---

I've decided to go into a different direction with my journal.

Some of you may be OK with it. Some of you may shriek and flee in horror. Most of you probably won't even notice.

But I can't keep doing what I'm doing the way I'm doing it. It's driving me crazy.

The way I've operated for the past three years is like this: I absolutely couldn't sit down to write an entry without having a big ole topic to write about.

• Today I'm going to write about the cows.
• Today I'm going to write about teaching The Scarlet Letter.
• Today (and every June 26) I'm going to write about how much my husband rocks.

And I more or less make myself stick to that topic. It's like I'm writing a newspaper column or something. I don't want to bore my readers! I want to treat them to something special! I must make this entry as perfect as possible!

Well. I'm tired of it. It's stressing me out. I need to be a little more relaxed over here. I value a finely crafted essay as much as the next person, but I'm not getting paid to write in my journal. Sometimes I like writing one-topic entries. But sometimes I just want to write about whatever is going on in my life.

My dog.

My pregnancy.

My job.

My husband.

Diff'rent Strokes.

So instead of arriving here to find a one-subject essay kind of thing, you're going to get something more random.

Those of you that are thinking, "What? You've been stressing over these entries? You say you've been crafting them? Well, really, you shouldn't try so hard then because...well, um, I guess you did always have nice dialogue."...well, then, it's good news for you. Because your life won't change a bit.

Do you remember the girl who guest-starred on Diff'rent Strokes, the girl in a wheelchair with glasses and little stubby legs? I believe her character's name was Kathy? And she and Arnold had some sort of tomfoolery going on? Well, one of her episodes is on right now, and...

Wait a minute. Wait just one minute. Willis just made a Billy Carter joke.

...I just wonder what she's doing today. OH MY GOD. Wait a minute. Yes, you wait.

I think my sixth grade teacher, Sister Alcuin, was related to her. I remember that when the episode aired originally, she was all proud of her. OH MY GOD. How could I have forgotten that?

Let me just tell you something about Sister Alcuin. I was doing poorly in math...as I did in all the years leading up to and following sixth grade...and my mom went in to talk to her about my current struggle. After some small talk, Sister said to my mom, "Well, has she had her period yet?" My mom said no, I hadn't. "Oh," Sister said in a most reassuring tone. "After she has her period, she'll do much better."

I do, I do, I do wish I could say I was lying, but sadly...I'm not.

According to my pregnancy calendar, I'm 20 weeks into my pregnancy and I have 20 weeks to go. Today was my big ultrasound appointment where we could spent lots of time watching our baby flap around on the screen while the technician rubbed a gooey wand over my stomach and pointed out its spine, its internal organs, and its private parts. To commemorate the occasion, we brought along my mom (who has had seven kids but has never seen an ultrasound) and my niece Maureen (who is just a cool cat and has been very enthusiastic about everything since we began trying to get pregnant).

My mom only made one comment about how she couldn't believe we were going to find out the baby's sex, then she kept it to herself.

Kelli told me yesterday that if you want to feel the baby move, you should have some sort of sugary product before you lie down, so on the way to the appointment this morning I had a big ole cup of orange juice. It worked, because the baby, it was SPINNING and FLAPPING and CLAPPING and KICKING...so much so that the technician had a hard time following it around.

Freakily enough, I couldn't feel any of this. And every time I laughed, it launched the baby off in a different direction and the technician had to find it again and everyone in the room would kind of glare at me. But I couldn't help it! Because my baby, it looked like a baby! It was so cute and I wanted it to come out and play with me, all five inches and 13 ounces of it!

But it didn't, so that was all good too. I don't think it's done cooking yet.

Oh yeah, did you want to know what it is? It's a she! A girl! A little bundle of estrogen for Andy to add to his collection. I'm very happy. I would have been happy with a boy, too, but I was hoping for a girl to watch Lifetime movies with.

The good thing about writing this type of entry is that I can just stop writing when my nephew Danny pops over with his Issue of the Week. No pithy ending. No final thought. Just naked space.

aaaaaaaaaahh.