I should be doing/should have accomplished ages ago so listing completed ones out helps. Because, as Tim keeps reminding me, I do get a lot of things done, I just don't always feel like it. Maybe that's why I've had this song stuck in my head since yesterday, and why I added another sticky note with "I believe that tomorrow is stronger than yesterday" to my massive mirror collection.

There's a lot of stuff you learn during pregnancy that you can learn without being pregnant, but, for me, lessons like patience with yourself and a greater sense of perspective when it comes to priorities and stressers are being hammered home in a condensed-course format, haha.