Cardinal Rules

I probably shouldn't be typing this right now as it is midnight and we just finished game night - my brain is mush.  Oh well, I will give it a shot!

I have had a few cardinal rules since I was a kid such as: never eat yellow snow, always examine your zipper, don't talk to strangers - unless they are family, don't let your teacher catch you with gum, never give in when your mom is trying to make you eat tomatoes...

Of course I added a few rules when I was a teenager like:  don't get caught when speeding or skipping class (I said rules not morals), don't forget to check for your keys when getting out of the car, when the gasoline thingy points to E - it means it, don't do doughnuts in a church parking lot while speeding and skipping class (or your mom will tow your car and scare the daylights out of you by telling you police impounded it), don't get too serious about 1 boy in high school...

Now that I have gotten just slightly older I have added a few more:  don't make a promise you can't or won't keep, don't make threats you can't or won't keep, don't watch infomercials really late at night, never judge yourself for eating too much chocolate at certain girlie times, also never make any major life decisions at certain girlie times, never give your kids a nap after 5:00 pm,  but one of my biggest is never, never, never ask a woman if she is pregnant unless she is clearly 9 months pregnant with triplets...

That being said I guess rules are made to be broken and I just HAD to ask the tiny framed woman wearing the overly large empire waste shirt if she was pregnant...and of course she wasn't.  Now after having been pregnant 2 times I know that when I apologized and she said it was "okay" that deep down she was trying to decide if she could run me over in the parking lot and get away with it. 

It is one thing if a little child asks you they really don't know any better.  If a man asks you, especially if he has kids you can think that he is a little on the dumb side for about 5 minutes until you realize that, like my husband, he probably means it as some kind of twisted compliment and/or he was totally unaware of the bodily changes during his own wife's pregnancy.  But when a woman who has had children recently asks you, the only recourse is to shoot laser beems from your eyes and melt her brain. 

I am going to go back to sticking to all of my cardinal rules, I have put them there for a reason.  There's a saying that curiosity killed the cat, well I am confident that the stupid, stupid cat was asking a lady if she was pregnant...and you can guess the answer as well as I can!