Pregnancy Rage, Second-Trimester Edition: Or, after babbling for hundreds of words, I tell you how I got my money back.

Early this morning, I dreamed that I drove a school bus full of people off of a flyover. It's a variation on a recurring dream I've had for years.

My clock radio is on NPR.

First, I heard about a forced, late-term abortion in China. It sounds even worse when you're pregnant.

Second, I heard that the New York Giants' pitcher threw a perfect game against my hometown baseball team. As far as I'm concerned, Houston teams are more famous for spectacular losses than spectacular wins.

Fun facts:

• The Astros made an early appearance at the World Series in the 1977 TV movie, Murder at the World Series, a film so unimportant that it is no longer on imdb.com.  You can see the cached entry here.

• In 2000, they moved from the Astrodome to Enron Field. I consider the Enron association a loss by proxy. 

• The Astros made it to an actual World Series in 2005. They were shut out.

• The Oilers have a Wikipedia entry devoted to their 1993 playoff loss. Apparently it's called "The Comeback." History's always written by the winner.

• They made it to the Super Bowl shortly after they changed their name to the Tennessee Titans. Of course, they lost.

• The Rockets won two consecutive World Championships. Back then, I heard that they owed their success to Michael Jordan's retirement.

• The Texans had a brief musical relationship with Chad Kroeger of Nickelback. 

One great thing about pregnancy is that I get away with murder: this is not a sports blog, and that was a very long tangent. Now, back to the things that enraged me.

I got to work and grabbed my yogurt from the refrigerator.

• Fun fact: I'm increasing my dairy intake to benefit my calcium stores. Apparently, the baby takes all it needs, and I get what's left. Darling parasite.

I could not open my yogurt; the foil was off-center and held fast to the plastic.

The tiny extremity of the foil tab came off in my hands.

I grabbed a knife and started cutting. Of course, I made a mess.

I rinsed my hands and pulled a napkin from the dispenser. The napkin disintegrated.

I hoped that those few minutes would be the worst of my day, realizing that it already paled in comparison to what that poor lady in China went through. I still can't imagine....

I wanted a donut, but there were none. Remember this. It is important information.

I checked my email: more problems, all boring to everyone but my coworkers and me, so I will not enumerate them.

On a coffee break, someone in my periphery bumped into the table where my coffee-and-milk sat steaming. Some of my coffee spilled. I gave my mug, and the room, an awful death glare. While I never located the culprit, I think I scared the person with whom I was speaking. I chalked it up to pregnancy rage. Since she doesn't have kids, I don't think she understood. I wouldn't have understood, either.

A network-server error inspired me to take an early lunch.

I went to a nearby donut shop. The clerk, having just slipped on the wet floor in the kitchen, limped to the register. She, too, was having a worse day than I.

I bought a dozen and a half donuts to share with the people who listened to me complain this morning, plus the unintended victim of my death glare and some other friends, too.

I sent out the email and bit into my long-awaited donut. It was stale, like a day-old slice of bread. I've eaten day-old donuts, and they were never that awful, so in retrospect, my batch might have missed the second rise and baked for too long. For simplicity, let's just say it was stale.

Most of my work-friends called them stale, but they were hungry, and some came back for seconds.

At 5:20 in the evening, three donuts remained in the larger of the two boxes. I took them with me, all the way back to the donut shop, where I spoke with an unfamiliar, quiet-voiced clerk.

"I bought these around noon today, and they are stale. I want my money back."

"You bought these today?" 

"This is a representative sample. Take a bite. They're stale."

She shook her head. "Where are the other donuts?"

"Should I have put the half-eaten donuts back in the box?"

"Yes," she said, nodding.

"These are awful. Have a bite."

She shook her head.

"Look at the reviews on Yelp. Lots of people say your donuts are stale. You guys have to fix whatever you're doing."

"I'll talk to my manager later. I need to talk to him, anyway. Where are the other six?"

"Someone said that one of the Boston Cremes was a little stale. I got no complaints about the cake donuts. But I want all of my money back because I had to schlep out here. Here's my receipt."

She looked at the timestamp. "Ohh, you bought these today. Fresh?"

I got my money back. I cannot entirely attribute the outcome to pregnancy rage. Feeling ripped off and asking for my money back is not out-of-character, but my level of aggression toward an innocent party, not quite expressed in this account, was very out-of-character.

Tomorrow, I'll bring in make-up donuts from another shop. Gestational diabetes, here I come!

