Battle of the bulge

When I landed in New York last week, I had a slight bump. If I sucked my stomach in and attempted to tense my muscles, I could pass for un-preg. But Ingeborg has truly taken to American food – in a big way. Not only do I now look unmistakably knocked up, I can actually feel a little dance of anticipatory excitement in my stomach when I’m about to eat something tasty. The kid was practically turning somersaults when I was waiting in the queue for Katz’s deli in the Lower East Side – it told me to order extra pickles. It elbowed me in the spleen while I was having a facial to remind me to buy a carrot muffin on the way home. It also made me eat half of a knish the size of a small planet, from Yonah Schimmel’s Knish bakery on East Houston St. What worries me is how long we are likely to be stranded here because of the volcanic ash over Europe. I could end up with a gigantic, American-sized baby, with big blubbery jowls and an inbuilt sense of entitlement. I’ll have to put us both on a lentil and raw food diet when we finally get home and just hope the kid doesn’t start punching me in the liver as punishment.

Boobs postscript

S complimented my ever more impressive rack the other day. Well, I’m choosing to take it as a compliment. He said they look like the tits of a really good Brazilian transsexual. Hmmm.

Encounter with an authentic Nu Yoik character.

We wander into a Greenwich village vintage store and almost immediately get caught up in the onslaught of the proprietor’s relentless anecdotes. He’s regaling a disinterested employee about his days in Vegas, rubbing shoulders with gambler extraordinaire Kerry Packer or, as this garrulous dickhead prefers to call him, Carey Packard. His stories go nowhere, at high volume. Inevitably we get sucked in. I try on a skirt – it’s a loose wrap type thing with adjustable ties which looks like it might be forgiving of my imminent pregnancy heft. I make the mistake of mentioning this to Mr Crap Anecdote. He lurches towards me. “Ya know how I know you’re pregnant?” Er because I just told you, genius? “It’s all HERE” he says, pointing vigorously at the bridge of my nose. Apparently, it gets broader in pregnant women. And he should know, he has three daughters, all of whom, I imagine, are overjoyed that he's such an expert on the physiological changes during pregnancy. Interestingly, he didn’t explain how he could tell that the bridge of my nose was broader, having never met me before. But I suppose being a pathological bullshit artist means never having to explain yourself. Then, with a theatrical flourish of the hand that makes him look like some kind of Brooklyn Gandalf, he declares, “It’s a boy!” Great. If he’s wrong, he says, I should call him up and he’ll buy me lunch. We both know that I would be more likely to stuff live cockroaches into my ears than to claim my lunch, so he’s pretty safe in making the offer.

Boobs

And still they grow. It’s starting to get comical. I hauled off my t-shirt last night to get into bed and S broke into a spontaneous round of applause. “It’s like you’ve had a really good boob job!” he said, appreciatively. This from the man who puts plastic surgery somewhere between genocide and child trafficking in his list of the world’s evils. This morning, as I took a shower after an attempt at a run, S came into the bathroom on the pretence of handing me a towel, but really motivated, he admitted, by the urge to take another look at my alien knockers. Enjoy them while you can. I rather imagine the effect will be somewhat spoiled when they have a mewling infant dangling from them for twenty hours a day.

Cheese brain

I read fairly recently that a scientist claims to have disproved the phenomenon of pregnancy related amnesia. 'Egg head negs preg head' should have been the headline, but wasn't, unfortunately. This man - it would have to be a man - claims that there is no proof that pregnant women are more likely to leave their keys in the fridge or the dog in the supermarket than anyone else. The subtext being, 'get it together lardy and stop blaming your foetus for your own stupidity'.

I beg to differ. I realise that my sample group (me before pregnancy vs me during pregnancy)is less than ideal. But i can categorically state that I never forgot the word potato in my pre-pregnant state. Nor did i find myself staring vacantly into cubboards, fridges and the like, vainly trying to remember what it was that I needed. I rarely lost the ability to add up. I, who until recently could list all of Angelina Jolie's ludicrously named offspring, in order of stupidity (the names, not the kids) actually blanked on their mother's name for a good minute. My memory has become a treacherous place, riddled with black holes and quicksand that suck away the words I'm looking for. I have to navigate a precarious, circuitous route in order to get where I need to go. Say, for example, I blanked on the name of an actor, for the sake of argument let's say Robin Williams. I can see his stupid gurning face in my mind vividly, mocking me, but the name eludes me. So I rack my brains to remember his film titles. And draw a blank (the panic is setting in). There was that fuck awful thing where he was a lovable android. And that piece of shit set in the afterlife. And that thing with Matt Damon. Matt Damon! Now I'm getting somewhere. So now I have to check Matt Damon's IMBD listing, until I find the film - Good Will Hunting - then scan down the cast list until I find the name - Robin Bastard Williams.

So forgive me for being blunt, science guy, but prenancy-related cheese brain most definitely does exist. So whay don't you go and stick that up your ...um... whatchamacallit... you know, thingy.