Aaaaaand... I'm HUGE.

Wow. Okay. So apparently my body has been reading books! Specifically, "What To Expect!" Or it has been getting the emails. Because, overeducated schedule maven that I am, I hit what, 25 weeks, and BOOM! Third trimester. I'm huge, I'm exhausted, and I'm stupid. It takes me all day to write a 500-word item that should only take an hour. I forget what I put on my fork before I can get it to my mouth. The bus driver sits there laughing as he waits for me to puff up the hill to him in the morning, shouting "Don't run! Don't run for me! I'm not going anywhere!"

All I want -- ALL I WANT -- is to lie on my stomach. I pile pillows into a little volcano and gently place my belly inside; I can only manage this for a few minutes at a time, because really, it's hard to make pillows understand that they are a volcano.

I have been outrageously fortunate in my pregnancy symptoms up till now, and I'm still really fine, but WOW. It's so sudden. I swear to you, I feel like I've put on 30 pounds in the past week, and no, I'm not pre-eclamptic. It's HER. It's the giant monster baby! We had a growth spurt, and suddenly there's no getting around the fact that I am most definitely pregnant. (Seriously. There's no getting around it, without an off-road vehicle and a full tank of gas. I AM BECOME GINORMICON.)

My excellent neighborhood-parents-email group is full of the most generous women: I put out a plea, and almost immediately was directed and/or invited (!!) to a bevy of heated, soup-warm swimming pool options. And in a few weeks, I'll head down to LA, where my sister has wisely rented a house with a pool. I think that's what'll feel best, though a pal is coming this week to march me around the top of my neighborhood's hill. "It's the best thing for easy labor," she swears. She's done it three times, twice with nothing but adrenaline; I'm trusting her on this.

Mostly, though, I'm looking for an inner tube and/or that cable apparatus Tom Cruise hung from in Mission: Impossible.

(Speaking of Mission: Impossible, guess what else is back? Oh, just my first-trimester horniness. THE IRONY!)

p.s. White guys? You're still pricks. But an older white woman was a TOTAL prick yesterday -- full subway car, lots of standing people, bag AND backpack on the handicapped seat next to her. Ten seconds of glaring, then I said "excuse me." What did I get for my trouble? A pinched-mouth grimace, a begrudging move of the shopping bag, and the backpack got pulled slightly closer to her, so that I was given... half a frigging seat. Oh, white lady! Don't you read my blog?!