A Mental Affair

Posted on 6/13/2006 by cheesefairy

Recently I became aware that “Beverly Hills 90210” is on television every day at 3 pm, on a new station called “TVTropolis.” (formerly known as “Prime” or “Channel 48”) It seems that all day on TVTropolis they broadcast the crappiest shows from the ’80s and ’90s and at night they show reality TV. I came in just at the second or third episode of BH 90210 and I am delighted to report that it is one crappy show. This in no way will stop me from watching every single episode for the next however-many-months it takes.

For example, check this nugget from today’s episode, where Mom almost has an affair with her college “one-that-got-away” boyfriend after Dad is ignoring her in favour of working in his accounting office:

Mom: (in college boyfriend’s embrace) I can’t…I can’t think!
College boyfriend: We’re already having a mental affair! And that’s worse than a physical one!

The other day, during the “Kelly’s Mom is a cokehead and is embarrassing her in front of the whole school” episode, there was a mother-daughter fashion show and I realized that wow: the teenage girls on TV then were on average 3 sizes bigger than teenage girls on TV now. Brenda and Kelly actually look healthy and well-fed. Observe: The 90210 crew versus The O.C crew. I hate to sound like one of those frowning biddies, but My Goodness the Young People Today and The Clothes They Wear!

I’m amazed that there is a noticeable difference between then and now. I became aware a long time ago of the discrepancy between the bodies of real women and the bodies of women on TV. Apparently I haven’t been paying attention or I’ve been desensitized over the years because I thought the status quo – wrong as it might be – was being maintained; I certainly didn’t think things were getting worse.

I also had a memory of BH 90210 being this horrible, trashy show, with lots of slutting around and lower than basement values. Maybe that happens a couple of seasons in, but so far (7 episodes in) it’s shittily written but not so trashy. However, my initial impression from 16 years ago stands: Jason Priestley is far too pretty and Tori Spelling far too scary to be real.

Posted in television | 2 Comments

Pineapple Head

Posted on 6/12/2006 by cheesefairy

I like reasons. If I can’t find a reason for something, I will make one up and woe betide you if you challenge it. So the concept of “crazy pregnant cravings” has rankled since the beginning. Just ask Saint Aardvark, who has learned quickly to a) on bad days, avoid calling anything I am eating by the bucketfull a craving or to b) on good days, call everything I am eating a craving, just to watch my eyes spark with rage. At this point he says what he wants because he can totally outrun me but JUST YOU WAIT.

In the first trimester of this pregnancy, approximately mid-October through January, I ate about 5 pieces of citrus fruit a day. I have always enjoyed citrus fruit – in a way that I don’t enjoy bananas, which I have only recently started eating without the vomit reflex getting triggered, or sometimes apples, which often have skin textures that displease me (waxy or too shiny so they squeak against your teeth or if unwaxed and out of season, pocked with worm holes [real ones, not the sci-fi kind]) or even pears, which bruise so easily and then have a texture sort of like natural toothpaste; all gritty and grimy and you know it’s good for you but why does it have to feel so strange against the tongue? 5 a day seemed a little excessive, though. For the oranges. But I wanted them. And it was Box O’ Oranges for $4 season, so it wasn’t a problem to feed my habit. The habit which was emphatically not a craving.

Many reasons were found on the internet about why some pregnant women like citrus flavours. Sour flavours help quell nausesa. The acid helps ease heartburn. The fibre helps early pregnancy constipation. But the one I liked best – and this is what’s awesome about how the world has developed to suit me, the one who always needs a reason for things, by providing me with the internet – was that oranges are high in folic acid. And though I was already taking vitamins with folic acid because it’s important in pregnancy, I couldn’t help but think that perhaps my body knew something I didn’t know – like my vitamins weren’t being absorbed properly. Or they were shitty vitamins. It felt very much like I, as the possessor of the verbal skills and overstated need to control things, did not at all need to interfere with my pregnancy. Because the body had it from here, thanks.

