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Lately I have been ordering my groceries online from Amazon’s food delivery service, and it rules. It’s a good way for me to stop and think about what I’m going to cook for the week ahead, instead of rushing through the aisles all willy-nilly and throwing whatever catches my eye in the cart (and inevitably getting home, unloading $200 worth of bags, and finding myself immediately thinking goddammit there’s nothing to EAT). It’s also a fantastic way to buy groceries without the nerve-wracking presence of a child in the shopping cart, which is basically akin to pushing a ticking time bomb around the store that could blow at any moment, and here you are without any knowledge of whether it’s the red wire or blue one that will diffuse the situation (in other words, sometimes Sir Demando-Lot really does want that balloon, and sometimes he’s just FUCKING WITH YOU).

Amazon’s got some introductory period going on where they don’t charge sales tax, although I find that I’m shopping less frequently but buying more at one time so it’s hard to tell whether I’m saving money or not. At any rate, it sure is convenient, even though I still haven’t figured out some of the container sizes and occasionally end up mistakenly ordering a wee little one-serving cup of Fage yogurt when I wanted the Mega Fat-Ass Tub, etc.

It’s nice to offload tasks like walking around the grocery store, not so much because it’s tiring to do so but because I feel really self-conscious at the moment. Every single person I come in contact with asks when I’m due, because it’s so burstingly apparent that the answer is “ANY MINUTE NOW”, and while these are perfectly friendly queries that a normal person could probably respond to without getting all embarrassed and sweaty, I was born with a tragic medical condition known as Social Dorkitude and drawing this much attention just by waddling lumbering lurching, Quasimodo-style, while holding my back and trying not to pee my pants walking around in public is hard for me to deal with; also, I’m convinced whatever response I give to peoples’ kind overtures is phenomenally weird and stupid. As in,

“So, when’s the baby due?”

“Well, Monday. I mean, that’s not technically the actual due date but that’s when the C-section is scheduled for so I’m just saying Monday at this point because it’s easier than explaining the whole C-section thing except I guess I just did ha ha ha HAAA!”

“. . .”

Lots of people go on to ask if it’s a boy or a girl, and then if they’re particularly chatty, they ask if we have a name picked out yet. I’ll tell you, I have a hard time answering this one because yes, we DO have a name picked out, but no, I don’t want to say what it is yet, and how do you say that gracefully? I just end up fibbing, by saying that we’ve got it narrowed down but we’ll make the final decision at birth. Since that’s such an unsatisfying answer to hear, I’m thinking of embellishing it a little further: “We prefer nontraditional names, so it’s either going to be Xerxes or the pound sign; you know: #. What do you like better?”

First of all, if any of you are also currently eating from the Fuckit Bucket, may I most sincerely recommend making yourself a Gooey Butter Cake. Take that sumbitch out of the oven about 10 minutes early, too, so it’s really gooey. Sure, you might need to go at it with a spoon rather than a fork, but that’s a small price to pay for putting the dessert equivalent of a full-body massage (WITH “happy ending”) in your mouth.

Also, please to be appreciating my fancy toes:

Sorry, I should have warned you before just sticking my feet all up in your face like that. I know some people are thoroughly skeeved by feet just like some people get weird lustful toe-boners and I hope you fall into the foot camp I’m in, which can basically be described as: Feet Are Benign Objects That Neither Call Me With Their Sexy Siren Song Nor Make Me Dry-Heave In Disgust.

That polish will probably be there six months from now, sadly. Oh, and I did look for Engorged Labia in my color choices but had to settle for whatever this was called — From Russia With Love, I think? Something wacky like that; makeup product managers must love it when they’re allowed to venture out of the “Peachy Keen” box.

The actual application-of-color part of a manicure or pedicure is nice enough, but it’s really all about the wonderful things they do to you beforehand, especially if you spring for the spa variety and get the bubbly foot soak and all. I even like the semi-terrifying paraffin dip, where you purposefully put your extremities in boiling-hot wax for reasons I’ve never understood yet still enjoy.

So I had my wonderful mani/pedi, and today I got my hair trimmed — just enough to put some longevity in the cut, I hope — and now I can focus on the important business of slothing around for the rest of the week. I’m going to read trashy magazines and surf all of your websites (heLLO, could you maybe update more often?) and make half-hearted attempts to make sure the house is ready for a baby and that we’ve put away all the bear traps and jugs of poison etc and will in all likelihood continue to mysteriously attract trolls at ParentDish while writing the most vanilla, non-contentious mommyblog entries on earth.

Also, there will be Gooey Butter Cake. Quite a lot of it, I’m afraid.

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