condense

there's something about today that feels like winter. i haven't even been outdoors yet, but the sounds from outside, the feeling in the house, it just has a cozy feeling to it. i kind of like it. sometimes i forget that winter has it's nice moments too. there are fewer things i like about winter, but it has its redeeming qualities.

on saturday b and i took a mini road trip up to the hartington library so i could get the third book in the divergent series. have i written about that series yet? i've formed many blog entries in my head about it, but maybe they didn't make it onto the screen. joy lent me the first two books, which i burned through (although i paced myself with the last few chapters of insurgent because i knew i didn't have the third book yet). it was nice having an addictive book again, and i tried waiting patiently to get the third one from a friend of joy's. but when i discovered it was at the hartington library, i decided to drive up there. i haven't done as much reading as i'd planned since i picked it up, but i'm sure i'll read a lot today (it's b's long work day).

the divergent series has got me thinking a lot about what faction i would join. and what my greatest fears are (basically, the characters are forced to face their greatest fears). it's quite fascinating really. they're making a movie out of it, when we watched the trailer b said "it doesn't look very good". i dunno, i thought it seemed pretty good.

speaking of books to film movies... the hunger games catching fire is out. both b and i really want to see it (we re-watched the first one on friday). i've felt pretty intimidated about taking éamon to the movies (i don't want him to disturb people). but b discovered that there's a 3:00 matinee on wednesday (his afternoon off), so we're going to go! i had to cancel a dentist appointment that i had scheduled for that afternoon, but we're gonna go. i'm glad. we haven't let anything else stop us because we have a baby, and where there's a will, there's a way. we have these little baby noise ear muffs that we'll take, and i'll just nurse him til he falls asleep. if we're in the very back row, we can stand with him (if necessary). i think it'll be fine. besides, we heard recently that taking your baby to the movies is good practice for taking your baby on a plane.

you look like a movie star from this angle

send

when brendan and i were first married, he felt that i used too many drinking glasses. this especially bothered him because he washed the dishes. so he told me to pick one glass to be my water glass. so i picked my biggest glass – a coca cola cup that held 2 cups of water. i can't remember where i got the glass, but it was probably a gift from my early 20 days when i drank a lot of pop (specifically coke). eventually, i bought a metal straw to with my drinking glass, and together i was able to down 2 cups of water in less than a minute.

i don't know about you, but glassware tends to break around our house. and i've often worried that my water glass could meet an unfortunate end. several times it got knocked over, but always sustained the fall. i was relieved.

last night, at 4 in the morning i was awoken by the sound of glass breaking. i shot up in bed. brendan on the other hand, slept right thru it (even though he's a light sleeper, he becomes quite disoriented in his slumber and doesn't register sounds or talking). almost instinctively, i knew what it was. my loyal water glass had met it's end. and sure enough, when i came thru to the den, i found it shattered on the ground. our diabetic cat had struck again. often when pekoe's water bowl is empty, he'll go searching for other water sources and frequently finds my water glass. and now he's gone and broken it. yet another reason why i'm annoyed at his existence. first he made our basement floor his personal toilet, and now this.

i suppose that if i'd thought to check his water supply before bed, this wouldn't have happened. because when i returned to bed (planning on cleaning up the mess in the morning), i could hear him drinking the spilled water. so i got up and filled his bowl, which then meant i had to lie there listening to him drink the entire bowl for the next 20 minutes.

to be fair, the glass was poorly designed because it was top heavy (having the coke bottle shape). and sometimes i found that 2 cups of water isn't enough. i've recently seen even bigger water glasses, which got me wishing mine was larger. so today i'll go to value village to scower their glasswares section in search of a replacement water carrying vessel :S

did you push us when we fell?

stream

éamon has started petting our kitties.

a few weeks ago, pekoe came close when i was holding éamon and i stretched out his hand and petted his fur. his hand went from a fist to an open hand as we petted the cat. but now, when he's sitting in his chair, or when we're holding him and pekoe comes by, éamon reaches out and pets him on his own, all by himself! it's super cute. it makes me proud of him. every little thing he does makes me proud :)

hello my friend,
yes it's me.

