I have now been truly stung by an insect. For real. By a hornet. On the left index finger. In the deodorant aisle.

It was not pleasant. I was up on a ladder putting overstock on our deodorant riser when I felt something land on the back of my head. There have been those Japanese ladybugs all over lately, so I figured it was one of those, and reached back to brush it off. And got a very nasty surprise. I was so startled by the realization that I had actually, at the age of 26, been stung by an insect, that I just stood there on the ladder going "Ow!" while the perpetrator flew off.

My finger turned red and swelled up a little, but about an hour later it was pretty much back to normal. And J from Housewares ran over the evil hornet with a pallet jack a while later and then called me over to identify the body. So it got its just desserts in the end.

So, I'm in week 13 now. And I've been less sleepy lately -- I only take naps every-other-day now, it seems ;-) Everyone in my universe knows the good news now, and I must admit that I'm already getting sick of being greeted with things like, "How's the little mommy today?" Hoping that will get old to other people after a while too.

I'm hating sweet foods less, although milk chocolate still doesn't taste right. But I like dark chocolate better anyway, so I'm sticking with that. And only once in a great while, as I try to snack on things like fresh fruits and veggies instead. Or cottage cheese, I'm a big fan of that lately.

I'm still not really showing, and I've only gained two pounds (sometimes one; that one pound seems to come and go). But I can feel a little place on my lower abdomen where it kind of sticks out now and used to just go in a straight (well, straight rounded) line. So maybe baby is finally moving up out of my pelvis and I'll have a few months' respite from all this peeing, lol!

We have now announced the baby news to the world, or at least to our families and most of our friends, so now I'm going back and publishing all those posts about being preggers that I've been writing over the last two months. So if you click on the little "preggers" label link at the bottom of this post, it'll take you to a page with all my posts about Gumdrop ;-)

I am ready for spring. I realized this Saturday night when I was baking a carrot cake for the Papoose's first birthday party and all I wanted to listen to was the You've Got Mail soundtrack. That's almost always a sure sign I want springtime to spring. Besides, nearly all our snow has melted, and it's supposed to be 57 later this week, so I think my hopes are about to be fulfilled :-D

Also, I'm in a much more chipper mood lately. I'd been kind of draggy and blase for the last few weeks, but I seem to be regaining my energy a bit. Plus, I watched the Richard Burton version of Hamlet recently and now I'm reading a book about the production, and that has cheered me up immensely :-)

So I'm approximately at the end of week 11 now -- one more week to go before my first trimester is over and we can tell people I'm preggers! Or so we think, anyway -- I have an appointment with my nurse/midwife on Tuesday that should let us know better just how far along I am. Might even be able to hear Gumdrop's heartbeat that day!

Anyway, haven't blogged about this topic for a couple weeks because nothing terribly interesting is going on. The icky taste in my mouth has lessened, although it tends to crop up toward the end of my day, usually when I'm getting hungry for supper. Still no morning sickness :-D A little constipation now and then, alas, but I seem to mostly be able to control that by eating lots of fiber-rich foods and also taking one chewable 2-gram fiber tablet every day. Oh boy, isn't this just so exciting? Almost as good as watching paint dry.

I love the internet! Guess what I found on YouTube: Bobby Darin performances! Here're some of the best ones I've found so far:

"Mack the Knife" -- It's 1959, this song has hit #1, and Bobby is 23 and cute as a baby puppy. When he does the bit about "MacHeath spends just like a sailor" I can't help but giggle like a giddy schoolgirl. Also, he's either an amazing lip-syncher already, or he's singing it live. I think it's live, because it's not the official recording version -- he throws in different little asides.

"Can't Take My Eyes Off You" -- Bobby's in his late 30's and on top of his game.

"Dream Lover" -- Also 1959. He's trying to be serious and earnest, but he keeps cracking up and smirking :-D

"Got My Mojo Workin'" -- Bobby plays both the harmonica and the vibraphone on this one! I'd never heard him sing this song, it's not on any of the cds or LPs I have, so that makes me dig it even more :-)

"Beyond the Sea" -- The joke about Tommy Sands is silly, but him slapping his own wrist is just funny. And then he segues off into bits of other random songs, which gets very fun. Just let it keep on playing, because he ends up imitating a trombone, telling odd jokes, and you get to see why he really was a consummate live entertainer.

The parking lot at work has been plowed and plowed and plowed some more, so often that we now have these giant grey mounds of snow that look like the slag heaps of Mordor. And it struck me that if you live in an urban area and that's the only kind of snow you see most of the time, then no wonder you'd hate snow. Because slag heaps are ugly and horrid and you can't even have fun climbing on them because they're so dirty.

But I get to drive home through mile after mile of countryside, with pristine snow-covered fields and forests on either side of the road. And when the sun is rising like it was this morning, filling the eastern sky with flame-tongues of orange and pink and the western sky with frosted rainbow layers, and the snow reflects the sunlight just enough to turn into a broad expanse of fairy dust, how can I not love snow?

And I realized that it's things like the sight of a snow-dusted forest that make me categorically refuse to believe in evolution. I can't believe that something that wondrous and beautiful could just happen by chance any more than I can believe that the Mona Lisa was created by someone dumping a bucket of paint over a canvas or that the "Rhapsody in Blue" was written by a cat running across a piano keyboard. God created nature as surely as DaVinci and Gershwin created their works of art.

Two things that make me laugh lately:

"Couch Potato" -- Weird Al's version of Eminem's song "Lose Yourself" (which happens to be my favorite Eminem song).

"A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope: Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III" -- by the sixth paragraph, I'm giggling every time I read it.