Halloweenerlyness

Halloween without the hallo or ween.

Look! Some early results from our photo session on my friend Sarah's blog.

I think they are lovely. And because I don't see my face in them, it doensn't make me go "EWWWW!!".

It's Halloween y'all. I'm not dressing up this year and no kids ever come to get candy at our place. The best I'm hoping for is that they'll show Simpson's Halloween episodes on TV. I did carve a pumpkin, which I'll post later, when it's lit up and dark outside. Boy oh boy, I bet your day will revolve around that event!

I can't even eat chocolate because I already had 2 chocolate bars this week. 2 WHOLE chocolate bars, not the little mini ones...Today, I'll just stick to pumpkin seeds. The roasted young of the pumpkins. EWWW!!!!

"Oh my holy crap, surveillance does." ( as in doe a deer, a female deer)

I am in a distinctly more chipper mood today, thanks to a day of full blow pajama recovery yesterday. I even busted out the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack, hella early today. I don't care that it's not even Halloween. I am starting the festivites now.

A few things I'm looking forward to: 1.Christmas, obviously, 2. Birth of child, obviously, 3. This movie coming out: Gentlemen Broncos.

I haven't been so excited about a movie since just before seeing Royal Tennenbaums.
I have a feeling this is going to be one of the most kick assest movies ever for me. I LOVED Napolean Dynamite and I think this might be 8 million times better. I am a spazz. You didn't know? Oh, you did.

Pumping iron in pajamas

For breakfast this morning I had 20 ml of liquid iron and some pumpkin seeds. Aren't you jealous?? The annoying thing about iron is you can't eat food for a few hours before or at least one hour after. I try to take it first thing in the morning, then wait an hour for breakfast, but I am always soooo hungry when I wake up!! Pumpkin seeds are high in iron so they don't interfere, still, not a very satisfying breakfast.

I will avenge in honour of my hunger at lunch I tell you.

Yesterday was a full day. A very full day. T and I had both been dreading yesterday for a week in advance because of what it entailed: switching midwives AGAIN!

To summarize thus far: Midwife 1, nice but speaks no english. Midwife 2, nice, speaks english, left suddenly not to return till next year. Midwife 3, just didn't like her from start. So here we are, back to midwife 1. Throw in a terrible, nosey, gossiping receptionist who interferes and you get confusion and bad vibes and stress by the bucket loads. Yesterday, we resolved we would tell midwife 3 that we needed to switch during our appointment, but she had just assisted a birth and wasn't available so we had to just switch without telling her because time is ticking ladies and gentlemens.

It's been a pretty big mess since the beginning, administratively speaking. Hopefully, it's all behind us. Onward and upward would be ideal. I have 2 and half months now to meet the new team of 2 midwives and convince them we aren't unreasonable people and hopefully, they won't leave or spontaneously combust or become satanists in the meantime. Out of 6 midwives, 4 have left in the past couple months! And you still want to go the midwife route you say? Hell YES! Even a stream of changing midwives and busy body receptionists is preferable to a doctor in a hospital as far as I'm concerned.

A pleasant respite from the midwife drama of yesterday morning, was yesterday afternoon, when the very lovely Sarah, came to our place to take photos of us: The only photos taken so far during my entire pregnancy. She does beautiful work and I'm sure she will have some great results. We are so lucky! Otherwise, all I'd have to show is some stick drawings I made of myself, to give the general idea.



I am not a natural model, that's for sure, so she had her work cut out for her and T being a bit of a ham in front of the camera got a little giddy and silly (a little? says Sarah), but I'd say we managed in the end.

I cut pumpkins, I ate an apple, I had leaves dumped on me while I sat in front of a tree...all the natural things you do during an average day.

Today, I am wondering if it's really nessecary to get out of bed at all. It's grey like damp flannel outside. The house is cold and entering the kitchen means confronting the vegetables we just bought that need to be washed. There are certain house chores that I just loathe, even though they aren't that difficult. Dishes and vegatable washing. I just dread coming home from groceries and knowing that the celery, spinach, lettuce, radishes and cauliflower or brocoli all have to be trimmed and soaked and rinsed....bleeeeuuurrrg. I will go without eating sometimes just to avoid seeing them in the fridge, waiting for me.

My cat is licking the envelope seal glue on a big envelope. He's been wanting more food all the time lately. He head butts his empty food bowl around as if he thinks he will magically get more food if he can just push it to the right place. I've even seen him drag an opened can of his food from the box. Heartbreaking. Poor little beast. I'll give him a little more because I am but human and my resistance to meowing furry creatures is low. At least feeding him doesn't involve cleaning vegetables.

Well grey flannel day, I greet you reluctantly. I now rise from bed to seek revenge against my shoddy breakfast and possibly to be so bold as to shower and get dressed. You are overwith yesterday, but your legacy remains in my tired, heavy frame.

P.S. I didn't get out of bed till 3 and I had a shower and put fresh pajamas on and got back in bed. My lunch was toast and a banana. Not very vengeful. Today is a write-off. Let's just put today in an unmarked envelope and file it away.

Me vs Dead Scottish Lady. I won!

Yep yep, winter is a'comin'. Ayep. I don't have a coat that fits. I got this old one that used to belong to my dad way back when. It's an old, long, wool overcoat in army green. T says I look like a depression era British matron in it or like a old russian lady from Siberia is how I see it. Either way, stylish and attractive.

