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!

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.

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...

C'mon Barbie, let's go party.

That bloody Barbie song played on the radio a few days ago and I've had it in my head ever since and now so do you! Why should I suffer alone? Share my pain.

Here's who else is annoyed: squirrels. At least the squirrels around here for the past few weeks. They've been making that HWEEEEEK HWEEEEEEK HWAAAAAUUCK sound they make when they are angry. I heard one doing it in the big tree in front of our house for a good 20 minutes. I finally went out to look and it was staring right at me, like it was waiting for me. As if it was sitting in the tree all that time calling to me in squirrel language: "Melissa! Get your friggin arse out here. We got us some business to settle. Have you or have you not been stealing my nuts???".

"I have my own damn nuts and I don't need to be stealing no squirrel booty. Chill the frig out!", is what I told him.

My parents were here, working their buttocks off fixing stuff around our place that we suck too much at fixing ourselves. We now have shelves in our shed, a kick-ass new extended and non-rotting, can step on it without falling through porch, a washer that doesn't threaten to leap to freedom across the room and out the window every time it goes through the spin cycle and a kitchen tap that doesn't leak.

Must remember to never ever by a "fixer-upper" house since we are both quite unmotivated to tackle these sorts of things. Must also remember to win a lottery to ever be able to buy any kind of house to begin with, fixer-upper or no.

About 20 minutes after my parents left for home, another province away, a pipe broke below our house and flooded the bathroom and under our house. I don't want to re-live the whole thing. Let's just say a few key phrases to sum up:
inches of water in bathroom, no one else home, 6 months pregnant hunched over in crawlspace full of dirt and spiders and buckets full of water leaking trying to turn off main valve, didn't work, flooded for an hour before anyone could get here, soaked, stressed, freaking out, plumber comes, leaves door open, can't find cat, soaked stressed, still sore from hunching and carrying buckets on top of frantically running around looking for cat, cat inside the whole time, pregnant lady at end of her rope!

We ended up having to go to an emergency trip to midwife, and take a cab there since it was last second. It's in another city! About a half hour away. Everything is fine, but let's just say I need to learn real fast about how to relax better.

I've been trying for years and years to learn to be less anxious and prone to being extra tense and worried. I talk about it in therapy constantly! Well, turns out, too much of that during pregnancy can create problems of early labour. If I didn't have a good enough reason before (ie: personal happiness, which should be a good enough, reason, but tell it to my brain), I certainly have a good reason now. I had already talked about the problem with the midwife before the -flood in the house day- happened. I was already in the process of trying very seriously to learn to relax more, when all hell broke loose. Wake-up call. That can't happen again. If the house explodes today, I will just go get some ice cream and read a magazine. It's a turning point. I simply can not go on, subjecting myself and now the safety of an unborn child to the pressure of anxiety, guilt, baggage, flooding bathrooms, injustice in the world etc, etc, etc.

I will have to finally learn how to be happier and that's the end of it. No more debate.

I try not to medicate with food, but last night, at the end of a day of stress, sogginess and no shower and 80 dollar cab rides and blah blah blah, I decided my dinner would be raw vegetables and chips with an entire container of dill flavoured dip. I ate the whole container! And wanted more after. So good. I've never done that before. I would do it again, I tell you.

Allow me to gush for a moment by saying that my husband has been incredibly unwavering in his ability to support me emotionally and physically with his inexhaustible energy to help, ever since, well since the day I met him really. I can't imagine how much more difficult it would all be without him.

I hope I don't yell too many insults at him during the moments of labour. I'll yell at the midwife instead. Tee hee.

Just in case this whole tale has made you forget:
click here!!!

Don't blame me! Blame the people involved in writing, recording and releasing the bloody song! Oh admit it! You love the song! You watched the whole video!

If you are extra unfortunate. You will remember that they actually had a bunch of songs after that one. All really really terrible. Like, really terrible. At least Barbie Girl is catchy (to say the least). The others are just awful. All with her singing some repetitive insipid hook and the weird bald dude, growling some danish-accented English spoken nonsense: "I am the candy man, coming from bountyland." What?! What does that mean? Does it make sense if you translate it into Danish? Or how about this: Girl sings: Roses are red, violets are blue, honey is sweet, but not as sweet as you,(barf) dum dum de dah de dum (insert ener-g drums)then bald dude's growled part: Come pick my roses. Uh,ok.

Actually, I think that every song on the album has a video. I think it was all masterminded by a Danish ad company (or just a plain old cheese danish? ha ha, I'm so funny). They marketed them with shiny videos and publicity spots just like they were selling insurance or chocolate bars.

