Eric came in the bedroom this morning as I was recording my temp.

"Your temps spike?"
"Yeah."
"You're pregnant."

And there's nothing I can say to make him believe anything else. He's so confident; I hope he's not to shaken if it doesn't happen on this, the first month we've tried.

I'm sitting at my desk staring at a wooden contraption that one of my coworkers decided would look perfect sitting smack-dab in front of me. It looks like a wooden table, about a foot tall, with long, skinny legs and a slanting surface. Attached to two of the legs and weighted so that it falls at an angle is a wooden paddle, shaped in such a way that it greatly resembles one of those African fertility dolls. (Omen? Perhaps...) The "non-head" end of the doll/paddle is a scoop. Hard to visualize, I know, but the thing is odd.

The friendly coworker showed us how it operates. He poured some green, sparkly marbles onto the surface of the table; they aligned themselves in a funnel shape, kept from falling off by another little paddle. Then he swung the doll/paddle. It pushes the smaller paddle out of the way, scoops up a marble, then falls toward a dish at the foot of the table. It deposits the marble in the dish, then swings back up to get another.

Absolutely mesmerizing. Terribly distracting. Everybody oohed and aahed, then went back to their desks and left me with this thing.

I thereupon discovered that it was one tiny design flaw. It wants to kill me.

Operation goes fine and dandy for most of the cycle of marbles. Each pretty orb goes sailing gently into the dish, clicking against all of the other marbles in a glass greeting. But then the last marble of the bunch takes his turn, and the table must be disgruntled about the fun being over, because it takes that marble and hurls it at my head. This was only mildly funny the first time it happened, and has become increasingly less so.

Of course, my coworkers find it hysterical, and reload the thing every time they pass my desk. If they do it one more time, they're going to find out what happens when I lose my polite demeanor.