On a good (read: slightly less lethargic) day, my thoughts would usually simultaneously race to hundreds of possibilities to make my answer sound more interesting and exciting...
The (everyday) superhero/heroine:
"I saved a cat from bring run over."
The productive intellectual:
" I finally started on the novel I have been planning to write for years, it is showing great promise."
The multilingual expert:
" I have made great progress on my Spanish lessons, having progressed by 2 lessons today."
The perfect wife:
"I cooked 5 dishes for our dinner tonight, did the laundry and ironed your suits, cleaned our apartment, and repaired the living room's broken windows. I can give you a foot massage later."
However, in reality, my answers would revolve around something like this:
The realistic wife:
"It took me an hour to finish my breakfast cereal...but oh, (feeling slightly prouder) I boiled an egg and finished that much sooner!"
His reply: " Good job, hun! Then, what else did you do?"
I try my best to gather my pride and try to make my day sound as productive as I possibly can, with the clever use of punctuation marks and compound sentences:
I add, " I then felt sleepy and slept for an hour to an hour and a half, then had lunch, then slept again for another 2 hours in the afternoon, then had a snack, then watched a TV series online (Usually either the intellectual rampages of Sherlock Holmes or the satirical humor of Family Guy"), had dinner, then tried to start on my blog/ open a book (I got as far as looking at it and bringing it close by my bedside so as to remind me to actually read it) /
Lately, though because of the slowly rising temperature that has signaled the definite arrival of summer in Shanghai, the excitement would reach about this degree:
"I swatted 5 mosquitoes and sent them to meet their ancestors in mosquito heaven"
This is about as exciting as my day gets these days.
Occasionally, my husband and I would visit a flat or two, as we are planning to move and have our own place (or at least not have to share the bathroom), but as luck would have it, rental prices have gone up 35% this year alone... 35%...35! it is, in some places, at par with downtown New York's real estate prices.
After the visit would come the highlight of a hard morning/ afternoon's "work", which is, to replenish our tired bodies (or rather, my husband would correct me if he were beside me reading my entry, MY tired body), with a delightful lunch. It would be either Japanese, Italian, or Chinese. If we had some extra time, we would drop by the import shop to browse, and inevitably, purchase some snacks and milk (imported milk is a staple for expats and a growing number of Chinese people, mainly due to the horrific stories of tainted local milk).
This has led me to realize that, being pregnant allows me to live the same life as a baby, perhaps this is nature's way of preparing the mother-to-be to be in slightly similar shoes as her baby-to be.
Aside from sleeping and eating as often as humanly possible, I am often incapable of doing certain things without the help of my husband, such as, tying my sneakers, scrubbing my toes (basically anything to do with touching my feet), getting up from bed is a struggle--- I basically have to roll over and put a foot down one at a time, thus, at times my husband would help me up by asking me to put my arms around him while he lifts me gently with one hand at my lower back, then steadies himself as I gather my equilibrium back. My husband's coming home with food has never been as joyous an occasion as it is now, especially when I don't have the motivation to walk the 20 minutes it takes me to get to the nearest food place. This is SUCH a huge change from my gung-ho, independent woman attitude with a penchant for multitasking and filling my day's schedule to the brim pre-pregnancy life. These days, I am happy merely to get one thing off my list (if I remember to make one or remember where I have placed it). My memory and motivation to get things done have turned for the worse, it seems.
These two photos sum up how I feel most of these days:
That's right... and if I had a placard on my chest, it would read:
Before a mom gives birth to her baby, she is one herself.
Photo credits: http://www.babble.com/pregnancy/pregnancy-understanding-your-hormones/pinterest.com
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