Today has sucked. My apologies in advance.

I don't know why today sucked so much, but I've been feeling sad since I woke up. Maybe its that this morning was cloudy and I didn't want to be awake so early. Of course, I don't really have much of a choice anymore... Either I wake up, or I'll pee the bed. But anyway, I got up this morning, went to the bathroom, and then tried to lie back down to sleep but babyzilla just kept nudging me on the inside. And I just wanted to sleep so much that I admit, I got angry at the baby. Which, of course, only made me feel worse because I know he didn't do anything and it is ridiculous to be angry at him for just being awake and moving, but I was angry and I couldn't help it. Then, when I wasn't angry anymore, I was horrified that I could even think of blaming the baby for anything. I am the master of guilt - its something Catholic school instilled in me. Its probably why my parents rarely had to punish me, because I already felt shitty enough whenever I did anything bad. Usually, I felt guilty even before I ever did anything bad, which I think probably prevented me from doing a lot of bad/fun things. But anyway, there I was... feeling guilty and thinkign I was going to be the worst parent in the world.

So then I got up, and I tried to distract myself and force myself into being happy. I'm a big believer in being able to force yourself into happiness, and I think it was working out pretty well for a while. I took a nice long shower, and shaved my legs. I stood in front of my closet trying to pick out clothes that would say "I would be a great tenant. I am clean & responsible." (while at the same time not looking contrived) for when I went to look at the apartment. Then I got a phone call, and they canceled the showing. For some reason, it really threw me back into my funk. There I was, pulling myself together and making myself look all nice for the apartment guy, and it all fell through. It kinda felt like spending all day getting ready to go out on a date, only to have the other person cancel at the last minute and make you feel like crap. Its stupid, I know, but thats what it felt like.

So then after that I went online and read other people's baby blogs. Sometimes this makes me feel better because I can see that there are far less capable people than I having babies and raising them. One of my favorite bloggers is so ridiculous that she purposely and severely constipated herself. Her thinking was that if she was so backed up, it would be like practicing pushing for the birth of her child. Yeah, she was comparing pooping to birthing her child. I mean, I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure there is a difference in there somewhere. But anyway, she was stupid enough to try that and all she got out of it was a nasty case of hemorrhoids and interesting blog fodder.

But today wasn't a day where reading other people's blogs comforted me. Instead, I just worried that I might be as stupid as they are and not able to notice the stupidity traits in myself. You know, kind of the splinter vs beam in the eye situation.

Jared realized I wasn't feeling so great today so he suggested that we get out and do something. We went to the mall and walked around, and I did feel a little better. We went looking for a plain grey maternity zip up hoodie, but we couldn't find one. Going into maternity stores isn't the greatest thing for me, because usually I just feel out of place. I'm not the serene earth mom who really would fit in with the usual Motherhood Maternity crowd. The clothes aren't really my style, and I'm paranoid that everyone is whispering about how young or unmarried I am. (Catholic guilt again.) I mean, I know most people probably don't even notice or even care but once I think about something its hard to push out of my mind. Thats probably the biggest problem I have... I can recognize and realize when I'm being irrational, but at the same time I don't know how to stop it. I hate that I can't control myself enough not to cry at TV shows with sick babies or get angry at Jared for leaving his socks everywhere. I could sense that I wasn't being helped by the maternity store ambiance, so I suggested that we go looking for new shoes for Jared.
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In hindsight, this was a bad bad idea. The issue of Jared's shoes has been bugging me for a long long time. He has been wearing the biggest, clunkiest, ugliest boots for the longest time now, and I hate them. I want them gone. They are hiking boots. (See the attached photo. They are bigger, clunkier, and uglier in real life.) If he were hiking the Adirondacks, maybe I would accept them. But.. since we're in urban Minneapolis, they need to go. Sometimes he gets dressed int he cutest ever shirts, and he looks absolutely adorable and attractive and then... he puts on The Boots, and thats all I can look at after that. Every other cuteness factor gets negated by those damn boots. So hated are they that I actually seriously contemplated having one of them mysteriously and "accidentally" end up in a dumpster somewhere. I hate hate hate his hiking boots.

