Feeling tired

So it's been a long time since I posted. In part, this is because I was determined not to post again until I could find something other than Ben to post about. It's been a while since I had a good feminist rant or mocked popular culture or argued with stupid anonymous comment-leavers. But alas, my life these days is ever so small. Ever so small. Ben is pretty much all I have to talk about. Last month, I got some pictures printed from my digital camera for the first time ever. I've had the camera for over two years. I told everyone I knew about this ad nauseum for weeks. I forced everyone to look at the pictures over and over and over and had a general feeling of pride and accomplishment that rivaled finishing my master's thesis. Because I had done something. I had a product to show for it.

Ben's first Christmas was lovely. Even though my sisters are in Costa Rica, my parents and Mark and I had a lovely day. Ben was charming all day long and then had a full colic meltdown right as Christmas dinner hit the table. Which was actually a good thing because my mom confessed to me later that she thought we had been exaggerating the volume of Ben's screaming, the length of his screaming sessions, and the way nothing worked to calm him (Dr. Karp's five s's sadly do not work with this "new colic" that started a couple of weeks ago. Apparently what came before was just pre-colic, a warm-up if you will, to the real thing). We tired all the usual things - swaddling, rocking, swing, naked time, bath, new clothes, more clothes, less clothes, fresh diaper. Nothing. But eventually he just had enough and turned into a cooing darling just in time to say good night to my parents. Little monkey.

Ben has also started waking up every hour at night wanting to be held for a couple of minutes. He doesn't need much, maybe 5 minutes of attention, and then he's back to sleep. I am not so lucky however and have gone from sleeping seven hours a night (with one small break in the middle for the 2:30 feed) to 4 hours a night and it's killing me! Ahhhh. Starting to relive the horror of those early weeks.

But on a brighter note, Ben rolled over for the first time. My awesome little guy. Anyway, that's my post. All about Ben because nothing else ever happens. Ever.

Losing the joy

So I have to confess that I watch a lot of soap operas. This started in grade 6 or 7 when I watched Y and R for a few years. I then moved on to Days of Our Lives and I watched Days pretty faithfully for a good 10 or 15 years. My mom started watching Days when my older sister was born and it was our family soap. We used to set the VCR to tape it and then all watch it together after school. And let me tell you, the late 80's to mid-90's, those were the glory years of Days. Hope getting blown up over a vat of acid, John is Roman is John is Father John is Forrest Allamaine, Vivian burying Carly alive in the condo coffin, and of course, the ultimate, Marlena's possession by the devil. We would watch together and howl.

When I went to university, watching Days became a great way to meet people. Everyone who watched would gather in the common room at 1:00 every day. You had an instant conversation because you could talk about how awful the show was and laugh at all the actor's and reminisce about past plot lines. I know it sounds lame but it was a great way to meet people. My university roommate also got me watching General Hospital so I expanded my soap repertoire a little. Eventually even the guys got into it and would watch Days even when us girls weren't there.

I still tune into soaps. I can't pretend I don't because my husband will rat me out. Just from living with me, he knows the name of everyone on Days, half the people on General Hospital and does a wicked John Black impression. But I have to say, watching soaps by yourself just isn't that interesting. Half of the fun is making fun of them and you just can't really get the full effect alone. As well, when you don't watch every day, you just don't care very much about what's happening and if you don't care, soaps become very very dull very quickly. Lastly, I swear the soaps just aren't as good any more. I don't know if it's me or if it's just that soaps don't really work on a pop-cultural level anymore but they are just so boring and so lame.

Which is sad because catching up on soaps was one of the things I was looking forward to with the whole maternity leave thing. Oh well, at least there's still Family Feud to fulfill my shitty tv hankerings!

Oh Dr. Karp, you are a god here on earth

So first off, an update on the screaming. My friend Melanie, Hi Mel, told me that her sister has had good luck with calming her newborn using the techniques in Happiest Baby on the Block. I had read this book months ago and used some of the techniques but as the author, Dr. Karp, tells us, you must use all 5 of his calming techniques together for maximum effect. So last night we did them all - swaddle, side-lie, suck, shoosh and swing and lo, the screaming stopped. We then put Ben to bed swaddled and he slept for three hours! This was an hour more than his usual stretches so we were very excited. We also tried to provide some white noise with a radio turned on dead air but there really isn't such a thing as dead air in this city so music and weird tones kept breaking through. But I just downloaded some womb sounds so we'll try that tonight.

The second big news is that we took Ben in for his 6-week check up and he weighs 13 pounds. 13 pounds! This is enormo giant baby! But the midwife said still in the normal range. So hah! It wasn't just that he was big for his age in the womb, he's big for his age out here in the world too. Anyway, he is gaining weight faster than I can grow the muscles to lift him so my poor back is getting quite a workout these days. But Mark and I are getting more competent. We are now awesome at the bathing thing, I can cut his wee little fingernails like a pro, and we can both change a diaper in no time flat. We finally tracked down glass bottles so even though I'm not breastfeeding, I can still be a little bit earth-mothery. And now that we have a trick for the screaming, why, it's almost bearable!

But it's still very very hard. We're still counting down the days to three months, to six months, to kindergarten. But the thought of a second child doesn't make me want to cut out my reproductive organs with a rusty spoon anymore so things must be getting better. And this morning, Ben even cood at us and smiled at the pretty, pretty light coming through the window. And I started to have that feeling again, like I can see how this parenthood thing might be a good thing. :)

God bless the baby swing

Ben has been crying. And by crying I mean screaming. And by screaming I mean splitting my skull open with a rusty saw. We got back to Toronto on Friday and for 24 hours, Ben did not stop fussing. Sometimes you could circumvent the full-on melt down with the soother but not always. Sometimes he would scream while he was eating, while he was burping, while he was pooping. I bet you didn't know a baby could scream and eat at the same time but they can. It's a miracle of nature.

Often the baby swing works, which is such a blessing. We call the baby swing "stage one intervention" and baby swing plus soother "stage two intervention." When stage two intervention fails, look out, cause if that doesn't work, nothing will. When it didn't work yesterday, I just cried and cried. Mark took the baby - Mark has not cried since the baby was born, he is amazing - and I felt like an idiot for not being able to hack it. People tell me this will get easier and pre-hospital it felt like it was for a little bit. But this just feels like that first hellish week. I'm crossing my fingers Ben will settle back into his routine. Say a prayer for me, people.

Scary times

So as some of you may know, Ben was in the hospital this week. Last weekend he spiked a fever and our midwife sent us off to London to the hospital. Because of Ben's age, he was automatically admitted and a bunch of tests had to be done. In the end he was fine and likely we could have stayed home and given him tylenol for a couple of days with the same outcome but better safe than sorry. I have to tell you though, the whole experience gave me a new appreciation of parents of sick children. It's hard being in that hospital. It's a lovely hospital and it has all kinds of murals and toys and mobiles but it all kind of reminds you that it's a place for children and they are there because they're sick. Every time I left the hospital and came back, I had kind of a sinking feeling as I approached the hospital. It's just a sad place.

There was a sweet little baby in the room next to us that Mark and I wanted to kidnap and take home. For whatever reason, her parents were only there a few hour over the four days that we were there. And she had this pitiful little cry (not like Ben's lusty wail - he was easily the loudest baby on the ward. You know those are my genes coming back to bite me in the ass!) and when she was upset, it wouldn't get louder, just deeper and more insistent. And the nurses would come and cuddle her when they could but most she was in her crib or in her little vibrating chair. We'd see her sitting in it, feeding tube in her nose and little mittens on her hands, staring at the mobile. Sweet little thing. She didn't look much older than Ben. I also met a man in the elevator who was here from Nova Scotia waiting for an organ transplant for his baby girl. Made me realize that a fever and heart murmur are not so bad.

The nurses were so amazing. They took such good care of us and of Ben. In terms of the care we received, it was a really really great experience. But it was weird coming home. I kind of had the feeling that while we were in the hospital we just stepped out of time and that life everywhere else had just paused. When we got back to the cottage, it kind of felt like it should still be Saturday night instead of Tuesday night. The best part is that Ben seems to have settled back in his routine fairly well. While he was sick in the hospital, he wouldn't fall asleep without a soother, being in the swing, or both. And I had to stand by him and keep a finger on the soother so it wouldn't' fall out until he was in a good sleep, usually 20 minutes or so. You better believe I was not wanting this to be our regular routine. But since he's been home he's only needed the soother during his nightly fussy time and has gone down just like he used to when it's time for sleep. So cross your fingers for me that this continues.

Anyway, this parenting gig is hard hard work. Between the early fatigue, the depression, and this blip, I feel like I haven't had much chance to enjoy Ben. I'm looking forward to a few weeks of healthy baby and healthy mom where we can just love each other without any drama. I don't know if that's a totally naive statement or not but it's the wish of my heart these days.

