morning gruel

but then why am I always late for work?

We are now five weeks away from the birth of our baby.

Five weeks may seem like a lot of time, and it kind of is. But just the other day I was talking to my lovely step-mother Ellie on the phone and she informed me that I was five weeks early. That was the first I had heard of it. Why did I not know this? I mean, I knew I was small when I was born, just over five pounds, but I assumed I was just little. I guess nobody ever thought it was a big enough deal to mention since I was after all a completely healthy baby.

So no big deal. The only thing it means is that if my baby were born at the same time as me, it would be born... now.

no room for wordplay

Last weekend Morgaine and I attended a three day prenatal course.

I have spent the last few days decompressing from that experience. It was a wonderful three days spent with like-minded people, sharing my hopes and fears and ultimately learning to trust myself, my instincts, and my personal strengths in this process.

I would love to write all about my weekend, to tell you about the things that I experienced. In fact I've been processing it for days, planning to do just that. But I've decided not to write about it. You see, I'm afraid that trying to string words together at this point would bring too much of my logical mind into the process and would ultimately interfere with my personal experience and how I envision bringing my child into this world.

It's become increasingly obvious to me that my logical, practical mind has only a very small place in the whole process of birthing. And so far It's a process that words can not encapsulate.

So I'm not going to try.

24 hours of goodness

I don't know how I'm going to stay off the sugar induced roller coaster with this new bit of information that I've received. You see, Morgaine recently discovered that the local bakery --the one with chocolate raspberry croissants-- is open 24 hours. Morgaine surely struggled with her decision to inform me of this, juggling the knowledge of my love of pastries with my battle with the sugar roller coaster. But how could she resist wanting to see the look on my face when I found out that I could get pastries ANYTIME I WANT.

This is a problem. Because pretty much the only thing that keeps me from eating pastries all day long is the fact that I don't generally have access to said pastries at all hours. I mean sure, I could buy extra pastries during the day and eat them late at night, but then they wouldn't be fresh, just from the store pastries, they'd just be kinda pathetic day olds.

Then again, perhaps the 24 hour bakery doesn't actually bake for 24 hours and their late night pastries are indeed day olds. For all I know, all I'm excited about is the convenience of being able to pick it up anytime I want. Well I don't know if these 24 hour pastries are really day old pastries. But I know one way to find out...

keep on movin'

I haven't stopped since we moved a couple of weeks ago.

It seems that there's always something to do: whether it's organizing our new home or working or even simply getting to work. At least Morgaine is on top of doing the dishes. But my energy level is greatly diminished. Just getting out of bed takes so much effort that I need a nap after. And I'm a morning person, so you can only imagine how worn out I feel by the time the evening rolls around.

And of course in the evening I have to work. So as I work, my feet drag on the floor when I get up to help a customer find a movie or I mask a slight sigh with forced enthusiasm when asked for advice. I feel the constant need for an energy boost but the only things that help are the two things I don't want: caffeine and sugar. And so I jump on that blood-sugar roller-coaster and end up alternately dragging my butt and buzzing around the store talking a mile a minute to someone who only asked me a simple question.

I would love to avoid this constant up and down but fear that my dependence on outside stimuli will only increase when my wonderful, wonderful child arrives... which means that they will likely find me alternately incredibly entertaining and terribly boring.

33 weeks

Morgaine is now 33 weeks pregnant.

Many of you might know that birth usually happens at around 40 weeks. That works well for me because you see, I need lots of time to adapt to change. So this 40 week time frame has been quite acceptable to me. I mean, 40 weeks is plenty of time to adapt. And we know that a majority of first children show up late so I'm thinking that I have at least seven more weeks to prepare. But last night we reading information on baby development and it said that at 33 weeks the baby's pretty much done. In other words, if they were born RIGHT NOW they would probably be perfectly fine. And that's actually much more than seven weeks off of my prep schedule because I didn't even know about the baby for the first four weeks or so. So really, I've only had 29 weeks to prepare for something that I've allotted 40 weeks for.

Uh oh. Now I don't want to say that I'm in panic mode exactly, but I haven't set up the crib at our new place yet, the baby's room is still full of boxes from the move, we don't have any sheets for the crib, we only have ONE little article of clothing for the baby... Don't get me wrong, I love that my baby is coming soon. I'm really looking forward to meeting them. What I'm trying to say is: I hope they wait a little longer to show up because I'm not quite ready yet.

taking the long way home

I used to spend 7 minutes on the Skytrain to get home.

Now it takes me half an hour... by bus. Now a half hour commute by transit may not seem like much to the average person, but it's a long time to someone who suffers from motion sickness. And I'm not talking major turbulence on a trans-atlantic flight kind of motion sickness -- I'm talking merry-go-round motion sickness. That's right, I can't even handle kiddie carnival rides. And If I'm going on a long car ride and I'm not the driver, I may even consider wearing the patch. What I'm telling you is this: just about anything more active than sitting still in a desk chair can make me barf.

And so a half hour long bus ride is not a lot of fun for me. Maybe if it was an express bus it would be easier, but I'm stuck on one of those stop and start on EVERY SINGLE BLOCK routes. And so on my way home last night, in an effort to take my mind off of the nausea-inducing jostling of the bus, I put on my iPod. Big mistake. Because in order to get to the playlist I wanted, I had to read my iPod's teeny-tiny screen. Now if you know anything about motion-sickness, you know that reading is never a good idea. I scrambled through the menu as quickly as I could, looking for a certain podcast. But I took too long and I began to feel like the guy sitting beside me was going to get to see what I had for dinner. So I settled my iPod on the best thing I could find quickly: some stomach-calming Beethoven.

