I am a changed woman....

I'm not sure if its all the pregnancy hormones or the fact that I'm so anxious to get this baby out of me, but I somehow feel like my body has been invaded by aliens.

Take yesterday, for example. Last week we got a notice in our mailbox that the Salvation Army truck would be in our neighborhood this week accepting donations. I was thrilled because I had a lot of things to get rid of, but I've been so tired lately that I haven't had the energy to take a trip to a donation drop off point. We had a nice exercise bike in our garage that has been needing a new home, so I called the salvation army just to make sure that they would be accepting donations of larger items as well. I was thrilled when they told me they would gladly take the exercise bike.

So, I had Steve move the bike to our front yard before he left for work and I got up early to move all of the boxes I had filled up near the bike for the 8 am pickup.

The truck pulled up to our house and one of the gentleman loading up the goods knocked on our door and informed me that they were unable to take exercise bikes due to liability issues. I informed him that I had called in advance and had been assured that that they would take the bike and asked him if maybe he had been confused. He told me that he knew the rules and refused to take the bike. That's when I got mad. I didn't yell at the poor guy, but I definitely let him know how frustrated I was and responded with some smart comment about how now we have this stupid bike that's gonna have to sit in our front yard and look tacky while all the neighborhood kids stop by and ride it. I was ticked.

Then, to take matters even further I got on my computer and sent a nasty email to the major of the salvation army explaining how frustrated I was and asked that they educate their staff on what their policies actually are so that people in the community will actually want to continue donating items to them rather than being misinformed and getting ticked off.

After that I left for my midwife appointment and cried the entire 25 minute drive because it really hurt my feelings that they wouldn't take my exercise bike. Yes, I was crying over having my feelings hurt by the salvation army.

I swear, I feel insane. Yes, it's silly that my feelings were hurt so much by this, but what really gets me is my response. Sending nasty emails and letting out my frustrations on the poor donation pick up guy is not only so out of character for me, but so un-christian as well. What's even worse is that now that I've settled down I don't really feel all that bad about my actions. Give me 2 weeks and I'm sure if I'm not losing sleep over this baby keeping me awake I'll be losing sleep about feeling bad about being mean to the salvation army and wind up sending an apology email in the middle of the night. Miscommunication happens, people mess up and that's just how life is, somehow with all these crazy hormones I seem to have forgotten that.

Will I always be this way now, or once the baby comes will I be back to my normal self? I don't like feeling so sensitive and mean. What's worse, is that I don't like NOT feeling bad about being mean. I recognize that pregnant or not, I'm no angel, but I do want to be a person that shows love and respect to others when I deal with them regardless of how they are treating me.

I'm really hoping and praying that soon I'll be back to my old self. In the meantime, I think it's a good idea that I just hide away in our house so as to not scare the rest of the world away.

PS...for the record, I did get a very kind email response from the salvation army apologizing for the miscommunication. We also got rid of the exercise bike. Before I could even post the bike on the "free" section of craigslist one of our neighbors stopped by and offered to buy it from us. We were thrilled to be able to give it to her and get it out of our hair.