I'm feeling a little sorry for myself of late. What, with the digestive system that is all but ceased to work and the WIDE LOAD sign that is permanently adhered to my backside. Not to mention the sheer spectacle I must be getting out of bed in the middle of the night (which is something that happens quite often). The only thing I can compare it to is a morbidly obese woman trying to squeeze herself into an extra small wetsuit. Every time I find myself maneuvering from my side, surrounded by pillows, to my hands and knees, backing off of the bed, I hear Claree Belcher from Steel Magnolias in my head saying, "It looks like two pigs, fightin' under a blanket." It's a real confidence booster.
I was humbled today by an unsettling sight at my perinatalogist appointment. I was sitting in the waiting room, surrounded by high risk pregnant women, playing with my phone when I heard chains rattling and the door to the examination area open. Out waddled a very-pregnant, cute woman in her late twenties. She looked like someone I might have lunch with except for one minor detail. She was wearing a blue jumpsuit with numbers on the back and had chains around her waist that were attached to handcuffs as well as chains bound around her ankles. Oh, and she had a uniformed, armed police officer guiding her by the arm. So, for the next two weeks, when I get the urge to complain about my stagnant digestive system or my soar lower back, I will think of Alice (that's the name I've given her). She has to eat prison food and walk with chains. She doesn't have the luxury of sending her husband out at 9:45pm to get her a bag of Cadbury chocolate mini eggs and she has to maneuver her ample arse out of a cot to pee on a stainless steel toilet in the middle of the night (I realize this may not be entirely accurate but humor me. I get all of my prison info from Oz). Somehow seeing Alice with my own two eyes made the whole situation clear to me. Sure, I know about those Vietnamese women who give birth standing up in a rice field and go right back to working. We ALL know about those women but they don't resonate with us because we can't see them. Alice, she resonated. She made a lasting impression. I guess I've got it pretty damn good.