Shopped, Dropped

Just for the record, a lingering hacking cough is bad enough normally, but with all your internal organs smushed up into your rib cage? Not good. And I say this as someone who actually once broke two ribs from hacking my way through whooping cough. That was bad, but this is worse. It's not even that I've been terribly ill - no fever, nothing too painful - but I'm full of some kind of mediocre virus that won't go away.

Still, staying home in fuzzy pajamas has given me hours to do all of my holiday shopping on the internet. I'm sure I'll still have a few odds and ends left to scrounge at the last minute, but I really did almost all of it from the keyboard. But it still took hours, and I was still exhausted when I was done.

I'll admit that I was also shopping for me - not just self-indulgently, but for the practical needs of a woman who has for the most part not thought about what she might need when she gives birth to an actual baby in a few months. You know, not-counting-chickens-before-they're- full-term, etc. - which is fine, and basically necessary for self-preservation. But at some point an actual baby might show up and then it could possibly be a good idea to have a diaper or two lying around.

I didn't really buy much, but I have a lot of bookmarked sites and a folder full of information. I can't believe how much has changed since my daughter was born. I feel like some relic from the distant past, way back before babies were their own niche market and everything they need is handmade in the Sweden.

ETA: I never even managed to publish this post back when I wrote it - my cough just got worse and worse and I thought I might actually have pneumonia, but it turns out that my airways are just compromised by being so squished up into my chest. Then the coughing makes it worse and now I am stuck in some vicious cycle of lousy breathing problems. No pneumonia, just steroids and inhalers and warm mist humidifiers. I'm basically fine, the little guy is fine, but my ribs and stretched-thin stomach muscles ache like they've been through boot-camp. Blah!