I am going to try to savor these last few weeks with Jonathan and myself.  I will be 38 weeks then or roughly the size of a small villa.

We haven’t set up the nursery yet. I have started feeling those twinges of nesting slowly seeping into my blood. I keep thinking “Remember to ask the midwife what sort of snacks she likes and if she likes tea or coffee.” because that is obviously very, very important. 

I had my first baby shower and I did not slap my mother in public. Sure my sister and I exhausted our eyes with all the rolling they did and I’m sure we ground our teeth down just a little bit more.  I, on behalf of the baby, received many lovely things from a group of even lovelier ladies.  We ate food and chatted, no games were played and no one told me any horrible birth stories. 

I watch my stomach do little waves all day. So far the baby seems to only wake up once during the night, around 3am when I get up to pee there is movement but the rest of the night is calm and relaxing. I hope this is a sign of things to come. I know my sister was kept awake all night during her last trimester and once born my niece continued her all night parties. 

I have to start buying things like baby detergent and diapers. Since were cloth diapering I want to have at least 7 covers and 80 prefolds.  I’m constantly trolling the internet for deals.  I have what seems like an endless list of items that we need.

I feel so underprepared and in 4 weeks time I want to feel over prepared, something that I have never experianced in my life but this one time I need to for the sake of my sanity. Because I know that the actual tiny human being that depends on me and Jonathan for EVERYTHING part is something I can only imagine being prepared for but, having a place for that tiny human to be comfortable in where everything is set up to make life even the tiniest bit easier will be a gift.

This means that if all the stalls are in use it is pretty easy to figure out who is in the washroom. I am one of those people who can poop in a public washroom that is full of strangers, but if there is even one other stall being occupied in my office washroom I cannot even pee. Even worse there is a woman who I think might have some sort of stomach problem and when you walk in there and she’s in there you know it, but then she won’t leave until you’ve left so you are stuck at an impasse. A pooping impasse. Do I just go knowing that she already obviously has? Or is she waiting for me to clear out so she can finish? I don’ t know, Emily Post didn’t tell me what the proper etiquette is in these situations.

Then there is the middle stall. I always use the last stall and if someone comes in and goes into the middle stall when the stall on the other end is empty it drives me batty. Because THAT is common sense, a vacant stall between people going is just polite.

Maybe it is because I have worked so hard to even get over using a public washroom that I have such hang ups. Seriously, growing up I could only pee in a completely empty public washroom. And the few times that I attended events that only had portapotties or outhouses…well I would just hold it. Do you know how hard it is to only use the washroom once a day while at Girl Guide camp? I only used the washroom at camp once a day when we went swimming because the life guard house(ha you thought I went in the water!) had a proper washroom so instead of swimming with the other girls I would use the washroom. I still couldn’t poop though. I remember my parents picking me up and me demanding they took me somewhere I could finally poop. A week of camp food lodged up in my colon was not fun.

Then I started working 9 to 5 and all was good until the one day that I had to go. I had obviously ingested something that my stomach did not like and clenching my butt cheeks was not going to work until I got home, the cramping and pain it was causing was worse than the embarrassment of someone knowing that I pooped in the washroom. So I went. Somehow the world did not end. I did not come out of the washroom to face a crowd of laughing, pointing co-workers. No one sent me an email telling me that I stunk the whole office up.

It was a relief in more ways than one.

I turned on the a/c. We didnt pay several thousand dollars just to be sweltering in our home!

Ok if anyone actually reads this here is an update to bring you up to speed.

I’m 6 months pregnant. There’s a baby kicking me as I type this. I suspect this will continue in some form for the next 20 years. We had the bathroom renovated. Showers are now glorious and I squeegee the walls after every use.

Um yeah that is about it. See not much was missed!

We also went to Montreal for a few days. 

While there I almost pooped my pants on the street after my fancy birthday meal. It was truly one of my finer moments. I have no clue what happened, I felt ok and then suddenly I did not. Suddenly a wave of clammy gross washed over me and my stomach did something. I am still not sure what but I suspect that it liquefied every morsel of food I had ate in the last 24 hours and shot gunned it to my colon. I had to run into a Subway sandwiches and ask to use the washroom. Calling it explosive diarrhea would be calling a hurricane  a spring shower.

On one hand I was mortified that I was in a Subway bathroom that had no fan and the chances of someone standing or eating just on the other side of the door were very high(luckily there was neither). On the other hand I was thankful that I had the good sense not to pretend that it was just gas and try to walk it off or take a cab back to the hotel AND that it was not food poisoning. It could have been so much worse.

