Ready or not, it's nearly time to rock.

Eyuch. I made the worst pancakes this morning. I've been successfully making a rice flour pancake for a while and today I made it, for the first time, with homemade rice flour. I don't know if that was the problem or, more likely, that I forgot to put the baking powder in until they were already mixed. Either way, I had to make them like scrambled eggs. They wouldn't hold together so I had to just keep scrambling them and pressing them until they cooked into blob shaped, slabs of unrisen batter. The taste is still okay but the texture...leaves something to be desired.

I would have just dumped it and made more, but it was the last of my baking powder. In olden times, (ie a year ago) I could have hopped on the bike and trekked to the grocery store. Now, just getting up off the couch requires a helping hand from T. I try to use inertia to get up, whereby I swing my upper body back and forth a couple times in the hopes that it will eventually propel me forward enough to be able to stand, but it doesn't work anymore. Even just rolling over in bed requires that face that participants in the Strongest Man in the Universe make when they are trying to pull a truck with their teeth. Why are the men who win that always named Magnus?


Which leads me to my next point: I am going to have a baby in a matter of weeks (anywhere from 3-6 weeks) and it is completely, utterly, astoundingly blowing my mind. It is hitting me in a way where I can see it coming like a tidal wave waaaay out in the sea. I'm standing on the shore and I can see it's power and understand that is going to plow into me, knock me ass over tea kettle, as my Grandmother says, immerse me and pull me back out into the wide open sea.

A detached part of me is watching it coming and thinking: "Wow, that's big, really powerful and big. That wave is going to change my life." Yet, even though I see how massively things are about to change, my brain just can't fully comprehend it, having never been hit by a tidal wave before. My brain is trying really hard to process it, but it's more or less at a loss.

Luckily, I'm a big fan of the sea. I'm rooted to the shore, waiting for the wave. There's no running in the opposite direction, nor do I feel the urge to. But my whole psyche is bracing itself, trying to see if I have the courage to dive headfirst into the wave as it comes.

Having children seems so common place when you see it around. People have kids, millions of them everyday, all over, throughout time. Should be no biggy right? Well, millions of people die and always have and everyone will, but it doesn't make it any easier to accept or understand or process when it happens to your world. Birth, death, life itself: The most normal things in that they happen to everyone without exception, yet understanding any of them?...

I don't know. It really makes a gal stop and think. A whole live human being is the result of this endeavour. One that will rely on T and I to look after it and be it's guardians for the rest of all of our lives. For a while, it felt like the being pregnant part was going to go on endlessly. But it ain't. Soon, it will be a whole new scene.

I am stoked. Scared. Fascinated and mystified. Getting ready to rock. And so it shall be.

Navel gazing or: How I learned to be hermit and torture everyone with a blog about it.

Ah, the melancholy of a birthday over and done with... Luckily, being born in November means I have a good pace of things to look forward to each month, starting in August.
End of August: Look forward to the beginning of fall.
End of September: Look forward to Halloween
End of October:Look forward to birthday
End of November: Look forward to Christmas
End of December: (This year) look forward to birth of child and a new year.
End of January....uh, well normally, that's when the year starts to feel sort of blah.

This year, the birthday was low key and enjoyable. I started with 2 lovely looking presents to open from T and a card from my parents.





Then, a rather fantastic breakfast, if I do say so myself.

That's toasted almonds and walnuts with fresh squeezed pink grapefruit juice and homemade pumpkin spice biscuits with almond butter.

Then I watched T put together a new dresser we bought to replace the Ikea Aneboda dresser that I advise you never buy as it stinks like the most toxic plastic in the world and the stench will not part. Happily, they took it back at Ikea, even though I didn't have the receipt. They tried to psych me out beforehand, but I hung tough and called their bluff.

Then I had a nap. Then we went to Montreal and had a fantastic vegan lunch at Aux Vivres, my favouritiest of restaurants. Sure favouritiest is word. You didn't know?

So yeah, blah blah.

My cat just went on top of the dresser, opened the drawer to my jewelry box and found the toy mouse I bought for him and hid there, then somehow, managed to get it out without taking anything else out.

Uh, am I describing what my cat is doing to you? Yeah....

I went back and read some old posts on my blog. I suggest you do the same. This thing was waaaay more interesting when I actually left the house and encountered things in the world. It wasn't all: here's what I had for breakfast, and here's what my cat did.

You are lucky I haven't started talking about things that happen in the bathroom! T is not as lucky.

Everytime you read the word "birthday", have a drink.

Ah yes, a little birthday insomnia. Why not blog early. Like, 5am early.

I don't have many birthday traditions. I do enjoy my birthday, a lot. Mainly because it's a day where I feel justified in being kind to myself. I guess everyday would feel like that ideally, but hey. One day a year is better than none day a year.