mahogany

last night and this morning i stained a homemade shelf unit that we have in our kitchen. this morning, as i used varsol to remove the stain splatters from my arms, hands and face, i was amused thinking how normal that was for me. it got me thinking back to my first memory of using varsol, i think i was around 7 or 8 years old. joy and i had just finished taring the driveway. hahahaha. even writing that makes me laugh, because it seems so weird, but it was completely normal for us and i didn't think anything of it at the time.

i was talking to my dad on the phone the other night and he was telling me that my niece isn't a hard worker and that when her younger brother is outside raking leaves she doesn't help. he found this very strange and said "when you were little, we did everything as a family. we had you helping out with everything", which is true – including taring the driveway. i tared the driveway by myself for the first time when i was about 12. it was boring and my mom was at work, so i painted L E S on the driveway before i painted over it. for years afterwards, on the right angle i could still see my name written on the driveway even though i painted over it. i also remember that same day, when i was taking a break that a man arrived at my house and offered to finish it for me. i think he was looking to pick up some odd jobs, but i was just a kid and didn't have any money to pay him with, so i declined his offer.

i remember helping my parents strip wallpaper in the family room when i was 3 or 4 years old. it's one of my earliest memories of that house. we're going to be the same way with éamon, involving him in everything. it's a good way to teach a kid to do things, but it's also nice to include them on family projects. truthfully, i didn't always like helping (i especially hated raking leaves), but doing necessary things we don't like is part of life, and doing it together makes it fun. i also like that i built up my confidence. there is little i'm afraid to tackle around the house.

it's a family affair.

tasty

its always slightly disappointing when i see our mail-carrier walk past our house without delivering any packages.

lately i'm starting to feel more comfortable with my extra weight, ever since i figured out how to dress to suit my body. it's a subtle difference, but significant enough that i feel better about myself. it tones down all my problem areas. sometimes i ask brendan if what i'm wearing looks ok. he always says yes (sometimes without even looking), so i have to remind him that i'm asking him as a citizen of the world and not as my husband.

last night i tried baking those chick-pea peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. they turned out ok. i'm not sure if i'll make them part of my regular baking repertoire, but they're not bad. the thing i find most surprising about them, is that since they're mostly beans, they're remarkably filling.

when i take naps, i sleep on brendan's side of the bed. i must be subconsciously missing him. i like that his pillow smells like him.

i could drink a case of you.

bobbin

on wednesdays, éamon and i go swimming at the YMCA. each week i'm running late and each week i forget something (we've gone 5 times). this week i was determined that i would have everything we need and that i would leave in plenty of time. for the first few weeks we drove the car, but last week we took the bus and it worked out just fine, except i was rushing. so this week, i aimed at leaving around 9:30 (or at the very least be getting our coats and shoes on). before we left, i opened the door to check the weather, and found that it was super chilly. so, i got us both bundled up in warm clothes, and headed out the door. by the time i was half way to the bus stop, i realized that i'd forgotten our swimming bag (with our swimsuits and towels in it) and the diaper bag. i'd literally walked out the door with nothing other than the baby. thankfully, i was able to rush home, and make it to the bus stop with a couple minutes to spare. *eye roll*

i considered avoiding facebook on monday. last year i found remembrance day almost unbearable on facebook because people make extravagant statements about our freedom, which makes me cringe. however, i ended up forgetting and longing on as usual, but thankfully i didn't let it bother me as much this year. instead, i just skimmed past the statements i disagreed with. sometimes there's no sense in debating because people just become more set in their opinions.

on a similar topic... one of my cousins shared my grandpa's WW1 recruitment paperwork. it was very interesting and i'm looking forward to showing it to my dad. i was less interested in the military side of things than i was from a personal point of view. it had his full name (i didn't know his middle name), his mom's name (annie) and their address in hamilton. it made me want to look it up on google maps street view. my grandpa died before my sister and i were born. as a kid, i'd wonder what he was like. i remember making a comment once about how it would've been nice to know him, and my mom remarked back about how he wasn't that great. now that i'm an adult, with a kid of my own, i can understand how sometimes there are relatives who your kid is better off not knowing.

songs are like tattoos.

stud

neither brendan or i am very festive people. we don't really get into holiday cheer and all that. regardless, we're not going to do santa claus with éamon. we can't imagine telling him that a fictional character (with such a superficial back story) is real. i don't really know what the value to that is. i suppose people think it's fun, but i can think of loads of other fun things. besides, gift giving and christmas is fun without santa. my parents didn't pretend santa was real with us, and we still had stockings and all that.

