morning gruel

the hottest hot

Morgaine and I spent a night in Whistler this week. She was shooting a wedding and I went along as the nanny.

To make our trip more enjoyable, I decided to invest in commuter mugs. I imagined us sipping tea and eating freshly baked scones as we drove along the Sea-to-Sky Highway. It's good to own a commuter mug -- I always cringe when I stop for a cup of tea on the go and end up with yet another paper cup.

As it is with so many other consumer products, I discovered that if I spent a few extra dollars on our commuter mugs, I could get those of superior quality. So I bought us a couple of stainless steel Thermos brand mugs. The selling point? Thermax. I don't know exactly what it is but it was touted on the label to promote the 'coldest cold' and the 'hottest hot'. Good idea, no?

No. The presence of Thermax does not make for a better commuter mug. Quite the opposite. Half way to Whistler, I took a sip of tea and burned my tongue. In fact, my tea wasn't a realistic drinking temperature until we arrived at our hotel.

It's not a commuter mug, it's a drink-it-when-you-get-there mug.

day 10

Aahva's tenth day with us looks something like this...

learning curve

It seems that I still have a lot to learn about this whole 'husband' thing.

Yesterday, the ever-brilliant star in my sky that is Morgaine and I were going out. Now, I can not stress to you enough how beautiful Morgaine is and how she gets more and more lovely everyday.

Anyway, she was getting dressed and she put on this very nice purple top. I thought she looked great. Franky, I've never seen a more beautiful pregnant woman in my life. And that belly under that purple top looked so sweet and lovely that it made me smile and say, 'you look like a grape'.

To which she responded with, Never, EVER tell a pregnant woman she looks like a grape if she's wearing purple, or a pumpkin if she's wearing orange, or a tomato if she's wearing red. How would you like it if you were tall and skinny (which I am) and you were wearing green and I told you that you looked like a string bean?

She went to change her top. I made a mental note never to wear green.

Calling Morgaine a peach, by the way, has been deemed acceptable.

life with you

Here at morning gruel, life can be any combination of silly, erratic, emotive, embellished, or under-baked. But the main theme is it's all about me.

However, the truth is that even my own life isn't all about me; Morgaine and our baby hold an equal place in my consciousness. We're like a three-tiered pastry tower at high tea: Each tier on its own is satisfying enough, but combined we are extra tasty! extra satisfying! extra fancy!

And so to allow you to see more of the pastry tower, we have a new blog: life with you. This is where you can follow along with what we are experiencing, thinking and feeling around having a baby. It's the place to go to for regular baby updates, our own individual observations, and extra fancy pastries...

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.

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.