Pregnancy update: No gestational diabetes woohoo! Continue with the pasta/bread fest that has been me for the past 7 months. The belly is beginning to be unignorable, but I don't know about belly photos. I suspect Thanksgiving and Christmas will yield plenty of those. Other bodily updates include way more heartburn than normal and a return of having to pee every 2 hours.

We heard back from the insurance company and have decided to take Shannon's grandma's car. The insurance will be a couple hundred more so we figured why not. It will help especially if we decide to sell the Civic to buy a station wagon. I've not given up on the dream of having a car with a dog-only area. But then again I buy powerball tickets, so obviously I have an indefatigable sense of hope about these things.

I am getting more motivated to finish projects/clean things, like Melinda so cleverly surmised with the nesting comment on a previous post. November will hopefully be the month of a pair of socks for myself, the pair for my mother that has taken a whole year longer than I hoped, more baby knits and hopefully a sweater for myself as well. I'm still mulling over the sweater for myself, but I think it will be a cream color wool cardigan with cables and buttons. It'll be roomy but not made for the pregnant belly. I think it will have a shawl color but only if I can figure out how to do it. As it is, I think I will swatch for this sweater breaking with my wing-it tradition.

We are having our first shower tomorrow with Shannon's vet school friends. I am a bit nervous, just because of all the attention. It's at our house because the host's apartment is even smaller than ours. We are going to clean tonight and make some snacks tomorrow despite Molly (the host's) admonishments. She's bringing the decorations and the cake though, a rich concoction of chocolate, so we aren't bucking tradition too much.

The next shower will be with at my mother's in two short weeks because time is flying by at an insane pace. I am still kind of freaked out by everything we are packing into those four days of Thanksgiving: all the driving with the dogs, the two family dinners, the shower, etc. For my mother's shower, I'm just going to try to be myself and not get caught up in a frenzy of anxiety.

I have still been bowling at my work league. There's a tradition of pregnant team members bowling better than before, but I have just been more erratic. One game I got like a 176, but then just last week I got an 88 so I can't say the wee babe is a total good luck charm. Our team is squarely average in the league this year, not the worst or the best. I am still enjoying it, but more tired than before after the three games and all that social interaction.