Quack, quack.

I'm standing in line at the post office, waiting to buy stamps because the self-service stamp machine never has anything in it. I think everyone is staring at me. I try to seem sunny and upbeat and famous, but really I feel self-conscious. Everyone can see that I am pregnant. And everyone is just dying for me to do something "pregnant-y" - like on a sitcom, where suddenly I cannot stop from eating a giant ice cream cone with a pickle on top, or my water breaking while I stand in line. But I am just buying stamps. I am not doing anything "pregnant-y." Unless you count the way I siddle up to the counter, hips swinging, legs apart, like a Western High Nooner getting ready for a shoot-out.

I know that I am beginning to waddle, and remembering how I used to quack at my step-mother when she was pregnant with my brother, it seems like just desserts if someone quacks when I waddle by.

I'm glad that I don't have a white feather coat, or orange sneakers. Because then I really would be mistaken for a duck.

In 4th grade I wrote a short-story about waking up and discovering I had turned into a duck (very Kafka-esque), and in that story I had to waddle all the way to school with webbed feet. I don't have webbed feet, but I have waddling down pat. Dave says I look cute waddling around, but Dave thinks I look cute when I brush my teeth, too, so perhaps he isn't the best judge.

Then I come into the law school clinic on Monday, and the administrative assistant who is also pregnant and due around the same time tells me that she is suddenly so famished that she would eat a whole lasagna for breakfast.

I am hungry, but I wouldn't eat a pan of lasagna for breakfast. Not even for lunch. But I do like bready things, and I will eat any bread item if so presented, including cookie crumbles or stale crackers... and ducks like bready things, especially crumbled, stale items... ergo, I am a duck. Quack, quack.