Thanks Denmark. Good job. Yes, I blame ALL of Denmark. When you smell a fish, does it not come from there? Don't even get me started on that frigger Shakespeare. Ha ha, no seriously folks, Shakespeare is an OK guy. Can I get a round of applause for old Shakesy?

PS: Skullcap tincture. Amazing for sleeping, relaxation and possibly blog posts that are waaaaay tooooo long.

Tee hee hee. New age-y.

Jeez.

I didn't sleep too well. I've been waking up at 4:30am for weeks and not getting back to sleep till 7am. Last night I woke up at 2:30 and didn't get back to sleep till 7am. That's full-fledged insomnia ain't it? T kept asking why James Dean looked so old in Rebel Without a Cause. Because dude didn't sleep! And now, I see it on my face too. Yeesh.

Sometimes I get up and have a sandwich I'm so hungry. The cat sniffs around me, trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing up so early while I stand at the patio window, eating a sandwich and staring at the crescent moon and Venus. It reminds me of the Cat Stevens greatest hits cover and think that over and over while I look at it. Cat Stevens, Cat Stevens, Cat Stevens. A tired mind does odd things. The same thing happens when sitting down to knit, especially seed stitch: knit one, purl one, knit one, purl one etc. I can't stop thinking it in my head while doing it. Drives me nuts.

After I finally got back to sleep this morning, I half-woke and thought, nuh-uh, I'm not getting up yet. I will sleep till noon if I must. But then BANG BANG BANG BANG on the door. I'm always uninspired to answer the phone or the door. We so seldom get calls or people showing up that if the phone rings or the door knocks, it's nothing or no one good or interesting. Just telemarketers or Jehovah Witnesses. I figured, screw it, whoever it is can come back later if they need to. However, they loudly persisted so I lept up and realized it was the chimney sweep we had called, looking for his money before performing the job. No chim-chim cheroo from this fellow.

What a sight I must have been. Sleep lines on my face, eye mask hastily pushed up on my forehead, barely focused eyes and a gravely voice trying to articulate loudly in french (as he had given up and started up the hill to leave): Oui oui oui! Je suis ici! Le cheque, le cheque! Je vais le faire maintenant! He must have thought I was such a burn-out, although it was only 8:50 am fer crab's sake.

Now it's 10am and I'm ready to go back to bed. Totally done for.

Yesterday, we had our midwife appointment. It's the third midwife I've been through now. I asked to change the first one, because she spoke no english at all. The second one was great, but then took sick leave and so did her back up. Now I have this third one. Oh well, she seemed nice enough, although I'm sure she can't be more than 20 something. A veteran who'd seen 10 trillion births might be more assuring, but then again, sometimes new blood can have a more fresh approach. Who knows, it's random luck I suppose. Still a million times better than a doctor.

She did this thing while I was lying down where she helped me visualize moving the baby upward, toward my ribs and away from the bottom of the pelvis. It was a little spacey tinkly the way she told me to do it. Instead of just saying, close your eyes and try to relax your uterus and envision the baby moving upward, it was like: call your baby upward, call to him (chimes chimes, tinkly tinkle. ok, there was not actual chimes but there could easily have been)...It was hard to concentrate on doing it because I was concentrating so hard on not laughing, but it worked. T saw it move upward. My uterus went from all hard and tight to being soft and open. Dang it all if relaxation ain't the thing for most things.

I really do believe in the method of midwives; The way they treat pregnancy and birth as super natural and normal and they empower you to have control over your body and how you feel, (doctors just tell you what to do and act like it's an illness you must endure for 9 months). I totally believe in body awareness and breathing and yoga and all that stuff as super important, it's just the language that gets me laughing sometimes. The new age speak. It makes me chuckle like a teenager in sex-ed class. Might make me seem like I don't respect the message. I do. I just wish it could be delivered more matter of factedly sometimes. Yes, fact-ed-ly.

Anyhoodles.

Onward and upward. Tonight, if I wake up, I will try calling to my brain's sleep center. Come to me sleep. Come to me. And maybe I'll keep some chimes by the bed to seal the deal. Oh, I'm such a poop! I'm really making fun of myself more than new agey stuff. Me and my snickery self. Mmmm, snickers. Actually, I don't care for Snickers. I prefer Mars.

Powdery mildew. Mmmmm.

That's it, kablammy. It's fall. Last week was the last of the hot enough for a t-shirt days. Yesterday was be-a-utiful. Warm yet breezy and sunny with big puffy clouds. Today, overcast and under 20 and the rest of the weeks' forecast is under 20. Fall is irrevocably arrived.

