Our cat, Marzi, is broken. I noticed that she was limping on Monday night, and the Tuesday trip to the vet revealed that she had somehow managed to pop her knee out of joint. Probably by tearing around the house with Freybug. Poor Marzi! Despite the vet popping it back in and giving her an anti-inflamatory shot, she's still limping (and not talking to Tim, who was kind enough to take her to the vet though I'm sure she sees it as being shoved into a box and put in a loud, scary car). I've taken to carrying her with me throughout the house, as otherwise she follows me (I figure it's good practice for a baby, anyway) and it breaks my heart to see our most agile, graceful cat limping.

Speaking of limping, my hip hurt so badly on Monday that I was a hobblepot all day long. I think it was from sleeping badly on Saturday night, but between the extra hip pain and the overall, increasing pain of being a lumbering, waddling pregnant lady in her 8th month, I was pretty fuckin' miserable on Monday.

That morning, I got on the train knowing that if no one offered me their seat (and they haven't been, for the most part, despite the fact that I'm REALLY showing) I would have no choice but to ask (which is much, much harder than it sounds). I looked around hopefully, trying to make eye contact with people while they studiously avoided looking at me by sleeping, reading their newspapers or blackberries, or just not looking up. I was just taking a deep breath to ask, when a nice woman offered me her seat.

"Yes, thank you." I said.

Then I burst into tears. It was mostly tears of relief at not having to embarass myself by asking, which was so ironic that I started laughing while I sobbed. The kind lady got as far away as she could from the horrible sobbing pregnant lady, while I tried desperately to get myself under control.

Sigh.

Anyway, I'm learning that looking around hopefully is almost as good as outright asking, if the train isn't too crowded and I get lucky. Percentage-wise, 95% of the folks who have given me their seats have been women in their child-bearing years. Every single time, my eyes prick with tears, and I've found that if they notice, most of them are sympathetic about it.

The worst part is the fact that, for the past 6 years, BART has used 9-11 as an excuse to keep most of their bathrooms closed. My commute is about an hour, door-to-door, and sometimes I have to pee again 15 minutes into it. The only above-ground BART station (which, as long as we're not at terror-alert red, has open bathrooms open) I go through is West Oakland, which is one stop away from Lake Merritt (the home end of my commute). Despite how close it is to the end of my trip, I've started getting off at W. Oakland, running down the stairs, putting paper on the seat, peeing, washing my hands, and running back up to catch the next train. If it's not a bad pain day (like Monday was), I can do this in about 5 minutes, which means I can usually not even miss the train I need.

Ah, the last trimester. I'm still not *quite* at the "get it out! get it out!" stage, but I can see/ feel it coming. Right now wouldn't be quite so bad if I wasn't still working; that commute is horrible and draining. I'm starting to freak just a bit about all the stuff we have yet to do before the baby comes, but Tim's been awesome about making me comfortable and making me feel like he's on top of everything. He's so committed to getting things done right now, and it's such a relief to know that, despite my increasing baby brain, it's all going to get done thanks to him. I just don't know what I'd do without him.