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The middle-aged girl with the lazy uterus
In the end, I went into labor. Maybe because I changed the sheets on our bed, or because I made scones and had a friend over, or because Jason cleaned the office. I’m pretty sure it was because he cleaned the office. That, and my third cup of raspberry leaf tea.
I woke up at 3am on Thursday, after dreaming I was having some pain. Turns out it wasn’t a dream..it was a contraction. Maybe.
After waiting around for a while to make sure it was the real thing, we gathered up the boys and dropped them off at a friend’s house. We arrived at the hospital shortly after 8am.
While I was familiar with the location of the hospital, I had not set foot in it. In keeping with our tradition of winging it, I decided against informing myself about the location of the birth unit.
And our ignorance showed. We emerged from the parking garage elevator, and walked out onto the main floor of the hospital, where we got on the wrong elevator…headed for the parking garage. The medical personnel walking out stifled a laugh. They took a look at my gut, announced ‘6th floor’ and pointed us in the direction of the (clearly marked) correct elevator.
We got to the sixth floor, where additional strangers took pity on our ignorance and pointed us to the correct ‘unit’. Not so clearly marked, I must say. I saw a heavily pregnant woman standing at a desk, getting checked in and figured we must be in the right place.
I took a modicum of satisfaction in noting the woman had a bump that was larger than mine. The satisfaction waned, however, when I found out the woman was carrying twins.
After another jaunt downstairs for paperwork, we were sent back upstairs. They admitted us, fortunately, because if they had sent us home ‘to wait’, I may have chained myself to the triage bed in protest.
We were introduced to our attending nurse. I liked her immediately, despite her obviously pushy nature. Apparently she is a former midwife, highly supportive of natural deliveries. It figures I’d get assigned a pushy epidural hater the one time I actually thought a needle in my spine sounded like a good idea.
After reviewing my medical history, she sent me to shower for about an hour. I think it’s something to do with hot water and contractions. I don’t really know. But I was getting pruny. And bored. Finally, around 11am the doctor handling deliveries came in and introduced herself. She also seemed like a very nice person. She announced I was 5cm dilated. And offered to break my water. Because apparently my labor was taking a little too long for their liking.
I’d spent nine months telling anyone and everyone that I did not want my water to be broken again, because after the Hen’s birth, I swore I’d never do that to myself again. (And, I swore, if I did have my water broken, I’d get an epidural.)
But, at this point we’d already been at the hospital for 3 hours. The Gort was due to start Kindergarten at noon. I’d half expected to be ‘done’ with the whole thing in time for Jason to run him over to the school for a bit. Sensing hesitation on my part, Nurse Pushy stuck her head in my face ‘let’s have a baby!’ she urged me on.
Suddenly, I understood the pressure of those fraternity drinking games.
And, so, my water was broken. And I steeled myself for the horror to come. The Hen was born roughly four hours after they broke my water, and that time I was only 3-4 cm dilated.
Around noon, nurse P waltzed back in the room and announced she was going to lunch. She instructed Jason to time my contractions for two periods of fifteen minutes, roughly 12.15-12.45.
And that’s when the going got rough. All of a sudden there were contractions every two minutes. Supremely painful ones. Nurse P had left a canister of ‘laughing gas’ by my bedside; ‘fifty percent oxygen and fifty percent nitrous oxide’ she’d announced. (I think). I put the mask on my face once, and inhaled. It smelled terrible, and I felt claustrophobic. It reminded me of my failed experiment with the TENS machine in London during the Gort’s birth.
‘I want an epidural’ I told the professor, thinking he’d run out into the hallway and find the anesthesiologist. Instead, he said: ‘no you don’t, you can do it without one.’
Will the contestant with the actual uterus in labor please stand up? Thanks for playing Mr Johnson and Nurse Pushy. You can go home now.
A sub-nurse came to check on me, and saw that I wasn’t quite as ’stoic’ as two hours before. ‘I’d really try the gas,’ she encouraged me. So I did and, though it did absolutely nothing for the pain, it provided a nice loopy feeling…sort of an ‘I’m about to implode with pain, but man my head feels woozy’ feeling.
Only caveat, apparently the person in labor is supposed to hold the stupid mask while inhaling and exhaling, not her labor coach. To prevent the woman from passing out, I guess. Which makes sense, for people with regular labor coaches. But if you’ve ever seen Jason in action as a labor coach, you’d know that he was quite up to the task of holding the mask over my face.
It seems 13 years of marriage to a woman with extraordinary non-verbal facial cues has more than adequately prepared him to be a labor coach. He can look at the way I squint my eyes and know exactly what I need. Which is supremely useful since I spend most of labor with my eyes shut, unable to ask for anything.
