still so surreal

we just got back from a great trip to visit j’s family out east.  we more or less didn’t leave the house the entire weekend–it was great!  the one time that we actually left the house (other than for a run or to go get pizza down the street) was on Friday when we decided to go to the local JoAnn fabric store for a few crafting supplies and to take advantage of some great sales.  We arrived, fully expecting looooong lines at the cutting counter, but got lucky in our timing and didn’t end up waiting at all!  One of the things we bought there was some fabric to make swaddling blankets and burp cloths.  My sister-in-law needed to make some for a friend of hers who has an upcoming baby shower and while I was there in the store with her, she asked if I wanted to pick out any flannels for our baby.  At first, I wasn’t sure… should I pick out boy fabric or be super safe and still go gender neutral?  She suggested I go for boy prints because if I end up with a girl, she can always give the boy fabrics to someone else.  So i found some cute fabric with cars and a great stripe print (of course).  Then, I found some MORE flannels in the quilter’s flannel section that I love-love-loved, but of course, those weren’t on sale.  sigh.  but I still just had to get them for myself.  As the fabrics were being cut at the cutting table, the woman behind me said, “those are nice, what are they for?”  and I replied that I was thinking of using them to make “baby stuff” but I wasn’t sure exactly what specific baby stuff they’d turn into.  And then I had to FIGHT the urge to explain that I wasn’t pregnant and that I hadn’t just had a baby and I even found myself wanting to lie and say, “It’s for a friend.”  Why?  Why in the world would I lie to her?  Why do I care if this random woman who lives halfway across the country thinks I might be pregnant?  I mean, I really don’t feel like saying, “It’s for the baby we might be adopting in March” because, well, that’s just too much information.  The woman behind me didn’t want (or need) to know that and I didn’t feel like getting into any sort of adoption conversation with her.  She actually ended up following up her comments a few moments later by saying, “It would make a lovely quilt” or something like that.  But… if I had been pregnant and due in March, would I have shared that good news with her?  And would I have felt obligated to follow up with an admonition not to get too excited for me because anything can happen between now and March?  Still working on that “to the wind” thing.  But four years of conditioning is hard to shrug off quickly.