When Is It Time...To Ash Out?

I'm not a smoker - in fact, since I was little, I've been told I am somewhat allergic to smoke. My Dad use to smoke a pipe and every year, around winter, without fail, I would get strep throat or some coughing illness from all the smoke that was inhaled. Finally my Dad quit, for my health, cold turkey.
Now with DC and other big cities banning indoor smoking in bars, I have to say, it's nice to be able to go out and not worry about going home at the end of the night smelling like an ash tray.

But a question I have out there for the smokers - when is it time to ash or ash out your cigarette?
The reason why I ask is because I was driving alongside this woman last night, in rush hour traffic...we were side-by-side for awhile since we weren't moving very fast, but she had her window down and she was smoking a cigarette. When I first took notice of her (I actually had to turn the air flow into internal air flow cause I could smell her smoke), she had a good bit of ash on the tip of her cigarette. As we kept driving, that ash margin got bigger and bigger - to the point that when I left her, it started to curve. I kept wondering when she was going to ash out her cigarette - I was actually worried that if she didn't soon, the ashes might fall into her car. I also wondered if it's happened to her before.

Well - I hope she eventually ashed without getting any in her car. Because if she kept going the way she was going, she was going to look like she was puffing on a candy cane soon!

Information That Would Have Been Nice To Know . . . Yesterday

Cat's officially out of the bag. I've got a bun in the oven. I'm a first timer, so it's super exciting for me (even more so for my husband who got all choked up when he saw the swag I got at an "OB Orientation" class at the Air Force Base - I thought that dads couldn't care less about burp cloths and onesies - evidently, I was wrong). So, as a first timer, I immediately went out and bought the latest "What to Expect When You're Expecting" (which, thankfully, no longer features the picture of that matronly lady in a rocking chair on the cover), and a few very generous friends sent me some other helpful books. So rock on - I was equipped with all of the information needed to navigate my nine month journey. Right? Wrong.

Now, for those of you mothers out there, you remember the food aversions and cravings. Fortunately for me, I didn't have any true morning sickness, but the very thought of certain foods made me want to ralph (case in point: broccoli - still can't do it). Naturally, this led me to crave some very tame foods, a sharp contrast to my eclectic tastes in food. And yet, I couldn't just eat bread every day. The baby needed some protein. So guess what I turned to? Cold cuts.

But oh wait? After dining on tasty turkey and club sandwiches for a good three weeks (but not every day), a friend tells me that she was told NOT to eat cold cuts. Did I see this in any of the pregnancy books I read? Nope. But all it took was one google search, and I confirmed my fear. Deli meats are off limits unless you first heat them to steaming in a microwave (and yeah - no thanks). So deli meats are out. That might have been nice to know . . .

So I was sitting in the waiting room this afternoon for my latest doctor visit, and I decided to peruse one of the mom-to-be magazines. There was this section with letters from readers about the things they did before they knew they weren't supposed to. One woman wrote about her daily deli sandwiches, and I thought to myself, "Wow, that stinks - every day? At least my slip only happened a few times a month." And then I kept reading until I read, "I was craving Greek salads . . ." Oh no! I have been jonesing for Greek salads for three weeks now, and I have been making them at home, complete with feta cheese. Yup, feta is a no-no.

As Adam Sandler would say, that is information that would have been nice to know YESTERDAY!

Thankfully, the baby seems to be all right with these minor slip-ups, as he gave me a little high five wave during my ultrasound today.