Building Mansions

Well, I can say it's been awhile since I last blogged or posted here. Life sure can get pretty crazy.
Since I last wrote I have made it more than six months into my fifth pregnancy. Oh the shock and awe that numbed me for a few weeks. I've clearly moved past that and am happily nesting. I've been making jewelry like a woman posessed. I think it's some kind of self preservation mode that has kicked in. I know full well what happens when a new baby arrives. It's like a bomb that goes off an decimates ones life for a while. A most wonderful, sweet, exhausting bomb. You never know how the baby who is being abdicated from the throne will handle it either.
I have the joy of being pregnant at the same time as my baby sister. She's due 4 weeks ahead of me. It's funny how different we are, body wise. I look like I am about to deliver any moment and she looks like 5 months along, not 7.
People are shocked by my massive abdomen which swells to mammoth proportions, frightening even me. I have learned to say to the unwelcome comments, "Well, I know I'm big. It's just that I am in the process of building a mansion. Every time I have a baby the mansion gets bigger for the next one. " That seems to shut them up for some reason.
I always get asked if this is the last one. Please let it be the last one. Love them all but the old gray mare just ain't what she used to be and she's only 35. I'm thinking I'll need a mommy makeover. If you haven't heard the term before that's happy speak for tummy tuck and boob lift. No one, I say NO ONE, should have to tuck their stomach into their pants and fish the girls out of their armpits. Sorry if I've scared those of you yet to have kids. I look pretty good after a year goes by but it takes some smoke and mirrors. If you don't have children yet and are planning to expand your family you must invest in smoke and mirrors and a gym membership.
The gym membership serves more than one purpose. Mentally you feel like there is hope for your body that was taken over by an alien. Physically you feel better and look better if you actually go to the gym you paid to use. Emotionally, you get a break from your kids for an hour or two an pray that they childcare worker in the gym does not need to come get you to change a diaper or nurse the baby who know you are having "me" time. I might also add it's the only time you can use an ipod to dull the bionic sense of hearing you are blessed with in the delivery room. I like to listen to "Bringing Sexy Back." It gives me a sense of purpose and hope. I might have five kids but I don't want to look like I have five kids when I escape the house alone. I hate when you can just tell someone has a slew of kids and they are all by themselves. You know what I mean. I am off to attempt to read past the first chapter of Pillars of the Earth. I've been reading it for five weeks now, enough said. I might add that I am quite literate and have taught high school students. I didn't have kids then.