People do make me laugh.

So yesterday I went first to an OBGYN appointment, then went shopping to see if I could find a pretty maternity dress to wear to Jen and Colin's wedding this coming weekend.

The appointment was brief. My lovely doctor came flying into the room, ordered me to lie down, whipped out a tape measure, measured my belly, whipped out a heartbeat thingamajig, listened to the heartbeat, asked if I had any questions then told me to go to the outpatient lab and pee in a cup since my pee stick had some protein in it. The entire thing, including me waiting in the waiting room, took about 15 minutes total, a new record for obstetrical efficiency in my experience! Everyone at the office seemed a bit frazzled, actually. Busy day in babymaking, I guess. Except for the old man who was seated next to me in the waiting room and was eventually tipped off that he wasn't where he was supposed to be. He looked around and said, "Yes, there are an awful lot of pregnant women here."

Shopping for the maternity dress was as difficult as I'd expected, but only because there weren't any dresses. Like, none. I went to the Dufferin Mall because there's a Pennington's there and I was hoping to find an a-line dress that wouldn't necessarily have to be a maternity dress. There were no dresses at all. I'm not even kidding. Skirts and blouses, yes, but no dresses. I then went to Rietmans which most always has an awesome and plentiful plus-size section with great selection, but this time they also had no dresses. The clerk immediately got my drift as soon as I turned to face her and mentioned a-line dresses and had some suggestions about perhaps such-and-such a store would have something, but seemed dubious. She said this is a hard time of year to buy a dress anyhow, it being that wasteland between new seasonal lines when everything has been picked over.

I ended up getting a dressy pair of maternity pants and a fancy shirt which looked good to me when I tried them on in the store. Here's hoping I wasn't just desperately telling myself so in order to end the shopping process. I'll try them on again here at home and see. I still have a few days of grace and can shop in Ottawa, too!

My day was spiced right up by the craziness of my fellow shoppers and travelers, though. The first incident was in Pennington's. I entered the store at the same time as a woman using a walker and a much younger woman accompanying her. The elderly woman looked old enough to be the younger woman's grandma but referred to her as her daughter throughout. The daughter was shopping for a jacket and the two attracted the attention of one of the clerks as they discussed. The older woman had a VERY loud voice, and to my horror shouted to the clerk as she approached them, "We're looking for a jacket for a really FAT person, here. Really, really FAT."

I was mortified and wanted to hide behind a rack of clothes. Astonishingly (to me) the daughter didn't seem fazed by this at all, just calmly talked about the coats they were looking at with the clerk like this was absolutely normal behaviour. Yes, the daughter was obese, but HELLO OLD LADY, you are in Pennington's. Your daughter knows where she is, the clerks know where they work, your specificity is overkill in this situation.

I was left to wonder if the daughter just has to deal with this so much that not acknowledging it is her best defense. Whatever their personal relationship, I left and went off to shop elsewhere for my non-existent dress happy in the knowledge that my own mom is not a crazy, loud-talking, insensitive crone.

The second incident was much more palatable to me. I was on the Bathurst bus and an older couple sat down behind me. They looked to be in their sixties or so and quite cheerful and pleasant. The husband suddenly broke out into song. That didn't seem so weird to me because I live with Andrew, a man who has a song to fit every occasion and who will always sing that song.

I immediately realized, however, that I was in some kind of time warp and it was actually me and Andrew from the distant future sitting behind me because as the man sang his song his wife began to say, "Shhh. Stop singing. Stop it. Hush. Shush. Stop. Be quiet. Stop singing. Shhhhh."

He carried on singing for a bit, she very quietly carried on shushing him and eventually he stopped and they started talking about something else very happily and lovingly. So, I'm assuming that even when we're in our sixties, Andrew will still be breaking out into song and I'll still be shushing him. Some things will probably not change.