We’ve hired a cleaning lady.  With my ever growing belly, chores have become very difficult.  I mentioned this to my mom and she got into contact with one of her friends that  cleans for a living.

Now she is going to come once a week to tidy things up.  She is going to do the majority of the mopping, sweeping, and cleaning the bathrooms.  This helps me out in a big way.  Even though we have had to cancel our roadside assistance club membership.

But so far having a cleaning lady seems worth it.

My current status on my Facebook is as follows: 

Q:  what do you call relations that come and stay five minutes from my house fairly regularly but don’t bother to call or come by but yet have the audacity to send emails about getting together? 

A:  Strangers 

According to a friend of mine I sound ticked off and to an extent I am.  My status is directed to a very specific group of people that are in my life.  They are not in my life by choice they are there because they are ‘family’ and no matter how hard I try to distance myself from them, they always manage to get under my skin. 

This particular group loves to send emails about family bonding and how we should all get together all the time.  In their mind we should form this tight familial unit because as movies have taught us, blood is thicker than water.  And they should know because they are vampires, sucking the life out of my family. 

But I digress. 

In theory behind their idea is lovely.  The idea of a united extended family where everyone meets fairly regularly sounds nice and isn’t what bothers me.  What bothers me is the fact that the people that send me this email at least once a month, are in my neighbourhood fairly regularly.  They spend weekends playing Scene It a block away from my house.  They have run into Millhouse at the gas station and convenience store next door to me.  But they never bother to actually call or come by. 

Their version of family bonding is us coming to them, because even though it would be more convenient, they refuse to come to us and I have had it.

OK things have been bugging me lately.  I know that it mostly has to do with the fact that I am in the later stages of the pregnancy and I am pretty dang miserable.  So in an attempt to justify my madness I have compiled a list of all the things that have been cheesing me off lately. 

• Rude comments on gossip sites.  I fully admit that I read gossip sites.  I find the lives of celebrities fascinating so I go on once a day get my fix of drama and move on.  I rarely ever comment on any of stories though.  But it does tick me off when I read the comments and someone is like:  “I hate her.  Why does this count as news?  Who really cares?”  Here’s why.  No one told you to read the dang story.  You chose to.  So the only one to blame for the 30 seconds of your life that you just lost is you.  If the subject of the post doesn’t interest you, don’t read the post!  If you chose to read it, then STFU and quit your whining.
• Anti – vegetarianism.  I am a former vegetarian that still sometimes likes to go meatless.  I don’t push my views on people nor do I refrain from eating cheese, honey or a hamburger if I really want one.  So when I am going through one of my meatless phases it would be appreciated it the sly comments and raised eyebrows were directed somewhere else.  Furthermore, how about having some veggie options at staff functions.  Yesterday we had a BBQ and the only option for vegetarians that they had was coleslaw.  That’s very shortsighted.  Just because we don’t eat meat doesn’t mean that we don’t eat at all. 
• US Spell check.  I am Canadian.  I live in Canada.  I spell like a Canadian.  That means I spell favor, and color with a U.  Words like poutine and touque are actual words.  But Microsoft Word and my Blackberry don’t seem to think so.  Even when I set the language to Canadian English, these words still get flagged as misspellings.  They are not misspelled!  They are spelled correctly if you are in Canada. 

I have way more to add to the list but I have to go make my 587456 trip to the bathroom.  When I get back I may add more.

I tend not to go through my archives, hence the repetition in some of my posts.  It the same subject is running through my head then I write about it over and over again.  I am zany like that.  I don’t recall making a big hoopla about July this year.  Normally I am all about July and August because its summer and can’t wait to get out and do things.

This year I haven’t been writing that much.  The weather has been hot and humid, something that I used to love.  But this year I discovered that being eight months pregnant during a heat wave is no fun.  But I am still all about summer.

 So I condensed a summers worth of posts into on Hooray for Summer type post.

 And here we go!

 I ♥ the sun.  I am not really feeling the heat.  Normally love the heat.  But having a twelve pound watermelon strapped to my midsection makes the heat somewhat unbearable.

 I ♥ Ben & Jerry’s, Baskin Robbins and caramel sundaes from McDonalds.  I am not really feeling all the weight loss ads and commercials that come with summer.  Yes, bikinis are scary but I don’t need some special pill to wear one.

