Here, in case, anyone cares, is the story of the day we found out we were going to be parents, and the lying and sneaking around I had to engage in in order to get that piece of information.

After having spent a few days in Mississippi with my family for Christmas, we flew to San Antonio to spend New Year's with Dan's family. On either our first or second day we were there, I did some math and came to the conclusion that I should probably go buy a pregnancy test. Not because I was pregnant. Because there was just practically no way I was pregnant. But, you know, just to be sure and all.

The only problem with this was that we don't usually rent a car when we go to San Antonio, and thus, we have no independent transportation. This isn't usually a big deal, but it occurred to me that it would probably cause a lot of needless excitement if I asked say, Dan's mom, to take me to Walgreen's so I could buy a pregnancy test. What I'm saying here is that if I even implied to one of our mothers that I might, possibly, you know, be pregnant with their first grandchild, either one of them would want to be in the bathroom with me while I took the test. So I decided I had to get a test without anyone knowing.

That day, Dan's mom and I went to an outlet mall outside of town. The most surreal part of the day was that we actually went to Carter's, mecca of baby clothing, so that she could pick up a gift for a baby shower she was attending later in the week. I wandered the aisles of baby products thinking "Oh my goodness. What if I'm going to NEED a three piece baby bath time set soon? What exactly is IN a three piece baby bath time set? I should know that!" It was bizarre.

But after we finished shopping, I saw my chance. Dan's mom said she needed to go to H.E.B., which as Texans know, is the best, cleanest, most giant grocery store chain in the world. I wish we had them there, but we don't. Dan's mom wanted to pick up a few things for dinner. Not many, just a few, so I knew I didn't have much time. When we got inside, Dan's mom went for the produce section, and I started lying. Hard.

"Um, where's the bathroom in here?" I asked.
"Oh, it's up front by the registers," she said.
"OK. I'm going to go to the bathroom. Are you going to be in this general area for a little while? You know, so I can find you?"
"Oh, yes, I'll be here for a little while."
"Good."

The minute I was out of her line of vision, I was sprinting to the other side of the store. I'm pretty sure I knocked some people over on my way to the appropriate aisle. I grabbed the first pregnancy test I saw and made for the express checkout line. I was in luck, because the line I chose only had one person in it, a little old lady, and she was only buying one thing, a jar of jelly.

And then I got my comeuppance for lying to my mother in law, because I promise you, that little old lady took For-daggum-EVER to buy that jar of jelly. First, she remembered she had a coupon in her giant purse, so she started fishing around for it. Six years later, when she found it, it turned out to be expired. But the cashier, clearly wanting to be polite, the sap, called over a MANAGER to see if they could still take the coupon. Much entering of lengthy special codes into the cash register ensued. Then, then, .... THEN, the little old lady wrote a CHECK for the jam, which had, at this point, cost her all of about $1.19.

I thought my head was going to explode, because at any minute, I was expecting Dan's mom to come around the corner and come over to see why I was in the express line instead of the bathroom. A friend of mine recently pointed out to me that I could have been smarter about this if I had grabbed something else to buy with which I could have obscured the box that screamed "Pregnancy Test!" for all the world to see. This is a good point, but the fact that this never once occurred to me illustrates why I would be of no use in the criminal world. I don't lie well, especially not on the spur of the moment, and it stresses me out enormously to have to do something sneaky. Thus, I stood at the check out counter, practically dripping with sweat, as this guy FINALLY rang up my purchase. I was so flustered that I gave him a five dollar bill instead of the $20 I meant to give him, and then couldn't find the $20, and had to fish out my credit card. And then, at last, I shoved the test into my purse and ran back to produce.

"Did you find the bathroom OK?" my mother in law asked.
"Yep! No problem!" I lied. Again.

Later in the day, when the hard-won pregnancy test did its job and I was lying on the bed in my in-laws house, waiting for my head to stop spinning enough that I could go and get Dan to tell him the news, I decided to save the receipt from H.E.B. Something told me I would want some kind of souvenir of the day. I will put it in my baby's scrapbook, and when he or she wants to know what it is, I will say "That is proof of the first time you stressed mommy out."

I will join in the collective whining and say that I hate daylight savings time. It seems to me like a pointless exercise that messes with everyone's schedule and puts the whole nation into a funk for a few days, but what do I know? At any rate, yesterday's daylight savings time was only time I've ever sustained a clock-related injury.

There is a yellow clock in our kitchen that I bought at Wal-mart a few years ago for my first apartment. It's been a good clock, and I like it. Yesterday, I was standing under it, bending over to put a new bag into the garbage can, when I heard this "pop" sound. Before I could fully form the thought "I wonder what that was?" I felt something hit me on the back of the head ... HARD. Then I saw the clock hit the ground and its motor break into pieces. Yes, a matter of hours before daylight savings time, the clock apparently committed suicide, throwing itself down off the wall and hitting me on the head on the way down.

This was alarming for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I'm starting to think that my house is trying to kill me. But more than anything, it seemed appropriate. I mean, if I hate daylight savings time so much, why shouldn't my clock? So tomorrow, as we all go groggily about our days, trying to get adjusted to the new time, keep an eye out for falling wall clocks. Or you'll have a nice bump on the back of your head, like me.

