It’s super hot again, and Megan (owner of Lettuce Knit – not my daughter Megan) is still pregnant, and I absolutely don’t want to be responsible for keeping her pregnant by failing to finish baby sweaters for whoever is in there.

Family myth has it that no baby is born before I finish their knitting, in fact my three daughters (one two weeks late, one two weeks early and one right on time) were born the day after I finished their blankets, as was my nephew Hank. There’s a string of them – and it’s mostly true, although a couple of years ago I did get totally messed up by a set of premature twins. Took two of them to take me down though.

Last night I got to thinking about how very pregnant she is, and how very heavy babies are towards the end, and how they are in such a really crappy place in your body, right there in your pelvis and abdomen where you used to keep organs you used all the time, like your bladder and your lungs… and the guilt just swept over me, and I stepped away from the wheel and sat down and finished the sweaters.

There’s no way that I want to be responsible, not even on a molecular level, for her being pregnant one second longer. (Besides, I think that if she thought that I was the reason she was still pregnant with this kid my life would be in danger, and it’s not like I can avoid her. She owns a yarn shop. Near my house. A yarn shop near my house with my friends in it. A yarn shop near my house with my friends in it and beer. See? Even if I tried not to go in there, we all know she’d have the best of me in a couple of days.)

The sweaters are blocking now, and I’ll have the buttons on them later, and then I’ll be able to look Megan in the eye again, and know that if she’s still pregnant, it’s got nothing to do with me.