I wonder if Beethoven would consider being called a good cure for nausea a compliment.

the dishes are done

You may have noticed that my posting schedule has been erratic of late.

You know of course that we recently moved, and so the disruption of routine is to be expected. But we are now fully moved in and yet my posting is still inconsistent. Why, you ask?

The answer is simple: Our new home doesn't have a dishwasher. You see, for the last ten years I have had a dishwasher. Dishwashers are awesome. As an eco-friendly person, it took me a while to feel good about using one. But then I found out that modern dishwashers often use less water than washing by hand. Well I don't know if that was some unsubstantiated rumour, or even an out-and-out lie told by the Maytag repairman in a commercial, but it was enough to get me on the household appliance bandwagon. And so I got used to using the dishwasher and was awed by its time-saving convenience.

Welcome to our new home. Our new, dishwasher-less home. You wouldn't think that this one little factor would affect my life in any real way. But it does. You see, I'm a fairly busy guy; I've got things that I have to do and things that I like to do. That's a lot of things to do. And of course the things that I have to do take precedence over the things that I like to do. And now I have one more thing that I have to do: dishes. Which means that I have a little less time for some of the things that I like to do, like blogging.

But things are looking up: After some minor complaining, Morgaine has recently informed me that SHE LIKES DOING DISHES. I suspect she may not be telling the truth. But if she's lying, I don't want to know. The job's all hers.

bff?

I recently spent the afternoon with my best friend... from elementary school.

This was the third time Sean and I had seen each other since he looked me up a few months ago in anticipation of his move to the coast. I was surprised to hear from him the first time, but glad. We hadn't seen each other at all since grade six and had only been 'inseparable' friends up to grade three. But way back then we were indeed best friends.

Sometimes when you are with very old friends you can get stuck reliving the past... and that's it. This can happen if you no longer have anything in common or have no real mode of communicating in the present day. Sean and I do not seem to have this problem. It was great to spend time with him and to talk about our lives now with the ancient trust that comes with old friendship. There was a welcome comfort between us that I did not expect after such a long span of time.

I had a wonderful afternoon, not only with Sean but with his lovely wife and their BRAND NEW SON. For the sake of privacy I won't list their names without permission (I'm sure Sean won't mind), but suffice it to say that they are a beautiful family that I am looking forward to seeing again.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm glad to finally have a place to stay on the Sunshine Coast...

the walk-through

I spent a good chunk of yesterday cleaning our old apartment in preparation for THE WALK-THROUGH.

Those of you who are home owners may not know what I'm talking about. THE WALK-THROUGH is performed by the landlord who walks through the apartment to make sure everything is in order. I like to think that I have cleaned my apartments well when I've left them for the next person. And the next person is on my mind when I'm cleaning; I want someone to enjoy moving into their new, clean home rather than feel like they have to clean before they can settle in. And although I will likely never meet the people that move in after me, I do not wish them to harbour any ill will toward the person that lived there before them because they left the place a mess. So that desire to engender goodwill and positive energy between strangers is what makes me feel good about cleaning the place that I'm leaving.

But that is not my motivation for cleaning. My motivation is simple: the damage deposit. And although I still haven't mastered taking off my pants without a pile of change falling out of my pockets and potentially denting the floor, I keep my home clean and I do my best to not do any damage. And honestly, I believe that we left this apartment cleaner than when we moved in. But until the landlord has done their walk-through, deemed everything to be okay, and handed me a cheque, I'm usually a tad nervous. I mean, what about that kitchen cabinet door that's falling off its hinges? I didn't cause that, it's faulty workmanship. But if the landlord blames me, she can take some random amount off my damage deposit to repair it. And what about the paint stains that were in the kitchen sink when we moved in? I don't think the landlord recorded that. Or the expanding crack in the wall? I start to imagine that my damage deposit has disappeared to pay for a carpenter, a plumber, a drywaller...

So this afternoon the landlord came and did the walk-through. My worst nightmare began when she opened the faulty kitchen cabinet door and it feel right off in her hand. I wondered momentarily if I was going to have to call a lawyer. But she chalked it up to poor workmanship, finished the walk-through and handed us a cheque for the full amount of our damage deposit.

She also gave us some squash from her garden. That was the first time I've ever recieved lovely parting gifts from a landlord. I don't know what I was so nervous about.

day after cake

Yesterday Morgaine bought me a birthday cake.

For those of you who don't already know, I love birthday cake. And I especially love those grocery store birthday cakes of questionable quality with icing made from petroleum bi-product. And that's what Morgaine bought me. Yup, she went against all of her instincts to buy some beautiful gourmet cake and instead sought out the cake that she knew I wanted: cheap and crappy.

I try to eat healthy, I really do, but then my sweet tooth bites me in the butt. So I ate half of the cake in one sitting (and this was not a small cake). The rest of it is just sitting in my fridge, waiting for me to come home from work so I can eat it. But I'm not going to eat it because now that my birthday is over I can no longer indulge without guilt.

And so Healthy Craig says that I should go home and throw the rest of the cake away. But Sweet Tooth Craig is smart; he appeals to Frugal Craig by saying that it would be wasteful to throw cake out.

Hmm, two against one. That doesn't seem fair at all...

p.s. In response to all those who were concerned: I still live in Vancouver. If I ever leave this city, you can bet that I'll make a pretty big deal out of it.