27 weeks

The belly button is out. I've decided to call it Clarence. Clarence is obnoxious; he demands attention. He just STICKS OUT THERE. I was thinking about putting a band aid over him, just to shut him up, though I may need to resort to duct tape. I don't know how much worse he will get, some part of me keeps expecting it to go, "Pop!" and stay that way. Forever. Just like when your parents told you not to cross your eyes because they would stay that way. Permanently.

Clarence is much more obnoxious than Stanley, whom I haven't seen in awhile. Stanley is my chest hair. My dark black, extremely manly chest hair that grows in the exact dead center of my chest. He is about a quarter-inch long and no matter how many times I pluck him out with a tweezers, he manages to find a way to grow back.

Except now. It's possible that as a result of all these freaky hormones in my body that I'm not manly enough to grow back my chest hair anymore. Sometimes I wonder if he is gone for good.

I kind of miss Stanley.

Other things about 27 weeks:

Now I'm entering the last trimester.

So far my fingers and toes and ankles have not swelled up and I'm hoping it will stay that way. I don't really aspire to look like a Macy's parade balloon.

All my tests are fine so far. Last week I had to do the gestational diabetes test, which means I had to drink (really fast) a big bottle of gross orange soda and then sit an hour without barfing it up and wait for them to check my blood.

As I sat in the waiting room outside the lab I read through several magazines. The waiting room was busy; since it is a University hospital there are clinics everywhere. I was sitting by the women's clinic and the neurosurgery clinic and watched all kinds of people come and go, when two older women came in and sat down. One disappeared right away for something and the other sat right next to me while she waited for her friend.

I was reading a magazine and laughing. I was laughing because the subject was on song lyrics that people consistently sing wrong.

Remember the Joni Mitchell song, Big Yellow Taxi? The line where she sings, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

Some thought it went:
"It tastes very nice, the food of the parking lot."

There were some really good ones and I just couldn't stop laughing. Then I was trying not to burp up my orange soda. I felt I had to explain to the woman right next to me that I was not crazy so I told her what I was reading.

She started laughing and said, "Oh you're probably too young to know this but there is an old song called 'Forever in Blue Jeans'".

I nod. "Neil Diamond."

She looked surprised. "Oh, I thought you'd be too young to know that."

I don't tell her that I love Neil Diamond, my mom played Neil Diamond records in our house, and that 'Cherry Cherry' is one of my favorite songs on my Ipod. "Oh," I say, "I know Neil Diamond."

"Well," she says. "I always thought the song was 'Reverend Blue Jeans.'"

We both start laughing.

"And when I was a kid in church, you know that old song 'Rock of Ages, cleft for me?"

"Yeah?"

"I always sang it as 'Rotten Tomatoes, left for me!'"

I had my own confession to make. "It wasn't until I was much older that I realized the German expression was 'Auf Wiedersehen'".

"Oh?"

"I thought they were saying, 'Our feet are stained.'"

I've never laughed that hard in a waiting room before.