While Margaret isn't such a common name anymore, it's still not so unusual that you might not expect a little overlap. You know what? You love the name, you've loved it a long time, so when the time comes, you use it and love it and cherish the special little girl it will belong to, who'll make it her own as much as Emeline is the Emeline.

Barb is wise. Plus, if the "air-quotes friend" is just doing this to fuck with you, the best thing to do is to refuse to be fucked with. You name your kid(s) whatever you and Joe darn well please. And if your Maggie is likely to be around their Maggie much, such that confusion happens, well, you have a couple of options. First, you could give your girl a middle name that would work well said aloud with the Maggie (ex., just to fuck with DJ Lucy, which yields Maggie Lu) then slyly teach her to refer to their daughter as "Just Plain Maggie". Alternatively, just keep calling her Maggie, and steadfastly refer to their girl as "The Other Maggie". t /is slightly evil

Teppy, I hope whatever the heck is going on with your ear clears up soon.

Shir, you've got the best of my ~ma.

I'll agree with the crowd that it probably she probably didn't intentionally steal the name, Aims, but if you want I can still make snide remarks about baby weight behind her back with you.

I'd love that!! I'm mostly over it now.

Now there's new drama with another friend. Ah, my life. It's actually kind of funny and the person is being a total jerk. We had a baby shower and "tupperware" party for a friend last night. One of the women invited wanted to bring her 5 month old - GoH said fine, but this woman has been posting all over FB this past week about how her, her baby, her 9 year old, and her husband have been sick - hacking, fever, coughing, snotty noses. GoH said, "I really don't want to be sick. Please don't come." Woman Freaked Out all over FB. Calling us an adult clique, saying to GoH, "You'll be less paranoid with the second one" and other bullshit.

How ridic she is being.

I don't think asking them not to come is ridiculous. Freaked out woman is being ridiculous on FB. Seriously, if your family is sick, the right thing to do is send regrets.

That's totally what I meant. I am firmly in the camp of, "Please do not expose our 33 weeks pregnant friend to your germs." The sick friend should have totally backed out voluntarily and then not been an a-hole when asked not to come.

I've gotten the same thing for not wanting to visit friends if I think they might be contagious. I admit that I once was a hypochondriac, but I still think "I caught a cold yesterday, but you can still come," is the least-sexy invite ever, and declined politely. I can't believe anyone would be hurt by this, but she was.

The sick friend should have totally backed out voluntarily and then not been an a-hole when asked not to come.

a-holish behavior is nobody's friend.

I'm keeping snot boy home tomorrow because he's STILL feverish after four days of this bullshit. Going to call the pediatrician and NOT google H1N1 stuff.

Bodies are stupid. I think I squished a nerve or something. I was sitting, and shifted my weight slightly, and pain shot up my leg from my ankle to my hip and then back down again. And now, when I put any weight on that leg, that same ankle to hip path hurts like hell. It's definitely nerve and not muscle -- I can trace the exact line of where it hurts, and could probably figure out which nerve it was if I had a diagram. Just can't figure out how to undo it.

Shir, wishing you all the best with the house stuff. It sounds really stressful.

Aims, your friends are clearly idiots. Stealing a name is very un-classy. My sister didn't ever tell anyone her proposed name for her first daughter until Flo was born. Similarly, only The Girl knows what I would call a child in the alternate dimension in which I wanted to have one. People are so stupid. Use the name anyway.

Hil, have you trapped a nerve by subluxing a joint? I do that a lot. My only solution is subluxing it again, i.e. messing with it beyond the range of motion that the joint is supposed to have (I presume that, like me, you can put your joints in all sorts of weird contortionist positions).

Shout at me if you see me around here too much this week. I am incapable of working without deadlines, so The Girl has given me one: if I don't write my 2000-word literature review by midnight on Thursday, I get no American TV for a month. The thought of being four episodes behind on How I Met Your Mother is definitely spurring me on.

How can anyone be this happy on a Monday morning? [link]

I have skipped and skimmed, so ~ma to those that need it. We are officially short handed for the next 2 weeks, while one of the people in my department teaches in Poland. Hard to believe that last year I was in Krakow trying to get through my morning sickness as best I could in an unfamiliar city (not fun!).

That is a crazy amount of happy! Also, ADORABLE.