sweltering

There is something a bit creepy about what happens to a pregnant girl in the very very hot summer, when everything seems so long--especially the time--and every task is just out of reach. The weirdest time is at night when it is still hot and I am sleepy and I have to sleep for a few hours before I wake up and the room no longer feels like an oven. By then, I've dreamed enough and sweated enough to be a little crazy, so I shiver and have weird dreams and my belly tightens up and sometimes hurts and I have to pee every few hours. That's what happens. Long, strange nights.

I've been reading Lorrie Moore, I think for the first time, and have discovered that the death of animals is a thing I cannot even think about right now. In two consecutive stories, Moore mentions a dead dog and then a bat that a character whaps with a tennis racket and kills. Too much (even though each of those pieces is very tiny, in the scheme). Especially difficult w/Poeia panting at my side (sometimes the speckling on her legs looks cutely pink, like right this second). It's not that I haven't always been tender-hearted with animals, but now I can't even read a story in which a protagonist mentions that her dog used to sit in front of the fireplace.

Pregnancy, what are you?