President: "Let's go around the room. Please tell us who you are and one interesting thing that's happened to you recently or is going to happen to you in the next few months."

Me: "My name is Alice and I can't think of a single interesting thing that's going to happen to me in the next few months."

Attendee who doesn't understand sarcasm: "You're expecting a baby - that's pretty interesting."

Me: "Oh that? Yawn."
I am wrapping up some loose ends this week from last weekend's meeting at work. We do this twice a year - people from all over the country come in and spend a weekend talking, bitching and theoretically solving the problems of the profession, only to lay all the real work in the laps of the people who work in the office and go home again afterwards absolved of any real accountability because they've said their piece and now all they have to do is sit back and watch it happen.

Part of my responsibility at this meeting is to give a half hour report on all that I've been doing for the past six months... a sort of Justify My Love, where it looks like a status report, but my real goal is to remind everyone how overworked I am and how if they could just stop calling me to look up a phone number that they could easily find in their directories themselves, I'd probably get a lot more done. But... you know... with tact.

Somehow, (I'm sure denial has the lion's share of blame here) I'd let it get past me that I've been working at this job for ten years now. So after I gave my report, wheezing and sucking down water due to the parasite... I mean... baby... that is slowly stealing all my breath, I asked if there were any questions. The President said she had something to add and stood up to present me with a large plaque/photo arrangement for ten years of service.

It was sweet, actually. I've been working recently on trying to be more grateful for the things I have and despite all the problems and issues with my job - a good half of them due to the fact that I have to work at all and not the job itself - I realize what a good deal I've got. I don't know of many other organizations where they would do that for you in a public meeting. I don't know of many other organizations where the Treasurer brings you her old maternity clothes to wear because she heard you were pregnant, either.

But because this pregnancy is destroying my brain, or because I am simply an evil person, when the President said, "Congratulations on your ten years!", I said, aloud, "Thanks.... seems like twenty."

Realizing almost immediately how that sounded, I told this story about my husband, and when it was our third anniversary and I said something about how I couldn't believe it had been three years, he wholeheartedly agreed and replied, "Yeaaaaah... seems like ten." Then he immediately started backpedaling and explaining: "No what I mean is... that it just seems like we've always been together and I can't remember a time when we weren't together and... oh crap... just send me to sleep on the couch now." So it's been an inside joke between us and our thing to say ever since then. And that's not entirely a lie - he did say that. But I'm not sure if they bought it.