One month down....

Well, our little Benjamuffin is one month old today. We're at my parents' cottage, which is where I went into labour. A couple of days ago I was looking at the full moon and remembering my water breaking and all the excitement that ensued. It seems like it was a year ago. I think that this has been the longest month of my life. I have never known time to move so slow, cried so many tears, had so many doubts, and just generally felt in so much upheaval. But things are definitely getting better and I'm starting to see how, a few months down the line, I might really dig this whole parenthood thing.

Ben is growing like crazy. He is so big now that he's busting out of his 0-3 month sleepers. Nuts! And he's losing that newborn look and is turning into a beautiful beautiful baby. He still eats every three hours - for those of you not up on baby lingo that means from the start of one feeding to the start of the next. Since it takes an hour to feed him, it means only two hours between feedings. I'm trying to resign myself to the fact that this may be his feeding pattern for the next few months but Mark and I are both secretly dreaming of the night he sleeps 6 hours. They say it could happen any time between now and the six month mark. I love a nice vague timeframe.



Ben has unfortunately developed some digestive upset of late - lots of fussing (read: screaming) during the evenings. We've been trying different formulas and so far no real luck. I think it just may be one of those things. But he's a good little baby and so far (knock on wood) isn't screaming during the night so it could be a lot worse.

Ben also brings much humour and joy to our day. He makes the most amazing array of noises - grunts, moans, whimpers, shouts, and odd alien-like sounds - think the movie Gremlins. He's very alert now and likes to stare around with his big eyes. He likes to play with Daddy - tracking objects and reaching for things - but with me he's mostly a lump. But he soothes easier for me. So even though Mark and I have shared the load 50-50 since his birth, Daddy is still the playmate and Mommy the comforter. I'm hoping that will change - I want to play too!

Ben's sweet little head kills me. When he's hungry and you hold him on your shoulder, it bobs all around trying to find something to latch onto. It's just so precious I can't stand it. And he has soft little baby hair that I like to rub my cheek against. He also still curls his legs up fetus style when he sleeps against your body so his little bum just fits right in your hand. I love to hold him like this, sweet little lump. Ben is also so cute in the bath. He loves baths and just floats all boneless is the warm water. Because I'm not used to boys, it makes me laugh to see his wee little boy parts floating in the water - tiny little wiener! He hardly squawks while we wash him though he's not too fond of the part where we take him out. But we dry him off and lie him in the sunshine if there is any and he loves the sun on his skin. We let him get some naked time and get some air on his bum before bundling him back up. It's a lovely experience.



I can't wait until he can smile and interact. Right now it's hard to capture his attention and I'm just itching to play with him for real. We bought a new mobile for him and might try moving him from his bassinet to his crib upon our return to Toronto. Hopefully he's find it engaging enough at first to tolerate the crib. We shall see.

I am also doing much better. I think I have left my postpartum depression behind me and now am just struggling with the regular new parent stuff. Still hard, still want to cry some days, but those feelings of despair and regret are gone and I'm starting to really get attached to my little man. Which is awesome. I look forward to that feeling growing.

November, finally!

So I'm feeling really positive that it's November. October has been such a crazy month - highs and lows like nothing ever before. Somehow seeing the calendar page turn feels like a major accomplishment. We survived. I was a little sad because I feel like I kind of missed out on Halloween. Usually I put up all my decorations, wander the neighbourhoods watching everyone setting out pumpkins and decorating their porches and then wander around on Halloween night and check out all the little ones in their costumes. And of course eat lots of candy. But this year, in the haze of post-partum life, it all just kind of blew by without much notice. I went for a total of two walks in the neighbourhood and ended up being too tired to go out on Halloween night. And too tired to really care too much.

But I am feeling excited for Christmas, which also makes me more excited for November. Ben will be 2.5 months when Christmas rolls around and we'll have survived the worst of the early weeks (everyone tells us 3 months is the magic mark). Plus I'm just feeling homey and sentimental. My sisters are going away to Costa Rica for Christmas so it won't be our usual traditional Christmas but I'm okay with that. I feel like there will be a little less pressure and that's a good thing this time around. So my parents will come into the city or maybe we'll go to the cottage but it will all just be low key. And that's just fine.

It's fun to think about starting traditions with Ben. I was thinking about the Santa Claus Parade, which we always watched on tv but if we stay in Toronto, Ben can see it live. Provided we all feel like standing outside for HOURS that is. And I have to make him his own Ross family stocking. It will be so great in a couple of years when he really understands Christmas and Santa and all the magic that it holds for little ones. It's far away still but it's nice to think about. And nice for me to finally feel excited about my son instead of just crying! :)

Erin + Mark = Ben

So it's been a long long long time since my last blog but boy do I have a good reason. I had a baby. A beautiful baby boy named Ben - I'll post photos soon but in the meantime you can see him at my sister's blog - www.everythingisaspoon.blogspot.com

The labour went better than I could have hoped for. I had the epidural and the rest of it really wasn't as hard as I had feared it would be. It's the since the labour part that's been hard. Really really really frickin hard. Way harder than I thought it would be. I got hit with the baby blues right away and then those lifted and I had two good days before post-partum depression hit. I didn't sleep for the first five days AT ALL. And little sleep since though the insane adrenalin high has ended. I've yet to have a day without tears though the anti-depressants mean I'm no longer crying all day long. I think I've cried more since Ben has been born than I have in my entire life up to that point.

And I had to abandon breast feeding, which was very hard. I never thought I wouldn't be able to handle it but I just couldn't. It was at the point where every couple of hours I fed Ben but other than that I didn't want to hold him or look at him and every time he made a noise I just cringed. Since starting bottle feeding, this has improved but the bonding process has still be disappointingly slow. I know that it takes up to a couple of months for lots of women to feel totally in love with their babies but for some reason, I thought I'd be one of the ones who fell in love the first day. It's been hard being patient and keeping faith that in a few more weeks our little family will feel like the dream I always wanted.

All that grousing aside, Ben is a great baby. He is healthy, pretty content, a minimal screamer and he goes down to sleep at night pretty well. I'm just crossing my fingers none of this changes. He's growing like a weed and his face changes almost daily. He's already outgrown two of his sleepers. Tomorrow was his original due date - he currently weighs 8 pounds 12 ounces so he would have been a big big baby. I'm extra glad he came early.

Anyway, I will endeavor to post more as I start to feel better but make no promises. And soon I'll stop Suri-Cruising him and let people come and visit! :)

Comatose dog, comatose mom

So I'm a little nervous. Our last ultrasound guesstimated the baby would be 8.5-9 pounds, if he arrives on time. That's a big baby to have to push out. I'm also a little nervous because these last few weeks home with Buddy have made me realize something - I hate sitting home alone. I am so bored. My mood is starting to plummet, my energy is gone. I have work that I could be doing but the thought of doing academic writing is really no more exciting than the reruns of 90210 I could be watching. I think today Buddy's bladder is at the point where I could go out for a couple of hours, which I am SO looking forward to. But the whole experience has me more than a little nervous about what life at home with the baby is going to be like. Now mind you, I'm assuming the baby will be a little more engrossing than Buddy, who has taken to lying on the floor semi-comatose for up to three hours at a time. But still, I'm missing talking to people, the change of scenery, spending money!! I want to go downtown and toss my green paper around! I want to go out for lunch and converse with other human beings!!

Otherwise, all goes fine with the pregnancy. The little one is currently all smooshed up on the left side of my body so the left half of my stomach sticks out an inch farther than the right. It's pretty funny to look at actually. I alternate, sometimes very rapidly, between being in an absolute panic that I will be a parent in 6 weeks and wanting this kid out of me TODAY. Man, I'm going to eat so much sushi after little BenFinnCoen comes. I can't wait for some fresh yummy tuna roll!

Practice parenting

So our poor Buddy has developed a serious case of seasonal allergies. After several weeks of itching himself nuts and several visits to the vet, we finally got to the bottom of it. Poor little one was covered in scabs and sores from his constant scratching. Anyway, Buddy has been put on steroids and the itching virtually stopped overnight which is fantastic. The only downside is that he has to pee every 3 hours! We discovered this the first night when Buddy woke us up before 5 a.m. whining and then peed in the hallway. So now we get up a couple of times in the night to take him out. And during the day, he goes every couple of hours. And such monster pees. Sometimes he'll pee for almost a full minute (and that's usually in the afternoon only 1.5-2 hours after his last pee). The funniest part is that Buddy is as unhappy about having to go out so often as we are. We often have to coax him out with treats and happy voices. He'll glare at us and drag his feet but then he'll pee for 45 seconds - he must have wanted to go but you wouldn't guess if from his behaviour.

