Though I’d hate to have ugly google ads along the side of my blog, I have to admit it would be pretty cool to pay a mortgage on a house by blogging. Not that this blog is anywhere near getting the traffic needed to draw advertisers to pay me mega bucks like that, but I have to admit the thought has crossed my mind.

Well, guess what?!!!! In an indirect way, without being a complete sell out, I did get paid for blogging! Or at least for linking. I didn’t get paid any actual money but someone I linked to sent me some merchandise FOR FREE!!!!!

Here’s how it all went down: When I first got pregnant I changed my “obsession” block of links in my sidebar from all about Paris to all about baby stuff… because well, I’m obsessed and I like to look at baby things now. Well, guess what? Turns out a lot of you readers do too! And because I linked to Green Tea Baby, a site that has super cute Asian inspired baby shoes, a bunch of you readers went over there and the owner of this website noticed! She contacted me and thanked me and told me she was going to send me a little “something something” to show her appreciation for the link. How about that?!!!

So that is why I’m writing a post all about the cute little tangerine Asian silk shoes and hat that Jami Becker from Inner Chai sent me. It just goes to show you that linking is a good thing. Thank you Jami! (And thank you readers for clicking!) I LOVE the little orange shoes! I especially like how they are round and wide in the toes. My baby is going to be so chic! I’m just going to want to dip her in some soy sauce and pop her in my mouth!

I wish I could kidnap every tired pregnant woman who’s slaving away at the office (or home) trying to finish up that last project when she’s eight or nine months along (or anybody who’s stuck in super cold weather and hating it) and ship her out to my beach where it’s 75 degrees in the middle of January. Who cares what you look like in a bikini. There wasn’t a soul on the beach besides some gulls and some un-interested old man reading a paper. The breeze was just right, the waves were crashing, the sun was shining but not too hot… The baby’s kicking lightly because she likes being outside too.

Life can’t get much better than this. I feel so lucky to live where I live and even though I’m hating all this waiting and waiting and waiting, maybe it was meant to be that I have just a few more days to enjoy being exactly where I am right now.

I took a bunch of shots of myself in my bikini but unfortunately Toby has nixed the idea of putting that much skin on the internet (except the one shot, which he approved). He’s right. Even though I love showing off and feeling pretty in my own skin, that’s not exactly the kind of traffic I want to bring to this site. But it made me feel good to take pictures of my super mountainous roundy curves and for once not hate the way I look.

You know what I think? I think she crawled back in deeper this morning. I woke up with the distinct feeling of a bum being pressed up against my ribs, really hard. I think she doesn’t want to come out.

I went to bed thinking positive thoughts. Toby went on and on last night about how mysterious hormones are and how sometimes you can affect them with your thoughts. We both agreed that was a pretty new-agey idea but we spent the last four years trying to get pregnant and more mysterious theories have been contemplated. Toby said if I was stressing out about bright florescent lit hospital rooms and scary sharp needles and cold clinical doctors then maybe the baby was picking up my bad mojo thoughts and maybe that was hindering the natural hormone process.

So I went to bed with thoughts of opening flowers and butter melting and lots of good happy cheery warm receptions with hot chocolate and apple pie…. I drifted off to sleep with the feeling that I was opening up every lock in my body…

AND THEN I HAD A NIGHTMARE!!!

I dreamt the I was in a horror movie! There were a bunch of us stuck in some kind of haunted house and we were all trying to get out of this house that was eating us with it’s walls! What kind of crazy dream is that? The doors and windows were all locked and we were all trying to cut ourselves out through the walls with machetes and hack saws. But the further we hacked into the sheet rock and insulation, the more skeletons of others who’d tried to escape we’d find! It was terrible! If my thoughts can trigger hormones to release, then that dream will probably scare her back in until February!

And sure enough, at my doctor’s appointment today, the doctor said there was absolutely no progress. None, zip, nada.