Sadly it’s a gift he only seems to have when I’m in labor.
Laughing gas or not, I still had my wits about me. And heard everything the professor and the nurse were saying about me. ‘Is the contraction over,’ she asked him. ‘Must be,’ he replied, ’she stopped crushing my fingers.’
‘She’s got a lazy uterus,’ the nurse informed the doctor later on.
‘I’m right here!’ I wanted to say. But didn’t.
Around 1pm they determined I was 9cm dilated and at 1.18 the B3 Bomber emerged into the world. Superman style, with his arm extended above his head, apparently.
An hour or so later, after everyone was settled, the nurse looked over at us. ‘So, are you going to go for a fourth, try for a girl?’
‘No,’ we replied, in unison.
‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘You are 35.’
As she took leave of us, she kissed me on the cheek and pronounced me superwoman. ‘All woman should do labor that way,’ she praised.
Whatever. I wanted an epidural.
As of 3pm or so on Monday August 3rd, we ceased being home owners. International home owners, at that.
If you’d like some helpful hints on how to sell a home in just 450 days or less, feel free to send me an email. Or call 1-800-slowhomes. And for only 3 easy installments of $19.99 (payable by credit card) I will share my secrets with you.
The first time we sold a house, it sold in exactly one day. The first people who looked at it bought it at the listed price. In the dead of winter. The second time we sold a house, it sold in about 450 days. For 22% below asking price.
The first time we made a nice profit. The second time, we went in the hole. Maybe ‘buried ourselves in the hole, 3 feet under’ would be a better description.
Well-intentioned people have said: ‘at least it’s off your hands’ but of course they’re not the ones sitting 3 feet deep in a hole.
But, ’tis true. It is off our hands. When I went upstairs to brush my teeth in our Calgary home a few weeks ago, there was water dripping from the ceiling. My first thought was, ‘why did this have to happen when Jason’s out of town’. My second thought was ‘thank goodness no one will be calling me from Muncie, Indiana at midnight to inform me there’s water dripping from the ceiling.’
Which, they wouldn’t have anyway since the roof is brand-freaking-new. But it could have been a leaky toilet or a flooded basement. Or a rat infestation.
It was a nearly two-month journey, the selling of Alden Road. Beginning with an out of the blue call from our realtor – after the house had been taken off the market. Someone who’d looked at it previously had tried to buy another house and it had fallen through. Would we be interested in letting him look at our house again?
He did, and made an offer that day, which we chose to accept. After some minimal countering on our part. An appraisal followed, and a home inspection. Some minor repairs were made. Closing was scheduled for late July.
And then, in what can only be described as: ‘the worst week we’ve ever had’. When bad news came at us from all angles, the house closing was also canceled. Because, as it turned out the buyer had never actually filled out the paperwork for the loan.
How appraisals and inspections and closings got scheduled without anyone bothering to figure out that the buyer hadn’t actually completed the necessary paperwork……I shall never know.
Strongly worded emails and terse phone calls followed. And then, following a trip to yet another notary to re-assign power of attorney for the closing, we got a phone call saying they’d misunderestimated the taxes on the property and closing costs would be about $700 more than the previously quoted amount. Which was already about $3000 higher than we’d anticipated.
And to think we had – at one point – expected to make a modest profit on the house.
Jason ended up flying to Indiana over the weekend and so the (second) closing of Alden road was scheduled to coincide with his presence, for 2pm on Monday. He called me when all was said and done.
When he got to closing, he found out the amount was still $10 higher than the last amount he’d been told. Being as we were 3 feet under at this point, he didn’t even have $10 on him. So the realtor had to write a personal check for the $10.01 we still owed.
It was the lone funny moment in an un-funny process. We may buy a house again.
When Brett Favre returns to the Packers.
Before August, it had been ages since I’d watched a movie. Or anything on DVD. But in the days of waiting for B3 to arrive, I yearned for something to entertain me; to keep my mind off the drive-you-crazy waiting game.
It started with an invitation from a friend to go see a movie. We chose The Hangover – which had received ‘acclaim’ as the surprise-hit-with-women of the year. Apparently it was funny, or so the movie people would have one believe.
And who couldn’t use a laugh?
I told my sister on the phone that I was going to see it. I could hear the derision in her voice as she questioned my judgment. ‘I could use a laugh,’ I replied defensively. She made a remark about how it was too close to the Judd Apatow genre, and I sheepishly confessed that I thought those movies were alright. (Funny, even.)