Anyway, everyone seems to think that this is good practice for parenting but I tend to differ. I mean, do you know any 7-month pregnant women who set their alarms for 3 a.m. to practice what it's like to get up in the middle of the night? Mostly I'm just irritated about losing my last few weeks of decent sleep! But I am encouraged at how I am holding up. Mark has his ups and downs, which isn't a surprise as he tends to wilt if he misses sleep several nights in a row. Overall, though, he's been awesome, especially considering he's working all day. And while I've had a couple of days with afternoon naps and one headache, mostly I've been holding up well. I'm just cranky and SO BORED!!! I can't really leave the house, since I'm taking Buddy out to pee every couple of hours. I've been finishing up my internship paperwork from home, watching a lot of tv, playing online, going for walks with Buddy when I'm not too exhausted, and generally just going stir-crazy. I'm realizing that I'm going to have to find a bunch of mommy and me type activities to take part in. I just am not an alone at home kind of girl.

Of course, things brings me face to face with the part of parenting I'm most stressed about - making friends with other parents. Over the past few years, I've discovered that while I'm good at socializing, I'm not so good at making friends. I go through phases of social anxiety and withdrawal as my depression waxes and wanes and generally don't feel as confident about meeting new people as I used to. But if I don't make friends with other parents, then I can't arrange play dates for my son and then he'll have no friends. No one to come to his little birthday parties, no one to play in the park with, no one to take cute playing in the sandbox pictures with. Not making it any easier is that all the parents in my neighbourhood are perfect thin, fashionable, rich parents or nannies. There don't seem to be many messy, regular type parents. But hopefully they'll turn up in some of these community classes. My sister suggested I check out Dufferin Grove park where more hippy parents hang out but we decided I couldn't show up there with my Bugaboo! lol We finally settled on Trinity Bellwoods - hip downtown parents, probably a little too cool for me but at least a little more messy.

Oh my aching ... something in my lower abdomen

So the baby has recently turned (yeah!). This is great news as it means that another obstacle to vaginal birth is out of the way (the first being the potential placenta previa). The only downside is that since turning, the baby has lodged himself against some organ or tissue or something in my lower abdomen and I now have stabbing pain when I roll over, stand, or walk. So if I sit or lay perfectly still, I'm okay but basically anything more than that and it HURTS! To date, the pregnancy has gone pretty smoothly so I really can't complain but I'm hoping the baby just shifts his weight or something because it really sucks. Plus Buddy is getting crappy walks because I can only shuffle along at the speed of a racing turtle. And I feel extra bad about this because Buddy is currently suffering from some allergies and spends his whole day itching and being miserable. Poor little guy.

The other baby development is that I found out today that I am "measuring large" and have to go in for an ultrasound to find out how big the baby actually is. This frightens me more than a little. Labour is scary enough imagining a 7 pound baby, never mind a 10 pound baby. But it makes me extra glad I didn't spend much money on newborn clothing. But hopefully the ultrasound will show a little wee baby that will slide through the birth canal just fine. I have to say though, I'm getting more than a little nervous about the whole labour thing. I mean, have you looked at how small a 10 cm opening is? I have a hard time imagining a baby, even a little small one fitting through a 10 cm opening. It's just not very big. Not very big at all...

The cervix is when you do the pushing, right?

So next week marks seven months pregnant. The end is in sight. And as we get closer to our big day, a lot more baby related things are happening. We continue to add to our nursery, having now bought a change table and heading out this weekend to get a glider. We also started prenatal classes. This has been a frightening experience, let me tell you. Now I know that not everyone is as neurotic as I am. I know many women do not run out and buy every pregnancy book on the market as soon as they start thinking about getting pregnant. Many women do not even bother with this once they are pregnant. Many women do not belong to 7 different baby sites and do not have stacks of pregnancy magazines. But surely, surely people come across an itsy bitsy bit of information somewhere on their nine month journey. Sadly, most of these people are not in our prenatal class.

There have been many fine, informed, thoughtful questions, such as:
** Why is the baby blue when it comes out? Aren't they supposed to be flesh coloured?
** The woman in the video was squatting when she gave birth to the baby. Can you do that? Why would you do that? Do you have to arrange that with your doctor ahead of time?
** What do you mean by "waste products" in the bloodstream?

There is also the woman who confused the definition of the cervix with the definition of stage two labour, the one who "doesn't believe" in diaper rash, and the guy who was amazed when his friend had a caesarian and was conscious the next day (I think he expected her to be in a coma).

And then there's our labour nurse instructor (who teaches the course continuously throughout the year and has been for several years) who says such fabulous things as:

** Where is Edmonton anyway? Is that in Manitoba?
** I don't know that rate of caesarians/epidurals/episiotomies for this hospital even though I work here.
** I don't actually know much about pain relief medications used in labour. I didn't do so well on this part in school.
** You'll have to ask your doctor about that.
** I was asked to leave the room while a patient was having an epidural because I was stressing her out so much.

Anyway, after getting the hospital tour and finding out what happens to our baby after birth, Mark and I decided that we had had enough and aren't going back to our last class. We're just going to wing it on the missing elements. But we did meet one nice couple and exchange emails so maybe I'll have a pregnancy buddy.

I've also been enjoying a pleasant amount of sharp, intense back pain that radiates down to my butt. I think this was brought on by a lot of driving over the course of a few days followed by hours sitting in my computer or therapy chair. Needless to say I am looking forward to my internship ending next week so I can rest my body a little. But there's also been lots of fun stuff. My belly has grown huge and the baby is kicking constantly. He's like a little companion that talks to me all day through morse code. I'm getting very anxious to meet him. I didn't really enjoy the first five months of pregnancy but have been liking this later part a lot more. Still, it's the baby I'm after. October can't come fast enough.

One step closer

So Mark and I went shopping this weekend and I finally got to buy something for the baby!! Those of you who have heard my constant whining will know that I've been waiting since before the pregnancy test came back positive to buy things for the baby. In fact, I had a secret drawer full of baby toys for the last year that only my sister Kelly knew about until very recently. But mostly I have only bought a few onesies and a mini-mobile. So this weekend we bought real things for the baby. We got this beautiful crib and an awesome swing for the baby, both second hand. We are feeling very good about our awesome second-hand savvy. We were all set to buy everything brand new but honestly, some of it, there's just no point. It reminds me a lot of our wedding - things are overpriced just because people are spending emotionally.

Anyway, it took the entire long weekend to change my messy, dirty, cluttered office into the baby's room. There's still a few things in there to go and a few things to add but the basic shape of the room is there, which is very exciting. I even got to take some of the toys out of the drawer and put them on the bookshelf. Honestly, it was all I could do not to run out and buy everything we need for the baby RIGHT AWAY, it just felt so good to do some actual baby planning. Plus, we got stacks and stacks of old papers out of the corners and into the recycling bin - Mark is excited to actually see the floor in that room for the first time in over a year. I feel a little more wary of where all the new papers will go now that I've lost my study... :)

Not looking for a peanut gallery

Well, I have decided to turn off the comments option on my blog. For a while I was being irritated by this person who kept arguing with my interpretations of sexism in the world at large. And that is this person's prerogative but it is my prerogative not to engage in such conversations on my blog. I have to defend myself enough in real life, I have no patience for doing it on my blog. And I just don't get people who find blogs that piss them off and read them and argue with the author. Just move on to the next blog if you don't like it. I don't spend my time reading ultra-conservative blogs and writing scathing comments. If you don't like my politics, don't read my blog. Simple. Plus it pisses me off because the people leaving these sorts of comments always do it anonymously. So irritating. Let me see your name so I can go to your blog and see what it is you believe in.

Anyway, after that I moved comments onto moderation, which allowed me to preview them before allowing them to appear on my blog. And it's been quiet for a while so I turned moderation off, thinking that it would be okay. And within three days I got a snotty comment, anonymously posted of course. So I've just turned them off altogether. If you want to leave comments, let me know, and I'll put you on my allowed commentators list. Otherwise, you'll just have to keep your witty responses to yourself.

In other news, poor Buddy got stung by a bee. It was the first time he's ever been stung. He was walking through some longish grass and a bee got caught up in his leg fur. He got stung on his ankle. Of course he promptly ate the bee and then pulled out all the hair around the sting so that he has a little bald patch. But he wasn't allergic and recovered within a few minutes. But I was having a very stressful couple of days and it was just one too many things for me to be able to handle and I had a little bit of a meltdown. It took me longer to recover than it did Buddy but we're both okay now.

Finally, a little recognition

So today, for the first time, it finally happened. A total stranger noticed I was pregnant. Now, to be fair, I was holding a pamphlet on caring for children, so if she was looking at me and thinking "Is she or isn't she?" she had a little help. Still, it was very exciting for me. It was also funny because up until she said something, I had been secretly hating her and this other woman that she was with. I was waiting for the streetcar on Spadina and it was about 35 degrees. I had my choice of waiting in the shade provided by the streetcar shelter where there was zero breeze or standing in the blistering sun where there was a nice bit of air flow. The streetcar was nowhere in sight and took at least 10 minutes to come. I seriously thought I was going to faint. But I was first in line so I knew I'd be getting on the next one so I was toughing it out (well, actually I was debating whether or not I could justify the cost of a cab but I decided I needed to be at least 8 months pregnant for that).