A couple days before my birthday, I usually make a loose plan based on how I feel. The only thing that I for sure do and have done since the song was released when I was 14, is listen to Birthday by the Sugarcubes. I'm sure I've blogged it before, since it is the only real tradition I have.

Bjork was so amazing to me back then. A wierd little Icelandic pixie with a crazy voice and the best clothes ever. She forever implanted in me a love for a white dress with opaque silver leggings.



One thing I almost never want to do is have a party on my birthday. Or even go out for a little dinner with family and friends. The day before or after is nice, but for some reason, I like to reserve my birthday as a introverted, energy inward sort of day. Oh wait, that's pretty much what I want to do everyday. Har de har. Well, I'm better at it on November 17th.

I'm tired and hoping to get a little more sleep in before the whole day begins. I've got some presents from T to open and everything! I love presents. Not the opening of them or the getting gifts so much as the way they look. I acknowledged to myself in Ikea last night that I have a bit of a wrapping paper fetish. I love the way a wrapped up package looks. My favourite part of Christmas presents is just looking at them all wrapped under the tree. I'm actually quite uncomfortable opening gifts or receiving them. I much prefer giving them. However, I've got a couple gifts to open today and I'm not complaining. It is fun to unwrap a surprise just for you.

So Happy birthday to me. My last one as a not quite yet a mom. How crazy life is.

36 ladies and gentles. Thirty. Six.

Number one costume award of the universe goes to...

Halloween is over, but major props to my cousin-in-law who sent these photos of her and my cousin's son dressed up as Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys for Halloween. Hands down, best kids costume ever. He even had a little shopping cart to push around like Bubbles.


Brings to mind my favourite Trailer Park Boys episode: Conky. Please enjoy the scene below, where Ricky, after accidentally gluing a rag and model truck to his hand and nose with contact cement, fishes out Bubbles' puppet Conky from a swamp (where he was thrown years ago due to Conky's evil ways), because it's the only way to get him to go to the hospital for his abscessed tooth. Bubbles, Ricky and Julian find themselves with some explaining to do at the hospital. Further complicating things, is the fact that Conky is a beligerent puppet who has a mind of his own and ends up pushing both Ricky and Julian to extreme measures.

Warning: Profuse use of the word fuck in this delightful clip.



I recommend checking out the full episode here if you dig.

If you're happy and you know it, grunt and stand!

For lunch, I made a gigantic bowl of spaghetti and tomato sauce with lentils. We had that for dinner last night and there wasn't enough to have seconds, even though I wanted MORE!!! Well, there was enough, but we save all leftovers for T to have for lunch so he doesn't have to buy lunch. So to satisfy my (still present after sleeping on it) need for more spaghetti, I had to make a new batch today at lunch.

Technically, the -T gets the leftovers deal- is fair. Since I'm at home, I can make my own damn lunch. I have the leisure and time to do so. In practice though, it's annoying. I love leftovers! They are so easy. This begs the obvious question: Why don't you make more dinner so that there are enough leftovers for both of you? Why indeed. I've been trying for years to get the hang of that. Even when I think I am making an army platoon worth of food, we plate it and it's barely enough for 3 servings. Plate it? Who am I? Martha Stewart? Darling, I've plated your toast for you, tis ready for you to delight in. It's like Moe from the Simpsons saying to Homer "OOh Garage. You call it a garage. Well la dee dah." Homer says: "Well, what do you call it?"
Moe says: " A car hole."


So anyway, for lunch today, I filled a big cereal bowl to the top with spaghetti and place your bets on me eating it all ladies and gentlemens.

...

It's later now.

I ate it all.

Lordy lordy, I am full. I avenged the spaghetti craving, that much is accomplished. Now, I wonder if half a bowl might have also done the trick. Or maybe not drinking the huge, cold glass of water right after...I feel like a water balloon, that also has a lot of spaghetti in it. Nice imagery huh?

The moral of this story is...is...hmm. I'm stumped. There is no morality here I guess. It's a moral-less meal jungle. Only the strong survive! Only the - able to make enough for a proper amount of leftovers so they don't have to make it twice and then eat too much the second time around- will rule the jungle!

Forget the fact that we should be making EXTRA extras so we can have leftovers AND double that to freeze, for when we have a 2 week old child and 2 minutes of sleep and find ourselves eating handfuls of flour or mustard with a spoon like pudding because we are too exhausted and incoherent to make a real meal.

So much to learn, so much to learn.

I"m going to get one more hair cut before the next long long while, tomorrow. I figured I'd fit one last attempt at looking slightly kempt before the whole new baby, can't get out of my pajamas thing. Even now, I can't be bothered to wear make-up most of the time anymore, or small things like putting earrings in. Often, while getting dressed, I think, Gah, do I really have to put on a bra??