With the end of summer, comes the end of my pumpkin patch also. The leaves have fallen victim to powdery mildew and must be destroyed. I have 4 pumpkins. They are not fat raccoon sized, more like, fat rabbit sized. However, they will do. I'm ready to change gears and kick into Fall mode. I'm thinking about scarves, stew and apple pie. To be honest, I've gone one step further and even thought about Christmas. Sorry, but I have. I've been using a tiny little fake tree the past few years. Mostly because of lack of space and the fact that no presents go under it as we always go to KW for Christmas. This year though, I will be 2 weeks from giving birth and ain't goin nowhere no how so I'm getting a real big spruce and I will make room for it. Oh yes indeed. I am a fan of the Christmas tree. But I leap much to far ahead with this train of thought.

I've been counting off weeks, mostly to remember when my 2nd trimester pilates work-out should change to my 3rd trimester and it's all been so abstract: 22 weeks, 24 weeks...Last night I converted it to months and thought: Holy poop, I'm nearly 6 months! Dig that, would you?

I guess another part of fall for me will be kicking out the knitting needles. Sitting around knitting for 3 hours doesn't seem right in the summer or spring, but somehow, in the fall, feels right. I should knit myself a winter coat since none of my coats are going to come anywhere near to getting all the way around my circumference...Maybe I could just by a reaaaallly long piece of wool and wrap myself up like a mummy in it when I need to go out. Could start a new trend.

Today, I feel like I should mark the seasonal crossover somehow. Perhaps I'll start by pulling out the pumpkin patch and end with a hot chocolate and figure out all the rest, in between, as I go along.

So long summer, smell ya later.

Boo to onions. Rah to Blenders. Sisk Boom Bah to all the rest.

Once again, Fall is on it's way. For some reason, I'm always dubious that summer or winter will pass when I'm in the middle of them. Despite constant proof to the contrary, I still sort of believe that they will just stick around and torture me forever. See, I'm an Autumn lady who happens to also dig Spring. These are the two touchiest and most fickle of seasons. Sometimes, they seem to only last a couple of weeks before the ball hogs of summer and winter tackle them to the ground and steamroll them.

Speaking of tackling. I was driving past a group of old people. They were in a bocce playing field, sitting on benches lining either side of the pitch (is what I'm guessing the bocce play field is called). As is my wont, I chose to imagine what else they could be assembling for. Of course orgy was my first thought. Then, British Bulldog came to mind, which is actually way more funny to imagine than orgy. You know British Bulldog right? The really sensible game where groups of kids line up on either side of a field and then yell "British Bulldog!" and charge at each other and tackle each other. That's some good sportin'. I loved that game.

So, back in the now, it's 8pm and pitch black already so Fall is, in fact, coming. Summer will give up the ghost even though I'm sure it would stick around, annoying me with it's heat and sun all year if it could. Summer is so bloody full of itself.

The wasps are dozy, the geese will be heading for the hills( I don't mean Hollywood), all my plants are dead, but that's mainly because I didn't water them enough the past 2 weeks...Anyway, the signs are all there. So kiss my ass summer. You go ahead and have your last few days of heaty heatness. You are so outta here.

Sigh. The arrival of Autumn is always so bittersweet though. I love the weather, but as the days grow shorter, depression does tend to sit in. Now, with me already feeling like a huffing, puffing, beached whale at only 5 months pregnant, how will Autumn feel this year? Will the fact that I won't be pushing money around electronically at a bank help? Let's hope so. Maybe I'll haul my widening ass out for Fall walks and get some of that precious daylight to help with my mood this year. We shall see, we shall see.

Oh, by the way, know what's not fun? Iron supplements. They suck so bad. I got the easiest (and most friggin' expensive) kind to digest in liquid form, but it still kills the stomach and makes you feel pukey. Well it's practically drinking liquid rust with a bit of prune juice for flavouring. Mmm-mmm. Tasteee. I tried to go without it for a while and just eat lots of spinach and pumpkin seeds etc. However, after a while, I ended up feeling like merely blinking my eyelids was too much effort for me to bear and developed panda eye dark circles that make me look like the undead. So back to the cursed Iron juice. Shudder. I absolutely hate it. Tough shit though. I need to take it and that's that.

As a balance, something that is fun is making your own delicious cocoa flavoured granola with almonds and dates and eating it with chocolate soy milk. Yes indeed.