Then this 100-year-old lady with a cane came and stood in front of me. Well, I was irritated but she did look very old and she did have a cane and a little shopping cart (or bundle buggy as my mom likes to call them) so I thought that her case was definitely solid for getting on ahead of someone who was 6 months pregnant. But then these other two women came up near the front and I was annoyed with them. I don't know what it is with Spadina but people do not obey the basic structure of the line. Everywhere else in the city, people line up. Spadina, the just walk past a line of 30 people to stand in the front. Yesterday someone cut in front of me with a frickin cooler during rush hour. Not cool. It's also the only station where they have to have TTC staff in the subway station to control people as they get on the streetcar. Every other station, people line up unsupervised but in Spadina, they have to have people babysit us otherwise it can get pretty ugly as people swarm the streetcars. I have my own theories as to why this happens on Spadina but they are too boring to expand on here.

Anyway, the streetcar came and I, of course, let the old lady on first. Meanwhile, these two women tried to muscle their way around her while she struggled with her shopping cart. The streetcar was packed and I was not sure that all four of us would get on, never mind the other 20 or so people in line. So I totally cut them off, thank you very much, and was feeling very indignant about it until one of them asked me if I wanted her to guilt someone into giving me a seat. We then had a very nice chat about how people in Toronto never give their seats to pregnant women anymore and really hardly even give their seats to elderly people or those with disabilities. I was so pleased to have strangers acknowledge my pregnancy that I didn't even care that these women had butt in front of a whole line and tried to force their way in front of me to get onto the streetcar.

For the record, I'm 25 weeks pregnant so only 2 weeks away from my third trimester before someone finally noticed that I was pregnant. Sometimes I think I'm going to actually have to have a baby coming out of me before someone gives me their seat on the streetcar.

Ads that piss me off: Nokia

So while Mark and I were in Vancouver, I spotted this ad on the ceiling of a city bus.




I think you can guess what pisses me off about it. The ad itself is for a phone that lets you copy an image from the world and have it appear as the skin on your phone. Which, okay, is pretty cool but come on. Where do I even start with this? I mean the most obvious is the boob thing. Of course, of course, it has to be a woman in a skin tight dress and of course the sample is going to come from her cleavage. And of course it's going to be big enough that we can see a bit of her sexy bra and the perfect globes of her boobs. Seriously? Breasts don't look like that. That is not a shape that nature created. That shape only results from silicone or push-up bras. And just once, just once I would love to see breasts with moles, scars, or even an uneven skin tone. Cause in real life, they just ain't so perfect. But whatever, realistic breasts in advertising only seem to appear in Dove ads and even then they look pretty good.

But back to the exposed cleavage - I mean, really, there is just no subtlety left. Let's use boobs to sell a cell phone. You might as well just have her stuff it in her cleavage and walk around like that instead. And I love the look on her face as she looks down at her own suddenly exposed cleavage. She's shocked but turned on. Her breasts are so gorgeous and she finds being exposed so sexy. The hand pulling at the hip/groin region of the dress down in the bottom corner lets you know how sexy she really finds the whole situation. I mean, if they have to use sex to sell phones (and really, don't they always have to?), they could be sensual and provocative and have the sample come from her shoulder or her back. It doesn't always have to be breasts and bums, you know.

And of course we have to use an animal print dress. That just sexes it up even more. Let's make her look primal and animal, associate her with basic instincts cause that's so hot. Women who wear animal prints are only after one thing. Especially women who wear skin tight animal print dresses.

But the thing that bugs me most about this ad is the thing that bugs me about the majority of print ads for camera phones - they always refer, either directly or obliquely, to taking sexy pictures of women. TV ads don't often go this route because I think it is hard to do without being really fricking obvious in a TV commercial but print ads always seem to have women in bikinis or bending over and pouting or things like this, where the women's picture isn't actually on the cell phone but still the her sex and the phone are linked. And it bugs me because of all the incidents where women's pictures are taken without their knowledge, the way girls are cyber-bullied with pictures taken of them in change rooms. The whole business of camera phones frankly reeks of sexual exploitation to me and that advertisers capitalize on that just really makes me sick. And this ad totally plays on it. The sexiness of the model, the cleavage, plus her own reaction to the exposure of the cleavage - which suggests it wasn't her that removed the sample from her dress - it just all presents the picture of "playful" and oh so disturbing sexual victimization and exploitation.

When I see ads like this, I just get really really angry. Because it's a fucking cell phone. Stress the communication functions. Stress the appearance if you want. But stop linking it with sex - especially non-voluntary exploitative sex. It's just a further example of how women's bodies are taken out of their own control and become objectified public property. The subtext of this ad and the actuality of what happens with camera phones underscore our society's totally lax attitude about women's rights to privacy and ownership of their own bodies. You may see this as a big stretch, but I don't. It's all the same thing. When women's bodies are objectified, sexualized, and treated without dignity, then women themselves are objectified, sexualized, and treated without dignity. And that opens the door for a whole range of negative outcomes from low self-esteem to rape and domestic violence.

And while here in North America these attitudes have enough negative impact (think rape, sexual harassment, the $11 billion diet industry, girls who are afraid to quit smoking for fear of getting fat, girls who can't go to school because of bullying and harassment) these attitudes have far more horrifying outcomes in other parts of the world, like the Congo where 8 year old girls are raped so violently they have to been sewn back together. And we just let it happen because we don't value women. So don't tell me ads like this don't mean anything. They signal an implicit approval of the poor treatment of women around the world and a devaluing of women here at home.

The Budman

So in all the pregnancy excitement and vacation excitement, I realize it's been a while since I've posted about our sweet Buddy. Poor Buddy's been having a hard time lately. While we were in Vancouver, he stayed with an awesome dogsitter but the day before we got back he seemed to lose hope that we were going to come get him and stopped eating, which I didn't think was possible for Buddy. We've been back for a month now and he still hasn't sprung back to his old self. He no longer eats his breakfast, though he will eat kibble as treat on his morning and afternoon walk. He's also started drinking twice the amount of water, irrespective of the weather. And he's extra clingy with me but also often irritated - we never seem to be petting him right (though in all honesty, this was an issue before we left too, we just never seem to get it).

And then last week he had to go to the vet - here's a picture of Buddy at the vet from this spring -




twice in four days, once to get his anal sacs done (ouch!) and then two days later he burst out with a massive ear infection and had to go back. The infection was quite inflamed and painful and having it cleaned out was not pleasant for Buddy. After the vet cleaned out Buddy's ear, he brought him into the waiting room to show me how to put the medicine in his ear. Poor Buddy had had enough though and ran two circles around the vet trying to get away from him and then hid underneath the bench I was sitting on and looking balefully at the vet from behind my legs. Mark and I have had better luck but it's still rough on poor Buddy. We bribe him with milkbones, which worked at first but then he decided even the milkbones weren't worth it so now we just tag-team him, hold him down, pour medicine in his ear, and ply him with milkbones after. Unfortunately, he isn't 100% responding to the medicine so it's back to the vet on Thursday.

It breaks my heart, poor little guy. If only there was some way to let them know why you're doing this to them. Overall, it's been a hard month for our sweet Buddy. And in a few more months, it's going to get even worse.

On the plus side though, Buddy flushed three rabbits while at the cottage this weekend - major score for our little hunter. He also saw a mama skunk with two babies in the back yard on Friday night. We was looking out the screen door and started getting excited. Mark went to see what it was and, spotting the skunks, quickly closed the door. But Buddy remained really excited. We decided to take him in another room in case he started barking and scared the skunks. Only problem was my sister's cat, Simon, was sitting in the doorway and had become very agitated at Buddy's level of excitement. Simon refused to move, being unresponsive to shooing and too scary to pick up (he's a bit of an attack cat). In all the jockeying about, Simon suddenly lunged at Buddy and followed him around for about 30 seconds, hissing and biting at him. This was very upsetting as they had been enjoying a peaceful coexistence for many months now. But it was over quickly, no one was hurt, and the next day it was as if nothing happened. Frankly, I think Buddy felt it was worth it to see the skunks. He didn't calm down again until we left the cottage a day later. Silly Buddy! :)

The perfect frickin mother

So as Mark and I get ready for parenthood, I am trying to hold on to the values I went into the pregnancy with - that kids don't need a tonne of material things to be happy and have a life of abundance, that kids don't need perfect parents to grow up strong and healthy and that really, somehow you are going to inevitably mess up your kids so you can't put the pressure on yourself to be perfect at all times. But of course as the pregnancy progresses, I feel guilty about all the ways that I am not the perfect parent. And I see lots of pretty, slim, glowing pregnant women on the street and in stores who seem serene and fashionable and probably do not require large doses of psychiatric medications to get through their days and I start to feel insecure. Don't get me wrong, I know enough to know that in actuality these women have their problems too but from the outside, they look like they have their shit together.

