If you are pregnant, do not let your friends talk you into having your baby shower during your very last month of pregnancy. No matter who tells you how cute you are, all big-as-a-house and glowing…. They are lying. They are just enjoying the fact that you look like blubber on wheels and they can feel all skinny next to you. It is HORRIBLE.

I know, I know. I really do not deserve to complain. Here I am perfectly healthy, and I have friends showering me with gifts!! It’s just that I really wanted to have a cute outfit to wear to my shower. Something pink and brown and not a tent. I even saved a gift certificate from my mother-in-law to Pea in the Pod for something extra special. I just want to look stylish and cute in my state.

WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE when you look like a walrus!!! Since when have maternity clothes been too small for me! It was pure torture yesterday at the mall. Nothing fits me! If I get a large, my boobs don’t fill up the top. If I get a medium my stomach is stretching the belly area to maximum capacity. I am so front heavy, I look like I’ll fall over if a breeze blows by.

Plus, I think yesterday was fashion model shopping day. Everywhere I looked were skinny bits of beautiful women. Everyone looked so pretty except me. I am chubby everywhere. My chin, my shoulders, my elbows, my knees. Every part of me is chubby! I bet even my teeth are chubby. There is nothing quite like the beating you give yourself in the reflection of a dressing room mirror. I don’t know if it’s the light or that the whole point is to be critical, but I am horrid to myself. I can see nothing good when I look at myself trying on clothes. This experience is not for the light hearted. I was practically in tears.

I ended up buying a super expensive Diane VonFurstenberg blouse and a dumpy looking brown skirt. The skirt really made me mad because I already have two brown dumpy looking skirts! But they wouldn’t go with my new super expensive blouse because one is a wrap skirt and gaps all over the place and the other has pin stripes. The gapping is just vanity because I don’t want to show my chubby legs. But the pin stripes really don’t go. The DianeVonWhatshername blouse has a pattern that is dainty and complicated and it really really really doesn’t match with pin stripes. Unless of course you weigh 89 pounds and you are a model. Then it would go. Anything goes then.

Acquiring yet another brown skirt reminded me that I do not have any brown shoes. Well, I do. But they are my old $20 Target clogs from two years ago. I really need to update. I’ve been thinking that whenever I wear them with my other dumpy brown skirts. So I walked and walked and walked the mall. And I noticed all the very skinny fashionable women. Everybody who shops at my mall is beautiful. I think if I have to go on another shopping excursion anytime soon I am going to drive out to Hemet and shop where everyone is regular sized.

I popped into fifty-some shoe stores and found plenty of cute brown wedge heels that would go perfectly with my new outfit and not send my feet into swelling purgatory. But guess what? NOBODY HAS MY SIZE!!!! Nobody even has anything close to my size! I think all holiday shoppers over the weekend have bought everything size eight and under. I wear a six. But with recent events, I’m wearing sevens. It didn’t matter. Nobody had either. And there’s no way I’m ordering anything online because I really am not sure what size my feet are. Nothing is what it appears to be any more. I am living in the twilight zone of the eighth month of pregnancy. Plus my shower is THIS Saturday. There is no time for uncertainty.

When I got home, shoeless, I was crying. Which is sort of a good thing because Toby felt bad for me and didn’t give me a lecture about spending too much on a designer blouse. He agreed that the skirt was dumpy and even told me to take it back and buy another one if I can find one. But we both know that isn’t worth it. I’ll live with the dumpy skirt. And I’ll live with the out-of-style clogs. Toby says that everyone is going to be looking at my face or my tummy and they won’t even notice my skirt or my shoes anyway.

He’s probably right. Besides attitude is everything right? Here’s to putting on a smile and grinning and wearing it!