Bitch, bitch, whine.

I went to get my third trimester lab stuff done today.

This time I got better advice about how to prepare for the glucose tolerance test so it wouldn't make me violently nauseated. My plan was to drop Alex off at school and then go to a diner to protein-load. Unfortunately, after I parked outside the diner at 9am and fed the meter, I discovered that it didn't open until 9:30. No problem, there was another diner a block and a half away. I struggled through the bitterly cold wind only to find the lights off and a "family emergency" sign on the door. Okay.

I went to the hospital. Fortunately, the cafeteria was still serving breakfast. I loaded up on two hard-boiled eggs, two sausage links, and two strips of bacon (no carbs allowed) and went down to the lab. I waited ten minutes to check in and another half-hour to be seen. They drew some blood to type and cross for my Rhogam shot and made me drink a hideous syrupy orange drink with 50g of glucose in it. Yum.

I settled in for the hour-long wait. Another woman who arrived shortly after me for the same test decided to while away the interval with a long stream-of-consciousness cell phone conversation. At the other end of the room, some kind of Christian news broadcast informed me that 45% of people surveyed thought the US had become too open to different ideas and lifestyles. It was a long hour.

At the end of the hour, they drew more blood and told me that the blood bank needed another half-hour to prepare my Rhogam shot. The sugar crash hit, and I fell asleep sitting upright in the waiting room. They woke me at noon to walk me down to the blood bank, and then, Rhogam dose in hand, on to the "Center for Advanced Fetal Care," where ten people were already crammed into a tiny waiting room the size of a large elevator. Including a noisy preverbal toddler and a family playing "Bible Trivia" from a book. Poorly. ("On what island did Saint John write the book of Revelation? ...I'll give you a clue, it starts with P." "Pennsylvania?")

A nurse eventually led me back to an exam room and asked me to bend over the table and expose what she euphemistically referred to as my "hip." "They brought me a big needle, and I got a smaller one," she said, "but this is still going to hurt." And it did, a lot, as she punctured my skin. Then: "Okay, this is the part that hurts." She started to depress the plunger, and I was unable to stifle a sharp Wow. "Yeah, they changed the formulation, and most people seem to think this one hurts more."

I had been at the hospital for more than three hours. I made my way back to my car and drove over to Michael's office. I pulled into the parking lot, gathered my things, and realized that I had left my library book at the hospital. I fervently wished that I could just go home. The blood sugar challenge was interacting predictably with pregnancy hormones, making me exhausted and overwhelmed. But I had an important meeting with my boss at 3, so I had to go to work. I drove back to the hospital, went back to the Center for Advanced Fetal Care, found my book in the exam room, drove back to Michael's office, and walked from there to the light rail platform. It was bitterly cold, and I was underdressed. I cried a little while I waited for my train.

Took the train to my stop, hit my work hospital (it's a different one) for some lunch - by now it was 2pm - and came to my office. Only to discover that Lydia had left a message on my machine yesterday, which for some reason I hadn't gotten then. Canceling the meeting, of course. I could've gone straight home from the hospital.

My "hip" hurts.

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HOLY FUCK, IT'S SNOWING IN BALTIMORE.

I am wearing a canvas field jacket over a thin cotton maternity shirt. The jacket can't be buttoned at the bottom. I have a six-block walk to the light rail when I leave work, followed by a three-block walk from the light rail stop to my house.

Updated to add: Okay, flurries have stopped, but still. That is ridiculous.

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Michael came to pick me up from work, yay. The car thermometer said 39 degrees. Before I went to get Alex from nursery school, Michael got my long wool coat and scarf from the attic, and I brought Alex's winter coat with me to school as well. It really was much, much colder today than I expected it to be.

I used some of my cancelled-meeting time to book the mini vacation we've been planning. We're going to Williamsburg VA, a.k.a. Colonial Williamsburg, for Thanksgiving. Michael and I have never been there before. We recognize that we're not going to see all that much of it with a three-year-old, but I think it will be fun regardless.

For those who are unfamiliar, Colonial Williamsburg is a massive recreation of the town as it was in the 18th century, with hundreds of houses, stores, and other buildings rebuilt on their original foundations, furnished appropriately, and populated by costumed historical interpreters. You can watch blacksmiths and weavers at work, visit a plantation and talk to both the slaves and the "family," go into a coffeehouse or tavern and be swept into a debate about whether the Colonies should revolt. The farms have 18th century breeds of livestock and grow 18th century crops.

I think the historical aspects of it (the Revolutionary War debates, the opportunity to speak to Thomas Jefferson) will be utterly uninteresting to Alex, which means that Michael and I will probably miss out on those aspects as well. But I know she'll enjoy visiting the farms and watching the artisans work, and we will too. And I know it will be lovely just to have several days to relax together as a family.

I've reserved us a room - well, sort of a cross between a room and a suite - at the Springhill Suites Hotel. It has an indoor pool and a hot tub, which I think all three of us will enjoy, and serves a free hot breakfast every day. We'll have Thanksgiving dinner at the Williamsburg Hospitality House, and we're planning to go to a seafood feast on Friday night. (Key phrases: "featuring sushi of the moment" and "children 5 and under are free." Little do they know what they're getting into.) Saturday night we may try a tavern in the historical area featuring period singing and games.

We have a whole series of contingency plans, depending on the weather. If it's cold and rainy we may not even wind up touring the historical area, but there are plenty of other attractions locally: the Mariner's Museum, for example, and the Virginia Living Museum, which seems to be a sort of a Biodome. If the weather is great, we may try to find an ocean beach so we can take a walk and look for shells. Alex has never seen the ocean, not for real. (She's seen the harbor, obviously.) If we love the historical area, we may spend two days there and not see any other attractions.

I think it will be wonderful.