Never a dull moment in the Library Lady's household...

... Selfishly thinking I'm in need of my own bit respite care but with neither the vacation time nor the mental stability to support it, I made a somewhat pathetic attempt to escape the grind by fondling the new book truck at work. And low and behold in and amongst the knitting patterns, locavore manifestos, and The Harmonica for Dummies, I came across this little diddy:

Oh my.

Laser-beaming babies aside, for those of you who are contemplating, wishing, fingers crossing, body-temperature-taking, ovulation monitoring, hoping to be pregnant and/or already growing your own hump and corresponding fire monster scales, this book is for you. It's also great for those of us who have cats.

How about an excerpt, hmm?

Chapter one: The Swelling:

"Greetings, woman. You are gloriously full with child, living proof of the miracle of creation, or else you wouldn't be reading this. Unless you're just curious. Or you're a man, and you have some sort of fetish. Well, as long as you paid for the book and are not soiling it in a dim corner of your lcoal bookstore, we're okay with that... Our first question is: are you sure you're pregnant? It's a little-known fact that 83 percent of people who believe they're pregnant are not; of those people, 47 percent stuffed an embroidered keepsake pillow under their shirt to see how it would look. The remaining 59 percent are merely confused about how The Secret works. And for good reason!" (3)

It goes on to explain that it's possible instead of being pregnant you might actually be: not pregnant, hysterical, recovering from a plate of bad clams, a snake that recently swallowed a full-grown ewe, a pumpkin costume, unable to button your pants, nurturing an eight-pound subcutaneous grapefruit, or a man.

This book. Makes. My life. There are a glorious number of references to fatties, "unruly paginas", baby jerks, and silly questions like "how can I be sure I'm pregnant?" (answer: torso swells gradually until baby falls into underpants.)

As I type I'm secretly pilfering this title from the new book cart into my oh-so-professional Club Sandwiches Not Seals work tote (thanks, Hurr_ah!) to hole up in my office and giggle. I recommend a bout of this for all of you facing the next 2.5 hours of a Tuesday wishing something stronger than bad coffee came out of the machine in the lunch room.