Oranges, of course, are also incredibly high in vitamin C. And with the pregnant body’s calling off the immune system dogs so that it doesn’t reject the interloping embryo as a virus, every bit of Vitamin C helps. Especially when one’s pregnant body is working in an office in cold and f lu season. I had not a flutter of respiratory illness until the dumb cold this past April and I fully blame the bus and skytrain for that dumb cold. You filthy commuters. (I do prefer it if I have many reasons to select from, so that I may choose the one I like best, whether or not it is the one that is most accurate. My world: my rules!)

My point is that over the past 8.5 months while I have been overtaken by mostly benevolent forces, I have learned interesting things about what my body does and why and thus have learned to trust it implicitly. At the beginning, I tried to follow one of those nutritional charts from the food guide but it was far too much like accounting. All those columns and boxes and ticking things off. But by now, I feel like I could go to the grocery store, stand in the centre with my breezeway basket, blindfolded, and be able to find all the food I need. If that means a basket full of milk, Twizzlers, pineapple, plain corn chips and wheat bran, so be it. (I shall call it Intuitive Shopping. I plan to write a book and get on Oprah and get rich; then who’s laughing?)

This morning, as I downed another can of pineapple (mainly to gather the strength to walk two blocks to the store and buy MORE PINEAPPLE) I looked into the nutritional value of this latest fruit to steal my heart. Check it out: high in Vitamin C and manganese; it’s also got fibre and Vitamin B1. And it works as an anti-inflammatory.

As I stare at my swelled hands, which can no longer hold my wedding ring (and oh the hot-preggo-out-on-the-town fun I’ve been having!!) and which ache every morning when I wake up as though I have been clenching them in my sleep, though I know I have not because the morning is never the first time I wake up after I have gone to sleep – there is also a general wellness check tentatively scheduled for 11:3o pm, 2:30 am, 4:30 am and sometimes a surprise check at 3:15 – and each of those times my hands are flat against the bed and achy, so achy, I realize: my body is doing it again. Vitamin C, fibre, plus anti-inflammatory properties to replace the folic acid: pineapple is my late-pregnancy version of oranges. And it’s in season.

I have yet to discover a reason for the Twizzlers, though. I think maybe that’s the babby’s craving, not mine. Kids.

Related: We were recently lent a copy of “The Human Body,” a BBC tv series from 2001 which follows the human body from its beginning to its end. We are currently halfway through. It is fascinating, smart and funny; I highly recommend it.

PS: The full moon has passed, as has the 2 week date prior to my due date, as has the 2 week point past when the babby dropped, as has the one week point since I stopped working and I am Still Expecting. All bets are officially off.

Posted in babby, food, movies | 9 Comments

What’s Cuter than a Baby?

Posted on 6/9/2006 by cheesefairy

A puppy! And ducks!

Posted in babby, ducks | 2 Comments

Dispatches from the Couch

Posted on 6/6/2006 by cheesefairy

Now, System of a Down, you know I love you. You know I embrace your krazy klezmer thrash prog whatnot. Shrieking “dis-ORDER! dis-ORDER! dis-OHOHOHORDER!” is how you express your true disgust for the downward spiral you see the world participating in and I respect that. You’re a really unstable group of men and I respect that, too.

But I just heard a track of yours – actually I watched a video, the one where you guys are on a shiny, tin can tour bus looking very maudlin, driving through cities that are in flames – and I don’t remember the title but there was a chorus that included the line “the most loneliest day of my life.” And I just can’t forgive that. That is a shitty line and it doesn’t do you justice.

OK and Blue October? Where the hell did you come from? And who cuts your hair?

Now I’m watching another band, Evans Blue, – that sounds just like Blue October perform in another video shot in the same colour… you know that look that would be sepia if it was brown but actually it’s blue? Sepia blue? Is there a word for that? Is it because they both have “blue” in their band names? And are mohawks back?

Another question: what is a “Ne-Yo?” (according to his biography and in his own words: “Heaven took a melody, gave it a soul, gave it a mission, put it on earth and named it Ne-Yo.” Ah.) Anyway, he just told his girlfriend that she’s too damn sexy when she’s mad so he’s just going to have to kiss her and take off all her clothes. I don’t think Ne-Yo and I would get along very well.

