What a strange thing it is, to be nine months pregnant.

You are so close, and yet for the time being not there at all.

As with Bean, I find myself looking around in disbelief that I’m actually nine months pregnant. It feels slightly (mostly) absurd. Nine months pregnant. It belongs in movies with women with enormously large prosthetic stomachs spontaneously clutching a wall as their water dramatically breaks. Inquiring strangers look at you funny when you tell them you’re nine months pregnant. I want to say, “I know! It’s just the funniest and strangest thing, how all of a sudden I’m nine months pregnant. Trust me, I’m right there with you. I’M GOING TO HAVE A BABY SOON. How unbelievable is that?”

I’ve written before about how this pregnancy was different from my first. Namely, in that it was not that much different at all, except this time I’m living through it with a little person who is all questions and still requires me to be a mother and not a sloth on the sofa. Although the goodbye kisses (one for me, one for the baby aka my stomach) are sweet and I’ll miss those the most.

Just as before, I finally stopped running a couple weeks ago. As before, mostly because I felt people staring at my lumbering self. (Although the kindness of San Francisco strangers to a pregnant lady is one of my favorite things about this city. This time, out on a run, I had an older woman run down the street behind me (“Is that woman chasing me?”) in order to point at my stomach and give me a thumbs up.)

I was proven correct again that maternity clothes really don’t cut it for the full nine months. The non-maternity dresses and stretchy tunics are the only thing comfortable in my closet. I want to set my maternity jeans aflame.

And yet, even then, I don’t feel big. Not like nine months pregnant big.

And yet, It feels equally absurd that in less than a month, I won’t have this protruding, comical,unwieldy stomach with its poking elbows and knees and who knows what else.

I have run out of things to nest with. Kitchen drawers and cabinets have been organized to within an inch of their lives. The refrigerator and freezer followed. Same goes for our closets. The micronursery is finished. We just rounded out all our newborn purchases.

Thankfully, and the reason I’ve been spotty posting here, is that I’ve lined up a series of semi-professional gigs to see me through the end of the pregnancy. What better time to pick up new projects than around the nine month mark?

Which is all to say hang with me, here, folks. Being nine months pregnant is a weird time.