tell me why...

cause i want it that way

take snapshots into the light

i've been thinking lately, since we got our new camera and all, that it would be great to be able to take pictures of people. but it isn't that easy. you see people don't take kindly to some stranger taking their picture, it implies something and generally i don't think it is that they are beautiful. i can't argue that point cause yesterday on three seperate occasions i wished i had a camera to take the picture and in every case it was because there was something odd about the subject.

the first was my bus driver heading downtown after work. he was a heavy set man with long thick grey hair, a bushy grey beard and big thick rose coloured glasses. they were the variety of glasses that really stand out on a man's face, oddly out of place and seemingly more appropriate for a female octogenrian, they immediately made me want to stare at him. what i was treated to was his lazy lean on the steering wheel as he filled his hand with corn chips, clenched it into a fist and then tilted his head back ever so slightly as he shook some chips from the fist into his mouth. then, as one would expect, he started agressively chewing with his mouth open, his face in an ever so slight grin like he was amused by his shear audacity. now i realize all this couldn't have been caught on film but just one well timed shot, fist in the air mouth open awaiting chips glasses reflecting the harsh light from outside, would have somehow seemed satisfying none the less.

the second time the thought crossed my mind was at the corner of robson and thurlow. as we approached the corner we heard some loud very distorted music wafting through the air. i thought it was simply another store projecting their noise pollution onto the sidewalk in hopes of garnishing some attention. but as we got closer i realized this was not the case. there leaning against one of the 7 starbucks on the block was a middle aged asian man standing beside a boombox circa 1986. he was wearing black sunglasses that wrapped around the side of his head, a black leather jacket with studs and one leather glove with tassles, his head bobbed ever so slightly from front to back. after taking in his apparel i was once again drawn to the distortion only to realize it was michael jackson (and here you would moan and say of course it was!). he seemed to be completely unaware of the dozens of people staring at him and laughing. in fact had i had a camera he likely would not have cared in the least if i had taken his picture, but i still don't think i would have been brave enough.


the third and final occasion was later on in the night when we returned home. getting off the bus we saw a crowd gathered outside the local comic book shop. it is the kind of place you would barely notice in the day, no sandwich board outside letting you know it is there, no glitzy signage. just a door and some dated posters in the window. so at first when i saw the crowd i was a little taken aback, did i know there was comic book store here? but soon my confusion became amusement as i caught a glimpse of the people inside. something between geeky and cool which i think sums up my neighbourhood well. girls with thick lisa loeb glasses, black and white striped tights, pale skin and long faces. mouths upturned in jagged tooth grins. the boys wearing comic book hero t-shirts, ill fitting jeans and sneakers adorned with bright colours had slick awkwardly long hair and seemingly large facial features. there were 2 dozen, maybe more, all spilling out on the street. excitement was in the air as they laughed and jittered. there was no beer, no cigarettes, the only intoxicants present were hormones and comic book magic. in my eye i saw the shot but had to keep walking. the image in my memory alone.

when i got home i thought about these shots and how hard it is to be the kind of person that can take them, well at least without a telephoto lense and then i thought of how we as a society have become obsessed with capturing the moment. whether it is digital cameras or digital camcorders we all are starting to only see the world through an eye hole. i am equally as guilty of it, needing to trap everything in my butterfly net, pinning them somewhere for later. it was, in the end, refreshing to know that somethings, at least for now, are only found in my memory. that some things i am still able to look at, take in and leave behind.

take me to the shore and wrap me in a blind tomorrow

so today's topic= bubble tea. actually i don't think that is all together acurate. you see i go to a bubble tea establishment but the thing i get is neither tea nor does it contain bubbles so really this is about fruit slushies that come from a place that sells bubble tea. otherwise known as my newest addiction. thankfully it won't be at my finger tips for much longer which i am sure my wallet will appreciate.

