37 weeks

I've had some highly entertaining pregnancy commentary this time around. One gentleman at Whole Foods (right around the time this picture was taken) turned to me and very gently asked, "Are you expecting?" A thousand jokes were running through my head, but I held back and managed to say with a straight face, "Um...yes." He wanted me to get in front of him in line - very sweet.

A week or so later, the same thing happened at Ye Ole Fashioned Ice Cream and Sandwich Cafe (dear GOD, do they have the most AMAZING chocolate milkshakes...I wish I had one right now): a gentleman asked whether or not I was pregnant. I know so many men (so many people in general, but I think men perhaps the most) have been burned asking women if they are pregnant when they aren't, so they pretty much wait until it looks like your water is about to break before they will assume such a thing. It's quite charming, actually.

Those two examples stand in stark contrast to an experience I had at Target around the same time. I'm coming down the aisle with my cart in front of me (and blocking the view of my belly). A Target employee, no older than 20 with short, spunky dreads was kind of be-bopping down a cross aisle, singing to himself and nodding his head up and down, in his own little world. He passes me, but then stops and turns around like he's forgotten something. Now I'm closer to him and he has a side view of me and my belly. At which point, he stops dead in his tracks and exclaims -- in the most genuinely amazed way -- "WHOA!!!! You are like Ruulllllll..." (he trails off for just a second as he takes in the full girth of my belly with widening eyes) "...PREGNANT!!!"

I couldn't help but crack up. He was so innocent, so authentically astounded. I replied, laughing, "It's true. I am." He asks: "When's that baby supposed to be here??" I tell him in just a few weeks. He continues: "It looks like that baby is coming, like, TODAY." Too funny...

Anyway, here's me and my belly at 37 weeks: