10 Pregnancy Cliches that really are true:

1. A comfortable position is gold. If such a position is found, don’t move for anything. Seriously, don’t even get up to pee or eat or run from a tornado. You will never find this position again.

2. It doesn’t matter when you last used the bathroom, you will have to go again within the next ½ hour. Also, if anyone even says the word “bathroom” you have to go. If you wake up at all at night, you will have to go. If you think about water, you will have to go. At this point, a permanant catheter would save A LOT of time and toilet paper.

3. Don’t try to hold in your sneezes. It doesn’t work…something is coming out, North or South, whether you want it to or not.

4. Perfect strangers will walk up to you and ask you these questions in this order: “Are you pregnant?” “When is the baby due?” “Is it a boy or a girl” “Have you thought of a name” “Are you excited?”. Then a story usually follows about their birth or the birth of their child or niece/ nephew/ cousin… These are not usually nice stories, they are stories about 36-hour labor and gigantic 15 pound babies. Don’t listen. Run away from these people before they can touch your tummy.

5. You will gain a lot of weight. A lot. Don’t look at the scale at the doctor’s office when they weigh you; it will make you cry.

6. It doesn’t matter when you last ate, you will be hungry within the next ½ hour. Also, people will make fun of you for eating so much. Smile benignly at them as you hurl the carcass of the chicken you’ve just finished into their face.

7. As the baby gets bigger, werf will kick you. It won’t hurt at first, but if werf’s anything like this one, be prepared for pain. This is to train you for labor. I swear this baby is a ninja.

8. Cave in and buy maternity clothes. A baggy shirt is better than a tight one that you have to keep pulling down all the time. You won’t be able to wear your pre-pregnancy clothes much past the 4th month. This is one of the most depressing things you’ll experience.

9. Nothing says I love you like a good back rub. Your back will hurt all of the time, this is unavoidable. Make your husband rub it, and it will feel ok for awhile.

10. Stretch marks are the devil. Don’t look at them. They will make you cry. Use Cocoa Butter, it will make you feel useful, even if it doesn’t do anything.

That was fun. Now I have to go to the bathroom, though. And I'm hungry. I think I have some carrots around here somewhere...

Today is Monday. FHE day. Get up and go to work day. Yuck. The only thing making this Monday bearable is the thought that I get to go to a concert tonight. And not just any concert...a Yellowcard concert. That's right, Dinomight and I are into punk and we've got great seats for what should be a great concert. Go ahead, drool with envy. This night will mark the official end of my birthday celebration. We're going out to dinner and then to the show. Awesome! Any band with a stringed/bowed instrument (they have a violin) gets top marks in my book. The difference between this punk band and others (like Sum 41 or UVR) is that they sing adult songs. That's right, none of this "my parents don't understand me, high school is hard, I'm going to be a non-conformist when I grow up" crap. That stuff is fun for awhile, but it gets old. Yellowcard sings about intelligent, adult breakups, reminiscing about their younger days, realizing its time to move on with life. I tell ya, it's like a breath of fresh air. In any case, I'm totally pumped about this concert tonight, if you couldn't tell. The tickets were a bit expensive, and the idiots at UVSC charge parking per-ticket. Pretty dumb. I mean if you and 8 of your friends all pile into a van and just use one parking space, why do they charge each person $4 for parking? Doesn't charging discourage people from carpooling and just make traffic a nightmare for UVSC? It doesn't make much sense to me.

Rumor has it there's a Board party on the 9th, and spouses are allowed to attend. Since Dinomight is not only my spouse, but my baby's daddy, we might be showing up. I wonder if Duchess would let me come if Dinomight was just my baby's daddy, and not my spouse...she and her new dark hair would have some decisions to make. I'd just like to give a shout-out to my boss, who is in AZ all week this week. You can leave any time you want, man, I'll hold down the fort here. (*And by hold down the fort I mean blog, read the board, read my book, etc.) I guess I should go get SOME work done today.