Pie Crust #4, a.k.a., Chocolate Pie #4

Ten Signs I Suddenly Entered My Second Trimester

1. Exercising for an hour without thinking, "I am going to die."
2. Coming home awake at 9 pm, ready to empty the Dishwasher of Doom, clean the counter tops, freeze two batches of Campari-citrus sorbet, and roll and blind-bake four pie crusts.
• Fun fact: I'm pretty inexperienced with pie crusts, so the probability of frustration was high.
3. Watching, fascinated, and without screaming, as cheap ice-cream-maker #1 fails to freeze its batch of sorbet and cheap ice-cream-maker #2 freezes but subsequently melts its batch.  
• Fun facts: at the times of measurement, the sorbet was about a degree cooler in cheap ice-cream-maker #2, and the base of cheap ice-cream-maker #2 was a degree-and-a-half cooler than the base of ice-cream maker #1.  The two motors spun the cooling vessels at the same speed.
4. Not caring that I won't eat the proto-sorbet once it leaves the freezer.
5. Calmly realizing that one of my mother-in-law's homegrown summer squash, obtained only two days prior, had rotted and leaked. 
• Fun fact: during my first trimester, I would have raged at the squash over its non-compliance.
6. Producing two shrunken pie crusts and one doughy, shrunken pie crust, all with minimal complaint.
7. Setting off the smoke detector without lamenting the other inconveniences of the previous two hours.
8. Accepting the reality that uploading a photo of pie-crust #4, an attractive specimen, will have to wait until my cell phone decides to stop roaming.
• Fun fact: I am at home, where my phone should not roam.
9. It's 1:53 am, I am still awake, and I think I have two more hours in me.
10. I look a little bit fat.

Maybe this belongs in the "Tiny Fists of Rage" blog.

My life is wonderful.
I'm incredibly lucky in almost every way.
Here's a bulleted list of things I hate.

• The dishwasher, still.  
• Sticky and powdery things are its kryptonite.
• Our dark, narrow cabinets.  
• I shattered the glass lid of a casserole dish by forcing a salad spinner onto the bottom shelf. 
• I guess the salad spinner won?
• Home-decorating shows. 
• Our house decorates itself. 
• I don't need some lady from North Carolina telling me what looks good. 
• I'm sure that lady disagrees.
• Nearly all nineteen-eighties pop music.  
• I've always hated it, but now I really hate it.
• The ubiquity of aioli.
• Raw eggs! 
• Raw eggs!
• Other people's baby names.
• Some of the baby names I thought I liked.
• The fact that I've started to like names I thought I disliked.
• Posting a list of complaints when my life is very good.

And now, a bit of what I like:

• Ingenuity.  
• I retrieved the glass fragments from the back of our lowest kitchen-cabinet shelf with
• a flashlight
• a cookie spatula
• a frying pan
• a dustbuster.
• Refined sugar, for its medicinal properties.
• My husband, who laughs off my rage.
• Even when he's temporarily out of underwear.  
• I think the dryer's done now.

If I say "f$@%," and the baby's ears haven't developed, does it still...

At the bar on Saturday evening (I did not drink anything, I swear,) I mentioned that my new blog was called "Beer and Sushi."

"You should have called it 'Tiny Fists of Rage,'" my husband said.  "Is that one registered?  If not, could you register it?"  Our friends nodded.  "Beer and Sushi" was okay, but "Tiny Fists of Rage" was awesome.  

The Sunday before I learned I was pregnant, I screamed at the dishwasher, which had spewed the grainy residue from my latest baking project onto every flat surface and into every glass.  I had a full plate that afternoon, pun intended, and the last thing I wanted to do was clean what should have been clean in the first place.

My husband, far more even-keeled than I, sent me away from the kitchen.  It took him two hours to re-clean the dishes amidst his other chores.  (Thanks again, sweetie.)  Always excitable and opinionated, blaming the increased frequency and intensity of my rage on the baby, as convenient a scapegoat as it is, makes me a little uncomfortable; for now, I'll continue to hope that our offspring will inherit my husband's temperament.  Last week's ultrasound indicates that the baby has his head, but all babies have his head.

Omg, another pregnancy blog!

Hello, world, from my favorite bar. I'm not drinking anything, I swear.

With so many pregnancy blogs out there, you might wonder, "Why read Beer and Sushi?"

1.  You're a guy. My male Ob/Gyn suggested that I start a blog.  Twice.  He must think I'm hilarious.

2.  You know me in real life, and you're reading Beer and Sushi out of obligation.

3.  Your hunger-driven, online search for "beer and sushi" led you here, and you're inexplicably intrigued. Now go eat something before you get grouchy.