I’ve reached that point in the pregnancy where I am just all cranky, all the time. I’m trying really hard not to be such a grouch, but it is difficult when you are operating on less than 4 hours of sleep a night. (It is a cruel joke of Mother Nature that the extremely pregnant woman is robbed of anything resembling quality sleep in the last few weeks before a newborn enters the scene.) I mean really. How friendly would you be on so little sleep under normal circumstances? Now try that sleep-deprivation with a very active, almost full-term fetus squirming constantly in your belly, a backache, and a body temperature that always feels about 10 degrees above normal. Not so Pollyanna anymore, are you? ARE YOU?

I’m also cranky because of the damn cat. Now, I love my cat. She is a sweetheart, and about the most placid pet that anyone could ever hope for. She never bites, or swats, or even shows signs of irritation – she’ll put up with whatever AE does to her without a complaint. She adores all of us. HOWEVER. Sometimes she is so loving that I just want to strangle her. She won’t leave me alone at night because she always wants to be curled up as close to me as possible (this does not help the elevated body temperature situation I mentioned earlier). Case in point: the other night I woke up to the sound of her purring louder than usual, and when I opened my eyes I realized that it was because she was approximately 3 inches from my face. When she noticed that I was awake, she stretched out her paw and lovingly touched my cheek. I am not even kidding. It was the kind of gentle touch usually practiced by mothers of young children and people in romantic relationships. What a weirdo.

The cat also has a bizarre (and irritating) habit of eating the ribbons and bows off of gifts. I am aware of this habit, yet every single Christmas season I have to be reminded. This year the reminder came around 2:30 a.m. Monday morning when I heard the warning yowl. N heard it too but was too sleepy to do more than sit up and mumble something incoherent. I’m glad for the warning yowl, as it gives me a chance to grab the cat and fling her into the bathroom to keep her from puking on the carpet. (Of course, she then pukes on the bath mat, but hey. It fits in the washer.) Anyway, when I heard her yowling I got up as fast as I could and took her in the bathroom. Once she threw up, I realized that she had eaten at least a half-yard of red curling ribbon. And it was all in one piece, which means that she must have spent quite a while just patiently swallowing it a little at a time. EW. So now I have to crawl around under the tree taking all possible cat-choking hazards off of the packages.

So there you have it. This post doesn’t really have a coherent theme except The Pregnant Lady Is Cranky. But isn’t that enough?

Oh, wait, before I go, here is something funny. We celebrated Christmas with my family over the weekend (since the baby is due dangerously close to Christmas itself we’re getting it out of the way early), and after opening gifts we played a few rounds of Catch Phrase. AE played too, he actually did pretty well with giving clues for some of the easier words. During a particularly heated moment when various family members were all yelling over each other AE suddenly blurts out “DAMN!!” Everyone stopped and stared, and N and I were about to fuss at him when he follows up with “You know, what a beaver builds.” Hee. Nice save, kid, couldn’t have played it better myself.