Waiting and remembering

View of frozen river from our patio door.


It looks like we are living on arctic tundra today. Minus 28 Celsius with the wind.

Ah yes. Post-christmas melancholy. I always feel the let down. December is such a warm time of year, even with all the annoying xmas commercials and how many times can you hear Santa Claus is Coming to Town before you want to stab yourself in the ears, but...it's such a nice build-up to a fun holiday. And then. January. Winter. Lights come down, smiles on people's faces turn upside down. Decorations get packed up and ho ho ho turns to ho hum blech.

Wait a sec though monsterteeth, don't you have something coming up to make January a little more interesting? Well, yes I do actually. I haven't forgotten, believe me. I am officially in a position to give birth at any time now. Who knows when. I feel it becoming more imminent though. It's like waiting for a kettle to boil. Waiting for a big, fat, moody kettle to boil. And while you're waiting, the kettle makes you feel like you have to pee and poop a lot and get on all fours because the kettle is making your back hurt and somehow, the kettle also makes you want to become hysterical like a maniac out of the blue and the tiniest emotion feels a million times more significant as you wait for the kettle to decide when it's going to freakin' boil.

So who's the kettle? Is the baby the kettle or are you the kettle, you ask? Well, right now, we're all sort of in it together. There is a full moon on dec 31st. Perhaps that will be the boiling point. All this talk of boiling is making we want a cup of tea. Oh, and to give birth. Have I mentioned I feel ready?

T has put on a cd of pipe organ music that makes me feel like I should be rubbing lemon oil in church pews or polishing the stations of the cross. I'm trying to decide when to strip the tree of it's jewelry and cast it from our home. That's the brutal part of having a real tree. I have half a mind to just keep it up all winter. That's how I think of it anyway, a tree to celebrate winter. When I cast my eye out on the "arctic" landscape and then balance it with a glance at the decorated tree, it reminds me of the beauty of winter. Winter is beautiful, it's just that it triggers such a strong animal instinct of relenting and hibernating. Being sort of couch bound, doesn't help, I would imagine, to fight the hibernation instinct. I would really dig being able to head out for some skating or a winter walk...I'm not complaining though, not really. It's pretty cozy and relaxed in here and my lack of mobility is for a good cause.

I have been thinking of California a lot though. For some reason, those 4 months stand out in my memory more vividly than anything else. Sometimes, a flood of those memories will come in waves for a few days. The same goes for T. We have intricate sight, sound and especially smell memories of so much from that time: The decaying orange smell from the orange farm next to our building, the smell of the cherry blossom trees in Japantown and the cocktail of sake and sparkling fruit juice we used to get at our favourite sushi place Kazoo, the electronic ding of the light rail, the smell of the dishwasher in our apartment when it was done running, the chlorine of the outdoor hot tub, the disinfectant in the elevators, the rental car's new car smell, the cold morning air being warmed by the mid morning sun smell while running on the nature trail...I could go on and on and on. What lucky people we were to live that experience. To be honest, I still feel pretty lucky to be living my current life also. A gal doesn't need to be in California to gather a cache of good memories. Still, it was a particularly strong impacting experience.

I don't think my blog from that time did the best job of reflecting it. I focused too much on the creative struggle I was having. That's often the case with me though. I seem to experience the past more vividly than the present. I could probably write a better blog about it now.

Well, I've tried to remedy that with the past 9 months of this experience. We'll see what it all seems like when I look back on it in a few months from now. It's hard to actually believe I will really have a son by then; A real live human being! Right now it's seems purely speculative. Winter will pass though, spring will come, the ground will thaw and plants will grow and life goes on, even as we speak.

Happy holidays and junk and stuff

Well Happy Holidays lovely people. It's Christmas evening and I am full of Tofurky. An episode of Northern Exposure from my new dvd (gift) is playing and the cat is sleeping on the baby changing table because he can. Actually, he quite likes all the baby items. He was sleeping in the car seat for a few weeks, until we installed it. He got a taste for being carried around when he was a kitten so we decided to test out the baby sling on him, to get a feel for it. He loves it. Freaky little furball.