so there is this place in the student union building on campus that sells me these concoctions. they open at 11am which is really too bad since i am usually jonesing for one by my first break and they are nowhere to be found. by lunch it is a matter of desperation. i must feel the icey goodness in my throat, the tang of the fruit. the drink itself is really quite healthy and so there is no shame in that. to the best of my knowledge they seem to put fresh fruit of your choosing, lots of ice, some sort of clear liquid that may or may not be water or some kind of sweetener and then a few splashes of milk. the whole things gets mangled in an industrial blender and then it is piled high in a clear cup with a thick straw, a straw that is presumably built for bubbles. but as we have discussed i know nothing about this.

so that is the story or the background for the story i guess. you see i need this drink, i think about it all morning. what flavours will i have today. you can get one or mix two together, forever a mixer i usually choose the latter. the options are varied: strawberry, peach, blueberry, pineapple, mango, cantaloupe etc. so this one day last week i set off to get my fix thinking that today i would try something new. it is well documented that the experience of trying something new always leads to one of two conclusions, either you discover something wonderful and are glad to have taken a chance or you are sorely disappointed and mumble things like "oh well chalk that up to experience" but really think "what the hell was i thinking?". in my life it is almost always the latter. this story is no exception.

you see i decided that today i would try what the refer to as "green lemon" mixed with pineapple. i thought mmmmm citrus just what every pregnant woman wants (honest there is something about being pregnant and eating citrus fruits that i can not explain). so i tell the lady what i want. my first clue that something was amiss was when she said huh? and gave me a funny look. i thought it was a language barrier and stuck it out repeating the order. she shrugged a little and got to work. so it turns out that green lemon is actually a lime (and i found myself asking how it is i did not come to this conclusion on my own?). i wouldn't mind this, i like limes, maybe even more than lemons. so far so good. but then wait...did she just put in three chunks of lime with the rind? i start to get a little nervous. do i say something? no they know what they are doing, i have never done this what do i know. then comes the spoonfulls of fresh pineapple and my mouth starts to salivate. the blender is whirling now and i am anxious to try it. i am still slightly wary of the lime rind but think that maybe it gets pureed enough in the blender that you don't notice it. i mean it would have to right?

wrong. i got my drink and i quickly took a sip only to be treated with an enormous chunk of rind. next sip brought another and i was starting to get a bitter taste in my mouth. i made it just outside the building, 6 sips in and i threw in the towel, or in this case the cup into the garbage. i thought of going back and getting another, allowing my need to control me, but i fought the urge. some things are better left alone.

as i walked back to my desk i could be heard muttering "oh well chalk that up to experience" but what i really wanted to know was what the hell i had been thinking?


creepy dolls are from here.

i won't push you unless you have a net

so i was lying in bed trying to sleep but unable to find slumber when i realized it is tuesday, that means video tuesday, a tradition which it turns out i nearly abandoned after it's first week. luckily i have still have 19 minutes until midnight and so there is still time plus now i have an excellent excuse to be up again and so here i am.

i came home after work today and fell asleep 5 minutes after walking in the door, slept until 7:30 and then woke up to a hunger even a hibernating bear would be jealous of. the nap however means that sleep is a foreign concept to me right now. well that and the constant kicking of the alien in my belly. he is a night person. i think that might be okay cause deep down i am too, if it weren't for that damn work thing. i can see us having all kinds of fun together in the dark and then sleeping in until noon on sundays...ok i know i am delusional but this is the part where i can fantasize about having the perfect baby, one that is completely tailored to my needs, before i have my actual baby that will be nothing like that at all. the one that will re-tailor my needs and make a mockery of my habitual existence. so let me have this just for a moment.

speaking of fantasies this week's selection is a sorta fairytale, enjoy.

i will now go back to listening to the pipes creek and counting down the hours until i have to go to work with no sleep.

