My one-hour Mother's Day cabbage pregnancy

Yesterday, we went for a ride on the tandem bike.

On our way home, Pythagoras spotted a sporting goods store and couldn’t resist the urge to stare at $5000 time-trial bikes.

Since I’d rather cut off my pinkie toes and soak my feet in grapefruit juice, I walked across the street to a small produce stand. Once there, I decided to make German red cabbage for dinner.

I selected a small purple cabbage and a Granny Smith apple and approached the cash register. “Excuse me,” I said to the clerk as I lifted my sweatshirt and turned to reveal the pockets on the back of my cycling jersey. “Do you think these would fit?”

He looked at me, looked at the cabbage, looked at the pockets. “Um, I guess I could try.”

“No, no – I don’t need you to put it in for me. Just wondering if it would fit?”

We weighed the cabbage, considered its dimensions, inspected my pockets, and eventually determined it was too large. “That’s OK,” I said finally. “The apple can go in the pocket, and if I cinch up the bottom of my sweatshirt, I can stick the cabbage in the front.”

I tried it out just to make sure it would work. Then I paid the clerk and walked across the street to find my husband.

When he saw me, he stared.

“How do I look?” I asked.

“Like a pregnant woman with a bobtail.”

“Excellent. Ready?”

So off we went on the tandem bike, earning a few strange looks from bystanders, and one shouted wish for me to have a happy Mother’s Day.

Then Pythagoras spotted another sporting goods store. We parked the bike and headed inside, Pythagoras studying me as he held the door open.

“Maybe you should take the produce out of your clothes,” he suggested.

“Wouldn’t it be weirder to walk around a sporting goods store carrying a cabbage and an apple?”

“I’m honestly not sure which is weirder.”

Once we were inside, Pythagoras became less interested with weirdness and more interested in overpriced bikes. I wandered around honking horns on the tricycles. That amused me for about five minutes. Then I was bored and ready to leave. I walked to the back of the shop where Pythagoras was talking to the clerk.

“We should go now,” I said, rubbing my cabbage belly through my sweatshirt. “It’s starting to kick.”

Pythagoras looked at me. “Want me to kick it back?”

The clerk was clearly horrified until I lifted my shirt and revealed the cabbage.

Then he just looked confused.

“It’s what all the cool cyclists are doing these days,” I informed him. “Cabbage in the front, apple in the back.”

“OK,” the clerk said, suddenly very interested in helping a customer at the other end of the store.

We eventually made it back on our bike and back home, with several fellow cyclists yielding the right-of-way upon seeing my delicate condition.

“I should ride like this all the time,” I told Pythagoras.

“No,” he said. “You really shouldn’t.”

“You’d better be nice or I won’t give you any cabbage.”

“Why does that sound dirty when you say it?”