I just posted on Craftytown about the origin of the boots I'm wearing today. Unfortunately they're just a little big for me. Had I bought them in a brick-and-mortar store I would have done my annoying-shoe-shopper-lady routine of having them show me multiple pairs of the same exact size, since Doc Martins can vary widely. Instead I tried a 6, which was too big, and a 5, which was way too small. So I kept the 6, and I'm trying to be okay with it. I walked to work today in them and my feet keeps sliding around inside. It's just like walking on sand, except without, you know, the ocean, the sunlight, and the nice warm breezes.

These boots would be perfect for my pregnant twin-sister, whose feet are swelling up beyond her usual shoe size. Of course, she'd have to get someone else to lace them up. Last Saturday she showed me the deep indents her socks had made in her ankles at the end of the day, since she's all full of extra fluids. That extra-blood-volume aspect of pregnancy is almost as weird as having a little creature inside living off of your body. Like me, she's always been relatively skinny (we were quite bony in grade school, but have since filled out, in a healthy way I hope) so suddenly having no waist and a giant belly is a very new experience. When we get together, we go someplace private and compare our bodies as a kind of living before-and-after photo. As a result, I've seen my sister naked more times in the past few months than in the past 15 years.

I may end up seeing a lot more of her, if I end up in the delivery room as currently planned. I bought a book about being a Birth Partner, which details some practices better left to her husband (the daily perineal massage comes to mind), but also is teaching me things about labor and birth I didn't know before. For instance, during labor (or is it pre-labor?) the cervix not only dilates, but gets paper-thin. That shit is insane.

Anyway, I hope I get to be there for as much of it as I can, because it is going to be completely amazing and beautiful and scary and gross and sad and wonderful. I won't sleep for weeks.