This morning I felt a protruding body part of a child above my hip. My first thought, was heel. That's a dang heel. I'm guessing of course. I have no idea what's what when I feel it. The midwife touches me for 2 seconds and is all like: "Oh he's sitting at a 45 degree angle with his legs crossed and a cigar in is his right hand watching Johnny Carson.". When I try to feel what she's talking about, I just feel lumps.

So, so I've been whipping our place into shape lately and I'm pretty pleased with myself. I've had these dreams throughout my life where I have an appartment and I discover a secret room that's huge or connects to another city or another whole floor I didn't know about. They are always great dreams. Dreams of discovering bounty, right at your doorstep. Since moving here 3 years ago, I've had the feeling that this place has potential space that is being unused. I think I've found a way to use some of it by rearranging things for the eight millionth time. I have this little breakfast/blogging/knitting corner now and it's my favourite part of our place.







Also, I took down the ugly blinds that the cat had destroyed in the sewing/drawing corner and put up curtains and now it's like working in a heaven cloud.



Might as well continue with the show and tell theme. Thanks to my cousin Mike for finding them and my parents for going out of their way to go get them and bring them to us, we have some lovely room dividers whose main purpose is to segregate a baby from a cat. However, as our cat is relentlessly agile and clever, he has managed to find a way to jump over the top of them. Our temporary solution was to staple cardboard on the top of them.


Once again, so stylish! I don't usually take delight in home improvement, but as I've said, I've been motivated lately. So the new and nicer looking solution was to:

A) Buy cheap, ugly board and cut to shape.



B) Find suitably lovely cloth from personal stash.



C) Sew said cloth to proper size and house ugly board within thus giving birth to much groovier cat defying panels.



The final step will be D) Convince husband to fasten lovely panels to top of dividers:



Thereby E) triumphing over unsuspecting cat.



Well, actually, they look a little odd but maybe once they are all attached...

Finally, in preparation for the fall, I have made my best bag yet and it's all for me me me. It was an old woolen, scottish skirt. I managed to even keep the lining and reuse the zipper for the inside pocket (although I replaced the clasp). This bag is pretty kick ass if I may say so myself. The lace cameo I sewed on the outside pocket was found inside a sewing table that was for sale at the Salvation Army. Someone donated the table and left everything in the drawers. I've been waiting months to figure out what to sew it onto. So voila.

My scarf is still in progress but will soon be ready to accompany the purse on yours truly. I am sure some old scottish woman is rolling over in her grave over the trasformation of her skirt (as I do believe it was a homemade one)into a purse. Too bad scottish lady. I win!





And then, then! On top of it all, I made these cranberry scones (from a Martha Stewart recipe no less) and they were DAMN good.



Understand that I don't do much baking, since baking is usually followed by eating baking which is followed by ass growth. Sometimes I "bake" things with no oil or real sugar and rice flour and make T cry from the fake-out because it looks like dessert but tastes like cardboard. This time, I followed the recipe. Flour, butter sugar. Yes indeed. Admittedly, these ingredients do make things taste good. I had to subsitute yoghurt for the half and half cream but it worked nicely. Yes, ladies and gentletons, this is the scope of my life lately: pushing around furniture, baking and eating fattening scones and defiling old lady skirts. People are up to much worse things I'm sure. Probably people are up to much better and more globally usefull things too but...that ain't my scene so hey.

Carthington, C. A real effing effer.

I call this one: I'm a helicopter pilot ma'am.



Last night, I had a dream in the style of a Masterpiece Theater, Victorian drama type thing. It sort of took place on a train. For part of it, I was reading the story in a book in the library, and for the other part of it, I was watching it like a movie. I remember no one had a first name. They were all addressed by their last name, then first initial. The only character I actually remember was Carthington, C., an elderly, wealthy, widow (of course, no Victorian story is complete without one). The text in the book part of the dream read: "Carthington, C., a woman who took great delight in observing birds of the region through her binoculars for hours at a time. Known also for taking even greater delight in being served one of those birds, after viewing it from afar, in all its' roasted glory for her evening meal."

Then in the movie version, she was in the dining car of a train, looking the wrong way through the binoculars at the roasted bird on her plate so that it appeared far away and small, laughing uproariously the whole while. "I saw you earlier you effing effer. You were so pretty!". This was another of her characteristics. She referred to everyone behind their backs as "that effing effer".

Anyhoo.

I culled the pumpkins and embarked on a pie. Half-way through, I discovered I had no cinnamon, so I used a 45 year old allspice, sitting dustily on the shelf. It was passed down from my mother who probably had it since the start of her marriage. Note to self: refresh spices. It turned out tasty anyway, but T doesn't like pumpkin pie so now I have a whole damn pie that I MUST not eat in it's entirety. It is still warm from the oven and very enticing... Observe the life of the pumpkin.






Also, please enjoy witnessing my first hand knit baby item. I made this eensy cardigan and I'm pretty pleased with myself. So much more satisfying and quick to make baby clothes as opposed to giant adult clothes that take a million years and always turn out cruddy. Although, I am knitting myself a rather fetching scarf right now. I will show you soon.



Now, one more tiny slice of pie while it is still warm and new to the world. The little effing effer...