Well, I forgot that I don’t like Bradley Cooper. He was okay in Alias, but it was his appearance in Wedding Crashers that sealed his unappeal for me. I also don’t like movies that feature one ridiculous circumstance after another, (Mike Tyson, tiger, baby in a closet) shrouded in hysteria. All I could think after it was over, was ‘this makes Judd Apatow look like a comic genius.’
A week or two later, another friend suggested we see a movie. This time, we settled on My Sister’s Keeper. Because it was at the cheap theater. I was so clueless about it, I thought Cameron Diaz played the sister with cancer and Joan Cusack the mother. Not so much. But once I got over that initial ’surprise’ I thought it was a fine movie. If unnecessarily sappy (emotionally exploitative) at times. I mean, people were SOBBING in the theater, I don’t think the scenes with the dying girl and her mother looking at a photo album were needed. Or the drawn-out hospital goodbyes from idiot family members who kept mumbling things like: ‘keep fighting….be strong’.
The movies were interspersed with nightly viewings of The Wire. My sister and brother in law had raved about it for so long that I asked her to send me the first couple of seasons (which she owns on DVD). Jason was hooked, immediately; urging me to stay up several nights until 1.30am to finish ‘just one more episode’.
It reminded me of Christmas 2002 when we were ’stuck’ in London by ourselves, and would stay up till 4am watching the first season of ‘24′. Except we had no kids, and could lazily sleep in until 10 or 11 to compensate for the lack of sleep.
I found the first season intriguing, once I got over the sadness and disappointment I felt when the HBO logo would pop up on the screen and the Sex and the City theme song did not follow.
I watched all o the first season, but petered out in the second. As a mother of two young children who are, on occasion, rather ‘trying’ I decided it was best for all the Johnsons if I did not have a Baltimore Police Officer’s vocabulary in my arsenal of words to shout at my kids.
If I were to shout at my kids, which I most certainly never do.
After watching a few episodes, I found myself waking up (particularly after those 1.30am nights), wondering why my ‘mopes’ had to wake up so freaking early.
And, then I committed the most egregious act of movie choosing, ever. I selected Confessions of a Shopaholic because I wanted something ‘light’ and ‘entertaining’. Which I suppose that movie was, to some people. But mostly I found it embarassingly horrible. And I couldn’t fault Jason for any of the disparaging remarks he threw my way while we were watching it.
Though people who’ve watched the likes of You Don’t Mess with the Zohan and Semi-Pro should really keep their mouths shut.
I’m just saying. We followed the junk with some Oscar nominees: Doubt and The Reader. Doubt being the better of the two, in my opinion, despite Philip Seymour Hoffman’s nasty fingernails. Clearly I’m not the scholarly film critic I once was, now that I’m watching Isla Fisher movies, but it seemed to me that Kate Winslet just frowned a lot in The Reader….and she got uglier and older as the film progressed.
Genius.
Jason has this theory that if you allow yourself to be made ugly on screen, you’ll usually get an Oscar nomination out of the deal. (Charlize Theron in Monster…..) Same, if you speak with an accent or in a language besides English. (Yes, Penelope Cruz from Vicky Christina Barcelona, I’m talking to you.)
Jason summed it up: ‘Is The Reader better than Confessions of a Shopaholic? Yes. Is it better than Bolt? I’m not so sure.’
Rather than while away each day being annoyed that B3 still hasn’t arrived, I’m trying to ’squeeze the marrow’ out of these last days of summer. Days with no schedules or obligations; days where I wear my pajama pants and tank top for the entire day (unless I have to venture out of the house); days when the Hen can nap when he wants, for as long as he wants, and I don’t have to wake him in order to pick up his brother at school.
Days with only two children to care for.
So, because we’re insanely fun parents at least once or twice a year, we had an end-of-summer-extravaganza-of-fun last Thursday.
It entailed watching ‘Coraline’ and ‘Superman’ on the ‘big screen’ in the basement. The big screen being the white wall against which the projector was projecting. One reason I don’t want my kids to go to school is because they’ll realize other kids have televisions and Wii’s and Playstations. And the gig will be up. To be honest, G already realizes other kids have Wii’s. ‘Remember that Darth Vader game we played at Ben’s house,’ he told me yesterday. ‘Can we get a game like that?’
Uh….
After watching ‘Coraline’, we announced it was pool time. It sounded like horses running up the stairs, that’s how fast those blondies moved to find their swimming pants.
