Just A Little Off Kilter....

24 week belly Happy weekend you lovely peoples!

I have been excited about this week for a while...I am now officially six months pregnant. Does anyone else find that hard to believe? I literally live for Thursdays at the moment. Not just because it's one day away from the start of the weekend, but because every Thursday, baby and I grow a teensy little bit more and I can tick another week off my pregnancy countdown. I now have just 16 weeks left. It's my sixth month of pregnancy. This baffles me because six months is always the month people use when they go: "Oh she looks like she's about six months pregnant!" And if people say that about me I can now say: "HA! I am!" Life at 24 weeks... This may sound insane but you have no idea how much I love this little wriggler. It's like counting down to Christmas when you are little but SO much more exciting. I don't know if I am much bigger this week, mainly because he likes to switch position so often that often that my bump doesn't real

If Leonardo da Vinci posted the Mona Lisa on Instagram today, it would get 30 likes, tops. via 

Yes, I am a grown ass woman. Yes, I have a very (had) "adult" job and yes, I still face bullies. Their tactics get more insidious as you get older but bullies are still out there. They may be long time players or they may just be hitting their bullying stride as people who were formerly victims and seeking revenge on the world. Regardless, they can be easily managed. I am so over them. Now get those Chumbawumba lyrics in your head and get ready to "get up again" with these simple pieces of armor. All bullies have a weak spot Remember when Buffy finally had the “a ha!” moment with Turok Han, the ubervamps? Well, even they can be dusted. You just need to cut off his head. My point is not that you should cut off a bully’s head or kill him/her but simply that everyone has their vulnerable spot. This is comforting to know deep down when you are facing a bully. I repeat, do not try to literally cut off his/her head (just know that you could). All bullies are afraid of som

Sometimes speaking your mind is harder than it should be. Whether it’s confronting an intimidating coworker or telling your BFF you don’t approve of her actions, occasionally we find ourselves hushing our hearts in difficult situations. This is a huge problem because the more you hush your heart, the more likely it is to freak out, and eventually get into screaming matches with people. No one likes a fight, but what do you expect when you bottle up your feelings? Of course they will ultimately Molotov Cocktail your relationships. But the good news is you don’t have to wage war to have feelings or let them be known. All you need is honesty and love, and you can never go wrong. Sounds too simple, right? That’s because it is. Personally, I absolutely abhor confrontation of any kind. The lyrics to the theme of the cartoon The Grinch Who Stole Christmas also double for how I deal with conflicts– wouldn't touch them with a thirty nine & a half foot pole, dude. But coping with quarrel

Today I am 22 weeks 5 days pregnant! This morning we had our Level II ultrasound and OB appointment. Why a Level II you might be wondering...I have a PFO ( patent foramen ovale) a  small hole in my heart. It's a congenital heart defect. Because of this, baby automatically gets a Level II. While baby's heart and all of his other bits look great, we discovered that I have a marginal cord insertion. What this means is that the umbilical cord is attached near the edge of the placenta instead of the usual spot, which is in the middle. As it stands now, maintain the status quo. Once I enter the 3rd trimester, I'll have extra monitoring and appointments in the high risk clinic at the hospital.  A marginal cord insertion raises the risk of baby not getting what he needs and could result in lower birth weight so we  will keep a close watch to ensure that he's growing properly. My OB  assured us that while this raises the risk some, most pregnancies proceed normally with a

Je suis à Québec avec ma soeur...

Eighteen.  Twenty two weeks down, eighteen to go. It's surreal to be past the halfway point in this pregnancy. Crazy even!  While I'm finding it hard to be thankful for things like constipation, morning sickness, and the inability to see one's own feet, there are plenty of things about pregnancy I am thankful for.  Here are a few... A supportive partner Adam has been amazing. The love that I see radiating from him for baby boy and I is just the most incredible thing to be on the receiving end of. Pure joy.  A whole new outlook Pregnancy has taught me to be thankful for my own body. The opportunity to experience human growth and development inside of me has made me more understanding and compassionate of people in general. I 'get it' now. I get sacrifice. I get heartbreak. I get unadulterated happiness. I get unconditional love.  Ultrasounds That first ultrasound was a knee-weakening dose of reality, and subsequent ones gave us the chance to spy