I'm sort of nervous about going to get my hair done, because it's a train ride, then a short metro ride, involving stairs, then a 5 minute walk. Lately, just walking to the mailbox, 2 minutes away, requires an hour of recovery after. However. it's my birthday Tuesday. I feel like I should make one last attempt, at the age of 35, to at least have half-decent hair for the commencement of my 36th year. Aye carumba. 36. That's a number that is not kidding around. 36 ain't playin'.

Oh whatever, who cares. 36, schmirty schmix. I probably don't need the stupid dumb haircut either. What's it matter in the grand scheme of things ? Life, the universe and leftovers...

Look at that. You can read, as it's happening, one of my rapid mood changes of late. I turn super sour and annoyed about something mid-sentence. Something that started off being fine. I also drop everything, I grunt from the effort of trying go from sitting to standing, I cry for no reason whatsoever, and I eat too much spaghetti.

Parts of pregnancy are amusing and fun and parts are gritty and not at all pretty. I guess most of the those latter parts seem to happen in the last 2 months. 10 weeks left, possibly 7. Egads, I say. Tally ho and hup hup as it were.

Look, I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore. If I lean too far back on the couch, the baby starts pressing into some major artery that leads to my heart and brain and things start to go all woozy.

By the way, we've been sort of quiet about it, but it's decided so dig it or shut it. He shall be named: Leon.

On that note.

Glad I don't care for beer.

Where I live, the wealthy retired people, with their big riverfront homes, live interspersed with the very unwealthy, like us, renting the glorified shacks and cottages that used to be just fishing cabins. What mystifies me though, when I walk past the homes of the other poor people around, is how everyone has a satellite dish.

Those things are expensive! I've seen these same people, biking to the store on 10 speeds from 1982, paying for cigarettes with pennies, but they can afford satellite TV? How do they do it? We can't afford satellite TV. We've been using the same rabbit ears antenna that's half broken on one end from the cat and loose on the other end so it never stays in place and barely gets us 5 channels, for nearly 5 years! Our TV needs to be jiggled at the back for the picture to come in and it had to be hooked up to computer speakers because the volume stopped working and only the remote can turn it on or off because the power button is broken and the screen is an eye squinting 12 inches. New TVs are way too expensive, even for the smallest most humble kind. Yet, I see my neighbour, who doesn't work and smokes pot all day, with a big screen TV mounted on the wall inside his place. What is the deal?

I hesitate to buy bread I like sometimes, because it's a dollar more expensive than another kind! Is it a question of priorities? We simply could not afford to buy a new TV or cable etc, because it would mean not eating or not heating our place. So how do they do it? Do they not eat or heat in lieu of watching Thai soap operas on big screen TVs?

We stood behind a man in the variety store the other day. He had a case of beer, Doritos, a 2 litre bottle of pop, scratch tickets and cigarettes. A single man's essentials? His debit card kept being declined and all he had was a 20 dollar bill, so he chose items, one by one, in order of importance from least to most, till he was left able to afford nothing but the case of beer.

I wondered at the time, why didn't he put back the case and just get a beer or 2 instead and be able to have all his other items as well? Priorities? Poor reasoning skills? It was depressing to watch.

We have to be careful with our money, and we can't watch cable TV, but we have a nice, clean, quiet home. We eat fresh food and we have enough to pay bills without going into debt. I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful also, that we don't miss the channels we don't get or the beer we don't buy...

We've had some recent fear and panic over money and the future, with the arrival of a baby very soon. Looking at the budget and facing what needs to be adjusted or eliminated to allow for new demands... Sometimes, it's overwhelming. I know we aren't unique in our situation. I know that you too, reader, are probably juggling finances in your own situations.

When I step back and look it at with a cool head though, I see that it's ok. We are OK and maybe even on the side of lucky. Things are so much worse for some people. And some people won't be able to ever get it right because they just don't know what to take out of their basket at the store.

Some people don't have family and friends either, to help out. We do and I feel grateful for that as well.

What is this maudlin mood I am in? It's all about perspective I guess. It's easy to get caught up in your own world and forget to breathe and look around.

Anyway, we made specific choices. T chose to stay in school to do his Masters, which was a good choice. I chose to quit a job that was making me unhappy, also a good choice. The consequence of our choices was low income. It's hard sometimes, but ultimately for good causes and like I said, really, it's not so bad. We have what we need.

Sometimes we even have great bonuses! Here are some of my favourite photos from the session with Sarah a few weeks ago.



Well, you can't actually see the really pregnant bits of me in the photos I've chosen, but you can imagine.

Also, I had an early birthday party last saturday with a few friends that was very fun. Lots of food and we managed to fit in a bit of craft work also, toward the end. It was nice to have some people over, seeing as how it's getting less and less feasible to haul my arse outside of the house for long these days. I think my double chin alone, is adding weight to my load. Ha ha. Seriously!

The weather is beautiful lately. Sunny and mild creamy air or crisp like a crunchy red apple....mmmm, red apples...

Apple time. Happily, apples are cheap and abundant this time of year. So dig it.

Smell ya later everyone.