Only problem….the promised 30 degree weather never materialized; the water was freezing; and the Hen was exhausted. He dipped his foot in the water and began screaming like a rabid dog. Jason was convinced he was mad about having to wear a swim diaper. But the second I placed the boy in his crib, he was content as a lamb. Lying there like a little old man clad in exercise shorts. His shirt still lying on the deck by the pool.
So the Hen took a nap and my oldest halfheartedly played in the pool for a bit, until he reached a nearly hypothermic state.
Then we had a picnic on the deck: tuna fish, sweet pickles, cheddar cheese and Ryvita crackers. G’s favorite lunch in the whole wide world. ‘I don’t think we have a lot of sweet pickles left,’ I informed him after grabbing the nearly empty jar with the world’s tiniest sweet pickle floating forlornly inside it. ‘Well, I guess we can’t share then,’ he said.
His way of letting me know that the tiny sweet pickle would be his, and his alone. So I had tuna fish, cheese and crackers. No pickle.
On the deck, I decided it was time for some ‘Mom lessons’ – not to be confused with ‘Man lessons’. ‘So, let’s talk about Kindergarten,’ I gracefully began the conversation.
‘I think big school is going to be really great,’ he informed me. ‘Really great’? Where does he come up with his phraseology?
We talked about meeting new friends, and having snack, and not getting to ‘play’ as much as at preschool. At which point I had to backtrack a little…I didn’t want to give him the impression that big school wasn’t going to be ‘fun’. So I inserted the world’s lamest parentism: ‘but learning is fun, too’ or something pathetic like that. I made myself cringe, really.
After our picnic, the Hen woke up. And it was time for ‘Superman’ and cookies. Regular-ish cookies: chocolate chip…but with oatmeal (and a little bit of coconut). When Superman finally ended we chased them back outside to play (fight) in the newly constructed sandbox.
And then it was time for faux-camping. Jason brought out the tent-we’d-never-used and, with the boys’ help, set it up by the sandbox.
After being inside it for a while, they eventually lost interest. All the big talk about ‘going camping’ faded into nothing. Instead, I found myself sitting alone on the deck, with nary a Johnson boy outside. Because they were all lying in front of the laptop watching ESPN.
Seriously?
I looked on my watch and realized dinner wasn’t going to make itself. And the professor had a soccer game, which meant he wasn’t going to be around to make dinner, either. So I whipped up some hummus, pita bread triangles, apple slices and mediocre chicken. And lemonade. Because those boys think lemonade is the drink of all drinks.
We ate (the Hen ate his weight in hummus, but avoided the chicken like the plague) and they played and then it was time for bed.
Suddenly the Gort brought out his pillow and announced his intention of sleeping in the tent. Outside.
The upside of a summer extravaganza? Both boys were fast asleep by 7.30pm.
When Jason returned from his game, I informed him that he needed to retrieve his son from the tent. ‘He slept out there…alone?’ he asked incredulously.
When Jason retrieved him from his tent-digs, a very sleepy G protested heavily. ‘It’s too cold out here,’ we told him, all parent-like. Not to mention there was no way in Hades that we were going to leave him out there on his own.
Or, join him in the tent.
*Most likely
My morning started off pretty well. I got an email from my mom. She’d read my blog and the handy statistic about how women are 14% more likely to give birth on a Tuesday than any other day of the week. It just so happens, she informed me, that she, my sister and I were all born on a Tuesday.
Well, I took that as a sign from the heavens that today was going to be the day.
I’d scheduled a play date with another mom and I considered calling her and cancelling. The reason? Because there was a 14% chance I could go into labor, and because I, my mom and sister were all born on Tuesdays. But I thought that sounded ridiculous. So I didn’t call. And she came over. And the kids played. And I didn’t go into labor.
The professor had important business to tend to at the University. So he left mid-morning. With our car-van. ‘Make sure you leave your email on,’ I reminded him. Because we haven’t yet come to terms with the 21st century and do not have that all-important lifeline accessory known as a cell phone. So our labor contingency communication plans include the phone numbers of his departmental secretaries, cell phone numbers of the guys that he plays soccer with once a week. And gmail.
When he’s at the University, he’s supposed to leave his gmail ‘on’ so that I can send him a message if I need him to come home.
We really are ridiculous.
As the boys ate their lunch, I checked gmail-email. A message from my better half popped up on the screen. ‘How’s it going,’ he said, ‘I’m still in a meeting.’
‘Oh, fine,’ I replied, ‘I had the baby a couple of hours ago….he seems okay, if a little funny looking.’ ‘Unibrow?’ my clever half responded. ‘Yes,’ I wrote back, ‘and black fuzz covering his entire body.’ Reminiscent of a conversation we’d had with friends on Friday night.