Anyway, a couple of days ago, I had an experience that just seemed to be the perfect expression of this whole dilemma. I was coming home from work, having worked a long day and feeling tired and cranky. I was starving, too hungry to make the walk from the subway station to my apartment without eating so I bought a snack at the kiosk in the subway station. I picked the second healthiest snack, a bag of Smartfood popcorn (the healthiest was probably the pretzels) and headed home, achy, snarly, sweaty, disheveled and eating cheddar cheese popcorn. As I was plodding down the sidewalk, I saw a lovely pregnant woman, maybe seven months along or so in a pretty maternity outfit and glowing suntanned skin and pretty flowing hair. As I watched, she stopped suddenly in her tracks. About three inches away from her toe was a little earth toned butterfly. She tripped prettily around the butterfly and then it fluttered prettily away. And I just thought "good god, that is the perfect mother." I mean seriously, she might as well be feeding a baby dear while woodland creatures gather at her feet and birds sit on her shoulder.

It also made me think of a story Mark told me the other day about how he squished a dragonfly with his bike wheel. It had been buzzing all around him while he was setting up a trials line and just didn't get out of the way fast enough. Draw from this comparison what you will...

Mathemagician!

I have a recurring dream that I am back in high school and cannot remember either my locker location, my locker combination, or sometimes both. In this dream, I am always at first with some people and casually trying to look like I'm not desperately looking around trying to scrounge up some glimpse of a memory that would tell me where my locker is. Eventually they go off and then I slink from locker bank to locker bank trying to find mine. It's often in a sunny corner, though I never had a locker in a sunny corner in actuality. Then I must open my combination lock. Generally I have more luck with this part. I think this is because I'm decent at memorizing number strings. Not in that "you say 15 numbers and I'll say them back perfectly right away" kind of way. More in that I memorize my everyday numbers fairly easily kind of way. I know my credit card number, my bank card number, my old bank card number, my student number for U of T, my student number for York, my social insurance number, my library card number, and a bunch of phone numbers of people I haven't called in years.

Though really, I'm not as good with phone numbers. The other day I totally spaced on my friend's phone number, which she's had for over a year and which I never bothered writing down because I had it memorized. I was reduced to pressing buttons on my touch tone phone trying to produce a familiar sounding tune. I got it eventually. I'm chalking it up to pregnancy brain. I have been waaaaaay more flighty since being pregnant and since I'm not used to it, have not yet devised clever organizational scheme like oh, writing things in my planner and then checking it later.

I have been irritated with pregnancy issues a lot this week. In particular, I am tired of people giving their seats on the subway to women who I believe to be the same or less far along in their pregnancy than me. Being a larger person, I think people are afraid to assume I am pregnant. So little skinny women with their cute but tiny little 4 month bumps get to sit down and I am left standing with my back stabbing with pain, my shoulders aching, and my stomach nauseous as the driver lurches the subway or streetcar along. I often feel like screaming "I'm pregnant too you know. Asshole!" Not to mention the cuteness of maternity wear for skinny women and the floral/animal print nightmare that is maternity wear for plus-size women. I'm really not sure what I'll do when I outgrow my two-sizes-to-big normal clothes and have to really move into maternity clothes.

On the plus side, I feel the baby kicking often these days, which is pretty cool. The first time it happened I was excited. Then later it was kind of creepy - there is a creature not just living inside of me but moving around inside of me. Strange. But now it's pretty comforting. I'll feel him moving around when I'm in a meeting, or watching tv, or going to bed and it makes me feel good to know he's still there and still growing. You go, little baby. You go!

i robot

So a couple of years ago Mark and I got our first air conditioner - an awesome and much needed early wedding present from my parents. Those of you who live in Toronto with the summertime humidex of 40 degrees know what I'm talking about. Sadly, because of the shape of our apartment, the lovely coolness has never reached our bedroom. And absolutely no cross-breeze reaches our bedroom. No matter how comfortable the rest of the apartment is, the bedroom has remained a hot sweaty sauna of misery.

So this year, with being pregnant, I decided enough was enough. Last summer it would take an hour or more to fall asleep just because of being so hot and if you woke up in the night, you'd have to go through it all over again. And I anticipate waking up frequently in the night this summer. Plus, in order to ensure the correct sleeping position, I am surrounded by a little cage of pillows that keeps me from rolling onto my back. Not exactly conducive to airflow. So after playing the "for the good of our baby" card with Mark, we decided to get a portable air conditioner for the bedroom (we can't have a window one in the bedroom). Mark's dad got wind of this and was awesome enough to give us the cash for it - yeah Al and Kathy!

So we wasted no time and went off shopping. Behold our frosty beauty.




Mark just finished installing it and I'm loving it. Could it look anymore like a robot? The little exhaust tubes look like arms and everything. It reminds me of a cross between Rosie on the Jetson's and some of the less than stellar droids that the Jawas had on that huge transport in Star Wars, especially the one that was just a brown trash can with feet. Now as long as it doesn't try to kill me in my sleep, it will all be good.

Can you return from the dead twice?

Ha. As I was typing in the title I started thinking of Days of Our Lives where Hope has returned from the dead no less than 4 times. So I guess the answer is yes. Anyway, it has been almost a month since my last entry, which is just inexcusable. But lots has happened. I was away in the lovely British Columbia for 10 days and also I have been struggling a lot with my mood and motivation as it has been over six months since I went off my antidepressants and I'm starting to feel it. The last few days have been especially bad but today things were a little better so I'm feeling hopeful.

BC was awesome. Went out for a family wedding - spent a day in Victoria, three in Tofino and three in Vancouver and a couple of days traveling from Victoria to Tofino to Vancouver. My family and I encountered many weird, wondrous, and beautiful things on our trip such as these:

Miniature World in Victoria - a little museum made up of miniature scenes. Except instead of being handcrafted art pieces, the scenes are just made up of dollar store toys slapped together with model kit buildings.



In some cases, they ran out of even these toys and substituted home-made crocheted dolls or ceramic figurines that had nothing to do with the scene represented. There was also a surprising amount of nudity!





The giant trees of Cathedral Grove (there were also giant slugs in Cathedral Grove):





The market between Victoria and Tofino where goats graze on the thatched roof. They also had amazing wooden toys and I would have bought a tonne if I had had a bigger suitcase. As it was I was very restrained on the whole trip - go me!




The beautiful Tofino, where there is a man named Turtle who laughs so loud that they have placed an 11:30 p.m. curfew on laughing (this is not a picture of Turtle, this is Mark, who laughs like a normal person, though he generally calls "quiet times" on laughing after 11:30 p.m. too).




And finally, perhaps the strangest thing on our trip, our hotel door. We stayed in the Sheraton Wall Centre in Vancouver, a fancy conference hotel downtown. Anyway, their guests must have a lot of security issues because the doors each had six peep-holes and none of them were at head level. You can make them out in this picture but it's blurry because the people in the room started to open the door as I was taking the picture so I had to run away and never bothered getting another pic later. lol

Crazy crooked eye

Well, I've kind of been sucking with the blogging. It seems like since I've been pregnant, my creativity has flown the coop. This is mostly just cause I'm tired and headachy a lot of the time. I'm heading for a massage this week that I'm hoping will help. I also have some pictures to scan for some good feminist ranting but my scanner is busted at the moment so they are back logging, waiting to be released into the world, enhanced by the genius of my analysis!

In the meantime, I have been watching the May sweeps. And what a sweeps it has not been. My regular shows got so sucky, I stopped tuning into them several weeks before they actually ended. And the soaps! So bad! In part, I think this is partly because I've largely stopped watching soap operas and so when I catch them once every couple of weeks, I'm not very invested. But even still, they've been horrible. I can't believe how boring a sweeps month it is. A couple of my shows had good endings, mostly because of awesome romantic subplots coming to fruition. Gilmore Girls, which has had the worst season ever (read in Comic Book Guy voice) redeemed itself by Lorelei hooking up with Christopher at the very end. And the Office, which has rocked all season, also ended with a good romantic hook-up between Jim and Pam. Oh and Veronica and Logan finally figured it out on Veronica Mars. I guess I should have put a spoiler warning on this but oh well.