But anyway, we were off to a good start. He found a pair that he liked, and was convinced he should just try them on and buy them. No need to look at other pairs, right? Jared's idea of shopping is usually just seeing something, liking it, purchasing it. There is no "shopping" with Jared, only grabbing and buying.

So, like a madwoman, I continued to look at the other shoes. Even though I thought the ones he liked were pretty good looking, they were pretty swanky upscale looking tennis shoes and I didn't know how they'd stand up to Jared's abuse. And also... Who knows? Maybe an even greater find was lurking 20 feet down the row. That was my first mistake.

Jared found a pair of really heavy duty clod hopping hiking shoes. I'll give it to him that true, they weren't boots but they were as close as they could get to boots. They were the same brand as the offending hiking boots, so I was quick to put the kibosh on them. I shouldn't have done that. I should've just said that I liked the other ones better. I shouldn't ever bring up how much I hate hate hate his hiking boots. I should've just pretended like I thought the first shoes were the greatest int he world.

But anyway... we started to bicker over the whole shoes thing. Any shoe with a bit of white/cream/light grey was out of the picture because it would get dirty. I tried to tell Jared that you just wear your regular shoes for say, walking to class, wandering around the mall, and you use other shoes for say, geocaching through muck or walking unshoveled sidewalks. I even implied that he could wear his boots for the activities that would get shoes with any infinitesimal amount of light colouredness dirty. But that was too much. I shouldn't have pushed him and a full blown storm was upon us.

The fight about shoes quickly became a big deal to me. I mean, Jared & I fight and we always have but now its like any fight is a gigantic cry fest for me. Somehow I extended the fight about shoes into how hard it is to be pregnant. I guess its never that far from my mind because I can guarantee that something about me being pregnant is going to come into any fight that we will have in the next however many months. I guess, from my point of view, being pregnant has changed everything so I can offer it up as an excuse to why I am, for instance, crying and making a scene over what shoes my boyfriend does or does not buy.

But then Jared said something that just super pushed me over the edge, even if he did retract the statement when he was no longer upset with me. He said:

"I don't think being pregnant has even changed your life much."

I went crazy, its true. There was no way I was going to be able to stop crying over that. I was back and forth between wanting to murder Jared and wondering if I'm just being a big baby over this entire pregnant thing. Of course its changed a lot for me, right?

I mean... even if no one thing is so bad, it still sucks to be just generally uncomfortable all the time. It sucks to have to genuinely worry about what I'm going to be doing int he future, because now its not just my life that would be ruined if I didn't plan right. I can't even forget that I'm pregnant because even when I'm not being nudged from the inside, I can still tell that I don't have the energy/balance/stomach capacity that I did before. I hate that some of my friends are going to be lost because we'll be running in such different circles. They're not going to want to be heading to the zoo and looking at ducks int eh park when they could be sleeping all day and going to obscure indie films by night. I don't blame them, but still... I'm going to miss them and I'm scared I'm going to be awfully lonely without them. I know I can make new friends but thats a daunting enough thought without having to juggle everything else I've got going on. I guess mostly it comes down to me being scared.

And I don't want you to think I'm not ever excited or happy, because I am. As much as I hate being pregnant I'm so excited to meet my baby. I'm probably happy more hours than not, but sometimes its hard to remember the happy times when I feel like everything sucks so much. Its easier to just blog about everything thats bothering me because then I can see how much I'm whining over a bunch of nothing. I guess its a sort of perspective.

So probably what I'm trying to say is, don't worry that I'm never happy or that I'm not looking forward to the baby. I am. I just get taken over by the bad things sometimes and I have to write about them, even if its in rambling grammatically incorrect sentences. Jared & I have called a truce and we're going to try to start the whole "be happy" thing over again. We're going to walk to DQ and enjoy a value menu sundae together. Because ice cream makes everyone happier, right?