 I ♥ the beach, the water park, the sprinkler in the backyard and the inflatable pool.  I am not really feeling the sand that refuses to wash away and sunburns.

 I ♥ BBQ’s.  I am not really feeling meat though.  There are times when the steaks, and ribs smells super yummy but when I eat them they just don’t taste right.  This year my BBQ experience consists primarily of grilled veggies and veggie burgers.

There are so many other things I love about summer but then the post would get too long. 

I have said this before:  I have no friends.  I have no problem saying this.  At one point I couldn’t say that.  It was too hard but not anymore.  The people that I once considered my friends have been cut off.  I don’t want to deal with their drama.  I have other things going on and pretending to have something in common was getting old. 

But that is not the only reason I cut them off.  I cut them off because they didn’t live up to my expectations.  What I mean by that is:  I tend to jump into things with both feet.  As a friend I will be there for the good and the bad.  I listen and I hear.  I am all about going out partying or staying home and holding your hand as you cry.  And people were all good with that.  I was when I needed them to be there that they disappeared.  I had friends that had no problem drinking with me, partying with me, laughing with me but they were not there to cry with me.  When things got hard I couldn’t find them.  My heartache was not a priority.  And to me that isn’t fair.  When I was younger this realization shocked me but as I get older I find that fewer and fewer people are living up to my expectations. 

There are fewer and fewer people that are willing to be there when you need them to be.  And I am OK with that.  Sure, it would be nice to have people to confide in, people that take a genuine interest in my life and want to see things get better but I expected this from the wrong people.  The people that I expected to be there for me aren’t there.  They are off at another party because that is where they want to be.  They are not sitting with me holding my hand because they have chosen to do something else more fun.  They cannot handle the darkness that is following me so they have decided to ignore it and let me deal with it on my own. 

And I can accept that 

And move on without them.

This is clarify my anti baby shower stance even more.  This post was originally supposed to be protected because I did not certain members of my family reading it.  But what the hell here goes.  The ones that this is about know that I cannot stand them anyway so this is nothing new. 

One of the major reasons that I don’t want a baby shower is because of my crazy family.  Now not of them are actually ‘crazy’ per se.  They are just an annoying bunch of people that get under my last nerve and driving me to scream into pillows to avoid cussing them off. 

So here is the breakdown of my family.  And at the end you can marvel that I turned out so well. 

My mom’s side:  My mom has five brothers and one sister.  I can’t stand any of them.  They all have offspring and I am nonchalant with having a relationship with any of them.  The reason that they all bother me so much is because of their love of status and money.  All of them look down on us because we are not as rich as they are.  My immediate family was never considered their equals.  They go out of their way to remind us that they, in their minds anyway, are better than we will ever be.  They rarely visit even though they live down the street from me and when they do it is to see what we have or do not have and find fault with that.  And it is not just the things that we have that they criticize.  They find it necessary to criticize our complexion, weight, hair, and life.  They are quick to point out that I am the biggest female in the family and that I should look into a lower ab workout.  They willingly spend an entire conversation telling us about how great they are and how utterly horrific we are.  And, truthfully, I would rather have my fingernails ripped out one by one by a toothless wolverine than have a conversation with them.  

So I don’t. 

My dad’s side:  isn’t here.  

My dad has two brothers and five sisters.  Borders and oceans separate our immediate family from his side.  But I do love them.  They have their quirks and moments in which they drive me insane but because oceans and borders separate us guaranteeing that our time spent with them is short and should be treasured, I love them. 

But because they are so far away I am stuck with my mom’s side.  And really when it comes to them, I would rather be locked in a room with a toothless, rabid wolverine than deal with them.

*I like History.  I spent a lot of my teenage / university years reading up on myths and stories for different eras.  This is one of the stories that I remember very clearly from that time in my life.  I think it may be Greek in origin but I am not certain.  I am also not certain of the actual names in the story so I left them out.* 

There was a father eagle that lived on the peak of a mountain made of wax with his three sons. 

One day a great fire started in the valley and the mountain started to melt.  The eagle’s children could not fly yet but because of their size he could only save one of them. 

He chose the oldest son.  He picked him and as he was flying with him over the valley of fire he asked; ‘Son, one day you will be in a situation such as this.  When the time comes will you save your child or me?’ 

The son said that he would save his father. 

The eagle dropped his son into the fire and turned around. 

