There’s a girl at work who is pregnant with her very first child. She’s due two weeks after Meadow and it’s fun to watch them both experience the early weeks–you know, without actually having to experience the early weeks myself.

My sister Meadow is almost 12 weeks in to her fourth pregnancy. I walked into the house the other day and said, “I hate to break it to you, but when you do decide to announce you’re pregnant, people are going to stare blankly and say, ‘Um, yeah, we know.’” And just so you all know, here’s what 11 weeks looks like on a very thin, very fourth-pregnancy sister named Meadow:

In other news, this is about 11 inches away from me on the bed.

I am assuming that’s entirely safe, yes?

Working Title: “Wikipedia Said So”

Not that it’s anything earth-shattering or important at all, but just so you know: I had a list of foodstuffs to consume whilst I was in Georgia for Christmas. There are just some things that can’t ever replace what you can find at home, you know.

1. What’ll ya have, what’ll ya have, what’ll ya have?
The Varsity is an Atlanta institution. I remember heading over there after Georgia Tech games with my mother and before baseball games with my Papa. Nana would take Daniel and me to the Varsity Jr. on Lindbergh for lunch and then we’d wander across the street to Hastings Garden Center, when it was still there. I used to order a naked dog, probably mostly because I thought it was funny to say naked. Ketchup on fries. Frosted Orange for sweet libation.

Convenient, it seems, that IKEA is situated not far from the downtown location, which serves well as bribery for one’s brother to just “stop by” IKEA after dinner and on your way out of town. Not that I would know. I wish I’d had my trusty (and vintage!) Pentax K1000, a good flash, tripod, and the inability to ignore people wondering what I was doing in order to capture all the people and the movement and the spirit of the looong counter. But then you couldn’t hear the banter and the order-calling and the “WHAT’LL YA HAVE, LIL SISTAH?” that makes it all its own. These days, I’ll have two slaw dogs, fries, and a Diet Coke, no ice, please-sir.

2. Bald.

I have reason to believe that every single person, who is not from the South and to whom I explain boiled “bald” peanuts will turn up his or her nose in disgust and abhorrence. I have this reason to believe, because of my not-so-random recent samplings, and in Atlanta Braves fashion–because, Seriously, where’s Smoltzy and Maddux and you guys suck, what with your players that look like teenagers with their rap music and their baggy pants … oh and their insistence to keep NOT WINNING. Doesn’t anyone else get goosebumps anymore when you hear “BRAVES WIN, BRAVES WIN, BRAVES WIN” and would forget what it sounded like were it not for the modern miracle of sound recording?–um, anyway and like I was saying, in the area of getting people to react positively to the idea of soaking peanuts in saltwater and spices, I’m 0-for-11.

But seriously, read this and hear it in your mind as a 9-year-old girl in Atlanta, as I was when I heard Skip Caray call it, and tell me you don’t get all shivery and start to cry maybe a little:

Swung, line drive left field! One run is in! Here comes Bream! Here’s the throw to the plate! He is…safe! Braves win! Braves win! Braves win! Braves win! A mob scene! They may have to hospitalize Sid Bream; he’s down at the bottom of a huge pile at the plate. They help him to his feet. Frank Cabrera got the game winner! The Atlanta Braves are National League champions again! This crowd has gone berserk, listen!

Man. I will tell you what. You give me a man who finds experiencing something like the final play of the 1992 National League Championship Series a spiritual experience, and you will have given me my eternal companion. And in return, I will have given you a cookie. That’s what, I’ll tell you what.

3. Scattered, smothered, covered.

The Waffle House is a place I expect to always be in Georgia and to always mean home, kind of like Stone Mountain’s Christmas Tree and its–now that I’m an adult, and can see it as such–really strange laser show-atop-a-Klan-memorial, and yuppies in Buckhead. I always try to partake at least once whilst I’m home, and during Christmas break, Daniel and I made the trip the way God always intended–at 2:30 a.m. in a small college town.

I always order the same items, because why ruin a good thing?–bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich (comes with dill pickle chips and a packet of mayonnaise, which never makes sense but which I always apply to the sandwich on the bacon side) and hashbrowns, scattered, smothered, and covered. A cherry Diet Coke, for good measure. If I’m feeling particularly gluttonous, I’ll have them fry me up a piece of homemade apple pie, with salt and butter. Yeah, that’s right. Salt and butter.

The Waffle House is headquartered in Norcross, Georgia, and I don’t know how they do it, but their HR staff could probably write a bestseller detailing the downright weirdos they gainfully employ. For a while at the Lilburn location on 29 at Indian Trail, there was a waitress with an honest-to-goodness bleached-blonde beehive, which extended at least eighteen inches from the peak of her forehead. And her name was Flo. And I am not even beginning to kid you.

And that? That’s so home to me.

Not pictured: Checkers (Checkerburger with cheese, fries, and a Diet Coke, no ice) and Zaxby’s (Chicken salad sandwich, fried mushrooms with honey mustard, and fries with Zax sauce).