Four Navel Oranges

Stupidest produce comparison ever. There really isn't a single fruit or vegetable the right size for 31 weeks? You have to resort to comparing Barack to a portion of a bushel?

Moving on.... We met with our rabbi this morning so that we could move forward with pre-planning the bris. Quick background for people who aren't Jewish and have never seen an episode of Seinfeld. A "bris" is the Jewish ceremony for circumcising a newborn boy. It involves a bunch of prayers, the circumcision, bestowing the name on the infant, and then a lot of food. Because after seeing an infant's foreskin cut off, you want to follow it up with a bagel and lox sandwich. A "mohel" is the guy who actually does the cutting. Of the foreskin, not the bagels.

I thought that the meeting would put me more at ease about it, and I guess regarding some things (eg, planning the ceremony) it did. But now I'm even more stressed about finding a mohel. Our current top pick mohel made the rabbi cringe a little, and we got the strong feeling that they don't get along. The rabbi said that she would try to work with whomever we picked, but that the ceremony wouldn't be quite as smooth if we went with this particular mohel. That would be bad, because a bris is tense enough without adding additional tension between the rabbi and the mohel. Two mohels that the rabbi did recommend are ones that we've already ruled out (one because we've seen him in action, and they were the worst bris ceremonies we've ever been to, because the guy is slooooow, and for pete's sake, circumcision isn't the sort of thing that you want dragged out; the other we ruled out because the mohel just seems... stupid. I don't know how to put it more delicately than that). Another recommended mohel doesn't meet what we want. That leaves just one more mohel on our rabbi's "recommended" list, so I guess we'll have to call him and see what we think. But I hate this feeling like we're out of good options. I also didn't realize until recently how much variation there is among mohels. Weird.

And in yet other news: holy crap I'm tired. As in, I've started nodding off in meetings. I've been leaving work at like 4:00 so that I can go home and hit the couch. Everything I have to do to get through my day, no matter how small, seems to require more energy than I have. And it's certainly not because of physical exertion -- my sciatic nerve, which hurt a little for a very brief one-week stretch several months ago, flared up in new and exceedingly painful ways in the middle of last week, and got progressively worse until I was hardly able to walk at all by Saturday. I barely left the house on Sunday, issuing a pathetic refrain of "Ow ow ow ow ow" with each step when I had to do mobile things like walk to the bathroom. The self-imposed activity restrictions seemed to help a bit, because the pain is down to a dull roar rather than the unbelievable shooting pain of last week, but I'm scared of walking too far or doing anything too active for fear of provoking it. I'm doing the recommended exercises, but the other treatment that's been recommended to me (sitting with a heating pad) is out of the question, because our temperatures have once again climbed to the 90s. No way I'm using a heating pad in this heat.

One final bit of news: we are now legally ready for the baby to arrive. You can be the most unprepared parents in the world (have zero diapers at home; forget to buy a crib or bassinet; own no infant clothing at all; have sharp objects scattered willy-nilly around your dwelling) and still be cleared to take your newborn home from the hospital as long as you meet one legal requirement: you have to have a car seat. As of this weekend, we are now legal. We own a car seat. Which is good, because we do, indeed, have zero diapers at home, no crib or bassinet, and a fondness for sharp objects.