Because the belly has been getting so round and so out there, people have started patting it without permission and asking if I’m “so, so excited” and “getting ready.”

Well, sure, I say. But my due date is still ten weeks away, and that’s a really long time from now. A really long time to waddle through the high school hallways, where I spend my days with sixteen-year-olds whose responses to my lessons in the last few days have included, “Why do we always have to do this stupid stuff?” and “But that’s not what I read in Spark Notes.”

This morning a colleague from the Spanish department suggested I try running stairs before my next appointment in an attempt to spike my blood pressure and procure a doctor-mandated month on the couch. As the days tick down to spring break, I think the pubescents alone will be enough to cause danger to my health.

I woke up in a funk today. I logged at least twenty-five deep sighs before ten o’clock.

“Do you want to go to the museum tomorrow?” Sheila IM’ed.

“I don’t know,” I responded. “I’m despondent.”

Finally, I left for the Y to try to swim away the bad attitude.

On the way there, I called Rachel, who tolerated about ten additional audible sighs. I could tell the funk was extra thick because I was speaking longingly to her about going back to school.

After I got to the Y, I stood in the vestibule for a few minutes, sighing and droning on until I decided to just get on with the exercise.

“Call me back later,” Rachel said.

“Sure,” I agreed. “I’ll probably have to call you because I’ll go in and weigh myself and discover that I have yet to lose a single pound this summer despite working out for -- wait for it -- FIVE HOURS EVERY WEEK.”

And then sure enough.

My week has been in a downhill slide. It's hard to relish the victories because some of the defeats are sort of crushing.

Here's an example of a small setback: when I got home on Wednesday, Shef cheerfully announced, "Daddy is my friend, and you're not."

That made me feel like a real winner.

You may or may not have noticed that I haven’t written much about My Stupid Master’s Degree™. You might have thought that “no news is good news” on the progress front.

If you thought that, I’m sorry to report that you were sadly, sadly mistaken.

All these months I’ve worried about it and thought about it and kind of done some reading about it. Remember how Dan spent two months in Iowa? That was part of the problem. And other times I’ve frittered away my work time by doing dumb stuff like grading papers and planning lessons and clicking around the internet with reckless abandon.

I was supposed to fill out some paperwork this fall that would make doing my paper legit. It would allow me to actually use the data I collected from my kids. Did I fill it out? No. Not until yesterday, when I realized my school district also has their own set of forms that need to be completed and then signed by various dignitaries. And, I can’t actually submit the former set of forms until I get all those signatures on the latter.

What do you think the chances are that all those forms will be submitted and approved in the next eight weeks? What are the chances that I’ll actually write the rest of the paper in that time?

Yep, I agree. Slim. Very, very slim.