It's a dreary, rainy Tuesday, I got about 6 hours of sleep, and am having trouble remaining upright without dozing off.  So here we go.

1. Tomorrow I will be 28 weeks pregnant and officially enter the third trimester.  Holy crap.  Third trimester, as in there are no more trimesters.  In two weeks, I'll be 30 weeks... which is the last group of 10 weeks.  The tens, twenties, thirties... and the big 40.  Absolutely crazy to think about.

2. The Force kicks on a daily basis now.  I haven't yet figured out exactly when he kicks, but I've noticed he kicks if I'm really hungry and he also tends to kick a bit after I eat, and then he chills, like he's in a food coma.  He also tends to kick when I lie down in bed for the night.  The other night I had my netbook resting on my belly and he kicked and moved it!

3. We still keep Buster in the kitchen when we're not home or if we need to get something done - like put something together or eat something in front of the TV in the living room.  Well, the other day I was carrying a plate and a drink while trying to get over the baby gate in the kitchen doorway... and I tripped.  Thankfully, I just mainly fell on my right knee and secondarily on my left.  My stomach never touched the floor (AND I saved most of my drink, but not the food).  But the next day, I felt like The Force wasn't kicking as much and I worried all day - but that was the Saturday I had to work and then we spent hours at IKEA so he doesn't usually kick as much when I'm up and about.  That night he started kicking more and the next day kicked his normal amount... but it was worrisome for a while.  I'll be glad when I can go back to knocking my own body around without having to worry about the fact that I'm protecting someone else.

4. Buster is getting better, little by little.  It's kind of like two steps forward and one step back.  The hubby says there's "Base Buster" - the basic dog Buster is when he's not in full on, crazy puppy mode.  This is the Buster we'll eventually see all the time if we stick with the training and have a bit of luck.  When he's in Base Buster mode, he's awesome... when he's Crackhead Buster, though, he makes me want to curl up under a cover and wait for him to grow up.

5. We've reached the point in February where I'm tired of winter.  I really love winter, but at this point (late February), I'm always ready for spring to head on in.  Sunday morning, as I lay in bed and peered through the blinds to see the snow still sitting on the ground, I had such a strong urge to pull the covers over my head and wait for someone to tell me flowers were blooming.

6. Tomorrow the hubby and I are finally registering for the baby shower.  My sister is coming with us since she's giving us so much stuff, we want to make sure we don't register for duplicates and that what we do register for matches/fits some of the stuff we're getting.  Having been to dozens of baby showers by now, I'm a pro at Babies R Us and can't wait to go through with the zapper!  It'll be the last time I register for anything, though - *sniffle*.  There was the bridal shower and then this... and then that's it.  Kind of bittersweet.

7. I am still behind on my reading for school... and last night one of my professors sent an email reminding us that in order to have a good class discussion, we must be up to speed with the readings.  It's like she could see me feverishly trying to finish them.  As a teacher, though, I will tell you that they know when you haven't read.  They might humor you and pretend they don't notice, but they know.  And I tend to talk a lot in class (shocker, I know) so when I haven't read and keep quiet, they absolutely tend to notice (and ask what's going on).  Hopefully there's little traffic today and I can get to school early enough to do a bit more reading.

For now I'll continue working on keeping my eyes open and remaining upright.

I'm not what anyone would call a Susie Sunshine.  That's my sister; the nurses' nickname for her at the maternity department at the hospital is "The Cheerleader."  (And, yes, she was one - and she coaches peewee cheerleading sometimes, so it's completely appropriate.)  Me?  I was the one in the bleachers listening to Morrissey on my Walkman during the pep rally.

Even here, my sister (on the right) clearly has spirit fingers going on and I seem to be more like, "Yay, something!"  (And yeah, I know, I know - the bowl cut.  But my mom kept my hair short because I hated brushing it.)

It's not that I'm a "glass half empty" type.  I'm certainly not a "glass half full" type either, though.  I'd be more likely to be like, "There's a glass and it has water in it.  Why do you even care how much?"  I don't see the point in swaying too far into the positive or the negative.  I like to keep it real, yo - you know?  (Okay, yeah, not really, but hopefully you get what I mean.)

This week has been full of little moments where I've had to swallow my initial snarky response to something and give a pointedly sweeter answer.  I had to rewrite an email to an HR person five times to stop myself from being snarky and sarcastic.  I had to edit a reply to a blogger's post that I found a bit ridiculous to make it seem as if my response was more helpful than annoyed.  I had to explain to a student - with a straight face - that, no, sanctions against Iran and climate change are not the same thing.  (No, seriously.  She had no idea what either was until I said climate change "is like global warming, but climate change is a better term for it." Then I could see the light bulb go off - but sanctions against Iran meant nothing to her.)  And I had to kindly word an email to a coworker who had no idea that something was her responsibility even though this wasn't the first time it's come up and her email was a rather snippy kind of, "Well, what would you like me to do about it?"

I'm much better at "biting my tongue" through my fingers, meaning I fair better when I don't have to deal with these things face-to-face.  The problem happens when swarms of negativity are coming at me from various directions: people I know in real life, people in the media, and commentors on blogs. Long ago I gave up reading the comments on most blogs and news posts because they make me lose my faith in humanity all too often.

So I'm beyond happy to escape to Baltimore this weekend.  Back pre-marriage, when Mike was single, too, he was always my refuge.  I used to visit him every four-to-six weeks for years in my early-to-late twenties and as I entered his apartment, I would always feel like I truly exhaled for the first time since my last visit.  I didn't check my email while I was there and, post cell phone, no one would call me.  I was free to sleep in, eat good food, and spend all day at the pub if that's what we felt like doing.

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Those days are gone.  We both have spouses who either don't drink much or at all, Mike has a seven month old daughter, and we're due to have The Force in May.  Life has clearly changed and, in those old days of regular trips, I would always wonder about this time - if it would come, when it would come, how it would be when it did . . .

And what it is... is hard.  It's hard to make time to go out of town for the weekend when you have two jobs and grad school plus two dogs who need minding while you're gone.  It'll be harder yet when we have all that plus we want to travel down there with a child, who will need all the gear you have to bring for two days away with a baby.  There was a time when I had a weekend bag half-packed at all times, forever ready to hop in the car and head to Maryland.

There are few times one can look around and say, "I truly have a very different life now than I did not that long ago."  Sure, life is always changing, but some of those changes are more monumental than others - they take up more space.  Having your friends get married and start families is probably the biggest one I can think of; it forever changes the dynamic of your friendship and what you do together and even what you talk about.

But what hasn't changed is that those friendships are still a place of refuge.  Naturally, when difficult times happen, the hubby is my first go-to - or even, more likely, he comes to me before I'm even ready to admit something is wrong.  But it's still great to have those friends that have known you for a long time (I can't believe Mike and I have been friends for fifteen years now - it completely blows my mind).  The ones that sit with you in a bar from the time it opens to the time it closes.  The ones that listen to you talk about the same problem for the tenth time and aren't exasperated. The ones who throw you birthday parties so awesome that the police show up and your friends have to keep you out on the patio because you keep trying to tell the police that there aren't any doughnuts in the house.

Nevermind.  You had to be there.

And this weekend, I will be there.  But I promise to keep The Force out of trouble.