A SLICE OF LIFE

Lori Borgman finds the funny in everyday life, writing from the heartland of the US. Now, if she could just find her car keys…

Our columnist Lori Borgman is turned off by fruits and vegetables. Blame it on a pregnancy app.

Our youngest is having another baby and I’m weirded out. Not about the baby. We’re thrilled and excited about the baby. Couldn’t be happier. It will be grandbaby number 11. It’s our daughter having the baby who is the concern. She’s not one of those people who lives on her phone, but she does seem to have an app for everything. She even has a pregnancy app that tracks the baby’s growth.

Lovely, right? Of course.

What could be more beautiful than knowing the size of the new life growing within?

Except it doesn’t track the baby in inches, or centimeters, or ounces, or pounds.

It tracks the baby in fruit. Yes. Fruit.

She keeps sending these disconcerting emails, “This week our baby is the size of a blueberry.”

I love blueberries. They are the absolutely the best fruit to bake with. And now, I’ll probably never eat another one.

The next week I got a notification saying, “Baby is now the size of a wee raspberry.” Raspberries are my second favorite fruit after blueberries. At least they used to be.

The week after that, baby was the size of a pecan.

That is flat out nuts.

I called her up and asked her to stop. “Stop what?”

“Stop ruining food for me with the baby tracker emails. You’re not growing a fruit salad, you’re growing a baby and, in the meantime, the food trackers are making me nauseous.”

“Not a problem,” she said. “I can also chart the baby’s growth with vegetables – Brussels sprout, bok choy, corn on the cob, cabbage and eggplant.”

“You just ruined any remote possibility I ever had of going vegan.”

“The app can also be set to track the baby in relation to desserts. I tried that but one week it said Charlotte royale and I had no idea what that was.”

“You are on dangerous mounds of meringue messing with desserts.” I said.

“They also have animals. This week the baby is the size of a chinchilla, then next week the size of a small bunny.”

“Stop, just stop.”

“Wait. There’s one more option. I can track baby growth in objects,” she says. “This week the

“Stop ruining food for me with the baby tracker emails. You’re not growing a fruit salad, you’re growing a baby.”

baby is the size of a paper airplane. Next week it will be the size of a baseball cap, then a water bottle, then a Barbie doll.”

“You realise that makes no sense, right? How can a baby go from the size of a paper airplane to a baseball cap?”

“I think the cap is rolled up.”

“Oh, I guess that does makes sense. Listen, you’re ruining fruits, vegetables, small furry animals and ball caps, but before I block your emails, what fruit is week 40?” “Watermelon.”

I should have seen that one coming.