How I usually get to work (once in Seattle): walk off the ferry with the herd, trudge eastward along a wide pedestrian thoroughfare as quickly as I can manage, since I have a bus to catch and the connection is tight. I get to First and Marion and typically must wait at the light. Being pregnant and still having a hacking cough, I’m already out of breath.

Cross First and walk into the Exchange Building, which happens to be the building where my father worked for about 25 years. Give secret dirty looks to the perfectly able skinny young girls carrying venti lattes who use the TWO sets of automated handicapped doors (there’s an air lock), while I, “disabled” and with my hands full, use the manual doors. Lazy bitches. This happens every day. Don’t they know how much that wears out the doors and disrupts the AC (or heat) in the building???? Don’t they know how easy it is to open a door? Anyway, then I take the elevator up four floors to Second Avenue, because the hill from First to Second is so steep that it would probably cause me to hyperventilate, or fall, or both. I figure the elevator is mostly full of people who work in the building anyway, so I’m not using extra energy.

Anyway, I exit the building on Second and have to hustle across the street because the light is short. Then I must walk as quickly as I can manage up another steep hill, to Third. I cross and turn right, then proceed to have a painful, violent coughing fit all the way down the block to the bus stop, where I am usually right on time to catch the 70. Which I ride for ~ten minutes, then am dropped off across the street from my office. This whole thing takes a half hour at most.

Today I decided to do something different. At the ferry terminal, I walk through the building and down the ramp to Alaska Way. Parked right in front is a waiting 66 bus, which I know will take me somewhat close to my work. I have not had to hurry or climb any hills or make it through any yellow light crosswalks. I board the bus and ask the driver if he stops close to my intersection. He does, and in fact, stops very close to Vivace (!). Perfect, I say, and take a seat. The 66 bus carries me up those two goddamn hills, through downtown, and deposits me two blocks from Vivace Cafe just before 9am. I go get an iced latte, then walk another flat two blocks to work. Oh joy. That’s better. And why didn’t I figure this out a year ago? Or even three months ago when I stopped being able to really run. Sigh.

So. I’ll get ten weeks of this new route, then… well… I shan’t be visiting Seattle at all for a while!

It’s going to be around 90 today. I’m wearing my great big bra, maternity Spanx (with panel), and a short-sleeved light jersey knee-length dress. And flip flops. I have to wear the Spanx because otherwise my thighs will chafe. Wheee!!

If I weren’t pregnant this summer, the hottest one Seattle has experienced in a long long time, I think today I’d be in a lightweight no-wire bra, hanky panky panties, and a sun dress. And I would have leaped out of bed early and taken Kona on a walk in the 65 degree 6am sun.

But this was the time the baby chose to inhabit me. If I was pregnant in winter there would be a whole other set of discomforts. It’s okay, she’s worth it.