I remember when “indie” referred to bands that were good, undiscovered and not top 40 material. Like System of a Down 10 years ago. Or Technicians of the Sacred. But I guess now it just means “unsigned.” For example, Muchmusic just said “Indie Cut!” and then played a vid for a song called “Uh Oh,” by a woman named Rosette, who sounds a lot like a pre-Diddy J.Lo:

Your kiss makes me go “uh oh”
Your love makes me go “uh oh”
Your smile makes me go “uh oh”
Your tendency to pat me on the head when I get angry with you for very good reason makes me go “uh oh”

Sarah organized a mail-in baby shower for me recently, all the way from Moncton, New Brunswick. Friday was the day to mail me things and I have already received 5 parcels! The postman came to my door twice yesterday and rang my doorbell (just once each time). Thank you to all of you who are participating! I will arrange the many splendid gifts and photograph them so you may share in the long distance baby shower joy. But please, no episiotomy stories. That’s one of the reasons I don’t like real life baby showers.

And thank you to all of you who are still reading, even though I am rapidly losing my ability to write about anything of consequence.

I went swimming today! There is a pool two blocks away so I went to check it out. I have this to say about swimming at 37.5 weeks pregnant and up 40 lbs from the last time I went swimming: Gravity is a Bitch. Once I remembered how to swim, I swam and I swam and I swam – I even moved out of the old-men-chatting lane and into the lane where the real swimmers are. And then half an hour had passed and I thought: Mm, probably don’t want to over-exert myself. So I got out of the pool and nearly fell over because BAM those 40 lbs were back!

Aaaaand….snack time.

Posted in babby, music, television | 6 Comments

It’s My Variety Show and I’ll Write What I Want

Posted on 6/4/2006 by cheesefairy

Question
Does it count as “nesting” if your house is untidy and you feel no desire to clean it but you are set to drooling when you smell cleaning products? Or is that a late-stage craving?

I seriously want to lick someone’s clean laundry right now. It’s sick.

Good bye, Norma Jean
After completing my longest straight stretch in one office job – 27 months – I am delighted to announce that I no longer have to see other people on a daily basis unless I choose to. Much as I have grown to either at most love or at least, er, appreciate the eccentricities of those I worked with, (past tense!!) I don’t need to see most of them every day. There are very few people, in fact, that I need to see every day. I married one of them. I’m about to give birth to another one.

I worked in retail and customer service for 10 years. I really think this kind of work should be required for everyone who plans to live within society as a human. Nothing will prepare you better for the world than being trapped behind a counter, with all of humanity flying at you in all its crazy, non-sequiturial, mean, loving glory. It’s my experience that people who have experience serving other people, whether it’s at McDonald’s, The Gap or a small, strange cheese shop in a public market, are kinder to and more respectful of others and less likely to shove past a pregnant woman to get on to the bus first FIRST FIRST! Because It’s Important To Be First!

Ahem. Did I mention that not going to work again for a year means not taking public transit at rush hour? Can I get a hallelujah, please. Thank you.

That being said, customer service jobs pay really poorly unless you are a 6’2″ blonde, volleyball-playing waitress at a pub in Surrey. So eventually you might want to move on to the office job, which follows a lot of the same rules of a retail job but with slightly better pay and you get to sit down all day instead of stand up.

Rule 1: People are fascinating! Isn’t it amazing how everyone started out the same size, little mini cells in our mothers’ bellies and we’ve all turned out so Different! Vive la difference!
Rule 2: Sometimes differences display as apparent psychopathy.
Rule 3: Don’t argue with someone who isn’t listening to you or who doesn’t see you because you’re at a lower level. That person probably never worked in retail and will never see it your way.
Rule 4: The customer/co-worker may or may not be right. You are probably more right. But the sooner she believes that you think she is right, the sooner she will go away and you can get on with your day.
Rule 5: Suck it up. You can be right everywhere else. Just not here.
Rule 6: (There is no….oh, wait, yes there is.) Yes, sometimes it’s impossible to suck it up. In this case, pick your battles. Don’t fight the one about “no one ever replaces the water on the cooler except me.” You’ll just go thirsty. Fight the one about your boss misappropriating funds.
Rule 7: Eventually, something marvellous will happen – like a much wished-for layoff or another much wished-for layoff or a well-timed pregnancy – and you’ll get a change of scene. Or – you could always quit. Once you have experience, jobs like this are easy peasy to get.
Rule 8: Keep your job-hunting pants clean.

