Should we or shouldn't we?

Have a child that is.

I've always wanted to be a mom. From the time I was little girl pretending to nurse my "baby" outside the house. (I had two younger sisters, they were breastfed, so babies didn't get fed from a bottle in my mind) Now as a 29 year old woman I know that it's not so easy. That there are so many things to consider before you just go out and get pregnant, that is if you can even get pregnant. All the financial and emotional changes that have to occur before you bring another life into this world.

Starting a family has always been in the back of our minds. Before we were married we always talked about how many children we would have. What their names would be. How we'd raise them. We'd joke about how Andre was going to be the softy, and I would be the disciplinarian. What we would do if we found out our baby was going to be handicapped in someway. Would we do genetic screening or just take the leap and have faith that God would only give us what we could handle? So many things.

Now as the time nears that I will be stopping the birth control pill we have started doing some digging about our families medical histories. What would we be passing on to our children? I knew for the most part already about my families history of depression, about the females and their issues with hypothyroidism, about my great-grandparents both passing away of cancer. Then Andre at my urging does some digging with the help of his cousin. I knew that he has an abnormally high number of women in his family that have passed away from Multiple Sclerosis, but didn't know how many until we looked at the family history.

As it turns out he had two great-aunts and two cousins both pass away of MS in their 30's and 40's. He also has two other cousins that have Lupus. It's all been weighing on my mind lately. Andre could sense how much all this new-found information was troubling me. He came to talk to me on Sunday night. He was very serious. We talked through everything and he expressed to me how much he wants children. I told him that I had a lot of things I will have to discuss with my doctor in the fall. Until then I told him we have to table the baby discussion.

This week all these things have been floating through my brain. Made much worse by the fact that I see young children and babies everywhere. From the little girl in the clinic that just kept smiling and waving, not wanting to leave with her mom but just smile and wave at me, even to the family of ducks that we saw on our walk this afternoon. Children are such a blessing, a miracle really. Andre would kill me if he knew that I was thinking this seriously about not having children. He is the rational part of my brain. The one who jumps into each situation with both feet. While I sit on the edge weighing the pros and cons before I take that step.

He would say "Jenna, it will be fine. Our children will be fine. Don't be silly. You're such a worry-wort". Maybe he's right.

We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies. ~Shirley Abbott

Someone shake me for thinking as I do....

I just had to get this off my chest. Andre has to listen to me rant and rave all the time, but what a better way to cleanse the soul, then dump thoughts into cyber space? This might come back to bite me in the ass, but oh well.

So I have a best friend. Her name is Pam. Pam has suffered with depression for most of her adult life. She was on almost every medication known to man, or at least to her old shrink. For most of her early 20's she was on so many meds, that I now serve as her memory. She doesn't remember too much, or chooses not to, I haven't quite decided.

So Pam's dream in life was basically to marry Mike whom she's been in love with for pretty much as long as I've known her, buy the house of her dreams close to her family, have a baby, and then stay home and raise her family.

Well almost three years ago they bought the house of their dreams literally right behind her grandmothers house. Two years ago she married the man of her dreams, Mike. Then finally after 7 months of trying they finally conceived their little bundle, and she is due to deliver this summer. She has it all: The house, the baby and the opportunity to be a stay at home mom.

You'd think she'd be happy about finally achieving her hearts desire. On some level I think she is, but most of the time it seems like she isn't. Now I know that depression is a very serious disease, that is very complex and difficult to gauge, so but sometimes I just want to stop her when she's talking and scream at the top of my lungs "woman, you wanted the husband, the house, the kid, and you've freakin' got them all. Stop your freakin' complaining and suck it up! Life is hard, life isn't fair! Get over it!!!"

Is this wrong?

Movie and Book Review

So on the off chance that anyone (besides myself, and well Andre) actually reads this thing I decided to include some movie and book reviews. I can't promise that I'll blog about every movie I see or book that I read, but well I'm bored right now, so what the heck.

The Book:

My best friend Pam lent me a book to read, and from the first page I was hooked. And let me tell you I was a little hesitant because I'd never even heard of the authors before, and I'm always a little hesitant of new authors. Yes, I'm a creature of habit.

The book is Literacy and Longing in LA, by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack.

It's the first book they've published, and it was a very good read.

The main character is a major book junkie who slips into these "book binges" when life becomes too stressful. She's just getting over a divorce and trying to get her life back on track. There are a lot of book references to the classics, but I didn't find it distracting, or hard to follow because of it. I was happy that I had at least read one of the books that was referenced in the story though (Emma by Jane Austen).

Their follow up book is now on the bookshelf. I might just have to pick it up.

The Movie:

Andre and I have been meaning to get to the movies for weeks now. We originally planned for Saturday night, but were pooped after spending the day in my grandmothers garden, so we went today.

Let me tell you, I got a thrill out of going to the movies on a weekday. I know it's a holiday Monday, but it was still fun.

We had the choice between the new Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher movie or Baby Mama (the one I really wanted to see). Andre actually chose Baby Mama. No, he didn't have a fever, he actually chose it of his own free will.

I was really in the mood for a goofy, no-brainer type of movie, and this one fit the bill perfectly. Not as funny as Knocked Up, but it was still cute.

