Answering life's important questions

"Sometimes I wonder, if I saw one of my old high school teachers, what would I call them? Like, would I call them Mr. or Mrs. whatever? Or by their first name?" "I think you'd call them whatever you called them in high school. I think that's normal."

"I mean...if I saw one of my old coaches, I'd definitely call them 'coach.'"

"Sure. Makes sense."

"One of my coaches, Coach Jacobs, was also my teacher. But he didn't want us to call him 'Mr. Jacobs.' He was like, 'Call me Coach Jacobs. Or Coach. Or Jake.'"

"Was his first name Jake?"

"No, his last name was Jacobs. And Jake is a nickname for Jacobs."

"Well, sort of. Except that it's usually a nickname for Jacob when it's somebody's first name. What was his first name?"

"Tom."

Pregnancy report, week 4,789 (or something like that)

August is off to a good start. We've had several days of reprieve from the oppressively hot weather and I think I'm pretty much over the attitude I'd adopted a couple weeks ago, the one where I was like, "Oh my God. This thing is going to get bigger. How is that EVEN POSSIBLE?" And while I still hate my swollen ankles with a sort of inappropriately high level of intensity for something so superficial, I've come to terms with them. I mean, I know I can't really do anything about them except keep my feet up 24 hours-a-day, and since I can't realistically do that, well, fine. I can deal. Maybe there's even some good in this situation, I've been thinking. Perhaps when I'm in labor I can distract myself with reminders that once I push the baby out, my feet will most likely return to their normal size and I can stop wearing flip-flops every day. That sounds like good inspiration to me.

But seriously, things are great. We've got a house full of really cute, really soft baby stuff and a bunch of free weekends ahead. I'm sure anyone who knows us would not be surprised to find out that we haven't done much in preparation for our upcoming arrival, but we are looking forward to the process. So I figure I better make use of the energy I do have while I've got it - the "nesting instinct" or whatever you'd like to call it - before this baby does, for real, take over my whole body and I'm forced to surrender. And, in this case, I'm pretty sure "surrendering" means lying on the couch watching my favorite movies whenever I feel like it, right? I thought so.