Hello Alien!
My new phase is starting! At 37 weeks along, I could give birth at any moment and start my new job. You know what’s crazzy? The job I just left took a year to get (and I still don’t have it!) The one I’m about to start only took 9 months to get and I didn’t have to write any stupid exams or participate in any role-play or do the job for 2 years and then apply for it again or ANYTHING!

Ways in which motherhood will not resemble my previous work experience

  • I won’t be trapped behind a counter or desk, subject to the whims of people I see more often than my loved ones, or forced to answer the phone.
  • I won’t have to wear clean clothes. (though in the past few weeks, who knows if my clothes were clean or not. I certainly couldn’t see them)
  • I won’t go into the kitchen to get lunch out of the fridge and be faced with all the people I like least sitting around a table talking about The Da Vinci Code and then have to explain why I haven’t read it without sounding like an asshole. (“I just don’t really like…..adventure novels? Or bad writing?”)
  • I won’t have to wipe down the toilet seat every time I go into the bathroom. Thus, I will not get the following poem in my head every time I pee: “If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie.” I don’t know where I first saw this piece of tripe but every time I have gone into the washroom at work and been faced with bodily fluids on the toilet seat, the poem has dislodged itself from a corner of my brain that is particularly poorly serviced by the maid who vacuums my cranial cavities. So hard to find good brain maids these days.
  • I won’t care if it’s Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Sunday. (Even when it comes to TV schedules. I don’t expect to be able to watch live TV for quite some time. That’s why we have The Contraption That Records TV [TCTRT][oh-oh – TCTRT])

Ways in which motherhood might resemble my previous work experience

  • I will have to deal with someone whose motivation and personality might not be immediately clear and comprehensible.
  • I will have to do things I don’t know how to do.
  • I will have to do things I don’t want to do. And procrastination probably won’t serve me as well with diaper changes as it has with filing paperwork.
  • There might be days when I am sick of my own thoughts and I wish for a steady stream of weirdos to cross my path so that at least I have something else to consider. Of course, in this case there is the internet.
  • My new boss might not let me use the internet.
  • My new boss might not let me do all kinds of things. And appealing to a union rep won’t help one bit.

However, I do look forward to having the power to – baby excluded – turn off whatever it is that is annoying me; be that the radio, the television or the internet. (Sadly, this is a trick which just doesn’t work with other people. I have taken SO MANY customers and co-workers apart, looking for the “off” switch, to no avail.)

Which brings me to the point of this entry: What’s up with “North by Northwest”? We got up early-ish this morning and now I have another good reason to add to my list of “Sleeping in on Sundays: An Extensive List of Good Reasons.” Because CBC radio on Sunday mornings before 9 am PST? Shittttt-ayyyyyyy. First there was this annoying pseudo-jazz-folk band (Dr. Fishy? I think?) from Prince Rupert and the annoying pseudo-Shelagh Rogers host was IN Prince Rupert and it’s all about the local content. Then she made some on-dragging small talk with her weather guy or co-producer about the relay race one or both of them had run the day before. It made Rick Cluff’s pre-show banter sound like Garrison Keillor.

“Hmm, so you just put on those sneakers and ran, eh?”
“Yep, I sure did. Boy it was hard at first but then it got easier.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that that’s what happens in a race.”
“Right.”

Then she interviewed an artist from Haida Gwaii.

“So, it’s pretty rainy up there in Haida Gwaii?”
“Mmm hmm.”
“And it’s raining in Prince Rupert too! But it was sunny in Vancouver!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“Well, there’s irony for you!”
“Yes!”

Then some more mournful folk music where a man with a guitar reminisced about growing up on a certain street and then going back when he was 37 and seeing life still going on and thinking, “wow, life goes on. even when I leave.” Not a poor sentiment or discovery, mind you, just one I’ve heard 4 billion times with the same guitar chords. As Saint Aardvark put it: “…it would be different if he went back to the house where he grew up and dug up all the bodies of the people he’d murdered as a teenager. That would make for a more interesting song.”

Posted in babby, music, outside | 6 Comments