I would probably save your money and save it as a rental, but it was still a fun comedy.

Mr Nice Guy

One of the best (and worst) qualities about my wonderful husband is the fact that he is a nice guy. He does things for people just because he cares about them. He's also one of those guys who's best friends are literally the friends that he lived next door to when he was 6 and has stayed close to them his entire life. From those two friends he has become friends with other people. His close network of friends probaby extends to 8 buddies who he e-mails regularly, gets together with the local ones, and arranges times to meet online with some of the out of towners so they can play an online version of a computer game they used to play years ago.

Now most of his friends realize that Andre is that "nice guy". He always has been and always will be. Some of them, have taken advantage of Andre's niceness. I've come to realize over the last 5 years we've been together that my wonderful husband was their whipping boy. He was the one they would tease, make fun of. Andre was the one that would drop everything and get together with whomever.

That was until he met me. Like most new relationships we wanted to spend every waking moment together when we first started dating. His buddies did not like that. Andre wasn't available at a moments notice to get together with the guys. He no longer just sat and let them talk down to him, he stood up for himself. They didn't like that he would talk to me first about our schedule before just going off on a guys night.

This brings me to an e-mail that Andre received from a friend of his this week. This friend, we'll call him Bob, is getting married in Hong Kong in July. Before the wedding Bob is travelling back to Canada, meeting his soon to be wife (they live in different countries), having a few celebrations here in Canada. One of these events is a dinner for all the friends in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Bob e-mailed Andre and asked if he would make the reservations at the restaurant. He did. The restaurant wanted a $100 deposit for the group, a non-refundable deposit. Andre e-mailed him back and said he wasn't going to risk a $100 if the plans fell through. Instead of Bob e-mailing Andre back with his VISA number he sends off a scathing e-mail telling Andre that if he can't afford $100 on his VISA that he shouldn't be thinking of having children. He goes into a tirade about the cost of children, blah, blah, blah.

As usual Andre send back an e-mail detailing why we will not be having children this exact moment. All the while I'm ranting and raving like a crazy person in the background while making our Sunday morning pancake breakfast.

Why should we be responsible for footing the deposit, and having to gather the share of the deposit ($10/person) from everyone whether or not they actually show? My darling husbands friends aren't the most reliable people in the world, what if the plans fall apart at the last moment? After all, this event is still over a month away.

Andre didn't include any of my rant in his e-mail response. He's still the nice guy. Letting them walk all over him.

Where did my friend go?

I had a mystery of the disappearing friend on Facebook a couple weeks ago. Now I'm not one of those "friend collectors" who has hundreds and hundreds of friends. I only add people to my list that I really want to catch up with, and see what they've been up to in the ___ amount of years since I've seen them last.

Not to say that I don't have any of the "collector" sort of friends on there. I do have some people on my list that added me ages ago that I was like "WTF? You actually remembered my last name?" but I never remembered them to be creepy, so I added them.

Which brings me to my rant. So in middle school and high school I had two friends that I lost touch with. Both for different reasons, but I would wonder what happened to them every once in awhile. So Facebook was fabulous. I could finally catch up with these friends.

So I did. Exchanged some e-mails, commented on some pictures. Talked about milestones that have happened since we lost touch.

Then I'm logged onto Facebook and notice that one of my "friends" are gone. I try going through the list, but I'm tired, and just leave it. Then later that week I realize I haven't seen any updates on a specific person. I check my list, and she's gone! Now, my issue with this specific person was not only that she had been a friend in real life, but also that she added me in the first place! She had also done this to someone that she went to High School with, who I am now friends and co-workers with.

So I am now publishing this Facebook rule:
-You may not add a friend only to delete them a few months later! You may however freely delete a friend if you were the one to accept the friend.

Weekly Renters Rant

So the Utility Nazi is at it again. This is what we call the woman who lives upstairs. Actually, us and her husband call her that.

It all started last weekend when Andre wanted to do some spring cleaning to our car. He vacuumed out the interior of the car and went to turn on the hose to fill the bucket to wash the car. The water wasn't coming out of the hose. They weren't turning the water on for the outside. She came running out of the house and told him that they were saving the water for the grass.

So he took the car to the car wash and paid a small fortune to wash the bird shit off the car. Whatever.

So today I go to give them the monthly rent cheque, and she runs to the back room and tells me that she printed off a list of water conservation things you can do around the house. After reading the list later, we already do 90% of the things on the list. She's going on and on about how her water bill is more than the water bill for the people next door. I don't know how it can be a comparison since there are more people living here but again, whatever.

Meanwhile about two months ago, I let her know about some blistering that was happening to the ceiling in our dining room. Our dining room that is directly below their kitchen. She told me to just keep her updated. So I e-mailed her a couple weeks ago to let her know that the blisters are getting bigger, and one spot is wet all the time. This leading me to believe that there is a slow leak in a pipe that is now dripping all the time.

She responded "I'll have to find someone who knows what they're doing to look at it". Did they ever do that? No, Andre came home one day this week to find them in our apartment staring at the ceiling. Still haven't had anyone qualified to look at it.

I wonder if it's clued into her that maybe, just maybe, some of this water that she can't account for could be the water that has been pooling above our ceiling for the past lord only knows how many months? Probably not.