War, Schmar. I’ve Got Samsonite-Sized Eye Bags.

Today is November 17th. I am 18 weeks pregnant. This stubborn misalignment of the number stars bothers me a little but I shall endeavor to overcome.

The last time I was pregnant I posted but one belly shot, I believe. It was my 17-week shot. It looked like this:

Look at that muscle tone. Now imagine it coated with about 5 more inches of flesh. That is why my facebook status was “[cheesefairy] is a broad expanse of flesh” for two weeks.

And holy hannah I am still tired. I guess that mythical 2nd trimester boost of energy only happens if you are not doing anything but being pregnant and maybe clipping your toenails every few weeks. Should I complain more? Enh, why not. If you can’t take it, come back tomorrow.

My back hurts. My nose is constantly stuffed. I get winded walking from the couch to the bathroom. I got up to pee in the night and when I was back in bed, I laid there, panting, for a good two minutes, wondering if I was having a heart attack or lung attack or attack of the clones or what.

I was all set to go out tonight – go OUT, I KNOW! – and then around 2 pm I started drooping and then, by 4 pm, I could barely stand in the kitchen long enough to start cooking chili and I love cooking chili and then, by 6 pm, with Trombone still running around the house, hollering “DOOTCH!” (means juice), I was on the floor, leaning up against the couch, imagining what it would be like to just get under the couch cushions and eat dust mites until I die.

Luckily, Saint Aardvark no longer works from home on Saturdays which means he was available to wrangle all afternoon while I sat and frowned and was weak and felt like weeping.

Oh and I thought I was going to get away with no boob pain through this pregnancy? Wrong. Allasudden this week they’re all “eek, the wind blew on me!” and “aiii, you climbed some stairs!” Come on. Let’s get with the program, boobs. You have a long, engorged, leaky, uneven road ahead in a few months. Take this time to just sit and rest. And DO NOT even THINK about GROWING.

Seriously. I will smite you. Don’t think I won’t.

So I’m inside tonight, no change there. I was a fool to think I could make a trip downtown in nice clothes to bowl with friends who may not even be friends, I haven’t seen them in so long. And so, a rousing chorus to send us off to TV land and then, to bed:

I lay my head on the railroad track
And wait for the double-E
The railroad don’t run no more
Poor, poor pitiful me.

Posted in babby, music, the parenthood | 5 Comments

Every Sperm is Sacred. Etc.

Scientists have isolated valuable stem cells from plain ol’ menstrual blood! I read this today and was delighted to imagine myself selling my bodily fluids, never working another dull, officey day in my life (assuming I can stop getting pregnant long enough to make it to harvest, as it were) and saving the world all the while. What an awesome development!

The news piece had a link to a site/lab called C’elle (“Your Monthly Miracle”) that is already storing womens’ menstrual blood for them. I have never seen menstrual blood presented with so much marketing panache. “Treat yourself to the potential for better future health and subscribe to the C’elle service now!” says the pricing page. Yes! I am so tired of treating myself to trips to the spa! What’s left for a woman who has spent her disposable income everywhere she possibly can?

It’s refreshing, actually, to go to a site about menstrual blood and have said blood be presented as normal, valuable and worth spending a cool hundred bucks a year to store cryogenically. It’s a little squicky that they refer to my potential menstrual stem cells as “c’elle stem cells” but I guess if they’re the only ones doing it and I send them my credit card number and my blood by Fed-Ex then maybe they can call the results what they want. They can even call my vials of blood my “…very own stem cell investment portfolio comprised of menstrual stem cells that are highly prolific…” I always knew I was special.

A couple of my questions weren’t addressed on the FAQ page, though.

1. You said to hurry up and sign up for your service. Why should I hurry? I am probably going to bleed for another 10 years, that’s 120 cycles. Right now you have no competition in the marketplace but, like CD players, I bet there’s a cheaper option in a year.

2. How about we split the cost of storage if I let you re-sell my cells to hospitals and research labs?

3. How do I get a cryogenic chamber at home? In the Future, will we all have our own cryogenic chambers and centrifuges and whatnot at home? I think we will.

And then, near the bottom of the page, just as I was asking it in my head, they answered my last question: Gift certificates? YES! “C’elle is perhaps the most special and meaningful gift anyone could ever give or receive in their lifetime!” For the (pre-menopausal) woman who has everything. Christmas is coming, dudes.

