The Third Trimester: It's Not for Sissies

So here's the little update:

• I have a stripe! A real stripe!
• My feet are so fat and swollen, my toes look like snausages, and it takes me half a block of walking to settle into my giant soft clogs.
• My butt's on fire
• I'm not sure I still have a vagina
• At least once a day, sometimes twice, I barf up pure stomach acid into my mouth, which makes me cough disgustingly. I feel like Richard Pryor: "When your esophagus is on fire, and you runnin' down the street... people will get out of your way!"
• Somehow these barfing coughing fits are tiring? I always want to lie down and nap after one. Sadly, this is not an option on BART.
• I AM A COMPLETELY PSYCHOTIC LUNATIC.

This last one is a bit of a shocker. My last post, which I just didn't have the energy to finish, asked "Who am I? I feel as if I've vanished inside this pregnancy." It seemed whiney and more of the same, so I jettisoned it, but the feeling is back, and much stronger as I plod through my days.

I have no idea who I am right now. I don't know if it's working too many hours, or worrying too much about the nursery, or stress over the last round of physical changes, or hormones, or a mix of everything, but I have absolutely NO buffer zone right now. I am a giant raw nerve. It feels like depression, actually. If the bath-mat isn't on the side of the tub, I want to cry. If I smell tuna fish, I don't just want to retch -- I want to make someone PAY. Nay, I need to. 

In the past few days, I have outright wept over: (a) a photo of a mourning marine in the New Yorker, (b) being snapped at by a 12-year-old, and (c) the end of Living in America. An Eddie Murphy vehicle. 

No less than 4 girlfriends have heard me rant in the last 24 hours. I mean Pacino-level rants. I have very, very patient girlfriends. (Though 2 only had to listen via email, 1 is my sister and therefore HAS TO, and 1 is just awesome.) One of these rants took place while hiking on the big hill, while wearing the white iPhone headphones and petting people's dogs and crying at the same time. People are very nice!

On the other hand, I just ate a piece of rugelach, wondered mildly if I were about to throw it up, and then enjoyed an internal happydance from Sluggo, which i could see (looked like the vibration of a drum) when I looked down at my stomach.

It's just 3 months out of my life, and I'll look back and barely remember what this was like, but it's a completely insane and overwhelming combination of joy, anticipation, fury, and desperation. That's all I can -- that's the only way I can describe it.

That's today.