8 more days. i can do this...right?

stronger than the wind in the willow tree

so today is maia's second anniversary, well anniversary, what does that mean? part of me wants to say birthday, i mean i guess technically it is a birthday but it is a death day too. some people say her second birthday in heaven, i am not so sure about that. sometimes when things like this happen people start believing more in the idea of heaven and sometimes i wish that was me. but mostly i don't. mostly i only see it for that which it is and not that which it could be. but i guess that is me.

there is something weird about days like today, this expectation or anxiety or something darker. i felt like i should do something important, something significant enough to give the day meaning. fill balloons with messages and release them out over the forest, put my thoughts in a bottle and toss it off a cliff into the strait, bake a cake and spend hours decorating it, making it just right. but the thing about all of this is that although in my head it seems profound i know that in the moment it would only seem empty. because there is nothing that would do the trick, no word, no action, no single moment that could properly represent such an important thing. the process is ongoing, today is just one more day in the line of days it took to get here. but still there had to be something, staying home didn't seem right either.

last night we were up late, me because i was feeling sick, marko because he always is. i woke at 2am with a stomach ache and so the two of us sat up in the dark drinking blackberry tea, looking at pictures on photo.net and talking with the fish. it was closer to six when we finally fell back asleep and when we woke up at noon, groggy but happy to see the blue sky and sun shining in our window, we were still unsure of what we wanted to do.

as it turns out we decided sometime around 3 to go rent a car and head out to steveston to take some pictures, spend the time together outside. we ended up eating fish and chips on the dock with the sun on our faces, wind at our back. looking at all the old fishing boats and talking back to the seagulls as we worked our way along the pier. cohen liked the sun and kicked at it reminding us of all the things we have to look forward to. i am beginning to think he is getting anxious to get out.

as part of our tradition we picked up a cake on the way home and in a bit i will make some coffee. we will probably spend the night on the couch watching koyaanisqatsi and then we will sleep and tomorrow we will wake up and it will be another day and we will still remember.

so happy birthday maia, although i am not sure you are in a place called heaven i do know that you will always be here with us.

my next project

swim fishy swim.

turning back, i thought i knew, thought i knew someone

so this growing a baby thing is starting to get interesting, i suppose i can expect that everyday will bring with it a new adventure from here on out. the latest is my jaunt down heartburn avenue and no i don't mean the type of burn in your heart that comes from a jilted lover but more acidic and pungent in the back of my throat. apparently this is pretty normal as the uterus pushes all my insides somewhere up into my throat. it is interesting though how it started out pretty tame, the odd discomfort and then slowly progressed to one sleepless night that encouraged me to go out and buy one roll of extra strength tums. little did i know that one roll would soon become a family pack. i am now at the point where every few hours i have to chew some "citrus" chalk. i was worried about taking too many as the back of the package warned that more than 5 in a day can be harmful. i was at the doctor yesterday and told her of my woes and my concerns with the quantity i would need to ingest to reach some level of normalacy. she laughed and said that when she was pregnant she would take 4 everytime she took them and some days consumed half a container. i was relieved. apparently the calcuim can give a person kidney stones but the quantity necessary for this to happen is extremely high so "chew away" says she. so i did. in fact right there in the office i pulled the container out of my bag and popped back three. ahhhhh finally some good news. now how do i get rid of this backache?

music video clip tuesday

that's right folks i am going to start a new tradition, cause really...who doesn't like traditions? every tuesday i will feature a live video performance of some music which i like or completely loathe and want to ridicule (at my discretion). hopefully we will all be able to discern which is which but i won't get my hopes up.

this weeks selection would be so much better if it wasn't censored, i thought you were allowed to swear on late night tv? isn't that the whole point of staying up? oh well here it is.

it's good old country comfort in my bones

this morning when we got up marko seemed distraught, a little shaken even and so i asked if everything was alright. he had a bad dream he told me. oh no, really, what happened? well we were all there, you, me, aaron and elton and we were going to partizan stadium...what's that? oh the soccer stadium in belgrade. so we were going to see football? yes. ummm ok. so what happened. well we were in the car, elton was driving and we were listening to some music i don't remember...and we had an accident? no. we saw an accident? no. someone was chasing us? hey, just let me finish! so we are in the car going to the game and we are late and just then i look down and realize that i am wearing white socks with a dark suit and there was no time to go back...you were wearing a suit to a football match? yes! but with white socks. hmmm ok, well what happened? what do you mean what happened, that was my dream! that was your dream? that is the terrible thing that happened, you wore white socks. no, i don't think you are listening to me, i was wearing a dark suit. (at this point i decided to give in) wow, that is terrible well thank goodness it is over now. let's get up.