I'm nearly 38 weeks now. I am so close to giving birth it's wacky. All is go. Retro rockets, activated. And so on. It's a trippy ride, these last few weeks. Surreal at turns. Thanks again to hormones (which, if you read in my blog archives, you will note that I curse these same hormones monthly with all my might!), they have lulled me into a feeling that all is cool. And why shouldn't it be really? I had slight hitch in sanity lately when I couldn't get the "I want a hippopotamus for christmas "song out of my head. It was assaulting my brain, there's no other way to say it. I would shout f--- off out loud to silence the song going round and round and round, but it would just laugh and keep on trucking through my skull. "No crocodile or rhinoceroses, all I want for christmas, is hippopotamuses..." NOOOO!!!!!!

It lasted about 2 days. I'm better now.

Crazy, man, crazy.

We spent this Christmas as just the two of us. It was relaxed and simple and really nice. The midwife asked us recently if we felt ready to be parents. We told her we were as ready as people, who had no idea what to expect, could be. She told us it can be a big change in the routine of young people. We both laughed and explained how we already live like retired hermits.

I love staying home. I need to go out maybe once every 2 months and that's pretty much it. I don't go to parties, I hardly ever go out with friends, I don't even go to movies anymore. What for, when I can rent and watch from the comfort of my home without having to hiss to the moron 2 seats down from me that if they don't turn off their cell phone, I will follow them home and strangle them with piano wire...

On Christmas eve, we had a skype date with my parents and sister where we opened our secret santa gifts. I got a big sharp knife and a knife sharpener to keep it that way. Makes me feel like a big man...with a knife. A big pregnant man with a big sharp knife. Er...well, it makes me feel like onions are really easy to cut at the very least. It was fun and modern and less Bladerunner than Skype felt the first few times I tried it.

This morning, T and I opened our gifts to each other. We did a good job! We even got the kitty cat some cat grass as a present, since we wouldn't let him eat our poinsettia. His former vexation has turned to satisfaction as a result.



We went for a wee drive in the country and then lounged at home, reading our new books. We feasted on Tofurky, as is our wont and finished with a decadent chocolate cheesecake, for which my stomach is currently debating whether or not it's going to punish me.

It's already nearly bedtime. I can't say I mind. Laying down is so sweet. Sleeping is so awesome. Getting up to pee every two hours is less awesome but falling back asleep again is redeeming.

I dig life right now. I hope you do too. Merry holidays to all.

Solstice+Jesus+Arctic Magic Man= Ridiculous but fun.

Have I been knitting? Why yes, I have actually. I'm pretty much stuck to the couch these days. All of a sudden I'm hella pregnant. I'm at 36 weeks. Around 35 I blew up. Figuratively of course...

The tree is up and I'm pleased about that. As if by the power of Greyskull, it snowed for the first time the evening I put it up. For a while there, it was looking like a rainy, poopy green Christmas. All that's changed thankfully. This morning, I looked out the window and overnight, the river had frozen into a layer of ice shards. No turning back now.



So back to the knitting. I've managed another baby sweater, a baby hat, mittens for me and T, T's scarf, a hat to match my scarf, smurf/elf slippers for T and fat pompom slippers for me. You know, I always thought it was spelled pom-pom. but apparently it's pompon.







So yeah. Knitting.

We completely reorganized our place AGAIN and this time, I think it will stick. I keep snooping around looking for things to organize and clean instead of just saying: Okay, enough! I guess it's just the feeling that soon, there will be no time to do any of it and entropy will not be held at bay.
The unending fight with chaos will be on hold. It's my last chance to wrangle some organization in my realm before I am overcome with feeding and pooping a baby and walking around in a sleepless zombie-like state. (Read following outloud with a monster truck commercial voice)"LIVE, One month only!!! Melissa VS Chaos: The Last Gasp. It's a smackdown, no holds barred piledrivin' GRUDGE MATCH! Watch them duke it out until only one is staaaandinggggg."

T is acting like my remote control cleaning machine for the things I can't do on my own. Lucky him...

I'm winding down though. Definitely finding it trickier to do pretty much everything. What I need is lots of good movies and good sandwiches and a few more weeks of soaking up the non-parental life. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited as a bear pooping in the woods (which is very exciting to bears. They like it a lot.). I am really looking forward to meeting Leon. I ain't no fool though. I know this last bit of time is to be appreciated and I'm trying to do that.

Luckily, 'tis the season to be jolly. I am. I hope you are too. Let's rock this pagan celebration that somehow turned into a birthday party for a jewish dude from Bethlehem, that somehow has something to do with a dude from the northpole and toys and chocolate. Pick the part of the story you like and go with it. As long as you rock it full-on. Happy holidays!