Upon returning to his nest he picked up his second son.  Once again as he was flying with him over the valley of fire he asked; ‘Son, one day you will be in a situation such as this.  When the time comes will you save your child or me?’ 

The son said that he would save his father. 

The eagle dropped his son into the fire and turned around. 

Upon returning to his nest he picked up his last son.  Once again as he was flying with him over the valley of fire he asked; ‘Son, one day you will be in a situation such as this.  When the time comes will you save your child or me? 

The son said that he would have no choice but to save his child just as his father was saving him. 

That was the answer the father wanted to hear and he flew his son to safety. 

At the time I read that story, I thought that the answer was obvious.  Of course it was the parents’ responsibility to save their child.  As much as I would want to save my parents, my obligation as a parent would be to my child.  It was very black and white. 

I am older now and even though the answer still makes sense to me.  I would like to find a way to save my father too.

As of late I have been encountering a lot of cheaters.

They are not my friends.  They are Millhouse’s friends.  And it seems like lately there are a lot of them that are going out and having affairs.  Some are staying with their wives, and some of them have confessed and are now getting divorced.

At first it was just one friend, and even though I didn’t approve of the affair I didn’t judge.  But over the four years that we have been married more and more of his friends have started or confessed to affairs.  I am starting to notice a trend and I am not sure if this trend is limited to the general population or just Millhouse’s friends.

I have been noticing that a lot more of the couples that we know have been breaking up due to infidelity.  I recognize that monogamy is hard.  To remain physically monogamous is hard but to remain emotionally monogamous is even harder.   I am wondering if these couples knew this and if they knew this what happened.  I think it is the anthropologist in me.  I like to know what people are thinking and why they do the things that they do especially if it looks like they following a trend.

I haven’t been able to get into the heads of Millhouse’s friends yet and I think it is because they don’t even know why they cheated.

Maks went on a field trip today.

It wasn’t his first field trip.  His first field trip was when he was 18 months old.  His toddler class all put on their matching orange t-shirts, sunscreen and summer hats.  All 18 of them held on to a rope and walked to the local grocery store.  They learned about colours that day.  They looked at peppers, apples and oranges.  Then when the excitement of produce wore off all 18 on a rope were escorted into the bakery back room where they got to decorate a cake.  When I picked Maks up he was exhausted.  He was using his limited vocabulary to tell me all about first ever field trip.

I cried that day because Maks it became apparent that Maks was growing up.

His second field trip was last fall.  This time his preschool class donned their orange shirts and piled into a yellow school bus.  They rode in the bus for thirty minutes until the got to a pumpkin patch.  They spent the day picking pumpkins, eating cookies, and singing songs.  When I picked Maks up he was exhausted.  He was so excited about his first ever bus ride and talked about it until he fell asleep.

I fretted that day.  I was worried about how he would do, would he, the youngest, handle the experience that the older kids had already been through?  Would he cry or be scared?  He wasn’t.  He loved it.  It was fun.

Today was another field trip day.  Once again the preschool class donned orange tshirts, sunhats, and backpacks.  Maks is now old enough to be responsible for his own bag.  He will be carrying his extra clothes and water bottle with him.  As I waved from the window as he got ready to show the ‘little’ kids the proper way to sit on the bus.

I couldn’t help but tear up a little.

The person waving back wasn’t an 18 month old getting ready to go count peppers.  It was an almost three year old who was holding the hand of one of the new kids in the preschool class telling them how fun the bus ride was going to be.

He knows, he’s done it before.

For the first time since we moved into the house, I took a bath tonight.

I am a very strong supporter of showers and given my schedules showers fit better into my time constraints.  Baths are more Maks’ thing.  He has issues with getting his head wet but loves taking baths.  I think because he likes them so much because he can pretend to swim in them.  So in our house baths are limited to people born after 2006.

But tonight I decided that I needed to relax and I thought a bath would be just the thing for me. 

I was wrong.

Firstly, I am too big for our bathtub.  In order for me to fit into it I had to hang my legs over the side.  It was not the most comfortable fit.  Then my large belly was barely submerged!  I have a fairly large butt so it took up most of the bottom of the bathtub and my belly had no water to cover it.

By the end of it I was so frustrated with being half wet and half dry and freezing that I just ended up taking a shower. 

Thank goodness we changed our furnace filters so there was enough hot water for my bath AND my shower.