i guess i should just feel lucky i married a man with fashion sense and one who clearly doesn't have truely bad dreams very often to know the difference!

so the roomba. so far i have been really impressed, well other than the fact that galena doesn't seem the slightest bit phased by it. i was hoping for some sort of confrontation, a showdown between animate and inanimate but no it turns out she is much too busy sleeping to be bothered by robots. so we put it to the test yesterday afternoon and it entertained us for a solid hour. we followed it around the house to see how it would react to different obstacles, we intentionally placed dirt around the house and had little contests to see whose dirt would get picked up first. mine mostly did, but the great thing was that no matter what both of our dirt piles always got caught, it was very comprehensive in it's tireless endeavours. it fit under almost all of our furniture which was a nice surprise and even though we had only just cleaned on sunday when we were done with it is was still filled with cat hair. now i will be honest that our apartment is the ideal space for such a device as it is two big rooms with lots of open space and hard wood so i can't comment on it's compatibility with carpet (other than the sisel rug we have under the kitchen table which it handled beautifully). so all in all i would say that lazy humans should unite and run out to purchase one, definately worth the 206 cad we paid (on sale at irobot.ca) including shipping. plus it is better than most tv for watching..so what is stopping you?

hippity hop hop

so for easter we bought ourselves a new camera.

and today i received my robotic vacuum. i haven't opened the box yet but you can be sure there will be lots to say about this one later...maybe even some video of the vacuum attacking the cat!

for now enjoy some easter photos.

i'm dreaming i'm on a highway with the windows down

so it's been awhile again. i thought being off all week i would have ample time to write clever and witty prose here. i also thought i would watch movies or at the very least the dozens of television episodes i have saved on my computer. i didn't watch anything. it is so sad. so what did i do? i became closely aquainted with the term nesting which isn't such a bad thing i guess, well except for when it finds you on your hands and knees scrubbing the grooves in the tile with a toothbrush at 2 in the morning, tears falling down your cheeks cause you are so tired but you can't stop. having this coincide with moving into a new apartment has been good though as it has meant eliminating tons of crap we have been dragging with us everywhere. although now i fear i have gotten rid of so much we may have to resort to living a semi-buddhist lifestyle. i say semi because we still have more glassware than a family of four could use in... say a month. not very zen i'm afraid. although it is nice glassware.

so not only have i been cleaning but i have also been scouring every kids store in vancouver and most of bellingham comparing prices, compulsively buying "just one more" onesie (strange name for something i have ended up with 17 of) because it is too cute to leave behind. although i think it is safe to say i am out of the onesie stage (knock on wood) and well into the hooded jacket. so far i only have three so it isn't yet a phenomenon but it is on it's way. so in one week i went from having next to nothing for baby to having almost everything. not just having but ...cleaned, neatly folded and put away perfectly in order of size and colour scheme to be more precise.

i also embraked on a little art project for above cohen's crib, it was clearly inspired by lori whose stuff i simply adore. i had saved some of the fabric i used in making maia's quilt and thought this was a great way to include her in cohen's life. for those readers that have never seen our fish tank you will not notice the resemblance but the fish in the pic are based on our real life family members fishter and the loving couple of clowns known as harold and maude. the hermit crabs are more colourful then their real life cohorts but i figured they deserved the extra flare.

i can't believe i am going to have a month off before the big arrival, there is almost nothing left to do. maybe i should start hiring out my services? if only i didn't weigh 900 pounds with what seems to be rocks weighing down my centre of gravity that might have been possible. perhaps i should simply spend some time with my feet up? mind over matter.

you were holding me like someone broken and i couldn't tell you but i'm telling you now

so vacation is here. 10 days off, back for 13 and then that is it gone for 13 months. 58 days until cohen is supposed to show up. time just keeps ticking. a week sunday i will be 33 weeks. i was 33 weeks when i had maia. hard to think about him in there the same size. it will be her second anniversary soon but so far things have been ok. i am glad the sun is shining, warming my soul and lifting my spirits. hopefully it keeps up this week, maybe i will venture out. this sounds like i am sad but i'm not really. i have good chocolate cake waiting for me in the kitchen and marko is making me a decaf hazelnut latte, cohen never stops moving and really things couldn't be better. just thinking about time and the way that it stops and starts unexpectedly.

