To begin with, I’m pretty darn fat…

and whenever I say that, people say to me, “you’re not fat” or “it’s not really fat.” A reflex, no doubt. Of course, when I say “I’m so fat,” I mean, isn’t it hilarious that I have this baby crawling around inside my body, and there’s this big belly, and isn’t it great and weird? My nephew gets it. He’s three. We were out to dinner and I proclaimed my intention to order the peppermint ice cream. “You can’t have ice cream. You’re too fat.” And this makes a cute three-year-old story but I guess it also makes him sound a bit size-ist. He’s thin and tall and he knows a lot about sharks. And he’s excited about his pending boy cousin.

We’re at week 24: the baby is about 12 to 13 inches tall and weighs 1.5 lbs. He has all his muscles but no fat on his body yet.

It’s hard to know what to say about being pregnant that hasn’t been said. Or is it? On the one hand, the CDC reported 4,163,000 live births between May 2005 and April 2006 in the U.S. So, that’s about four times the size of Seattle and about 2,175 times the number of people in my hometown, where women regularly have four to eight kids. But this is one kid, and the nine-month combo of the two of us is unique. More unique than anything I could write. Unlike a story idea that revealed itself magically at 3:25 am (voila! out of the collective unconscious), and that I might have worked on for months then abandoned, I won’t see it on HBO or in The Believer in two years and think, well, I could have done that. I did do that. Nearly. And (best part) there are no critiques: “She doesn’t have quite the irritability that we expect in these sort of collaborations, but we’ve definitely seen that waddle before.” I guess there'll be plenty of criticism after he comes, but for now I'm on my own.

So far, everything has been completely normal: the sickness (months 2 to 4), the exhaustion (better now, but still a factor), and the belly rubbing (I never saw myself as a belly rubber, but it feels pretty good — highly recommended). It’s nice to be able to eat doughnuts and sit on the couch watching movies for four or more hours a day.

It is strange to be walking around with a big poochy belly — conspicuous and then quickly invisible. People notice, obviously (except the people on my crowded morning bus, who pretend to look away as I’m trying to steady myself in the aisle while they relish their seatdom). In my neighborhood, the quick response is a vague non-response, a sorting out that may go something like this: Girl. Lady. Pregnant lady. Um, what’s in The Stranger this week? I can remember sorting in this way, hungover, on a Friday morning. One of us, not one of us.

The Center House is full of birds this morning and I can’t decide if that’s cute or really gross. It’s hard to imagine the SC food court being any grosser but there it is. Guano. GUANO. (No, I didn’t see guano. It’s the thought.)

And I sort them out, too. Converse, cords, hoodie. Yup. That was me. Now it’s not. My hoodies are too tight. Then something else happens, especially with boys: Boy. Really young boy. Son. Son? Hmmm. Where did that come from?

A woman just came and sat down at a table near me. She’s meeting a man here. He pulls out some photocopies, which seem to be galleys. “I don’t want a bunch of title shit on there,” she says. “I’ll take it off,” he says. “Dang it.”

I was walking to yoga Saturday and this harlequinesque goth kid, 19ish, passed me near SCCC. He did the quick look. Then he kept staring as we passed each other. This I’m not used to. I spent the rest of the three blocks trying to figure out what it all meant: he hates breeders, he loves bellies, he hates mommies, he hates his own mommy, he wants to kiss me, he wants to stab me, he's hungover and hates the idea of a vaguely rotund, chipper mama bouncing off to morning yoga class, readying for her unapologetic contribution to the too fat belly of the earth.