I have officially started showing. But I’m not showing enough to look pregnant. I call it the frump stage. And my clothes are “frump suits”. When you look at me, you just don’t know. I appear to be putting on some weight but it’s not all right there where the basketball shape should be. I think my face is getting fatter too. Which I’m very unhappy about. But Toby says I’m cute so I’m trying not to look in the mirror too much.

Some of my old clothes still fit. But a lot of them don’t. Getting dressed every morning has taken on some of the anxiety I used to experience back in high school when I had some kind of body dismorphic disorder. Outfits litter the floor. Every morning you can hear me doing my throaty grunt snarl at the mirror.

When I was out in Hemet, my mom and I decided it was time to go maternity clothes shopping.

What do you do when it’s 102 outside? Go to the desert to the outlets in Cabazon, of course! Yeah! What’s another 18 degrees of burning heat?! Nothing! My mom and I thought that maybe since it was such a squelcher of a day, nobody would be shopping at the outlets that are usually quite crowded. It isn’t an indoor mall and the dry winds can get whipping pretty fast out there by Palm Springs. But no, we were wrong. Everybody was out braving the 120 degree heat.

I felt faint just walking from the car (because of course we didn’t get a close parking spot) to the first air conditioned store. Probably not a good idea when I’m supposed to be keeping my body temperature within 2 degrees of 98.6. When we got back in the car to go home, the steering wheel was so hot I had to use my old too small bra (that I discarded as soon as I purchased a new one that fit) as protection so I wouldn’t burn my hands on the steering wheel. It was that hot!

Thankfully there weren’t any other foolish pregnant women out shopping and I had the Motherhood store all to myself. I hate trying on clothes but I was in rare form and loaded up both arms with outfits in every size. I even tried on the fake belly pillow. What a hoot. As you can see from the pictures I’m quite scary looking. Which is another reason I’m posting pictures of me now even though I think I look like the frumpiest bump ever. Someday, I will look back on these pictures and think, “wow, was I thin”.