Before you get all smug about "science" ask yourself why no microwave can penetrate the heart of a lasagna. via Epic Objects

I keep my shoes, even though they’re worn down, even though they’re worn out. They are underneath my bed or lined along the walls. I admire them for what they were and the places they've gotten me. Sometimes I think about the places I ran from in certain shoes, usually boots from the winter. There are holes in the bottom from my walks over sidewalks and gravel and sand. I remember all of the times I ended up in places I didn't intend to be, fueled by a curious mind and an eager spirit. My feet, like my shoes, were tortured by the conditions, and yet they kept moving, spurred by an uncontrollable desire to keep going. The going often led nowhere, but those few twists and turns that were fruitful make me less regretful. I used to own a pair of riding boots that I bought online...they were heavy and weird and perfect. I purchased them at the end of spring, their purpose during the unbearable summer rather pointless. I remember sitting on the stairs of my front porch and looking ou

My last day or work! I took a voluntary layoff so at 21 weeks 1 day...I am officially unemployed. There are mixed emotions about this. Emotions that I'm going to have to process in the coming weeks and months. I do have a plan (and an online PMP certificate) to keep me busy and I think the key to my sanity is going to be maintaining some kind of schedule...but I guess we'll see just how sane I am (apart from my usual insanity of course) in a few months time.  Happy weekend!

21 weeks into this pregnancy and I have to admit...I NEED cheese. I've been thinking of cheese so often, I decided to write a letter to the inventor of cheese and to thank them for making this pregnant lady very happy and full.  Dear Inventor of Cheese, Oh my goodness. Oh my word, you invented cheese. You did...you! One day, you just had all this milk from these cows that you maybe already owned or "borrowed" from a neighbor and the next thing you knew the milk was molding but it sort of looked delicious even though it smelled like farts. Maybe you were on some sort of old timey version of Benadryl for your strange bovine allergy...like some kind of hallucinatory elixir that gave you the munchies real bad, so you thought to yourself, "Why not. I shall eat this stinky, smelly, moldy lump of cow excretion and then I shall call it cheese". I think about you on a daily basis, I do. Sometimes up to sixteen times a day (but never seventeen). Mostly, I wonder what

I hope no videos surface of the time I opened a bag of potato chips and one flew out and hit me in the eye and I cried a little.

Writing is such a vulnerable and personal thing to share because it is the only way people can ever get a glimpse into your mind and understand how it is that you process the world as you experience it. Even as someone reads a letter you have written, they are in direct communication with your thoughts and heart. Generally, I prefer to write on actual paper. I used to buy my journals from the nearest bookstore, before I just stopped buying them. I’d select the smoothest pages and take home the journals that were either college-ruled or unlined, and maybe had a beautiful design on the cover. I've noticed though that as times passes, I write on paper/in my journal less and less. I send less personal letters and cards. I still dream up stories but when the time comes to sit and write a story, my fingers get antsy and my neck gets stiff. I worry that I won’t create the connection that must exist between reader and author. I remember the compliment from a former friend who said, “You’re

nor·mal·i·ty nôrˈmalitē/ noun noun: normalcy the condition of being normal; the state of being usual, typical, or expected. "let's try to get some normality back in our lives" synonyms: normalcy, business as usual, the daily round That's my goal for the coming days...find some balance and a sense of normality. In my last post, I let you know that I had been sick with a gastro bug that landed me in the hospital for a few days. Well...that evil gastro bug made a reappearance and once again I ended up back in the hospital. Last Thursday at 20 weeks 0 days, I spent a few hours at Labor & Delivery with contractions. As you can imagine, contractions at 20 weeks was a horribly frightening experience and one that I would not like to repeat. The gasto bug caused me to become very dehydrated and the dehydration caused contractions. I'm very happy to report though although the contractions were coming every 7-8 minutes, they were never strong enough to make