Stupid Lawsuit-of-the-Day:
"A convicted bank robber on parole robbed a California Savings and Loan Branch. The bank robber placed the money roll containing the hidden Security Pac in his front pants pocket. The Security Pac released tear gas and red dye, resulting in second- and third-degree burns requiring treatment at a hospital. The bank robber sued the bank, the Security Pac manufacturer, the city, the police, and the hospital." -American Tort Reform Association
I'm just hoping he lost...

OK, so there’s this girl here at work that CANNOT use the bathroom when other people are in there. This presents a problem in a public restroom, as you can imagine. She’ll literally sit outside the restroom and wait until everyone who was in there is gone and until she’s sure no one is coming, then she’ll run in and do her business as fast as she can. This girl has 2 children, so she’s no stranger to childbirth or sharing a bathroom with a husband, and yet… Today I figured out that her strategy isn’t such a bad one. I was in the restroom for what seems like the 100th time this morning (yay for pregnancy) and all of a sudden this smell wafted over the partition from the stall next to me. We’re talking seriously questionable. I waited patiently for the air freshener to kick in and do its little spritz, but it failed to fulfill the measure of its creation. Trying not to gag, I hurriedly finished my business, washed my hands, and ran for the door. The most embarrassing thing would have been being in there when whoever it was emerged from her stall. You just can’t look a person in the eye when you’ve smelt their nasty body odors. Maybe that’s why surgeons put you under anesthesia while their operating. They know WAY more about you than anyone else, and they don’t want to have to make idle chit-chat while their holding your pancreas. In any case, beware the Bathroom Bandit. She’s nasty and she’s coming to a town near you.

In other news, I got my first niece yesterday. 7 pounds, 10 oz., 22” long. My sister was in labor for 18 hours, bless her heart, when they finally decided to do a C-section. It was a good thing they did, too, since the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck and would have complicated the delivery something terrible. So, I’m officially an aunt, and that makes me feel old. My sister beat me by 3 months to the delivery room, although they were planning on their baby, so I guess they deserve it. At least we’ll be the first on Dinomight’s side to add to the family. I’m hoping the grandparents spoil their grandson rotten so I don’t have to.

Well, almost everyone in my department is down at "Circuit Training" right now. This is a perk of working for a health-conscious company. CT consists of an hour of initial training where they take your blood pressure and body fat readings, then they outline a training schedule for you. At the end of 6 weeks of training, they reassess your health and you get rewarded with a nice juicy-meaty lunch at Tucanos and some movie tickets. This, in my opinion, kind of defeats the purpose...if you train for 6 weeks, and then stuff yourself with all the grilled meat and potatoes and pineapple you can eat, doesn't that contradict the whole purpose? Who knows. All I know is that if they were to take my body fat right now it would be the highest of my life. Yes, boys and girls, I've officially put on 15 pounds in 7 months. Hopefully a lot of that is baby, but with the way I've been eating, who knows. Dinomight has been losing weight, and he made a VERY unfunny joke last night implying that it was because I had been eating all of the food in the house and there was nothing left for him. At that point the hormones took over, and any court would acquit me for the beating that ensued. :) The only thing I have to look forward to is the massive 1 minute weight loss program that I'll go through on January 26th. One minute I'll be huge, and the next minute I'll be 10-15 pounds lighter. Hooray!!

One of my favorite new (well, relatively new) shows is "Scrubs". It comes on Tuesday nights at 8:30 on NBC, I think. It's in its 4th season, so it's not that new, but Dinomight and I just discovered it this past summer. We've now completely caught up with the last 3 seasons and are really enjoying the new season. We've even got some other friends of ours hooked on it. It's like a comedic ER, and I think that it better shows what a hospital is really like. Not as much drama and trauma. More of the day to day diagnostics and inter-staff relationships. Many of the problems and cliches in modern medicine are addressed, too, like the female doctor who is a little neurotic but who the chauvanistic Chief of Medicine thinks should consider OB/GYN instead of Internal Medicine. A medical malpractice suit was just brought against one of our heros, the black surgeon, and I'm dying to see how he's going to get out of it. We follow JD, our main hero, around all day and are privy to his inner monologue and hilarious flashbacks as he battles with the Janitor and craves a hug from his "mentor". Honestly, this show is really funny. I don't laugh out loud at movies or shows much, but I find myself giggling uncontrollably at this, and Dinomight does his 3-octaves-higher laugh every few minutes. Since we only watch a few shows religiously, this has become a welcome treat. Especially after the Simpsons has kinda gone downhill in the funniness category, and Smallville seems to have become Sexville...Oh, and the music in Scrubs: so choice. I've actually gone and gotten a few of the songs off their soundtrack.

