From a student’s essay on a XIXth-century work of literature:

The protagonist’s best friend, however, does not belong to the middle class. He is part of the aristocracy. This becomes obvious when we discover that he goes to the theater. This is not something that middle class people do.

Staying calm and happy during pregnancy is extremely important. This is why I’ve been avoiding pregnancy manuals and discussion websites like the plague. I don’t need endless lists of what I shouldn’t be doing, eating, watching, reading, or thinking. I believe that all this hype created around pregnancies is just a way for many women to feel important for the first time in their lives. Since I feel plenty important already, I don’t need the drama.

Unfortunately, my OB-GYN’s office believes it’s a good idea to give all pregnant clients the hugely popular What to Expect When You Are Expecting manual as a gift. I had nothing much to do while waiting for an appointment, so I opened this scary book. And what a mistake that was! Within seconds, I discovered that I had already failed to do a ton of crucially important things before conception even took place. It turns out, there is a to-do list from here to the moon that you need to complete before conceiving.

After perusing less than 2 pages of the manual, I already felt like a humongous failure and a horrible excuse for a woman.

As you can imagine, I never opened the manual since then. I eat, do, watch and read whatever I want. As a result, I feel extremely happy and stress-free. And that’s what really matters.

I’ve experienced all kinds of symptoms in this pregnancy: dizziness, nausea, head-aches, extremely itchy skin, weakness, sleepiness. Everything except loss of appetite because that is something that just never happens to me. Ukrainian people can lose anything except an appetite. (Historic trauma).

The funny thing, though, is that I only had these symptoms whenever I really wanted to have them. I know this sounds weird, but let me explain.

Several years ago, a friend who was then the same age I am now got pregnant. And then, about a month into the pregnancy, the fetus just stopped developing for no reason. She had no idea that had happened until she went to see her doctor. And then she had to get an abortion to remove the expired fetus.

This story traumatized me deeply. The idea of walking around with a dead fetus inside you and not even knowing it was too scary. I also read a similar story on a blog I was following some time later, and the fear of something like that happening to me set in.

As a result, whenever I didn’t have any symptoms for a while, I’d start getting worried that something had happened to the fetus. Then, my body would get the message and would produce some symptoms to calm me down.

It is really interesting how this stuff works.

P.S. Don’t worry, I won’t only write about pregnancy from now on. I will just get all these stories that have accumulated during the first trimester out of my system and then proceed to write about other things.

All of this gushing over yet another Hollywood starlet trying to climb into politics makes me want to vomit:

 The idea of a Sen. Judd joining Sens. Gillibrand, Warren, and Baldwin is pretty exciting. No matter what she chooses to do next, we can count on Ashley Judd to stand up for women and for the marginalized everywhere.

Unless of course the women in question don’t have “flawless” skins and are so lazy that they wear size 6 or – the horror, the horror! – even size 8. If said women manage to have “visible wrinkles,” I’m sure the wrinkle-obsessed senator will have no use for these imperfect, ugly creatures.

If people were less in thrall to the aura of Hollywood, I’m sure they would notice that any non-Hollywood politician who said things that are as egregiously offensive to women as what Judd has said, that politician would see the fury of feminist organizations unleashed against her or him like a tsunami.

Folks, being a Hollywood starlet doesn’t make one special. All Hollywood does is produce very stupid, low-quality entertainment aimed to anaesthesize people’s brains into complete idiocy. You wouldn’t hire Hollywood starlets to fill your teeth, cook your food, or repair your plumbing. Why, then, do you think they are qualified to run your country?

Demand that the lazy Dems provide qualified candidates instead of humiliating their constituents by allowing this kind of people to run.

P.S. Yes, I’m resentful about the suggestion that women who look like me are flawed and lazy, and that resentment is not going away. Not even Sarah Palin has ever made me feel so marginalized for my appearance.

I’m walking around the house, repeating to myself, “I’ll have a little American baby”, and laughing. I was born behind the Iron Curtain, so you can understand why the idea of a little American baby seems strange.

And I’m not just speaking formally when I say this will be an American baby. I have proof of its inclinations already. For weeks, I’ve had the most intense cravings for

1. Pizza
2. Hamburgers.

And when I say “cravings “, I mean I have dreams about them and have to make efforts not to drool on the keyboard as I write the word “pizza.”

Normally, I eat pizza about once a year and hamburgers about once every 3 years, so this is highly unusual.