After I defiled the Subway bathroom(I flushed several times and used lots of scented soap to sort of clear the air.)  we went back to the hotel where I watched a Toddlers and Tiaras marathon. Over all it was a classy night.

The gloom of the last post has lifted and all is well, when that feeling lifted I knew I would be ok, even if it came back I knew it would only be for a brief visit.

Did you know that marshmallows go bad. Not just stale. There is even a best before date, which I guess if I had looked at the bag in my cupboard I might have seen but I didn’t look I just squeezed and thought “Not stale!” even though they have been in my cupboard for probably close to two years. I had been inspired to make rice krispie squares(I know, I’m a true gourmand!) because the cereal was on sale and company was coming over so they could help eat them! Perfect! I went out and grabbed a box of the multi-grain honey ones and looked up the recipe and got to melting my butter. I added the bag of marshmallows and they started melting. All was good.

Then they started caramelizing and smelling weird. Even though the heat was on low they started getting these brown streaks in them and then I realised that they weren’t really melting into the smooth marshmallowy goo that they should have been and were instead becomeing a mass ball of clumpy, grainy, brown streaked gloop.

That is when I thought “What the fuck? Do marshmallows go bad?” and sure enough the best before date on the bag was last May.

Lesson learned.

I was wrong. So, so wrong.

At nine and a half weeks I lost the plot. I started bawling uncontrollably and have stopped briefly to go to work(HA! Who am I kidding I bawled at work.). The hurricane seemed to be called fear and it has been whipping me around inside it like a rag doll since.

It started simply by the the thought of how it has just been Jonathan and I for ten years. A decade of our lives spent together doing our own thing, only responsible for a dog and a cat. Our yearly trek to Montreal, our late nights listening to records and having drinks, our weekends lying in bed snuggling and falling in and out of sleep. Us as a duo. It is all going. The fear makes me doubt if I am truly ready for that.

What if my mother was right? What if children do ruin my life? What if I regret and resent our child for taking away something I loved? What if I am just not ready? I have not yet seen Paris. I have not done so many things. What if I become my mother? I am so afraid that I am making the biggest mistake.

I know how that sounds. Like I am a horrible evil person. I have always wanted children. I have spent the last 9 years knowing that I would have them with Jonathan, that I want them with Jonathan. We came up with names we talked about it. This was not something we decided on a whim. Now though, there is a large olive sized baby growing inside me and the hormones are drowning me in so much doubt.

I am so afraid. Afraid that these feelings will stay forever. Afraid that if I hold all of this in it will eat me alive because it hurts so much but I have to purge it because I am afraid that if I say it out loud it will become true.

When I started there were about 80 or so people. As of today there are about 17.

See the company that bought us a few years back decided that we didn’t fit their core product and decided to try to sell us. In this economy we had no buyers so now they are just shutting us down. If we stay to the end we will get a nice little severance package. 

I don’t mind my job. What makes it good though is that I have one really awesome friend here. At least I did. Because as of next week there will only be 16 people in the office.

I’m happy for him of course, he’s going on to greener pastures.  But I feel so completely sad that the first night that I knew he was leaving I woke up in the middle of the night and had a panic attack about it.  I try to imagine what work is going to be like without him and I just feel like deflating. It’s not like there is no one else nice here but there is no one as awesome and we’ve spent the last 4 years or so cultivating this awesomeness. I see photos of guys he’s going on dates with and he knew that I was going to pee on a stick before I did.  We have even cross border shopped together and he didn’t blink when Jonathan bought 70 odd beers to bring back and I encouraged him to buy the Doritos we had never seen before. When I see hilarious things I often text him right away. When he travelled to Europe he IM’d me AND brought me back cool chocolates! That’s the kind of friends we are.

I keep forgetting that he’s leaving. I know he’s not leaving me but it feels like it.  Obviously we are still going to be friends but it’s different when you don’t see each other 5 out of 7 days. I’m pretty sure I spend more hours of the week with him than with Jonathan! Jonathan jokingly calls him my other boyfriend.

I’m happy though. I’m happy that he’s going to a job that is stable and pays him what he’s worth(well at least closer to it than here.) and I keep telling him that all he has to do is keep that job for about a year and 9 months and then he can make his big move and I can just take over his old job! I think I’m mostly afraid that he’s going to go there and find another me or a better, funnier me.

