The best advice I got on eating while pregnant was from flea who said, I think, don't let your stomach get too empty/hungry and that worked for me.

Yep yep yep - so much this. I kept apples and saltines in my bedside table so I could have something before I tried standing up in the morning.

Total random interruption: Huh. In the past 48 hours I've been contacted by both my parents (during different conversations with different friends in different states) to explain the lie/lay distinction. Are there lie/lay confusion germs floating around or something?

Are there lie/lay confusion germs floating around or something?

I'm afraid those germs have infected 99% of the population.

Are there lie/lay confusion germs floating around or something?

Hmmm... now where's my copy of Lays and the Laying Layers Who Tell Them....

Lays and the Laying Layers Who Tell Them

You mean minstrels?

God knows I have those germs.

Let me see. I lie down so they won't see me. I lay the body into the trunk. The car lies on the dock.

the lie/lay distinction

My mother's voice in my head screams: "Hens lay!"

One of the baby gifts we got is a temporal artery thermometer. I can't stop taking my, or Kalliope's, temperature.

Yesterday, I walked out into my yard to take in the beauty of the Autumn day. Fallen leaves were everywhere, lying in piles strewn about. I raked some leaves and built a huge pile and then I lay down upon it and promptly fell asleep! I must have lain there forever, for it was dusk when I awoke. I was tired and didn’t get up right away, though, and while I was still lying there, my neighbor came out and started working in his yard. He was laying cobblestones down his pathway, finally finishing a gardening project that had gone on all summer and was now winding down. He laid one final cobblestone down and pumped his fist into the air in celebration. Then he noticed me and said, “How can you just lie there all day? Don’t you have anything better to do?”

I wrote that horrible little paragraph several years ago for one of my friends who asked me to explain "lie" to her. I am pretty sure I've captured all of the various conjugations.

And remember, "to get laid" is a saying because someone has laid you on a surface in order to frolic. It's an easy way to remember that "lay" is synonymous with "place", and "laid" is synonymous with "placed".

I swear I have a mental block against getting those words right.

I think I get it right about 75% of the time. It's one of those things that if I don't consciously think of which one to use, it turns into a grab bag. So, I'm more likely to get it right when writing than when speaking.