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.