To Thine Own

This has been the most perfect weekend.

The weather could not have been better, I got to see friends and read and make soup and spend time with our neighbors…really, just an all-around good weekend.

I’d had an especially rough week at work, and clocked many, many hours, lost quite a bit of sleep, and though this weekend included some work, I needed a few days to be by myself – I ran errands and ambled through Target all by my lonesome and it was awesome – and cook and sleep and kiss my husband and burn Fall-inspired candles. I went a little nuts at Yankee Candle with the Hazelnut Coffee and Pumpkin Pie varieties.

I probably pushed it a little too hard – I’m having some aches and pains that I could do without – but it’s been worth it. I finally feel like myself again, and sometimes it just takes a little downtime to make that happen.

I’m well-aware of how fleeting some of this is, this “feeling like myself” feeling. Or, maybe the better word is “temporary.” The self that I know is about to change somewhat – how can it not? I imagine I’ll still be persnickety, and not like shopping, and really still love scotch and soul music and get super irritable with people who call themselves “experts,” and I imagine I will still be a liberal, and likely want nothing more than an evening with Malbec and dark chocolate and the Real Housewives, but I know that the me I’m looking for now will look a whole lot different a year from now.

It’s perfectly fine by me, and I’m far too old to think that it’s going to negate who I am completely, but it’s still a strange notion just the same.

God, that and the ninth-month pregnant belly. I know the female pregnant body is beautiful, blah blah blah but GOOD LORD. That’s a lot of stress and strain on the skin and I’m not really ashamed to admit that I blacked out momentarily, viewing these bellies because that’s going to be me soon and that just looks like it hurts. A lot. I’m reading about my best birth and hypnobirthing and I embrace the beauty that is this experience and all that jazz BUT OH MY GOD. Again. Ouch.

I don’t think there is enough cocoa butter in the world to make that not seem ridiculously painful.