the kids are being restless in the alley, i suppose it was inevitable that we would have to endure the shenanigans of the skateboard set. with a little luck it won't be all night. as i sit inside under the covers in my pajamas at 9 o'clock on a friday night listening to inebriated youth spilling out on the street i am reminded just how old i am, just how long ago that was me. it is refreshing. i like it in here warm and familiar. that reminds me that today i saw a store that was called a "lifestyle boutique", it contained racks and racks of yoga clothing, yoga mats and no doubt yoga dvd's. it got me thinking, how come no one has a boutique for my lifestyle? flannel pajamas, fuzzy slippers, bubble baths, big bowls to hold all the popcorn, electronic gadgets to make life easier. all of the things necessary for a general malaise. maybe that is the thing though, us relaxers are too busy relaxing to venture into business? maybe if i could go to work in my pajamas it would be worth it? something to ponder.

i will leave you with a treat that i know at least one person who reads my blog would appreciate. you know who you are and it is out little secret. for me it is a little like pornography...and no not for john fogerty. there i have admitted it. i guess now in am supposed to feel free?

off to watch narnia now, or at least the first 20 mintues until i fall asleep...

as time passed us by we never felt like we should we never did what we ought to

i only just now realized that the last post had an offensive title plus i see that i have had an influx of comments recently, perhaps it is true what they say about controversy being popular?

so i have decided that all you can eat establishments are not designed for pregnant women. last week i went to the mongolian bbq and i could not even finish one bowl. then tonight we went to the indian buffet and my one plate proved more than i could handle. even at that i had to lean forward and hobble to the canadian tire fearful that at any moment a burp could take a wrong turn. i think dinner is becoming more and more over rated anyway. i think lunch is really where i should be focusing my energy. dinner is best slept through these days.

so some crazy lady started talking to me (or at least i think it was to me) on the bus today. she kept looking at my belly and saying congratulations over and over. she looked a little like a witch and i was concerned that she would curse me if i wasn't nice so i nodded a lot while she muttered. more and more i have moments where i think that maybe we should get a car, maybe it is time. but of course then we would have less money for toolboxes, drills, stainless steel garbage cans and the hundreds of other things we buy but don't actually need, late at night at canadian tire. but i guess that is our dirty little secret. besides i am almost used to the crazies so why give in now?

i think it would be best if i laid down now, i am still digesting the butter chicken and it seems as though digestion is about all i have energy for tonight. it is much harder than one would think.

this job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers

is this for real? you just shouldn't mess with an original.

now look at the price of these and shake your head.

that is all.

i had it but then i lost it and now i can't find it anywhere

so we are finally moved into the new place and so far so good although i am still finding it unsettling how some of our windows look into neighbours apartments.

this morning i saw him talking on the phone in his boxer shorts, his hands waving expressively in the air while she entertained an asian friend in the livingroom, large cups of coffee and laughs. their life size oil painting of a girl riding a bicycle makes me think they are artists and yet everynight they sit together, seemingly silent, watching tv. i can't quite make out what it is they are watching but i like to think that artists would be in turmoil most of the night, their hair a mess and their hands dirty with colour. not big bowls of popcorn and hours lying on a couch without any alcohol at all it seems. plus they are out during the day, artists never leave the house. so i guess i am probably wrong. this morning while pondering this it occured to me that they might be doing the same with me? i closed the blinds. these things take time to get used to.

three babies were expected, each a surprise, and yet all in a week they were revealed. three boys. a gang. a cluster. trouble. my boy will be the last of the pack which means i get to learn from the others trials. i also get to hear the stories filled with pain and chaos. i focus on relief, joy, exuberance. it is so much worse than you could imagine. perhaps some things are best left outside the imagination. i will take things one step at a time.