Things they are a changin'

I knew things were going to change once my best friend Pam had her baby. I knew they would. I have enough friends with children to know that we wouldn't be able to get together as much, and if we would we would have to do a TON of planning before. I knew that most of our conversations would revolve around babies. (Little did I know most of those conversations would revolve around her babies poop) I knew that it would be a long while before the four of us (now five) would be able to do the couple's date thing. In short I expected change, lots and lots of change.

I don't think I expected to be shut out of everything for the most part though. I mean before the baby arrived we would be calling all the time. She would be trying to arrange coffee dates, or lunch dates to get out of the house. I would be subjected to hours upon hours of expectant baby talk (50% of which I minded). Now that she's had the baby? Nothing. I'm politely told that she's too stressed out to have visitors of any kind. (Aside from the one brief visit that I was granted) Phone calls are about two minutes long.

I don't know what I expected. I really don't. I guess I just feel hurt that I gave so much of myself to be the supportive friend while she was pregnant, half because I wanted to, half because she needed/wanted it, and now that the baby is born I am thrust to the side and don't get to experience any of what I helped her get through. I haven't even received so much as a copy of a mass e-mail of pictures.

I know to some I will sound selfish, and a bit like a drama queen, but that's the beauty of this being my blog, and it being a blog that hardly anyone reads! I just needed to get my feelings out there in some form.

Long awaited pictures

I finally have some to post! I went to visit Pam and her new little baby today. She's still cute, but I still don't want one right now!

To quote my dear friend, "Jenna, wait a few years, this is freaking stressful". So for now, I will dote and spoil my beautiful little "niece".

If you're wondering whether the picture is a little lopsided, you're not losing your mind, Abbey was swinging in her "Rainforest Swing". I have to admit, that was one cool piece of equipment.

And the questions begin...

Not that they weren't being asked before, but now they are more frequent. The question being what every married couple is asked sometimes mere minutes after saying "I Do". Yes, that question is "So when are the two of you going to start a family?"

The reason it has become more frequent is that my best friend Pam(who I have mentioned in a previous post) and her husband gave birth to their beautiful little girl, Abigail Marie on August 9, 2008.

I have learned the secret answer for most people is the short and sweet "We're just not ready to loose our sleep right now, ha ha ha". That seems to make them smile and move onto some other topic of conversation. I find it's much more polite than "Bugger off and mind your own business" which is what I would really like to say to most people. Now the people that are close to us know the real answer. The much longer, complex answer.

They know about my job, and how I would not get maternity leave thus making the decision to have a child that much more difficult (financially anyway), they know of my intense worrying about our combined health histories, and my anxiety of passing on the MS or Lupus gene to one of our potential children. They know of my desire to have a house, a home of our own first, and my more selfish desire to have one more fun in the sun tropical vacation before I push out a child. How do you express all of this to a mere acquaintance without seeming like a complete neurotic?

What no one knows is that I was patiently waiting for the birth of that baby. To see this wonderful little human who I had been feeling move in my best friend's stomach for months now, but also viewing it as a test. A test to see if this little bundle would kick my biological clock into high gear or do the opposite and press the pause button for a little longer.

I sat in the hospital holding the little bundle. Her little (well big really, she was 8 lbs, 8 ozs) body fitting perfectly in my arms. Her limbs still moving slowly as if still floating in her own little ocean. Then I realized something, I realized that I wasn't feeling anything. I wasn't feeling like I needed to go home and throw out the birth control and jump my husband. Instead it only cemented how not ready I was for this huge life changing event.

One look at my best friend who was sitting on her hospital bed simultaneously managing to look like she wanted to laugh, cry, scream, pull her hair out and then climb under her bed and hide. This only cemented that I was in no way ready to become one of those freaked out first-time moms just yet.

It's funny, if you had asked the 21 year old me where I thought I would be at 30 (just over a half year away now!) I would say, career, married, house and baby on the way. Well, two out of four ain't bad! The strangest part is that I realized that I was okay with this. I was really okay with where my life is at the moment. This isn't to say that I don't occasionally have a one man pity party where I lament on how much I think my life sucks monkey balls at that current moment, but overall I'm content.

