Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics

Patience is a virtue I have never owned. Why take a deep breath and count to ten when you could just burst a blood vessel and scream?

I'm afraid it's an absolute myth that pregnant women exist in a calming pink aura, spreading smiles and love to the world in anticipation of maternal perfection. If the pink aura exists, it's because she's eaten a truck-load of hash-brownies to pry her mind out of the aching, swollen, tension-filled mass of pastey waste she's still trying to mold some kind of body from. 

'Glowing'. There's another stretchy ball-sac of a lie. Pregnant women don't glow. They've merely spent a month's wages on Estee-Lauder and Chanel make-up rather than the Superdrug's own that would usually fill their blue plastic basket. They get up 45 minutes earlier, praying that by the time they actually have to leave the house, they can be reasonably assumed as human instead of walrus. 

Women 'with child' often then spend the rest of the day trying to act normal - showing the world that it's possible to be pregnant and still participate in society in some kind of productive way. I was doing so well. I only had to keep it up for four more days. Four days and then I was on perma-leave of my job and my senses. Feet up, tea in hand, Jeremy Kyle on the TV. The universe, however had other ideas. Fate's laughing - cackling at me this morning after a series of well-constructed mishaps culminated in a cataclysmic melt-down in the face of a cyclist who had made the unfortunate mistake of verbalizing her displeasure at nearly dying under the wheels of my Peugeot. 

The morning, which can usually be relied upon to start with the annoying and incessant shrill of an alarm clock, actually started with a sharp and painful stab to the left side of my right foot. Shifting and wriggling my way into a sitting position under the weight of the two-tonne baby I'm carrying, I lifted the duvet and raised the offending limb, squinting and out of breath, trying to get a better look. Getting a look at your toes in the ninth month of pregnancy is no ordinary task under normal circumstances - on a very squishy bed, it's even harder. Finally, after balancing carefully so as to not land myself on the floor while trying to elevate my legs, I caught sight of the problem. A large shard of glass* had worked it's way into the side of my foot, leaving a steady flow of blood trailing down my skin. Now. If you thought seeing your toes was difficult enough while pregnant - wait until you have to try and reach them with some tissue. 

*The large shard of glass was, I assume, from a pint glass that had literally leapt out of my hands the day before - spewing water and shattering itself over an astonishingly wide portion of my room. 

After this gentle wake-up call, I hobbled to the bathroom, and tried to re-establish some order to the morning by brushing my teeth and putting the shower on. First, the toothpaste ran out, leaving me doing that squeezy, rolly thing with my fingers trying to choke the tube of the last remaining drop. It was all going well until I over-enthusiastically squeezed at the last second and ripped my thumb nail right down at the join. 

Through expletives, I climbed into the bath, heading towards the beautiful, near-scolding water that promised to wash away the woes of the last fifteen minutes. So very nearly there, I stood on a wayward bath-toy of Izzy's. Not one of the nice, rubber squeezy toys you might expect of a toddler - but a hard plastic, replica cow. 

Now thoroughly fed up, I threw my head underneath the water and expected to feel at least a little better immediately. But the only thing I felt was freezing cold. The beautiful thing about DIY project showers, is that they're extremely unpredictable. This shower in particular, usually runs at a very acceptable standard - temperature, water-pressure, etc... all fine. But every now and again - and yes, this morning turned out to be one such occasion, it periodically runs in temperature from near-arctic to volcanic ash. This leaves me with an approximate window of 30 seconds during which the water is okay to put human skin under without the risk of frost-bite or third-degree burns. The result, which I'm sure would have been hilarious had anyone else seen it, was some kind of bizarre pregnant-lady shower hokey-cokey - stuck on the line 'You put your whole self in, your whole self out.' 

Other incidents before even leaving the house included burning my ear with my hair-straighteners, dropping an earring under the bed (which was NOT easy to retrieve in my current physical state), and using foot-cream instead of moisturizer on my face. 

It's imperative for the Oxfordshire public at large, that I finish work soon. With my current zero-tolerance policy, driving is not sensible. In fact, the 40 minute commute to work involves several hundred angry outbursts - and the usual uneasy feeling I get at the prospect of confrontation (though I'll still give it a go if I need to) is now replaced with a tidal wave of hormonal rage wherein it seems I'm actually willing people to start something. While pregnant with my first child, I got into a fight with a lorry driver over which one of us should be allowed to go first when merging into a single lane on the dual carriage-way. During that fun five minutes, I cared not that I had put my Renault Scenic up against a haulage truck. All I saw was the red-haze of self-righteousness and the possible injustice at having him pull in front. 

This morning, I think I made a cyclist cry. This offense is committed so often by cyclists that a friend and I had a rant about it not four days ago. We work in a part of Oxford littered with speed-bumps - the kind where the road actually narrows so you have no choice but to go over them with all four wheels. The good people of Oxfordshire County Council, have very thoughtfully accommodated for cyclists by creating bicycle lanes around the speed-bumps - though very few cyclists actually use them - choosing instead to piss drivers off by blocking the entire lane while they negotiate the bumps. As explained, I was in no kind of mood this morning to think rationally and so, in my fit of rage, I revved my car up onto the bump with the offending cyclist, forcing her to do a pretty nifty and swift maneuver to the side and nearly knocking her off on to the road. Unfortunately for her, my window was wound down this morning:

Cyclist: F**king twat!

Me: (screeching car to a halt and looking back at her) Excuse me?

Cyclist: You need to watch where you're going!

Me: Do I? See I was under the impression this was a ROAD. I was also under the impression that the path over there - you see the one around the speed bump (pointing emphatically by this point) was the cycle path. It's difficult to tell, isn't it? What with the BIG WHITE BIKE PAINTED ON IT. (At this point, cyclist's lip trembles and she starts to ride away). And where's your f**king helmet? (yelling after her like a proper crazy-lady) Or are there simply no brains to protect?!

In retrospect, this seems a little harsh and I probably should have just let her go through the speed-bump and taken the high road. Alas, rationality and sense are not my strong points at the moment. 

I had hoped that Tuesday might start to get a little better after that. But since being at work, I've spilt coffee down my top, cracked my knee on the underside of my desk and some little wanker from Dictionaries took the last chocolate croissant from the espresso bar. 

So yeah. Today's an unmitigated bastard so far. Roll on Wednesday.