I love freaks!

People who know me well know that freak is a pet name for my husband, but also I like people who are a little bit different. Not different in the sense of psychopaths who have no empathy with others, but different in some way. Perhaps they don't worry so much about the way they appear to others, or perhaps they sport interesting tattoos or piercings. Perhaps they challenge authority in interesting ways. Perhaps they have three first names or always surprise me by their words. Whatever . . . I like people who break normalcy . . . until they annoy me.

Random note: Shane, the fruit is good today. Thanks for bringing it. And Sarah, thanks for bringing vegetables from your garden. That's a sweet gesture, and it helps community form.

Yep, I'm jumping all over the place. Apparently, I'm a freak when it comes to coherence today. There's no structure to my comments, just the random nerve synapses firing and jumping incoherently from one thought to the other.

I'm sitting outside the classroom with my laptop on a bench, using the bench as a table. Well, not anymore. My back was hurting, so I moved to the bench itself so that I could lean against the table. That feels better, but now my computer wants to slip off my lap.

I'm in the hallway because Rebecca banished me. She has assumed Wes's role today of keeping me away from bad influences for the Muppets. The room still smells like paint, so I'm out in the hallway. Nancy wouldn't let me clean the bathroom Sunday, which would have only involved spraying Windex and wiping down surfaces. Suddenly, I've become the protected one. It's a weird feeling, one I'm not used to. It makes me feel a bit freakish.

Actually, the whole pregnancy has made me feel freakish. I struggle to get comfortable at night and turn probably ten times during the night, adjusting pillows, pushing Wes onto his stomach, pulling covers around me and tossing them off. Wes is not a big fan of sleeping with a pregnant women, and who can blame him? I'm not a big fan of being pregnant at night.

My stomach keeps growing, which means the Muppets are growing, and I'm thankful for that. But suddenly this weekend, the stomach really expanded. Seriously expanded--as in I wasn't sure I'd be able to wear home the non-maternity capris I packed, but I could. And today I still have on non-maternity pants, but they're tight. This week I bet I'll be moving to maternity pants. I already have on a maternity shirt, and I wore maternity shorts this weekend (very comfortable).

This week I went from not liking food and not being able to eat chocolate to being able to eat two to three servings of any meal. That's not good. I mean, it's good that I've only started gaining weight this week, but it's bad that I may make up for the first nineteen weeks of not eating within a week or so. I've got to get that under control.

There's so much that's different about me in pregnancy. I can get angry in a second, but I'm usually slow to anger and definitely slow to respond. I am out of breath after walking up the stairs in the College of Education. How annoying. It's just one flight of stairs. It is as if I've aged twenty years in twenty weeks. Ugh!

Yep, I've definitely become a freak during pregnancy, but not the cool kind of freak that I like. Instead, I'm the kind of freak who never knows what her body will do next. Yikes. I'm starting to run out of battery power, so I'll stop now, but I'd love to hear from some other current and previous fellows.