The Smorgasboard

This is an everything update. I don't have any pictures because our crappy point-and-shoot camera is without batteries that work, and our new Nikon D60 scares me with all of its buttons and dials, apertures and isotopes....

so just visualize....visualize a rainbow with strawberry mist....and now visualize yourself and me sitting in that mist, relaxing....Now you are ready for the rest of this update!

I went to our doctor on Friday and she checked my cervix. That means stripping down and exposing yourself in a way that I think I will never get used to. It prompted my question "so why did you choose this profession anyway?" If she was half as uncomfortable as I was (not likely) she would have run away and chosen a medical field where they look at slides all day or grow things in petri dishes.

Anyway, she told me that I am one centimeter dilated and that my cervix was 75% effaced, which apparently means it is thinning (at least some part of me is getting thinner).

I also asked her if she could reasonably guess (in my profession, reasonability is the measure of everything) how much the baby weighed. She said about 6 lbs, at which point I think I inadvertently swallowed my gum. "6 pounds, but I still have a month-- I AM GOING TO HAVE A 10 POUND BABY!!!"
She calmed me down and said that she guess the baby would probably have an average weight (at which point I looked at her incredulously--- there was nothing average about the size of my husband and I was no tiny cookie myself). I am expecting more of a female version of the incredible hulk-- only not so green. She also told me the baby's head was pointed down (and here I thought I had been talking to the baby's head, when really its been her butt)

I check my legs and ankles everyday. A coworker of mine told me that he wife's legs looked like christmas sausages weeks before she gave birth. So I check everyday-- so far no Christmas sausages.

Names: people keep asking us if we have a name, to which Richard responds "No!" (quite vehemently in fact). I calmly respond that we have a spreadsheet (No, "Excel" will not be her name!) with the top five names being given a number on a scale between 1 and 100 that takes into account such factors such as popularity, classicality (is that a word?), odds that she will be embarrassed the first time a teacher tries to pronounce and/or spell her name in 7th grade (the beginning of the dark years, in my estimation), potential bad rhyming combinations (why no boy should ever be named Chuck), and likelihood that she will ask for a formal name change when and if she decides to become a senator (and no, we are NOT considering the name Hillary).

The top 5 names in order of current numerical rank are:
Anna: 90
Elizabeth: 80
Laura: 80
Abigail: 78
Allison: 75

Anna is my particular favorite. I like palendromes!

In other news:
Richard passed the first section of the CPA exam (92 out of 100-- thats my boy!)
Our first father's day today-- I made his southwestern egg rolls which are uniquely named because there are no eggs in them (more about Richard's strange aversions to eggs later)
Farmer's market yesterday: I was optimistically clothed in shorts before all hail broke loose with the weather. But 2 lbs of cherries made me right as rain :)