Current Status

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.

This morning I woke up to 55 new comments on my blog.  Now I know that this isn’t right.  My blog is a blip in the world of blogs so if I get 55 comments in a month that is a miracle.  So 55 in a night when I haven’t written anything that day means one thing, spam.

I like spam.  Now that doesn’t mean I want to be bombarded with it but I find it interesting.  Here’s what I mean:

Natasha likes getting it from behind by horses in Russia – see I never knew this about Natasha but I think she should look into some alternate forms of entertainment.

Mason has the hook up on cheap insurance for ipads - this is good to know if I ever get an iPad.

VirtualDrugstore can hook me up with all kinds of prescription pills  – How convenient!  Maybe all pharmacies should be online.

And my most favourite kind of spam:

The kind in Russian and Polish, that I can’t read.  I just tend to assume that it is Natasha telling me about her love of horses.

:)

Memories

I don’t remember labour.

I remember being in labour.  I remember what I was wearing the day I had Maks.  I remember going to the hospital and all the events that lead up to Maks’ birth.

But I don’t remember labour.  More specifically, I don’t remember what labour felt like.  I don’t remember what I felt like in the hours, days, weeks leading up to me being in labour.

And this is distressing.

I am experiencing some serious pains but I don’t know if it is pre-term labour, Braxton Hicks, round ligament pain, or the baby dropping.  Over the past week I have called my midwife, telehealth, googled non stop and read everything I could get my hands on and I still don’t know what the hell it is I am feeling.

My midwife keeps telling me that this is normal.  I have to rest, take hot baths, take Tylenol and stay hydrated.  It will all go away if I do that but it is not.  There are days when it hurts so bad I can’t move and then there are days when the pain doesn’t exist.  On those days especially I question what the hell is going on.  If the pain was consistent then I at least would be able to justify my complaining but it is not.  Sometimes it is there all day, sometimes it is when I stand / sit / lay down / walk, sometimes it shows up in the shower and sometimes it’s just not there at all.

I wish I knew what was going on. 

I wish I could remember what labour felt like so I would know if this is something I should be worried about or not.

Slightly Panicked

I am panicking as a direct result of procrastination.  My lack of organization this time around has finally caught up with me and now I am running scared.  I attempted to pack my hospital bag last night when I realized something. 

  • I don’t have a bag.
  • I don’t have any toiletries
  • I don’t have any clothes for the baby.  All the stuff I washed and put away were for 6 months and older.  I have no newborn or 3 month clothes. 
  • I don’t have any clothes for me to wear in the hospital.  I don’t own any pajamas or bedroom slippers.
  • I don’t have pads
  • I don’t have swaddling blankets 

I swear I went through the list that the hospital gave me.  Stinky and I went shopping to make sure that we had everything and I really did think that I was ready but I’m not. 

I guess I shouldn’t have spent so much time looking at designer ties.

I am now slightly panicked. 

OK, maybe more than slightly.

This isn’t a review of the book.  I did read the book.  I do have a reviewed planned for the book but it is still in my head and I haven’t gotten around to shaking it out of my head yet.  When I do, I will let you know. 

My whole purpose of this post is to talk about sandwiches.  Swedish sandwiches in particular. 

How random is that?!  It is almost as random as doing a post on personalized basketballs.

The book took place mostly in Sweden and as such they ate a lot of Swedish food.  Now I willingly admit that I don’t know much about Swedish food, unless you count Swedish fish but those little red delights aren’t really from Sweden and they aren’t really fish so I don’t think that they count. 

But based on this book, Swedish food is a lot of sandwiches and coffee and not the kind of sandwich that I would want to eat either.  They had liverwurst and mustard, pate and pickles, and lots and lots of cheese.  Now I am not sure if these sandwiches that they consumed all the time were accurate of what the Swedish are actually eating. 

So I am throwing it out there, do these sandwiches actually exist?  Or was the author totaling messing with the North Americans and the Swedish eat way better than this?

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.

Round Ligament Pain

Currently I am on some impromptu bedrest.  I am experiencing some killer round ligament pain that has consistently gotten worse as the week went on.  I called my midwife at 9am today and she sent me home with the instructions to rest for the remainder of the day.

So I have been home for most of the day trying to take it easy.  I am not really a take it easy kind of person though.  I never really stop moving and this is hard.  I even tried to sleep but I couldn’t.  If I had a natural sleep aid I so would have taken it.  It seems like the only time I am not in pain is when I am sleeping.  But I didn’t have any so I just took half a Tylenol instead.  It helped with the pain but I still haven’t really slept. 

I am thinking that tonight is going to be an early night.

Halfway to 16

Stinky turned 8 on Monday.  That freaks the pants off me.  In the same amount of time that it took for her to learn to walk, talk, read, write, speak French, declare her love for the Jonas Brothers, become addicted to all things pink and sparkly; she would become a full blown teenager.  

In keeping with the traditions of the past few years I figured I would write a sappy post that proclaimed my love for the Ninja Princess and outlined all the birthday wishes that I had for her.  But I changed my mind.  I decided that instead of declaring Stinky’s birthday wishes via internet I would share some random facts about her instead. 

  • Stinky has a legion of Ninja warriors* that have sworn to do her bidding.  Her quest for world domination is now in full motion.  I have already sworn my allegiance to her for fear of her repercussion when she becomes leader of everything.  I think you should too.
  • Stinky saw Toddlers and Tiaras and she had the opposite reaction to her mom and I.  She wants to do it.  Well, she wanted to do it.  She all about pageants until we had to get her ready for her dance recital.  Putting on eye liner brought her back to reality and made her decide that pageants aren’t that much fun. 
  • Stinky won’t touch a worm.  But she will look at them in the bait bucket and scream out ‘ewwwwww’ for 20 minutes.
  • Stinky is super awesome.  She is sweet, caring, smart, and outgoing.  She is growing up into a spectacular young lady.  Who one day is going to take over the world.  And if you don’t believe me, please refer to item one. 

*OK, so it is not really a legion.  There are five of them.  And they are battery powered hamsters but they are still quite intimidating.  And they have their own Dojo of Doom.

Pregnancy Massage

When I was pregnant with Maks I got my first ever pregnancy massage.  It was enjoyable and relaxing.  I had never had a massage before so my expectations were greatly exceeded.  I never got one after that but that was because I never had enough time.

This time around I am way more stiff and tired than I was with Maks so I decided to get another pregnancy massage. 

This one is nothing like the other one that I had.  It was painful.  I think that the masseuse bruised me.  She used her elbows and knuckles even though I asked her not to.  Instead of gently massaging out my knots, she used a lot of pressure to loosen my muscles. 

 I wanted a peaceful experience, and instead I got bruised hips and a sore back.  I don’t think that I am going back.

The Jewels of July

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.  :)

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