The worst of the worst thought, had to be the "series finale" (apparently the series isn't actually ending) of 7th Heaven. Now I hear what you're saying. If I'm going to watch 7th Heaven, I have to expect a great deal of suckage and cheesiness. But honestly, all of the married kids all being pregnant and all having twins? Vomitous. Seriously. It was impressive that they got Jessica Biel to come back though. I had thought she was all Shannon Doherty and would never set foot on the set again. But given how her movie career has failed to flourish, she really can't afford to say no. Besides, she never had that Doherty edge to her. Not cold crazy enough. Shannon Doherty, man, she'll cut you.

Falcons triumphant!!!

So yesterday, my sisters and I completed our yearly good deed - the Bell Walk for Kids in support of Kids Help Phone. This year I kicked ass by raising the most money (thanks Theresa, Mae, and Cor!) and got a gift t-shirt as a reward. But let me tell you, we worked for our sponsored dollars this year. Due to poor signage we, and half of the other walkers, completely missed the 2.5 km checkpoint where we were supposed to turn around for the 5 km charity WALK and walked all the way to the 5km checkpoint that the 10 km RUNNERS use. 10k! I would feel bad for myself but others were doing it hauling wagons of kids or wearing babies on their backs. Fortunately, it was a beautiful day and I had good company (after all, the Falcons is the team for people who are cool), so it was an enjoyable walk anyway.

And fortunately, my first trimester fatigue is well and truly passed. Three or four weeks ago, I wouldn't have been able to walk 2km without lying down for a long nap in the dirt. However, yesterday I was able to troop like a champ. Though my butt did get sore. It's been an interesting part of pregnancy that my hips and side butt muscles tire out much more quickly than before. By the 9th k, my butt was aching. But I persevered, such is my dedication to the children. Other, non-pregnant people, turned around before hitting the checkpoint. Not so dedicated....

And this year, the organizers figured out the treat situation. Last year, they didn't have enough treats so only the first third of the walkers got incentive mini chocolate bars en route. This year, lest my team be disappointed, I took it upon myself to bring a secret stash of treats that I would surprise my sisters with when the Bell Walk came up short. Alas, they did not come up short. There were piles and piles of left over treats. I didn't need any of my extra treats, so now they're just sitting around my house like the day after Halloween, taunting me with their chocolatey goodness.

My teammates also kicked ass, despite the fact that Jill did not dress properly for such a strenuous athletic event and lacked a backpack of the proper size. They set a brisk stride and were not deterred by the extra kms. Kelly suffered through with a blister that set in by the 2nd k and braved very scary porta-potties. Despite these hardships, she enjoyed it so much that she announced her desire to walk a half-marathon. I however, will not be joining her. If I walked more than 20 km right now, I think my butt would seize entirely, leaving me to pull myself along the ground with my hands, dragging my frozen lower half along behind me. And that just can't be good for the baby. :)

Trash talkin' comes back to bite my ass

So for the last few years I've been trash talking one of my professors. There has been plenty to complain about - she hides from her students (literally, leaves the scene if she sees them coming), never returns phone calls or messages even from her thesis students, doesn't seem to actually teach any classes, and most recently kept a bunch of exams for over a year - they were marked, she just "forgot" to give them back. I pretty much stand by my trash talking - I mean if you don't want to teach, talk to students, or attend to school administrative tasks, don't be a professor. If you're going to take the salary, then do your job.

Alas, my thesis supervisor has recently suggested this person should maybe be on my thesis committee. Ack! Now, I can only assume that the fact that my supervisor thinks this means that my trash talking is not general knowledge among the faculty. However, since some of my trash talking involved actually complaining to the department chair about this person, I can't really be sure.

You may think that the moral here is don't trash talk people but the real moral is don't get involved with departmental politics. I only complained about this woman because I was embroiled in some drama about inappropriate faculty behaviour and frankly, the whole thing was so disheartening, I just gave up and promised myself to never again try to create change within my department. Better just to graduate and get out and get on with my life. I'll tell you, my school really does wonders in terms of tempering my cynical streak. lol

We are the Falcons - super cool

So in a couple of weeks, my sisters and I are going to undertake our yearly charity walk, raising money for Kids Help Phone. I got into a few years ago because I could see the adolescent girls in my research studies using the service and really believe it is important. The downside, of course, is that Bell has umbrella'd this service and I hate Bell and there's no way to support Kids Help Phone without Bell being involved. Hence, the walk is called the Bell Walk for Kids. But I'm not going to let Bell's corporate bullshit keep me from feeling good about the cause and my efforts.

Here is a picture of me and my sisters at last year's walk with our team tees.




Notice our awesome mascot - a ferocious tiger. It's a sister thing. Anyway, the really exciting news is that my mom may join team Falcon this year as she is in town on the day of the walk! Yeah MOM!!!!

Anyway, copying my sister's idea, feel free to click the link below to sponsor me on my walk. Remember, I'll be pregnant and dragging my tired ass along the 5km trail. I know, it's not that long, but considering I have been unable to walk Buddy for more than 45 minutes without resting, it could be trouble. Plus last year we missed out on all the treats so I may not even have sugary sustenance to help me through!! See how I suffer?? Don't you want to donate???

https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/StartUp.aspx?SID=878168


Plus I have to thank my friend Theresa for her pledge and my aunt Mae and cousin Corinne who not only pledged me but I hit them up first so I get the score over my sisters - awesome!

If you're still seeing double, it's only cause you're drunk

Oh, one more thing about the ultrasound. Some of you may have heard that at the first ultrasound the technician found a second, but empty, sac. This means that a fraternal twin had been conceived but had never been developed. In addition to first trimester screening, my doctor wanted the latest ultrasound to make EXTRA sure that there was nothing in that second sac and that my body was reabsorbing it. Anyway, the tech found no sign of it, said it had completely reabsorbed. So sorry for you hopeful ones but there are NO TWINS. Maybe next time though! :)

Our jumping baby!

Behold our ultrasound photos! Not really much to look at - it was much cooler on the screen where she could show us all the parts. Overall it was an awesome experience. I thought the baby would have little t-rex arms but it had real, long arms with elbows and fingers and the whole shebang. The baby also moved around a lot, arching its back and even mooning us! So far so good - all the parts are where they should be. The test was to detect down syndrome and of course the tech won't tell you that kind of stuff so we'll find out at my doc's on Tuesday but frankly, all I cared about was seeing that it was still in there and moving. The tech had me cough and jiggled her sensor against my belly to make it move - it's pretty crazy that the baby can be stimulated to respond, like a real person already! Anyway, very cool.

The blog that returned from the dead

Sooooooooo, it's been a while since I've been blogging. But I have good reasons: 1) I had a conference that required every scrap of my mental energy for the past few weeks 2) I have much less mental energy than usual because of being pregnant. But I am hoping that as the first trimester draws to a close my energy will return and in the spirit of optimism I am putting out this first post and boldly stating that it is the first of many.

Now as part of this new plan, I am cancelling my baby blog, Our Sticky Baby and moving all baby news to this blog, Luminous Multitudes. Maintaining multiple blogs is just too much for me. This is a move that contains some risk however. It means that those of you who read my blog for baby news will be exposed to my feminist ranting. And those who read my feminist ranting will be exposed to my sappy baby news which include non-feminist issues like desperately wanting $1000 stroller and having angst about not being able to dress my baby in brand-name labels. For those of you upset by this contradiction, I invite you to read my byline - I contain multitudes. I also advise you to only read those posts which interest you and skip the others. Though the Buddy posts are generally safe for everyone! lol

Anyway, we have our next ultrasound in a week and I will post the pics so check back!

Funny Buddy

So I went to my parent's cottage this weekend for a lovely break and of course, Buddy came with. Unlike most dogs, Buddy is not a huge fan of the cottage. Aside from the smell of the rabbits and the heart-wrenching closeness of the wooded hill behind the cottage, Buddy finds it somewhat stressful because he's not allowed to be on the furniture and the open floor plan means there's no contained little spot like his room at home to call his own. Nonetheless, he seems to adjust somehow. Despite our efforts to keep him off the furniture, he often sneaks up to sleep on the bed that Mark and I use at the cottage. We shoo him when we find him but it's an out of the way room so we don't usually see him. As a result, he doesn't take this admonishment too seriously and seems to think the bed is his to lie on.

So the other night I was chatting with my dad and was sitting on a daybed in the room adjacent to the bedroom. Buddy happened along and, seeing me sitting there, decided to join me. Up he hopped and immediately I shooed him off. He just sort of looked at me, gave me the dog version of a shrugged and hopped off and headed ever so nonchalantly to the bedroom, as if to say: "It's no big, I've got a bed to lie on in here." Cheeky monkey!

Buddy was loving the beach this trip. The beach is back and forth with Buddy. In the summer, the sand gets too hot and burns his paws, plus he doesn't like the look of the waves and often barks at them. But the beach in winter he really likes. Ice builds up along the shore providing all kinds of crevices to explore. And on this particular trip, lots of little dead fish. Sometimes buried in the snow, sometimes gleaming on a little pile of ice as if it was a display case in the grocery store. At first he just sniffed them, then he tried to nibble them, then he tried to pick them up and take them with him. I managed to foil him every time but yikes, gross gross gross. You gotta love dogs.

