524: falling behind

It's strange how small weeks can whip by in such frantic succession. I will give snippets:

- The semester has ended, which is an enormous relief, though, because of sicknesses and other disruptions, I may have to take an incomplete in one class with the goal of wrapping that up before my maternity leave is over. Most importantly, I got grades in--early--and finished thesis seminar.

- Just after the semester ended, my friend Emily hosted a dinner to celebrate the release of my chapbook The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake. We went to the Craftsman; I loved the Brussels sprouts. The table was filled with a dozen of us, and Emily had a cake made in the image of the cover. It's pretty remarkable. (Mmm, carrot.)

- Christmas was spent in Wisconsin; indeed, we braved the five-hour trek with my 38-week pregnancy progress, which turned out to be fine, our hospital bag strapped into the trunk, our car seat beside it. It was actually the visit that became the challenge--as Christmas Eve turned to Christmas, I contracted the stomach virus that had encumbered a nephew and a mama-in-law, though this was a bit more fierce for me, thirty-five bouts of illness in one day with three loads of laundry cycling, reducing me to a desperate child. I'm close to better now, but it certainly crushed me more than I expected, eclipsing the morning sickness for a few days.

- We've had several winter storms, one a full-on blizzard, in the past few weeks. The snow is up to our windows. The first was twenty inches, and Christmas Eve, while I was enjoying a few final moments of health, our town was getting covered in seven more inches (and several snows in between).

- I'm due in a week, essentially. For the gory details: I'm mildly cramping, and my mucus plug has begun to slip as of this afternoon. This means exactly what I could have told you without the earlier signs: labor could begin in a matter of hours or a matter of weeks. Very helpful, these early signs of labor, yes? My skin covers such a taut uterus; I don't feel as if there is any where else for the minnow to go. But I do hope she'll hold out until January, which is so very close. While my friend Michelle actually had a Christmas baby (10 lbs, 10 oz., named Crosby James McWoolery), I'd like more space from the raucous holiday.

I deeply look forward to the other side of this pregnancy. I've loved feeling her so close to me, those internal kicks and nudges, the reason why I gave her this little nickname, but I'm most certainly ready to meet her and begin this new journey.

I also deeply miss being outdoors. I know it is too cold for an infant to be outdoors for long, but I yearn for those deep tromps in the woods Ryan and I take with the dogs. I haven't been mobile in a great long while. Making it from class to class was enough draining effort, and at the shallow end of this virus, my snippets of energy are spent nesting as best I can.