In the last few days, I have learned what everyone is always whining about here in Albuquerque this time of year. It’s the juniper. It should be classified as a bioweapon. We could bring our enemies to their knees with the stuff, provided we could expose them to it for long enough. I think since moving here, I’ve been going through an allergy grace period where you haven’t been around the new allergens in your new home long enough to have a bad reaction to them. But that appears to be over, just in time for me to be pregnant and unable to partake of prescription medication. Glorious. So the last few days have found me using a Neti Pot to pour saline solution into my sinuses (that’s is just as much fun as that picture makes it seem, and you feel just as ridiculous as you look when you do it, let me tell you), hauling a box of Kleenex everywhere I go like a toddler with a blankie, and finally, today, staying home from work out of sheer exhaustion after days of sneezing and nights of bad sleep.

The good news is that this has given me a chance to think of a few things I’ve been meaning to blog about. So, first off:

I am starting the question my own sanity because of how insanely overjoyed I am about a stoplight.

The stop light in question is at an intersection near our house near the notorious traffic nightmare that is the Coors Boulevard interchange to get onto Interstate-25, which Dan and I both have to do every day in order to go to work. Since we moved here almost a year ago, this intersection has been the bane of our existence because there has been a four way stop there handling an enormous volume of traffic created by thousands of people who all, surprisingly enough, use the interstate to get to work. Why it took so long to get a light put in I don't even want to know, but a couple of weeks ago, there magically appeared a stop light, and it has made my life so much better that I want to pull my car over and kiss the light poles that hold it up every time I drive through the intersection. That is how much I love this stoplight.

Next up on the list is the fact that my Cracker Barrel is about to open! This may be the one aspect in which I have timed m pregnancy well. In spite of enduring allergy season unmedicated, and making sure that I will get to be enormously pregnant throughout the entire long hot summer, I will have the comfort of being able to drown my sorrows in fried okra and chicken and dumplings just a few blocks from my house. I will also gain 75 pounds, but you have to do what you have to do.

And lastly, I thought I would leave you with a charming sentiment that Dan voiced the other night when we were reading our weekly email from Pregnancy.com, where you can receive email updates on how your baby is developing, complete with illustrations. Dan was pretty quiet as I was reading aloud about how our beautiful child now has fully formed arms and eyes that are tightly closed. Then I clicked on the picture:

And Dan, in response to an artist's rendition of his unborn child, said "Awesome! It looks like an alien!"

Yes, that is certainly awesome. Let's hope he can come up with a better comment when we go in for an ultrasound.

I'm going home on Tuesday to see my family and most especially my brother Ryan, who is just home from a tour of duty to beautiful Djibouti, Africa. I hear he's glad to be home, and I would be too. Anyway, since I'm headed to the land of Jesus signs, it seemed like an appropriate time to share with you a new one, emailed to me by Daniel, my sister Hannah's boyfriend, who knows that I collect these things.

For those of you unfamiliar with rap music, the phrase "Drop it like it's hot" is a refrain from a song by Snoop Dogg, thus qualifying this as maybe the worst collision between pop culture and a church sign I've ever seen. I especially love that the word "it's" in "drop it like it's hot" has no apostrophe and the word altar is spelled wrong. This means it qualifies it for top honors in two categories: Poor Taste in Religious Messaging AND Bad Public Grammar. I just KNOW this church is somewhere in the South.

See y'all soon.

Tonight, I have been watching a Tivo-d episode of Austin City Limits, which I recently decreed we would Tivo for all time after I read that Sufjan Stevens is on the season that is currently being rerun. The episode we were watching tonight, however, featured a performance by Coldplay, which also makes me happy. What made me even happier was that halfway through, musical legend Michael Stipe of R.E.M. came out to sing a couple of songs with Coldplay. The first song he sang for was from a recent R.E.M. project, and it was great. Then Chris Martin of Coldplay walked over to the piano, sat down and introduced the next song Michael Stipe would sing with the words "This is the greatest song every written, in my opinion." Immediately, because I am a freak, I started screaming "They're going to sing Nightswimming! This is the best show ever!"

My hollering brought Dan into the living room just as the opening chords of (what else?) "Nightswimming" were starting, and I was starting to cry. But my music geek high was totally killed seconds later, when Dan looked at me and, in all sincerity, said "What song is this?"

WHAT SONG IS THIS? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I immediately started trying to give Dan clues, hoping that a light of recognition would go off in his eyes. "Dan. Think. R.E.M. Automatic for the People! Nightswimming! Come on!"

Nothing.

So now I'm downloading "Automatic for the People" to Dan's computer so he can get caught up on musical history circa 1992 and marveling at how Dan and I can be so well suited to one another when he can't identify what may, in fact, be the best song ever written, and I don't know anything about computers. It makes me wonder if our child will be really interested in something neither of us has even thought about, like competitive scuba diving. Or worse, will actively love things we hate, like musical artists who have backup dancers but no actual musical instruments anywhere on the stage, or Windows XP. The biggest irony of all would be if our child actually turned out to be athletic. We'd have to hire someone with motor skills to stand in for us.

But I suppose we could work around that, too. Love isn't about hobbies. Still. Nightswimming!

In other news, I'm back from my adventures and had a great time. I'll post pictures soon.