Thank god for the pronunciation guide

Main Entry: pan·a·cea
Pronunciation: "pa-n&-'sE-&
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, from Greek panakeia, from panakEs all-healing, from pan- + akos remedy: a remedy for all ills or difficulties : CURE-ALL- pan·a·ce·an /-'sE-&n/ adjective

So I have recently discovered that the Merrill-Webster online dictionary offers a pronunciation guide - not just the - and ' stuff that tells you where the emphasis is but an actual recording of a voice saying the word. This has been fantastic for me. There are several words that I learned to pronounce wrong in my younger years that I still mess up. Mandala, preflackadaisicalsical. And then there are some words that I know from reading but have never said them out loud because I'm not sure how they are pronounced. So I can now use "panacea" freely, which is awesome because it's a useful word. God bless the internet. I don't know what people ever did before.

Kanye West is a fucking misogynist

Okay, I want to support Kanye with his socially conscious music thing and his super catchy tunes but the guy is so frickin misogynistic. In the same song in which he is making a case against diamond trade that supports warfare in Africa, he is hating on women. In songs in which he is talking about the plight of the black man and the poor man, he is hating on women. And Golddigger, which is just SO DAMN CATCHY, is just disgusting. And come on, how much did I love him for "George Bush doesn't care about black people." That was such a fantastic moment. But then, then he does this??? Fuck you, Kanye, and your hypocritical bullshit. You can't raise up one while you put down the other. I mean sure, you can fight against racism without fighting against all other forms of discrimination but you can't fight against racism while actively promoting other forms of discrimination. All forms of oppression are linked and serve the same purpose, and when you support one, you support them all. So stand up against all oppression, Kanye, or sit your ass back down. Asshole.

Sky-cam buddy

So as time has gone on with Buddy living with us, he is letting us do more and more things that he used to clearly find objectionable (as evidence by chuffing and sighing and whale-eyes). One of my favourites is letting us carry him around like a baby or what Mark likes to call "Sky-cam Buddy." He scoops him up and carries him around to let him know what the world would look like if he were 6 feet tall. Buddy used to hate this and try to leap from Mark's arms. Of course, we didn't stop doing it and now Buddy will ride around in our arms, smacking (a sign of contentment) and will even rest his head on Mark's shoulder now and then.



Buddy also lets us hold him like a lap dog on the couch. This is something he's let us do for a long time but usually only for a few minutes. Lately though, he seems to really like it. He sat like this with me the other day for almost an hour. Eventually I had to dump him off because it was starting to put my legs to sleep. It just goes to show that if you mercilessly ignore your pet's comfort zone, eventually they will come around! lol

Happy Valentine's Day!

It's Valentine's Day! Yeah! I love Valentine's Day, mostly because I love all the cute heart-shaped things involved with Valentine's. I always had pretty good Valentine's experiences growing up, you know the kind of thing where the whole class gave everyone Valentines and you got to make a little envelope to hold them all and decorate it with glitter. Some of my friends gave character valentines like My Little Pony or Barbie but I liked the old school ones that we would get at Woolco or the Big V. They would come in a big book and you'd cut them out one by one. The cute ones I would give to my best friends and the lame ones I would give to people I didn't like (I know, mean girl *lol*). I used to spend forever carefully deliberating who should get which one. And in the end they were all kind of lame and usually made no sense. Like that raccoon - "You'll be mine when you see the sign." And then there's a little miles sign beside him. What? Is that the sign? Or is it a more mystic kind of sign? And why is he a hobo? And a "Ra-coon" instead of a raccoon? But he's so cute - I love it! Public school valentines, man. That's the good shit.

These days, Mark and I get each other cool looking valentines from high-end card shops. I swear, I could buy a thousand of them. I just love looking at them. And all the cute stuff there is to buy right now! But Mark and I decided to keep things in check this year and have a $40 spending limit. Since Mark directly requested a $40 comic book (so romantic, I know), I also made him some of my super yummy sugar cookies. But this year I fancied them up with red sprinkles and white chocolate. I must say I'm rather pleased with how they turned out!

Double burn!

As some of you may know, our Buddy is a mighty hunter of squirrels. We learned that the hard way when we first got him and in order to spare our little furry friends only let him "hunt" on leash these days. You may also know that our little Buddy is a canus carborhydratus, or what is commonly known as a carb hound. Bread, pretzels, bagels, chips. If it's starchy and white, he's all over it. He'll take multi-grain and whole wheat too, but he won't be as happy about it. This often raises some challenges in the park. There are many people who like to leave bread in the park for the pidgeons and squirrels and geese and ducks and mice and whoever else is living there. Which is nice in theory until you can't find anyplace to lay down a picnic blanket for all the goose shit on the ground. And then they try to steal your lunch.

Anyway, given these facts about Buddy, you will sympathize his recent plight in the park. We were stalking squirrels when all of the sudden Buddy spotted one in the distance, a black squirrel at the foot of the tree eating a hunk of french bread that some kindly visitor had left out. Buddy started straight for him and I thought, "Oh it will be cute. He'll chase the sqiurrel up the tree and then he'll get to eat the bread and it will kind of be like he caught and killed his prey but without the killing and the blood and the illegalness." Imagine my surprise when the squirrel ran up the tree with the hunk of bread the size of his body. He then sat on a branch looking casually down at us, munching his bread.

More surprising still was that Buddy didn't seem to care. I thought the double burn of missing out on both squirrel and bread would send him into a frenzy of barking and whining and jumping about but instead he sat calmly, watching, for a few minutes and then moved on. I don't know whether it was all too much for him to handle or if he was thinking "That's right, get nice and fat, I'll be back next week...." I'd like to think it was the latter but Buddy hasn't given too many signs of being much of a mastermind. If we try to play with him by tossing a bedsheet over him, he can't even figure out how to get out from under it. He'll just struggle for a minute and then lay down and wait for us to take it off. It's a good thing he's pretty.

Gwyneth Paltrow, how wrong I was about you

So the other day I doing a little surfing and I came across this story about Gwyneth Paltrow:

LONDON (KP International) Just because you're one of Hollywood's top stars doesn't mean you couldn't use a decent pay cheque once in a while.
Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow recently 'fessed up that the reason she took a much-criticized job as a spokesmodel for cosmetic giant Este Lauder was because she needed the cash.
"I basically stopped making money from acting in 2002," she was quoted as saying. "All the things I've done since then have been things I've really wanted to do and I have not made money from them.
Paltrow, who is expecting her second child with hubby Chris Martin, has also reportedly been singing the praises of girdles. "You think, 'It's fine because I'm pregnant so I'm meant to be fat.' But afterwards it doesn't go for a while, so girdles are good to raise the morale.

Seriously? Girdles? This is just so sad. So a new mother who has a bit of trouble losing her baby weight should wear a girdle so as not to offend the rest of the world with post-partum body? Um. Okay. Because the worst thing that could ever happen, ever, is for a woman to gain some weight while pregnant and not lose it the instant she delivers. Oh, well, not the worst thing, the worst thing, apparently, is for said weight to not be disguised by uncomfortable, grippy, smothering, tight undergarments. That's the worst thing. And Gwyneth Paltrow? Please. Her with pregnancy weight is still skinnier than 90% of the women on the planet.



I mean, I get that she feels a little self-conscious since she's used to being super thin. I get that she's just trying to boost her self-esteem a little. But it's just so disappointing. GP has generally come across as intelligent, thoughtful, if not outright feminist then at least in line with feminist values. So to find her endorsing girdles and publicly worrying about her baby weight is just such a let down. I guess she's lost whatever "sensitivity" she said she gained from donning the fatsuit for Shallow Hal.

Resolutions, schmesolutions

So I lasted three weeks with my news resolutions and I broke them both at once when I 1) did not blog for the last 10 days and 2) bought 3 pregnancy related magazines in the last 10 days. *sigh* The last 10 days have not been very good. I have been tracking my cycle in preparation for pregnancy attempts (whenever those start - another blog, another blog) and I did not ovulate this month. I am convinced this is because I am a shmoo who has turned her body into a toxic environment through a combination of bad eating and sheer body hatred. My husband, my therapist, and my dear friend Jennie have all tried to convince me that this is not the case and that I will, in fact, be able to get pregnant but I don't know. Anyway, I have been in a severe funk, hence no blogging

On a much funnier note, last night I forced Mark to watch "Legends of the Fall" and we now have a new game of "Who is Tristan" (Brad Pitt in the movie - gorgeous, passionate but mad, mad, mad). So far Mark has points because he is 1) male 2) has had sex with women 3) has fired a gun in a hunting context 4) can work up really good B.O. and 5) has ridden a horse that wasn't a pony tied to a merry-go-round at the Western Fair. I have points because I have 1) long hair 2) have had at least one full on nervous breakdown 3) am a middle child 4) have held a heart in my hands (well it was a cow heart but still) and 5) have given a protective bracelet to a female as a gift. We both get points for being blond and blue-eyed. Buddy also gets some points because he is 1) male 2) blond 3) has had the blood of a wild animal on his face before 4) dreams of running wild with the moon and 5) women love him. All in all it's a pretty tight race! The winner gets to put a Post-it that says "so-and-so is Tristan" on the tv. GAME ON!