After I put the Hen down for his afternoon nap, I reclined on the bed for a rest of my own. Eventually I had a couple of contractions. Sure enough, I thought, this was going to be THE DAY. I grabbed my laptop. I thought about emailing my mom ‘you were RIGHT’ but decided against it. Instead, I sent Jason an email.
Jason, who was not online at all. I sent him a lame message, about how I’m sure it meant nothing but I’d had a couple of pains, so he should at least be prepared for a quick exit. I didn’t hear from him until he walked through the door around 3.30pm or so. Completely oblivious to my minor SOS. Clearly on red alert these days.
By 4.30pm all of the Johnsons were lying on the carpet in the living room. I’d never seen four people so overcome with sheer boredom; so paralyzed by the absence of a life-changing event. Where was the entertainment, the fifth wheel, the main attraction?
And so we went to Zeller’s. Because we couldn’t think of anything else to do. Or, put another way, none of the XY chromosomes was interested in any of the other activities I’d suggested.
So, to recap, here’s my list of failed labor induction tactics thus far (don’t try these at home…they do not work.)
Drinking Raspberry Leaf Tea
Eating salmon curry
Buying two new laundry baskets at IKEA
Doing all the laundry
Watching ‘The Reader’
Cleaning all the toilets in the house
Cleaning the lid to the trash can
Mopping all the floors
Eating a bowl of frosted mini-wheats
Drinking a cup of coffee
Eating a raspberry pop-tart
Drinking a glass of water on the deck while watching the kids play
Setting up a coffee date for Wednesday
Playing Bejeweled Blitz on Jason’s Facebook account
Eating ice cream and Milk Duds
Stepping on an industrial-strength staple with my bare foot
Here are the remaining things I will try in order for this baby to be born:
Reading the latest issue of Oprah magazine
Making scones for my Wednesday coffee date
Cleaning the microwave
Changing the sheets on all the beds
And, barring visible results, chaining myself to the doctor’s reception desk until they schedule a bonafide induction date that meets with my approval.
In all of pregnancy I don’t think there is a day that is quite as difficult to get through, with a baby still in-utero, as one’s ‘estimated’ due date. The medical establishment makes this big deal about how the date is just an ‘estimate’, and that 50% of babies arrive before, and 50% after that date. Well, according to my slightly unreliable sub-doctor here in Calgary. The one who couldn’t quite figure out that if I was 40 weeks pregnant on August 21, I’d be 41 weeks pregnant on August 28.
But, I digress.
I just think, if the medical world really wanted to keep you from holding fast to a delivery date, they should give you a one or two-week window instead of an actual date. ‘You’re due the last week of August, most likely’ they could say. Instead of allowing you to fixate on a particular date for nine (ten!) months.
So, though I steeled myself for going well past my due date…I still managed to be highly irritable when my ‘estimated’ due date arrived. And I was still ‘with whale’. I went to my weekly appointment with the doctor who couldn’t do basic math, and felt my zen-like attitude slip away. Quickly.
I arrived home to tell Jason the details, which amounted to ‘not much to report’ and he actually had the (in)sensitivity to say: ‘why are you so irritable?’ Has the man not endured two pregnancies with me, with similar outcomes?
And then I made the mistake of logging on to Facebook. Only to learn that a Facebook friend, due 3 weeks AFTER me, had gone into labor. On my due date. The cruelty. The nerve. The unfairness of it all.
But I displayed an unusual level of maturity and perspective about the situation; choosing to email only four or five (likely disinterested) individuals about the terrible fate that had befallen me. One friend took pity on my petty-ness and brought me a frapuccino. Which helped my mood considerably.
Friday passed and with the breaking of Saturday’s dawn, my mood lifted. The Hen had tossed us a bone by ’sleeping in’ until 7.30 and I felt ready to face the world. I decided to go for a walk. Maybe walking the dreaded hills by our old house would help evict B3. But of course, the minute I put on my walking shoes, I had two children clamoring to join me, which was not what I’d had in mind.
So I ‘compromised’ and put Jason on playground duty, while I turned to the hills. He was beyond excited to be sitting on a park bench before 8am on a Saturday.
I walked down the two hills and crossed the footbridge over Bow Trail, and walked up to the start of the trail towards the river. I decided to turn around. I also decided I was too tired to go back up the hills to the park, so I walked along Bow Trail instead, circumventing the hills altogether.
I arrived at the playground, ready to walk home with my boys. Except they were gone. They were nowhere to be found. And I knew….they’d ventured downhill to look for me. And wouldn’t come back until they’d found me.
