phonophobia – fear of your own voice
eisotrophobia – fear of seeing yourself in the mirror

Ever since you can remember, whenever pregnancy comes up, someone offers a worst-case scenario. Women terrify you with tales of endless nausea, constant irritation, ballooning, swelling, facial skin discoloration. They proffer a string of “just you waits.” You begin to seriously consider adoption.

When you get pregnant, the stories only intensify. Disfiguring stretch marks, preeclampsia, debilitating mood swings.

You wait, and wait, and wait. None of the things you’ve always dreaded actually come to pass. The things that kept you awake at night, things that cost you hours and hours of worry, none of it happens. In fact, to you, pregnancy feels pretty natural.

You find these women, the women who needlessly terrified you, and beat them senseless with your handbag.

“I’m so sorry,” you say afterward. “I’m suffering from debilitating mood swings.”

Lately, Matthew Baldwin of Defective Yeti is posting like crazy, and he’s been pulling a few ideas from my book, No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog. Here’s my favorite 100 Ideas-inspired post so far. Never underestimate the power of acid wash jeans and red suspenders to make your heart go pitter-pat.

Meanwhile, Jeff Veen, user experience guru for Google, mentioned my book in a discussion of how the web is turning amateurs into experts, and tools like Vox and my book are helping on that front.

Blogging expert Leah Peterson is playing along by asking readers to submit something via mail for inclusion in a group painting. She has a P.O. box for submissions, so send something her way.

Finally David Beach, formerly of Yahoo Shopping and now with Wink, is still hard at work whittling his body down and upping his health quotient at Die Old. I mentioned Beach in the book because I’m pretty inspired by what he’s doing. Go on over and lend a helpful comment. It would be great to see him build a community around the idea of dying old.

That’s it for now. If you haven’t bought the book, I hope you do, as I think you’ll like it. If you have, please link to your 100 Ideas posts in the comments. I can’t wait to read them.

So, I have to be more careful. The baby in my daily photo (now removed) was a friend’s sweet baby from our birthing class. Not our baby, reapeat, not our baby. Rest assured, when I am no longer pregnant, you will know definitively that the baby you’re looking at is ours, as I will be shouting from the rooftops.

Meanwhile, I am still pregnant. Pregnant enough that I’m expecting a little plastic turkey thermometer to pop out of my tummy at any moment. Sorry about that. Please enjoy the new photo of a great pie place in the Mission.

The Mighty Goods Valentine’s Day Gift Guide is up! You have three weeks and no excuses.