The end of the mad, mad celebrity crush or Come back 90210

So it is so sad, but my celebrity crush on Chad Michael Murray has been ruined by his being a cheating pig. Apparently, after he had been married to his One Tree Hill co-star Sophia Bush for only a few months, he cheated on her. At first it was all hush hush but now he's fully admitted it. I guess after being a loser teen who was bullied and ignored by girls, he got a little heady with his sexual power as a tv star. But dude, come on, in the first months of marriage? He wasn't even trying to be faithful if he couldn't even hold on to it for a few months. And no matter how hot he is, it's hard to find someone sexy who is that much of an ass.

To make matters worse, it's ruining my favourite show. For the past two seasons, the story arc has been to bring CMM and his ex-wife together and the execs have decided to continue this storyline despite the divorce. So of course, chemistry not quite the same. And Lucas and Brooke getting together was the only reason I watched the show. First the O.C., now One Tree Hill. Soon there won't be any crappy teen dramas left for me to indulge in (cause I just ain't watching Falcon Beach no matter how many subway cars they plaster with posters).

In the meantime, I'm just going to have to hope Joshua Jackson keeps being a good guy....

Too tired to rant

A friend of mine recently sent me this ad.




And it's horrible for so many reasons (does anyone still buy these old stereotypes - that women withhold sex for money/commitment/to be bitchy; and the remote control thing "duh, if only I could get my woman to give me sex as easy as I can turn on the tv, huh huh!" Yeah, that's who I'm going to marry, the guy who thinks this ad is funny!) and why on earth would anyone think that this is the kind of ad that would be successful given that these days women are usually involved in the ring buying, if not picking it themselves outright. It's just gross, gross gross. Unfortunately, it's Friday and my brain is fried, fried, fried, so instead of an intelligent deconstruction and critical analysis of this ad, I've decided to post cute pictures of Mr. Fezziwig:






Look how small he is! He's literally the same size as the video tapes! He belongs to the guy who runs the page where I get my soap spoilers. There are more pictures of this little cutie at http://community.webshots.com/album/527573557flAMAe. I think he's a Cairn Terrier. Seriously, cutest dog EVER!

Doctor of Plastics

So I had a strange experience today. I was referred by my doctor to a plastic surgeon and went for my consultation this morning. My needs are not anything serious. I have a pair of moles on my back that while totally normal looking, are a bit large and every year my doctor freaks out at my physical and sends me to a dermatologist and every year the dermatologist tells me they're fine but to keep track of them because I do have a history of skin cancer in my family. So this year I decided enough was enough and time to just get rid of them so that I don't have to waste my time shlepping all over the city to go see insensitive dermatologists who make me cry (another story, another time....) and so off to the plastic surgeon I went.

My plastic surgeon herself was very nice and conveniently located at the hospital 10 minutes from my apartment. The weird part was the other people in the waiting room. There were three different surgeons in the office and at least one of them was a pediatric specialist. While I was waiting, I sat with the funniest little family who came in with their 2 year old daughter and maybe 6 year old son. The boy had a scar on the top of his head and one on the side of his face but to tell you the truth, despite the fact that they were quite visible, I didn't notice them for at least 10 minutes because he was so engaging and vibrant. And the little girl just played coy with me while she ran around the waiting area with plastic rings she got from the office toy box. As I was leaving, a teenage boy and his mom were also coming in.

Along with me and the kids however, were two women, maybe in their 50's or sixties. One of them was obviously quite face-lifted and nose-jobbed but the other, nothing out of the ordinary. When I had my turn with the doctor, she had to take a phone call and left the room for a moment. This gave me a chance to check out the breast implants on her desk (I've never actually held one before - very weird and gross and some of them had little bits floating around in them like super-fine pieces of tissue. Ick). It wasn't until I was leaving that I saw a flyer for a conference on breast surgery that totally focused on reconstructive surgery that I realized that along with cosmetic breast implants, many women use them post-breast cancer. Then I felt bad because the face-lifted lady was probably not there for cosmetic reasons but reconstructive reasons.

Anyway, sort of strange experience because I had a lot of fun playing with the little kids and the doctor was very nice and the procedure won't cost too much (not OHIP covered of course) but it was weird because none of us had really happy reasons to be there. Plus, it's just weird to refer to the field as "plastics." Gross.

Make up your mind MuchMusic

So I was watching MuchMusic today and saw an ad encouraging people to consume media critically. It would show half naked video ho-girls and then say "Sexy or sexist" and show 50 all blinged out and say "Success or excess" and all this stuff and then had some catchy phrases about thinking about what you watch. Which is nice in theory and all but come on. This shit is all MM shows. If they are going to acknowledge that it needs to be consumed mindfully because it's full of harmful messaging, stereotypes, and degrading imagery then they are basically saying "We are purveyors of damaging shit." They're better off not saying anything, IMO.

And sure, you could argue that it is not MM's fault that video content is what it is. And I would give you that. Except that when they choose their own programming, they still choose damaging shit. Case in point: the year end reviews included a MM special on their list of the most "do-able" girls of 2005. Not the most powerful women in music, not the women who received the most buzz, not the women who dominated the charts (deservedly so or not). No, they chose to name the show "Women who we would most like to fuck, 2005" (slight paraphrase). So they can just put away there little public messaging because its hypocritical bullshit. Just like the tobacco companies who spend millions on campaigns designed to keep children from smoking but the campaigns are so lame and lackluster that all they do is reinforce that not smoking is lame. It seems like they are doing one thing but they are actually doing another. Or like McDonald's selling salads. It seems like they have healthy options (but really who goes to McDonald's for salad?) but then when you actually eat one, it's like chewing on cardboard and vegetables so preserved as to be unrecognizable. Which makes the fries seem that much better.

So boooooo on you MuchMusic. Keep Video on Trial because it makes me laugh but get rid of your stupid metacommunications about media consumption. Admit what you are, cry freedom of speech, and artistic freedom as justification, and stop pretending you're selling deconstructionalist brilliance when you're selling lowest common denominator garbage. Except for Kardinal's latest. I like that video.

Happy New Year!

Ah, I love January. Fresh start. I'm a total sucker for it. We already have taken every shred of Christmas down to the storage locker and are making plans for what we would like to be different this year. A major theme for Mark and I is "quality of life" this year. Which means that I have made the monumental decision to change my dissertation topic from a socially conscious participatory action research project designed to empower women and challenge the patriarchal power structure to instead doing a few one-on-one interviews. I'm actually a bit disappointed about it but I am also excited to perhaps actually finish my degree on time. Woo hoo!

I have also made resolutions. Instead of the Bridget Jones route ("obviously, will lose 20 pounds"), I have decided to make 2 smaller, more realistic resolutions:

1) Will not buy anymore magazines, books, videos etc. on any of the following - pregnancy, labour and delivery, infant care, child care, parenting, child discipline, further your child's intellectual development through stimulating play - until actually pregnant and even then will practice discretion with purchases
2) Will blog 1-2 a week and not let weeks go by with no entry or with very lame entry

Keeping on the New Year's theme, my sister Jill told me that she was at a party on NYE and saw the full "Trapped in the Closet" masterpiece by R. Kelly. She described as being extremely funny and puts her money on a cult following developing in the next few years. I also made a discovery today of something that the artist is dead serious about but is in actuality a piece of unintentional comic gold. It's Kevin Federline's website (www.kevinfederline.com). It has a wonderful opening montage of clips from tabloids while he raps/warns "Keep messin' with my family and you're through." It also has a small clip of his single PopoZao, which apparently no label would come near with a ten foot pole but you can buy through Yahoo music. Plus Kevin displays his wit and skill as a writer as he introduces himself to us, his adoring public:

Hey Everyone,
I don't think we've ever been formally introduced. My name is Kevin Federline. I'm 6 feet tall, have brown hair and brown eyes. I enjoy horseback riding, long walks on the beach and the wind whipping through my hair. Ha ha ha. On a more serious note, there's going to be a lot more information and updates on here in the coming weeks and I think this will provide you with the opportunity to get to know who I really am. Anyway, thanks for checking out my site and be sure to come back often. You can click here to join my email list and also check me out on MySpace.
Kevin

Oh K-Fed!