I’m hardly a by-the-book person. In fact, the dozen or so books on parenting and baby sleep that I bought have all ended up serving as candle-holders on my nightstand, rather than actual resources to inform my mothering.

No time for ten things, so let’s cut that crap in halfsies and go! Here are 5 Things I’m loving or otherwise up to…

It always starts with me crying at random times, in random locations. Outside a drug store. Walking a lake path, as I catch a glimpse of the way the wind catches the water and pushes it into jagged caps. At Trader Joe’s, in the produce aisle.

So here you are, in your last month of pregnancy. By this point, you’ve already done a ton of work. But there’s one more thing to prepare before you meet your baby, and that’s your hospital bag.

It’s easy to tell when you’re a creature of habit. For example, when you look at my (not very impressive) shoe collection, one thing will undoubtedly jump out: I love booties.

There is no other way to describe this past Friday than messy. I don’t mean that in a figurative sense, but in a very literal sense. Specifically, it was bloody.

Pop quiz: What’s only moderately easier than giving birth to a human being? Giving birth to a website.Just kidding! Kind of. 😉

Everybody has some place to be, and often, quickly. For me, that place is in my van… stuck in a line of cars that’s being held up by nearby construction as I pound my fists onto my steering wheel and try to prevent myself from unleashing a string of expletives in front of the kids, wondering out loud (for the tenth time that week, likely) why I didn’t leave my house earlier to drop my kids off at school.

I so want to get quippy and make some comic tie-in between my love for this grandpa blazer and all the grandma-like things I’ve got going on my life these days (exhaustion, advancing to middle age, etc etc), but I gotta shoot you straight and tell you, girlfriend is wiped. Ain’t happenin’ tonight.

No doubt you’ve seen that one scary post your friend has shared on Facebook–the one where she feels she was followed by a strange person in a parking lot or store, and worried that person was tied somehow into a human trafficking ring.