Have I mentioned how in love I am with my new blender? I'm in love with it. Oh the smoothies and slushies we will make together, that blender and I. The other day I made a crushed ice, lime, ginger and honey slushy and I felt pretty smug about it. Pretty damn smug about being clever enough to purchase a machine that would easily facilitate such tasty drinks. Every morning I have a banana, strawberry, vanilla soymilk smoothy with some tahini for protein and dates for fun. It tastes so good, ladies and gentlemens. I recommend thee, oh blender, to all the people of all the lands.

Yes well, I have tired of this finger moving. The iron has yet to accumulate sufficiently in me so I heave and huff and only use one eye at a time because it's too tiring to keep both open at the same time don't you know.

Fun fact: I now abhor the smell of cut onions. I used to love it. Now it smells like rot and decay of the most foul sort. Boo to onions, boo.

Good night and thank-yee.

Yaaawwwn.

Well well well.

So we are having a boy, you probably know already. I have begun feeling him kick or punch or whatever they get up to. The first time I felt it I had images from Alien flash before my eyes. It was freaky! I worried momentarily that I would spend the next 4 months being creeped out. However, like all the feelings that go along with pregnancy, you become accustomed to them rapidly. We'd all be completely insane if it didn't happen that way since it is a strange experience, no denying it.

For once I'm actually appreciating the mental effects my hormones are having on me. They are soothing for the most part as opposed to the evil mix of menstrual hormones, the mix that nearly gets me into fist fights and induces bad self-made haircuts. The pregnancy mix convinces you somehow that things are groovy so long as nothing is threatening your physical safety. There is the whole 'weepy weirdo' aspect though. While waiting for T to finish boiling his perogies so we could sit down and watch Rebel Without a Cause, I watched the trailer to see how they sold it in 1955. I ended up being a weepy during it. Those poor misguided kids...

We had a visit to the K-dub a few weeks ago. Had a very nice baby shower in which people were thoughtful and generous with their gifts.



We had to buy a new dresser to store it all. Somehow, we have to convert this place into a two-bedroom by next spring which has involved chaos inducing furniture moving and boxing and throwing out of anything even slightly not useful. The staggering quantities of junk that can accumulate insidiously in a house. Entropy does rule. Damn entropy.

I am boring myself writing this. It's hard not being up your own hole. Very nearly impossible actually. I was less happy at my stupid bank job, but the blogging was more interesting because I tried to focus on what was happening around me more, to save thinking about my own misery. Now I just walk around all day thinking about me me me, my life, me me me. Well, you know, sometimes, it's warranted. This is what I've decided anyway.

More face

Attack of the awesome tomato.

I just had the most delicious tomato sandwich of my life. Twas a tomato from my own garden. My garden, this year, is absolutely pathetic. For 3 months, may-august, the critical months for a garden, I was too sick to tend to it. Now there's big empty patches, dwarfed little pea pods, sickly beet leaves and bitter overgrown carrots. The dill has gone to seed, and the lettuce is cramped and anemic. But the tomatoes! Oh my yes, the tomatoes are delicious. Meaty and sweet. I really should have taken a photo of the first one.

Also, I must say, to my surprise, the pumpkin patch is insanely flourishing. I want the pumpkins to grow as big as well fed raccoons. Like one I saw loping past the window the other night at 4am when I couldn't sleep. Big, fat, fuzzy raccoon, sauntering it's bulk around with his little robber mask on.

T is currently distracting me by singing an improvisational song about going to get coffee that ended with a tap dance.

Back to the tomato. I'd been eyeing it for days, waiting for it to be perfectly ripe. This morning I woke up knowing it was time. I went out in the early morning rain (must download some Gordon Lightfoot), in my pajamas to pick it and broke breakfast tradition slightly by having a sandwich. A perfect, delicious tomato sandwich that I really did consider photo worthy and nearly immortalized it for posterity's sake. Instead, I decided that actually eating it was too pressing and there was no time for dilly-dallying. I totally ate that sandwich. Delightful. R.I.P. in my stomach tomato. You served me well.

I think I might need to get out more.

Face it.

So painting. I haven't painted in YEARS. Maybe a tiny thing here and there, painfully excreted, but not real sitting down and "lovin' every minute of it" painting. Maybe it's the therapy, maybe it's the hormones, maybe it's both, whatever, I've been painting and really enjoying it. It clicked all of a sudden: I can draw a face and paint it in and I don't need a reason or a point other than I love doing it. So hah!

Some work out, some don't. The ones that don't, I chuck in the garbage and keep on truckin'. I couldn't care less because I feel like I have about a million in me. Who needs to write stories or illustrate events, really, I can say everything I want to with faces.