Posted in blood, media | Comments Off on Every Sperm is Sacred. Etc.

I’m Not Crazy. YOU’RE the One Who’s Crazy.

Is it crazy to be obsessed with having one’s email inbox display on only one screen? As soon as I have to scroll through my work inbox, I start to panic, so I spend what is starting to seem like an unreasonable amount of time going through and culling or filing emails just so I have only one screen display to look at.

And then people email me and I feel like I’ve lost a game.

It’s like email tetris.

Agh – it just happened again!

I am so glad it’s Friday.

Posted in more about me! | 3 Comments

You Take the Good. You Take the Bad.

Bad: Up until yesterday I was trying to spend quality time on transit with “Neuromancer,” a book by William Gibson that I thought Saint Aardvark recommended to me when in fact he recommended “Virtual Light.” For good reason, as it turns out. Yesterday I finally gave up and put Neuromancer back on the shelf. I thought – well, I will just spend time THINKING on transit, that way I will have more ideas for my ‘blog!

This afternoon as I prepared to leave work, the idea of spending 45 minutes THINKING made me feel very sad inside so I took a trip to the kitchen at work, where there is a shelf of old trashy books. Two Danielle Steele novels, several Tom Clancy novels, Shirley MacLaine’s “Dancing in the Light,” and an Erma Bombeck book. Motherhood, the Oldest Profession, I think it’s called. Because I have read both of the Danielle Steele novels (True!) I took the Belva Plain novel. It’s called “Whispers.” It’s about a woman whose husband beats her. It’s like a Judith Light movie of the week. I read approximately 50 pages of it on the way home. I will likely be finished it by Saturday morning. I think this is pretty pathetic.

Good: I got a cheque in the mail from ICBC. Looks like they tracked down the asshat who hit and runned our car. I got my deductible refunded to me.

Also good: mac & cheese. With sundried tomatoes. And bacon.

Posted in books, food | 5 Comments

In Which My Knickers are Twisted

Did you guys know there is a Canada’s Yummiest Mummy contest? It’s audience-participation, mostly, but the entries are also judged by the Mummy Mafia.

Holy shit.

I know – it’s all about the advertising. Lots of people like free stuff. I like free stuff. If I get free stuff for being me, well, that’s a good day. But “yummy mummy?” Didn’t that term die a horrible, fiery death 2 years ago? WHY NOT?

The only thing yummy about a mummy is her milkful breasts. After that, she is whoever she is and that person is probably not edible. Right? Are you mothers out there edible? Are you YUMMY? I just don’t get how it’s supposed to be a compliment to be referred to as something that sounds like a rhyming snack food.

Erica Ehm, creator of the yummy mummy club which, sadly, I already knew about because Saint Aardvark snuck a free magazine with her on the cover into my bag one day, tried to explain it to me at that website. She said that a yummy mummy is defined as someone who is more than ‘just’ a mother. Someone who has not forgotten her ‘old’ life and who makes time for her friends and self. Laudable goals. Some women do consider themselves ‘just’ mothers (against their wishes to be considered more) and many women do lose their identities temporarily when entering or enduring motherhood. I agree that it is worthwhile starting (reviving?) a counter-movement to the old idea of putting your partner and children first always forever.

Seems to me, though that while with one hand you are issuing a batttle cry to women to be whole, complex and unique, you are using the other to slap them back into the compartment next to the dill pickle dip and dark chocolate (two things that I, personally, would call yummy.) You are equating a woman who is a mother to a consumable item. Because heaven forfend a woman should not be available for desiring, owning or consuming.

Sure, the word “yummy” can be used to describe anything attractive, not just food. Shoes are yummy. That’s a yummy purse. Yummy husband you have there. But in every context, yummy means “I like it and I want it.” Do you describe something as yummy that you don’t want to own, have, keep? It’s a quality that indicates publicly the worth of the object in question.

So like milf, may it rot in hell for all eternity, yummy mummy to me means “just because I have used my reproductive organs for their intended purpose does not mean that I am any less possessable.” It’s a statement meant to reassure a worried world that growing a human inside your body and then raising it does not make you any stronger or more resiliant or more sure of yourself. Underneath it all, despite the life-changing (life-creating) you’ve done, you are still the same.

And I say bollocks to that. I am the official Unsavoury Mummy. Back off.

Posted in language, the parenthood | 9 Comments