I remember I had this friend in public school. We were thick as theives. I went and sat with her for hours every time she got her hair permed, I sat through that eggy stench while her scalp burned and our eyes teared up. We were going to move to California, hopefully somewhere near Disney World and we’d date Hollywood actors. We were going to open our own marshmallow store in the woods by our house(seriously don’t ask!)  Our moms even worked together.

Then one day she told me she was moving away. Oh how we cried. We promised up and down that we would be friends for life and never lose touch. We would write each other every day and talk on the phone once a week. For a while we did. But as those things usually go every thing trickled down and eventually stopped.

I’m still afraid of that trickle down even though I’m 3 times as old as I was now and theres the magic of the internet. I’m always afraid of being replaced.

I told her how I was meeting my midwife this week and how I was planning a home birth.
She said something about how she was great with midwives because that is what her mom used and I told her right then and there that she was not invited. I knew I would have to tell her eventually and really the quicker the better. Even though I know she will still lie to everyone and tell them I she is attending. There is no way in hades that she is going to be near me when I give birth. She drove me crazy when my sister was in labour, my sister had me basically push my mom out of the room on several occassions or block her from meddling. My sister wanted to kill her. My mom wouldn’t listen to my sister and refused to believe that she wanted her to leave. It was incredibly frustrating to deal with.

I don’t even plan on calling them when I do go into labour because my mom joked that they would just sit outside in the car. Except I doubt she was joking.

I realise I sound like an uber bitch. An ungrateful brat whose mom just wants to be there for her. I do love my mother but she spent too many years trying to be the cool friend and any mother daughter bond that we might have had when I was little was warped by her need to prove she was young and cool and could party. Iam not calmed or soothed by her and really she does not do well in certain situations and child birth would be one of those. So she’s not invited. End of discussion.

Its not my worst hair cut. In grade 8 my mom brought me to a fancy salon and I brought a photo of a short bob. Instead the woman gave me about a million layers. Sort of like this one:

At least in my head that’s how I remember it, maybe a bit longer. It did look good as I strutted out of the salon. It had about a half can of Paul Mitchell hair spray on it and had been painstakingly blown dried with a tiny round brush for the better part of an hour. It was my first real hair style. Up until grade 7 I had never even had anything more than a trim. Thanks to my pseudo hippy parents I had Crystal Gale style hair.

I would have been 12 or 13 when I went to the fancy salon. Which is about 15 years too young to have a hairstyle that involves more than 3 minutes worth of effort to get it to look nice. Oh I tried. I got up extra early and tried in vain to coax it into anything that resembled its salon state.

After about a week of failed attempts I finally figured out the only way to style it that wouldn’t reduce me to tears was to use a silver barrette I had and pull back the top layers and pulled the rest into two tiny ponytails or leave it to fend for itself. I wore it like that until it the top layer reached my chin and I went and got it cut all one length.  I probably made Goodie clips stock sky rocket that year because it was the longest 7 months of my life.

Right now I have 3 comfortable bras and 2 of those are sports bras.  Out of the two sports bras only one is actually somewhat wearable outside of the house. Double bleh.

Do I go and buy cheap comfy bras like every two weeks? Will I ever stop talking about my tits? Oh my god.

My in-laws have been told. Except they didn’t have the reaction I was hoping for. There was no crying or screaming with joy. Instead my Mother in Law asked where the photo was, she couldn’t understand why there wasn’t an ultrasound photo. Then she said that they figured it was something like that and that at Christmas she thought something. She obviously forgot that on Boxing Day I had to go to Walmart to buy pads and tampons and was bed ridden with a sore back and cramps. They said the same thing when we eloped, that they had a feeling that we were going to in Montreal. She asked when we were going to find out if it was a boy or girl and I told her we weren’t going to she said “Oh well you’ll probably change your mind.”  oh. ok. Thing is I adore my In Laws. A-D-O-R-E them! So it’s kind of odd when they do things that make me think “Reeeeealllly?”

Maybe it’s because I’m not their daughter. 

My parents will find out on the 21st. My sister thinks they will cry and freak out. But in a good way. Not like when they found out she was pregnant and my mom burst into tears and told my sister she was so disappointed in her. Yeah nice. My sister thinks that because were married and I’m the first born and we were trying that my parents will cry and freak out with joy. We shall see.

Oh fuck this is turning into a pregnancy blog. (Sorry Lynn!)