The Committee has Spoken

Yesterday I was told by a dear friend that "pregnant Laurel is funny." And I don't think she meant funny like"You should really look into being a stand up comic," but rather funny like "You might consider counseling." (These kind of conversations can only happen with people who truly, deeply love you and have a good sense of humor. She has both.) As she pointed out, apparently I have been using the word "hate" a lot. As in "I hate Halloween...I hate costume planning...I hate planning birthday parties...I hate scrapbooking...I hate soccor. You get the idea. Basically, right now I hate anything that requires a lot of extra effort on my part.

Evidently that includes calling people back because the same friend has insisted that I change my outgoing message. She says my recently recorded message sounds grouchy, and it isn't very inviting when I say, "Leave a message and we'll do our best to call you back." Look. I was just trying to be honest.

I ran that conversation past a second dear friend (I send all important information out to "the committee" you know.) She immediately laughed and said, "Well, you do have more violent tendencies."

"Violent tendencies?!"

"Well, violent is the wrong word. It's just that you don't seem to have an edit mechanism. Whatever you're feeling just comes out of your mouth."

Perhaps she is talking about my reaction at the Fall Festival when I may have said that, "I wanted to kill an old man with a plastic fork." But, in my defense, he was very rude. Or she may be referring to the incident when I purportedly said that someone was "the stupidest man I've ever met." Or maybe--and I am not proud of this--it was when I said that I may, "have to beat the crap out of my son." Again. Only honesty, folks. I defy any parent to deny that the thought hasn't at least flicked across their consciousness at one point.

Admittedly I struggle with a poorly functioning edit button on most days. And on top of that do you realize that pregnancy is causing my feet to sweat, among other sundry and unusual symptoms that I don't talk about? So, okay. People seem a lot more irritating right now. I concede that the committee may have a point. Maybe I do need to reign in "pregnant Laurel" just a bit, sweaty feet and all.

But I really am hating Halloween right now. It just seems like a lot of work. Don't tell my kids I said that, though. I think I have them fooled. (And just for the record, I'm not beating the crap out of anybody. Just so we are all clear on that.)