i'm thinking of this because it occurred to me that the santa claus parade is in a few weeks. we won't be taking éamon to that. not because of santa, but because it's a lousy parade. i'd taking to the toronto parade, but the one in kingston is just a bunch of cars with advertising on them. in the past, when andrew and shannon lived on princess street, the four of us would sit at their window drinking beer and critiquing (mocking?) the floats – looking for the worst ones. we once witness a lovers quarrel that we found moderately entertaining. it was a fun tradition. it's really the only downside to them living upstairs now.

it's hard for me to understand, no not even understand, but fathom, why people get so excited about santa. to me, it feels like the equivalent to eating topsoil or something. but i'll strive for a 'live and let live' attitude on this topic, because there's no right or wrong.

i find myself knowing the things that i knew.

poppy

this afternoon while éamon was napping, i went for a walk to john's deli for a few items by myself. i like that i'm deeply connected to him, but don't feel lost without him (it probably helps that he's in good hands with b AND he was sleeping). just as i expected parenting to rock my world more than it has, i also expected my identity to become more scrambled by having a baby. i'm pleasantly surprised by this.

transitioning into this new experience has been remarkably similar to my transition into my relationship with brendan. before there was just one (me), but when i joined my life with brendan, my circle grew larger and it encompassed us both. then there was two (us). our circle has expanded yet again to welcome another person who will live and grow with us, and will eventually grow away. he's definitely his own little person, and i'm excited to learn more about him as he grows, but my life isn't just him, nor is his life mine. now we are three.

this said, relationships tend to blur the line between where we begin and where someone else ends. i like that éamon has reveals parts of me that i never knew where there before. a tender side i didn't know i was capable of. it's nice.

the saltiest sea knows its own way to me.

dreamer

when people talk about how much weight they lost after they had their baby (i.e. 40lbs in 3 months) are they including the weight of baby and other pregnancy related stuff? because i feel like it's going to be impossible for me to lose 40 pounds in 3 months. that said, if we're counting the weight evacuated by birth then i've lost 25 pounds. if not, then i've lost zero pounds, and i'm kind of annoyed by, it since éamon and i walk almost every day. however, i do feel like my legs are more muscular than they used to be from all the walking, so maybe there's muscle mass gained. i've started measuring my waist instead. bah! it's so frustrating. anyways...

i've been feeling pretty hard on myself since i had a difficulty finding pants that fit me comfortably at value village today. since then, i've been on a roll with criticizing myself. i cooked dinner tonight (which is something i don't usually do). i made a meatloaf for the first time ever and roasted acorn squash. in spite of my enthusiastic start, i became convinced that both were going to be utter failures. surprisingly enough, both turned out well.

i'm currently on my first period since i stopped taking my placenta pills. i think my hormones are kind of out of whack. ugh. i don't like it. i look forward to this passing.

i am progressing abominably
and i do not know my own way to the sea.

shingles

over the last few months, i've been watching the show 'king of the hill'. i've grown into quite a big fan, and often find myself waxing poetic to brendan while we drive in the car about what makes it such a good show. i'm now on the final season – season 13. i've discovered a funny thing. i'm pretty sure that over the course of weeks upon weeks of watching this show, that i've classic conditioned éamon into associating the theme song with nursing. when he is fussing because he wants to eat, he immediately starts to calm down when he hears that song playing.

shannon and i went on our yearly outing to the casino this evening. we did quite well for ourselves each (more or less) doubling what we went in with (5 and 10 dollars). not too shabby! as usual, we got lost on the way there and spent at least a half hour trying to re-route ourselves. next year we'll either bring directions or a GPS device. this year in particular, i started noticing the other folks there. we usually change machines every few minutes, but no one else seems to move places. they all seem perfectly settled in like they'll be there a while. so i decided to start peaking at their screens to see how much they're making. most folks were around 19 to 22 bux, while others were at $279 and even so high as $394, which is especially impressive since they were on 2¢ slot machines.

it was my first time truly going out without éamon (other than just going to a friend's house after he was in bed). i kissed him good-bye and left him with b to put to bed. he did great. at one point i wanted to call b just to make sure everything was ok, but more to make sure b was ok and not try to soothe a crying baby. but there was no cell phone reception, which turned out to be fine because everything was fine :)

if there's no music up in heaven then what's it for?