Ugh.
A jogger was walking up the hill, so I asked him: ‘did you see a guy with a stroller and two kids, by any chance?’
‘Yeah, he was just crossing the bridge,’ the man replied.
Ugh.
So, back down the hills I went, and across the foot bridge. I saw my posse heading up towards the trail. Noooooooo, I wanted to scream.
Since it was not within me to run and catch up with them, I decided to use my lungs instead. ‘Jasooooon’ I yelled, hoping he’d somehow hear me above the din of Saturday morning traffic; in spite of the considerable distance between us.
He turned around. I waved my arms like a desperate idiot, which I pretty much was. He saw me and turned the boys around. We walked back up the hills, together.
‘I need to take a break,’ my oldest demanded.
Really. You need to take a break?
As I was lying in the bathtub that evening, with bubbles up to my eyeballs because I’d pressed the ‘jets’ button after dumping in some bubble bath, I began to sing a song. My usual ‘borrow another tune and make up some ridiculous lyrics that speak to my current situation’.
‘I think you’ve officially gone insane’ the professor called from the other room. He hadn’t even seen that I was playing with the kids’ bath toys. Strangely therapeutic, I must say.
‘Whatever,’ I yelled back. ‘I’ve been in the best spirits of all the Johnsons today.’ Which was mostly true.
See, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear Jason’s actually the pregnant one these days. All grumpy and cabin-feverish, asking me every five minutes ‘anything? Anything at all?’
Seriously. Have we not done this twice before?
By Sunday he’d formulated a plan for evicting the baby. Pronto. We got home from church, and he started looking on the internet for Thai or Indian restaurants. He’d latched on to the ’spicy food’ induction technique. We went to the grocery store and he insisted I purchase raspberry leaf tea. (Complete waste of $3.99.) He even drank some (labeled a ‘uterine tonic’) with me. ‘I’m starting to feel it’, he said. ‘Feel what exactly?’ I wondered aloud.
‘Do you think you can just gnaw on the tea bag,’ he asked, as if that might speed things along.
As Sunday waned, he tried to make an excuse for his failed tactics. ‘Well, I’ve said all along it was going to be the 24th. Didn’t I?’
And, so, the 23rd turned into the 24th, and, with only four hours to go until it’s officially the 25th, I’m guessing his prediction will not be realized. Though, I did come across a helpful statistic today; that women are 14% more likely to deliver on a Tuesday than any other day of the week.
So, there’s always the 25th.
Or the 1st.
Dear Calgary,
We’ve been together a year now. And what a year it has been: tattered world economy, the house that wouldn’t sell, moving house….twice, spending 24 hours of every day with my cherubs and growing a small elephant in the process. Really, in the midst of these fairly large changes, I hardly feel like I’ve given you the attention you deserve.
I could say you’ve grown on me, but I’m not sure that’s true. Maybe I’ve just developed a tolerance for you. When I wake up in the morning, I don’t think ‘wow, I hate living here.’ But I don’t think ‘wow, I love living here’, either. I guess I don’t think about you at all. Is that bad? Instead of a love-hate relationship, ours is more like an arranged marriage….or a 50 year old marriage; we make do with each other.
In the year since we were united in matrimony, I’ve found a few things I like about you. I like that you have places like Nectar Desserts. (Really, Nectar should give me free dessert for all the times I’ve mentioned them on this vastly popular blog read by thousands of people.) And coffee shops like Caffe Beano, Bumpy’s, Kawa and Caffe Artigiano. Where, for a mere $4 or $5 you can get a really good espresso drink with latte art. Perhaps you can guess from my tone that I don’t actually frequent these places all that often. That’s because I’ve curtailed my latte purchasing habit severely since moving here.
And let me not forget to mention my favorite neighborhood joint, Jeanne’s Pizza. I didn’t frequent Jeanne’s until a few months ago. Because, font snob that I am, I was severely turned off by the neon signs placed upon her storefront. Even if the neon signs said: ‘voted best pizza in Calgary’.
But one day, I put my aesthetic preferences aside and went in. And, Jeanne is the bomb; super friendly and an excellent pizza maker. She gave my boys 2 quarters last time we were there, so they could get Skittles from her candy machine. Her panzerotti are seriously delicious.
And then there’s the scenery. The prairie/big sky/mountain triumvirate. But, Calgary, you can’t really take credit for your surroundings, can you? It’s like a bride trying to take credit for having incredibly attractive parents, in spite of her own average appearance. If the looks didn’t transfer…..well, you lose bragging rights, I’m afraid.
But it is worth mentioning; that I enjoy driving around you and taking it all in.