So, Halo 2 came out today (actually at 12am this morning) and guess where Dinomight (Mr. Mynamyn) was. That's right...standing out in the cold at University Mall waiting to pick up his preordered copy. But guess where Mynamyn was. At home in her nice warm bed begging the baby to stop kicking so she could get some sleep. I guess he eventually heard me since he stopped. The Mynamyn household is now the proud owners of a brand-spankin new copy of Halo 2, and Dinomight has been playing all day. Lucky for him, he doesn't have school today or else I would have put the smack down. I'm not sure if he's even going to come up for air tonight. 10 straight hours of playing it, you'd think he'd get tired. Not my Dinomight. This concludes the crazies portion of the blog.

As for cold, it's DANG cold here. And it's raining. If it has to be cold and raining, why can't it be snowing??? And when is Andrew going to do another cabin weekend. Maybe he'll wait til January so that Benvolio and The Redhead can come, too. That'd be peachy. I think they'd enjoy it. In any case, if it's cold, it should be snowing. Mynamyn has spoken. So let it be written, so let it be done.

Wow, this is a name-filled post today. I did forget Duchess, though, and Phoenix. So there they are. Duchess, if you're reading this, it's time to go home. Meet you at the lift.

Yay, blogger is finally letting me post a new post! For the past few days I haven't been able to get the link to work. Sorry for anyone who has been checking this and not seeing anything new.

I wanted to write on the election night and the election results and the random lunches we’ve been having over the last few days, but today I think I’ll write about my birthday yesterday.

For the last week or so I’ve had a cold, which kind of bummed me out since I knew my birthday was coming up. It’s just no fun to feel crappy on your birthday, but there it was. Birthday cake doesn’t taste like anything and it’s hard to smile when there’s something leaking from your nose. I did, however, have a wonderful birthday! Mr. Mynamyn and Duchess took me out for lunch to Chick-fil-A, my favorite lunchtime spot and I got my own waffle fries. About 150 people here at work sang “Happy Birthday” to me at a seminar we were having, thoroughly embarrassing me and turning my face bright red. That was fun. Then I got some great presents from my friends here at work (yay for eggnog!!) but nothing from my boss, which was kinda weird seeing as how I’ve been working for him for about 10 months now. (more on this later). When I got home, some more friends were waiting for me with presents, which I promptly opened and one of which I’m wearing today. It’s a sweater, and really cute! They left after I opened their presents, and Mr. M had his famous Stir-fried rice and veggies all prepared for me. I can’t believe I got two of my favorite meals in one day. Lucky me. After dinner we had birthday cupcakes. He tried to put 24 candles into several of them, but I was afraid they’d fall apart so I vetoed that idea. Then I got some of my presents. This awesome stainless steel spice rack, complete with 24 spices already filled from CostCo that I wanted. Also, a hug bag-o-skittles and some lovely satin sheets. Oh, and the new The Incredibles game for the XBOX, which is just about my speed as it was made for 6 year olds. That’s ok, it’s fun anyway.

Tonight is Round 2, as we go out to dinner and to see The Incredibles. Then tomorrow he’s taking off of work to come to our prenatal class with me. Then in 2 weeks we’re going to catch the New Mexico vs. BYU football game. That, in itself, is a HUGE present as Mr. M doesn’t really like football. What a good sport.

I got phone calls from everyone and there are more presents on the way, or so I’m told. All in all, a great birthday, and one that I’ll remember for a long time. Hooray for birthdays! Even for ones where you’re sick!