Expressive phrases

I'm in the middle of proofreading a collection of three novels about a hillbilly woman from Kentucky who is a midwife and "healer" back in the 1870s. It's a fascinating story, one of the few fluffy romance novels I've done for this company that isn't too treacly. The author has a good grasp of the hillbilly's "language," and there are some pretty funny lines. My favorite, though, is one that I latched onto as soon as I saw it and laughed my head off over it. It's very satisfying to roll off your tongue. I drove Lindsay nuts with it last weekend when I kept saying it over and over. The midwife used this phrase to describe how a woman felt right after giving birth. The phrase is "catawamptiously chewed up." Isn't that hilarious?

Along about the first week of January, I'm going to be feeling pretty catawamptiously chewed up meself for the same reason as the woman in the book. Yep, number four is on the way! We're very excited, and the kids are ecstatic. Jed has his heart set on having a sister so we can have our own set of Pevensies (boy, girl, boy, girl) from Chronicles of Narnia. But he's okay with a boy too because that would mean another playmate to fight battles with. :-)