I have some beefs with you as well, Calgary, they mainly involve price. Bear in mind, before moving here, I spent four years in Muncie, Indiana. Which could hardly be considered an accurate barometer of what things should cost (population 80,000 on a good day). My mortgage payment there was less than half of what we pay here…to rent a house.
You’re bigger, and Canadian, and I get it that you should be a little more expensive.
But, really, do you need to charge me $8 for a pint of Ben & Jerry’s? Are you the city equivalent of a New York Deli? Fair enough, I now only eat Chubby Hubby when I go back to Muncie, which is probably better for all involved. It being the most caloric, fatty ice cream available to mankind.
Did you know Meijer (in Indiana, much like your Superstore here) often has Ben and Jerry’s….on sale…..2 for $6? Sometimes it’s even a 2 for $5 sale…but that’s, admittedly, less often. Oh you’d better believe I used to stock up. Those were the glory days – 2 pints of Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer.
And plane tickets…oh don’t get me started. It’s just all kinds of wrong that I have to pay more to fly to Indiana than to fly to Europe. All kinds of wrong.
And I’m sorry, but I hope I never get to the point where I think $500,000 is a ‘good deal’ for a bungalow. If I plunk down half a million dollars of someone else’s money, I want a tennis court and a pool. And a maid. Maybe even a driver. Though that would require a car upgrade, since the Chevy Venture is not chauffeur-worthy.
There’s also the matter of the Calgary lie, I’ve discovered. It involves veteran Calgarians looking you in the eye and saying (when the weather is particularly atrocious)….’it’s never like this….this is really unusual.’ They also have another little phrase (lie!) they like to toss about….’it gets really cold….but we have the Chinooks….’ Which is a fancy way of saying you’ll freeze your behind off but there are these supposed ‘winds’ that come around (virtually never) that will warm things up. Hypothetically speaking.
Calgary, let me just say that this past winter, I think there were one or two Chinooks. In a four month period. There was snow on the ground for three continuous months (December to March). And let’s not forget: you don’t clean residential streets.
We arrived last August 18th. It was so hot and muggy, all I could think was ‘what have we done…I thought this place was supposed to be dryer and cooler?’ I can still recall our taxi ride in that yellow minivan with windows that wouldn’t fully open, and no air conditioning. Driving to our ‘vacation rental’ in the bowels of the northeast. And then walking almost a mile to the grocery store where things were labeled in Arabic.
But, the next day, when we went outside, it was cold. Cold. And rainy. And it stayed that way for a week. I thought ‘what have we done….we’ve missed summer entirely.’ But you shaped up in September and October. No complaints here – it was magnificent. We were outside nearly every day. Exploring Fish Creek park, Prince’s Island, the pathways by the river. Eating popsicles outside.
It was a thing of beauty.
And then there’s the blur that was December through, well, probably May. The only time in my life I could recall wanting to go insane about something as trivial as the weather.
Put it this way, you make an excellent case for polygamy. Judging from the tanned Calgarians who flood the airport between January and March, clad in shorts and tropical shirts because they forgot it’s colder than cold here…..I’m guessing I’m not the only one who thinks a second city might be a good option. You know, just for the winters.
You can be my main city the rest of the year.
Some people spend their Saturday nights going out on the town, watching movies, eating at restaurants. Yawn. Apparently, I’d rather save the calories and money, and find a mini-tutorial on using Photoshop; and waste fifteen minutes coloring my son’s irises, and pupils. And his lips and….his tongue.
The professor wasn’t the least bit offended that I’d rather get my learnin’ from a random stranger’s blog than from him. What can I say, I’d just rather read instructions than have someone do the work for me? Actually, that’s not true. At all. But as we all know, working with another person (or watching another person work) on the same computer can drive you batty.
The original dirty Hen
Technicolor Hen, who may have played in his mom’s makeup bag. (If she had a makeup bag….)
‘Those lips are a little pink’ the professor declared when I presented my finished work for his review. But I think he was just miffed that I’d figured out how to do it myself. I guess I use the term ‘figure out’ loosely since I didn’t bother correcting my ‘artistic license’.
‘Which one do you like better,’ I asked my oldest who informed me earlier that he was angry at me for ‘taking away [his] light.’ (As in, daylight.)
‘I like this one, and this one,’ he answered. Ever the diplomat.
Clearly I don’t have a future as a photo editor. Though it would be nice if I could have evened out his bangs a bit…..
For now, I’ll stick to making popsicles. And regular cookies.
Even though it seemed to drag on at a sloth-like pace at times, the summer basically flew by. It was May, then it was June and suddenly it was August. I’ve no idea what happened to July.
