If it's not one thing, it's another.

Matt and I were coming out the Subway last night, on our way down to K.T. and Kevin's, and I felt a twinge in my neck. By the time we got to the car, it was a full-blown nerve pinch. I couldn't turn my head, look up, look down, move my arm in any way whatsoever, or keep my arm still without searing pain.

It wasn't any fun to drive, let me tell you. When we got to K.T.'s, Matt massaged my shoulder, and I draped my arm on the back of the couch for pretty much the whole evening. By the time we left, it was feeling better.

And then, in the time it took us to walk back to the car from their apartment, it was hurting again.

Usually, when I get a pinched nerve, it's because I slept with my neck at a weird angle. It usually clears up in an hour or so, and leaves me with a stiff and aching muscles that take a couple of days to relax.

This one woke me up at least three times during the night. I'd be peacefully sleeping, and suddenly come wide awake because it felt like a hot poker was being wedged into my joints. It took me about ten minutes each time to find a new position that didn't hurt too much.

While I was waiting for Matt to get out of the shower this morning, I fished out my heating pad and laid down with it under my shoulder. That felt pretty good - it didn't make the pain go away, but it reduced it a lot.

When my turn to shower came, I left the temperature up high. (I've been trying not to take super-hot showers since I got pregnant - increased body temperature in the mother can cause problems for the baby - and let me tell you, one of the first things I'm doing after I have this baby is taking a long, scalding-hot shower.) That helped some, too.

So by the time we left for work, I was actually able to pick up my lunch without whimpering. Yay... Now I just have to hope that it doesn't relapse on me while I'm at work. I can deal with a little jab of pain when I move my arm wrong or turn my head too fast. It was the constant stabbing sensation that was going to drive me mad.

On the plus side, I'm almost positive this isn't linked to the pregnancy in any way. After weeks and weeks of weird pains and twinges and sensations and symptoms that my books all agree are perfectly normal side-effects of pregnancy, it's almost refreshing to have something happen that has nothing whatsoever to do with the baby.

Karen gave me a calendar for this year that I keep in my office - it's a Michael Whelan calendar called "Dragons and Mystics." The April picture is called "The Reach". It won an award for color (that's where I found the link to the picture) and it does have some beautiful, subtle coloring. Whelan's good for that.

But the girl's breasts bother the hell out of me.

It doesn't bother me that you can see them through her shirt. I've been a gamer for fifteen years; I appreciate fantasy art that depicts women as something other than sex objects, but I hardly expect it.

No, the thing that grabs me is that they're pointed straight out at the viewer instead of sagging slightly downward. (If you didn't go look at the picture in the link, the girl is hanging sideways in the air, horizontal, as if she were lying on her side.) They're obviously not little A-cup boobs that are too small to have any sag. There's obviously gravity, because her hair and shirt are affected by it.

But her tits are pointed straight out, defying gravity, unencumbered by a bra. I suspect Whelan had his model standing upright instead of actually lying on her side, or else the model had little A-cup boobs and he wasn't thinking about gravity when he "enhanced" them for the painting.

For the first day the picture was up, I wondered what the story was that he was illustrating. I wondered what the woman was reaching for, and where she was, and why she was there. And then I noticed her weird comic-booky breasts, and now I can't see anything else.

I'll be glad when it's May, and I get a new picture to look at.

--Liz