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Wednesday afternoon I started crying. Hard. I cried because Lenny was in the sink drinking the soapy water out of a pot and because Heidi pooped in the living room (rainy days are hard on their housetraining). I cried because I was stuck on a chapter description in my Prospectus. I cried because I was lonely. I cried because the house was so quiet and so dirty.

In reality I was famished. The first trimester has been all about sleep. The problem with sleeping ten to twelve hours is that you end up going fifteen to sixteen hours without eating. Cramming six meals into about nine hours is quite the feat. Anyway, my nibblings hadn't amounted to much, apparently, and suddenly I was ravenously hungry.

For reasons I didn't understand until the day was over, all I wanted to do was go to the mall. The mall! I hate the mall, that repository of sinful materialism and adolescent vapidity. But the pretty colors! and the people! I hadn't seen a person all day. And I wanted a pedicure.

I figured I'd be inspired on my way to the mall, and indeed as I reached the bottom of the hill approaching the hideous commercial stretch of McKnight Road I saw it: Red Lobster. Cheddar Bay Biscuits. It didn't matter that their entrees are priced at wunderbar and plated at so-so. I needed the biscuits in the same manner that I used to need McNuggets as a six-year-old already addicted to fast food, despite careful parenting. The Snapper, I explained to myself as I pulled in, needed them biscuits.

The waitress was so, so nice.  She brought me food.  She refilled my water.  She smiled at me.  Just as I finished the last bite of salad she brought me me entree, oozing with creamy goodness.  And as I was clogging those last arteries that remained free and clear after the biscuits with the last few bites of white pasta drenched in cream sauce, she asked if I'd like dessert.  Would I ever!  I asked for key lime pie, which arrived promptly with the check.  The entire experience took one half-hour.  If you are well acquainted with my eating habits, as is Zerolio, you will marvel at the fact that I was able to feast in less than forty-five.  I tipped generously, for good service but mainly because this nice woman, Trish, was nice to me.  I was also finally sated by a good hot meal and emotionally stable for the first time that day.

On to the mall and my pedicure.  There may have been stores and fitting rooms in between; I don't remember.  I just remember sitting high upon a message-chair throne with my feet in rolling warm water, being touched.  Being paid attention.  Nary a word passed between me and the efficient Lena, and although she was being paid, I was grateful for her care.  I don't know if she felt that she had provided me a spiritual service, and in fact an eleven-hour day of massaging, scrubbing, buffing, and painting toes probably doesn't lend itself to quiet reflection on the dignity of pedicuring.  Being tired, pregnant, lonely, overwhelmed, I was grateful.

When I related this story to my friend A, she laughed long and hard and said I had to blog about it.  She was also concerned that every day for the past week she has thought I was still annoyed.  I am in fact still annoyed in general at several items on the list, but annoyance is no longer my dominant mental state.  That particular post was written shortly before I realized, on another day, that I was in need of a nap and a hot meal.

These days the blessed second trimester is allowing me to feel good on eight or nine hours and I eat the minute I feel that the universe is sobbing or some other awful melodramatic thing that is threatening to send me over the edge of despair.  It's working.

There is also dark chocolate in my purse.
Now–thirteen papers to go, and revisions, and class planning.