I'm finally here again. This being my fourth baby, and wanting to preserve the ME I'd been remembering since the last time I grew a baby 7 years ago, I intended to document each week of these 9 months. You know, to really appreciate it, and to carry on my writing, and to share it with others. I started at Week 3ish, cause that's when I found out. Here are some preliminary excerpts. Check for a trend... Weeks 1-4 (last part) Thinking about how they (*my kids*) will welcome a baby is a beautiful thing, though. And holding on to myself through this process, as I write each week, is my future gift to all my children, and to myself. I hope others might enjoy as well.                 For now, though, I’m tired. Time to eat. See you next week.   Week 5 (last part) Well, I feel the laying down calling me, so I must heed that call. I might not be as inspired to write these next few weeks, cause first trimester and al...

My very favourite thrift shop closed a couple weeks ago. Life's bowl of terrible things has been picked from quite freely this year, hasn't it? Thrown into the bag! Thrown into our faces! Littered across the sidewalk! Dumped all over the carpet! Spilled all over the floor till it's seeped under the refrigerator! Need I go on? I've spent so many happy and sad and bored and lonely and restless and searching moments in that thrift shop over the years, ever since I moved to this neighbourhood in 2009.  There's a route I could take, when I walk to buy milk or eggs or toilet paper or something, where I'd get to pass by that shop. And I'd often choose it--that route--so I could look in the windows. The store always had such great window displays, and looking in them would get me excited for my next trip there. Sometimes I'd see something in the window display I might want to buy!  At Christmas time, when I was extra poor but wanted to keep the "let the kid...

Well, my Grandpa Ronnie died the other day, at age 85. Out of nowhere, really. On my birthday, really. His own mom, who we all called Nanny, had lived to 98! So yeah, 85? He'd be around at least another 10 years I think we all thought. But, a stroke thought differently. Anyway, he went fast, and peacefully. And with all his nearest and dearest around him. This isn't about that.  This is about the whole end of an era thing. And Grandpa Ronnie, and Grandma Mom.  It's about the whole end of an era thing like graduations births marriages divorces moves new jobs deaths...that kind of stuff. See, Grandpa Ronnie still lived in the home I spent a lot of my childhood at, starting back around 1985. It's the only physical place like that left, from my childhood. And it's going to have to go now. I will inherit pieces of it, and treasure photos of it, but I won't be in it again. I still remember the house they had even before 1985, with its wood paneling, its basement with ...

It's not like I did it for that long. But I was pretty prolific. Efficient.  Every so often, since I've been with Simon, I'll have a dream where I'm single again. For whatever reason. And I'll be back thinking oh no I "have to" date again. And it's mostly an icky, empty, scary feeling. Sometimes it sits with me even after I wake up, you know how dreams do that. And for a few time-is-weird-seconds(?) I'll still think it's real. And then the gift of realizing it isn't sinks in. Phew!, of course. Cause dating can be (mostly) awful.  But, there are things that happen in it, little windows, that help redeem it. Little pleasant years later memories. "Oh, that wasn't sooooooooo bad" kind of thoughts. Like today, when I was thinking of these little windows I remembered about people.  Mostly there's this guy who came to my mind today, and for the LIFE of me I CANNOT remember his name! Not that I'd put it here. But, it was one o...

  "The irony of loneliness is that we all feel it at the same time" Rupi Kaur If only I could believe that.  Cause I don't, really. Loneliness is something we all feel, and many of us feel it at the same time, and many of us don't. I believe that because sometimes I don't feel lonely. It is a beautiful poem either way...  but sometimes I don't feel lonely. And other people most certainly do. And sometimes I do. (Lately. Often.) And other people most certainly don't. Maybe it's the pandemic? The loneliness lately and often thing. Maybe it's the pandemic's trickle down and around and everywhere effect.  I received today, in fact, a post about loneliness from this guy I follow, Mark Manson. Basically saying what we all already know--that reports of loneliness are going up. That it's probably due to our current lifestyles--even pandemic aside--you know, how we have these individualistic cultures, we move away from our families, we are hooked on...