Jason’s dream of nightly gatherings around the fire pit didn’t happen. Apparently the first time had been a bit underwhelming, and no one felt the need to do it again.
Until this week. I thought maybe some marshmallow roasting would be in order. Especially since we didn’t have anything pressing – like tending to a newborn – going on. And, of course, next week brings Kindergarten and Jason back at the University full-time.
So I headed to Safeway for jumbo marshmallows, Cadbury chocolate and graham crackers. And returned, to find the men starting a fire with damp-ish twigs and paper from the recycle bin.
‘What’s the man lesson for tonight, darling?’ I asked the professor, who’d also abandoned his dream of instructing his sons ‘in the way they should go’. The fire was taking a long time to get going, and the Hen had laid eyes on the bag of marshmallows. Things were beginning to go south. Quickly.
We’d already doled out a ‘raw’ marshmallow or two, to keep the troops happy. But the Hen wanted more.
‘Tonight’s lesson is patience’ Herr Johnson barked. It had little effect on the littlest one, who was in full-blown tantrum stage by that point.
Eventually the marshmallows got roasted. And tummies were filled with graham crackery goodness.
Followed by bath-time, which left the floor with an inch of standing water. And bedtime, which left the lingering smell of smoke on our pillows.
I returned home rather late on Monday night after having coffee with friends. One of my friends had insisted my bottom lip was slightly puffy which could only mean I was going into labor…soonish.
I wrote a blog post on waiting for B3, because Jason had started watching ‘The Wire’ without me. As he watched the show, he told me about how he’d felt super, crazy hungry after the kids had gone to bed. Like he needed to eat the world’s largest meal. Pronto. Suddenly he hit pause and went downstairs to fix himself an enormous chicken gyro pita. I saw (smelled) the red onions he’d put on top. ‘If you eat those, you’re sleeping on the couch,’ I told him. He removed the onions.
I’d had a bad backache all day and was still feeling pretty uncomfortable. ‘Didn’t you have a bad backache before you went into labor with the boys?’ he asked me. Sometimes he comes up with the most random (unlikely to have ever happened) memories. I mean, I can’t recall the precise circumstances or how I felt when I did finally go into labor with our oldest. But I don’t recall complaining about a backache. And I never ‘went into labor’ with the Hen. I just went to the hospital where they broke my water. A week after I’d gone to the hospital with false labor, which had resulted in us summoning Jason’s mom at midnight, from forty-five minutes away, to come and watch the Gort.
But, Jason’s comments got me thinking: backaches, severe hunger, puffy lips…I’d been cooking and cleaning up a storm all day, Jason had put the finishing touches on the nursery…and I’d set up a coffee date with another friend who’d told me that the last time she’d made plans with a pregnant woman, the woman had gone into labor and had cancelled the plans.
It all added up, and could only mean one thing, couldn’t it? It was past 12.30am at this point, and I put my laptop away. At 12.54am I felt an all too familiar Braxton Hicks contraction. Except this one lasted longer. And it kind of hurt.
Surely not?
I kept quiet for the next hour, as the contractions came eight or nine minutes apart. All of them on the painful side of the spectrum. Finally, around 1.45am, I decided I’d better take a shower, since I hadn’t gotten around to it earlier in the day. But I also knew if I got up and took a shower at 1.45am, Jason would get suspicious.
So I had to tell him I was having contractions, much as I didn’t want to raise his hopes that ‘this could be it.’
Sure enough, he sprang into action like a crazy man. The hospital bag got packed, snacks were packed, the cameras were retrieved, and the ipod was charged. Around 2.15am, after the flurry of activity, I suggested we try to get some sleep. Typical Jason, he started snoring almost immediately. Though he’d wake up every 30 minutes to ask me if I was still having contractions.
At one point, they were coming every seven minutes or so, and I started thinking about meeting B3. Thinking about how he’d chosen such an auspicious day to make his arrival – on our one year anniversary of moving to Calgary. How, if someone had told me when we moved, that, precisely a year later I’d be going to the hospital to meet my third baby boy, I would never in a million years have believed them.
Finally, around 3am I fell asleep, too. And, with my slumber, the contractions apparently ended. Because when I woke up again at 5.15, I was no closer to meeting my baby than I’d been at the beginning of my bout of faux labor.
I was a little miffed, but mostly I felt bad for the professor. He’d been all excited and my uterus had let him down. Yet again.
‘By the way,’ he informed me later that morning, ‘there are peaches in that (hospital) bag….you might want to take them out.’