So all you women out there at the same place in their life as I am, lets raise a drink to sleeping in, late nights, and telling all those nosey buggers out there to mind their own business!

What is a home without children?

Quiet.

~Henny Youngman

Things that make you go HMMMM

I had a dental appointment earlier this week to help fix a tooth that I had destroyed by clenching my jaws too tightly at night. After waiting in the waiting room for an hour, then the consultation room for a half hour and then finally the procedure room for another half an hour I was reminded about an annoying thing that all dentists do.

They always feel the need to talk to you once they have frozen your mouth and face so thoroughly that you're lucky if you don't look like a stroke victim with your mouth drooping and spit sliding down the side of your face. Why do they feel the need to do this?

First it was the assistant feeling the urge to speak to me about the two elementary schools in my neighbourhood that her daughter attends. Then the dentist who was commenting on my watering eye while my mouth is cranked open with a piece of rubber jammed in there (yes I know, attractive visual).

I did realize that there are quite a few ways you can make "ummhmmm, umm huh, and hmmmm mean so many different things. Maybe I should make a submission to Websters to have these added to their dictionary? That or dentists should just let me be drilled in peace without asking stupid questions.

The hoarder is purging

So my grandmother has indeed decided to sell her home. She is downsizing and purchasing a small home in a gated seniors community just down the street from where she lives.

Now for most grandparents this would be an easy thing to physically do. There would be the normal sentimental issues that would make it difficult to move, but most grandparents don't have that much stuff right? Well that would be correct for most grandparents, but not with my grandmother. She is a hoarder. Not a pack rat, a hoarder.

There is a difference. To recognize the difference you have to truly know a hoarder. A pack rat just has a lot of stuff. A room, an area, somewhere in the house with things tucked away in boxes or bags. For the most part, out of sight, out of mind. This is not the case with my grandmother. You walk into her home and every surface, every nook, every cranny filled to brimming with stuff. What stuff you may ask? You name is she has it. She actually probably has four or five of every item. You see, with hoarders, they can't find something so they just buy another of that item, sometimes this may happen repeatedly.

My grandmother has rooms in her home that she can't even walk into, there are items blocking the doorway, items that she's giving away that we can't even remember seeing in her home to begin with because it was either covered or obscured with so many items. It's sad really. I have a hard time being in her home because the clutter is that overwhelming.

My uncle is trying to get her purged, packed and out of her house so quickly I just have this feeling of disaster looming after she moves. Hopefully I'm wrong, but only time will tell how this situation will end.

Bad Luck Wednesdays...

That's what Andre calls Wednesdays (or Tuesdays, or Thursdays) when everything seems to go wrong. Today is one of those days.

Today was a slow day at work to begin with. It was to start with an 11am chiropractic appointment in the hopes of ridding my brain of the awful headaches I've been having since Wednesday. Then was to continue with four appointments at work. Three of my four appointments cancelled. This left me with a 6pm appointment and my adjustment.

11am I get a call from the clinic. "Jenna are you coming for your appointment?"
me: "Umm, it's not until 11:30"
clinic: "No, it's right now, 11:00"
me: "Shhhhhiiiiiit. There's no way I can make it"

I hung up the phone and the frustration of the pain that I have been experiencing got the best of me and I burst into tears. I just couldn't take it anymore. Thank goodness I still have some bootlegged Aleve to get me through the pain.

Fast forward to 3:30 this afternoon. Andre calls me from work. Due to Air Canada discontinuing their "Jazz" flights his job is changing and his hours are being cut. He will also be working every Sunday just to get more hours in. We've been working so hard to pay off our debt, so hard to put the money into savings for a down payment on a house and now this.

It's like the universe is just laughing at us. "Ha ha, sucks to be you!" The rational part of my brain knows that everything will work out. Hell we've made it through worse than this! But it's still frustrating.

Here's hoping tomorrow will be a good luck Thursday!