{the blessed return of the tinsel tree}

One of my favourite nights of the year is the one where we drag the tree box out of the basement. We make hot drinks and something sweet and watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the Boris Karloff one, not the Jim Carrey one) and hang ornaments and listen to the right kind of music. It's the coziest thing ever. The little tinsel tree is on its fifth year, which is spectacular for something we bought at 92% off at Canadian Tire. I think it grows a little in magic and stature every year.  However, it also seems to eat its ornaments every year during its basement hibernation, and so, every year, we have to buy and/or make new ones. And, every year, there is that age-old (five-year-old) dilemma: what do we put on the top? One year, it was a newspaper star, and one year we couldn't think of anything at all so we left it bare.

This year, after some festive hemming and hawing, and a quick inventory of what we had to work with, we twisted some wire around some other wire and made a big wire-y star. It suits our tacky space-age Charlie Brown Christmas tree and we are pleased as punch.  Now there is only the problem of how to get anything in life done when all I want to do is lay under the tree like a five year-old and eat chocolate. Too bad self-control isn't on sale at Canadian Tire for 92% off. 

{let it drop}

There are only two months, give or take a few days, until I meet the little boy in my belly face to face. I'll be honest about it: I'm completely terrified out of my mind. Which, I think, is not a bad or strange thing to be.

(Especially because back when it was looking like I might not be able to get pregnant, I consoled myself sometimes by reading horrible birth story blog posts and horrific online articles with names like, "What No One Told You About Childbirth". This was a terrible, terrible idea for a coping mechanism, because now I'm just thinking about What No One Told Me About Childbirth all the time. You know why No One Told You? Because you don't want to know.)

But the point is not that. The point is that this whole thing has just gone by a lot faster than I expected.

I mean, I love him a lot and so I'm very excited to actually see him, but it's pretty wonderful being able to hold him so close to me all the time and not have to share him with anyone. I guess that makes me a greedy baby hog which, I think, is also okay.

But.

Time is like a piano falling from a twelve-story skyscraper. Nothing but matchsticks soon. Suzy, I say to myself sometimes, I say, Suzy: resistance is not only futile; it's stupid. Let it drop. 

So here I am at 32 weeks, right in the middle of my third trimester, with both an end and a beginning in sight. I'm tired, but I'm happy, and I'm afraid, but I'm excited. The nursery's not finished, but at least I've been remembering to take my vitamins.  

{on location}

About a month ago, the local cable channel called to ask if I could be the on-location reporter for the Grey Cup stuff happening in town this year.

I said, "Well, I don't really like or follow football." Because I'm not athletic at all and I don't get sports and I don't get people who are all fanatical about them. And if you know anything at all about Regina, the Roughriders, or the Grey Cup, you'd know that 'fanatical about them' is probably the biggest understatement of all time. I said, as an afterthought, "Actually, I really hate football. Is that okay?"

And they said, "That's okay; you should just pretend you like it when you're on the camera."

And I said, "Okay."

And then I hung up the phone and said, "Why did I say okay?" to my empty kitchen. My appliances just looked back at me, blankly. They probably thought I was crazy.

But, yesterday, there I was right in the thick of a massive crowd of green and white, wearing a CFL toque, a media badge, and a grossly over-sized football jersey that said Access 7 on it. A middle-aged woman with green paint on her face was screaming in my right ear and a college guy in a green kilt and wig was hollering in my left. My co-host was distressed about the size of our jerseys (when we'd been given them, the producer had asked us, "Large or X-Large?"), and the cameraman was distressed that I kept calling the extro an outro. There is, apparently, no such thing as an outro. But I'd never heard that before.
I just kept pretending I loved football. I even sort of cheered when they brought the Grey Cup out. I did not, however, cheer for the mascot when he made his grand entrance--he is a nameless man inside of a giant stuffed gopher, and that felt like a bit of a stretch for me.

Anyway. It was alright. It actually at points kind of felt like a Juno week reunion; I ran into a bunch of the same reporters and cameramen, and even saw this guy again. Except, instead of Much Music and Metric, it was TSN and Wes Cates. And instead of taking pictures for blog posts and running the media centre, I was in front of the camera getting interviews and footage for an hour-long football special.

I'm headed back in a few minutes. I'm still in my sweats and haven't done my hair or eaten lunch, so excuse me if this post ends off on a weird, unfinished note. I gotta go get ready. Like now.

Go, football. Right?

{hermit}

I've been feeling reclusive lately. Like I could just spend all day alone, cleaning my house and doodling and listening to podcasts and reading and being, in general, just a little boring. Which is good, actually, because I have {lots of} {fun} work piling up in my inbox and the floor always needs sweeping and next week is going to be full of being exactly the opposite of introverted anyway.

So I spent a little bit of the morning with my pencil crayons and some weird, quiet Icelandic music. And it rained. And I'm happy.

{procrastination}

It's snowing outside and the roads are all glassy. I'm happy with it though, because I'm tucked away in my office drinking cocoa and working on stuff that doesn't involve driving anywhere. Bad weather is always so pretty from not out in it.

I got an email from Society6 this week announcing the option of adding mugs to the shop. They're pricey, but I decided to make some anyway. (Because I needed to procrastinate on something while I figured out how to go about it. Now I need to get on that other thing, but it's always nice to have something to step away to when you hit a brain block.) And then I found that, while I'd been completely ignoring Soc6 in much the same way as I've been largely ignoring most social media lately, they added tote bags and throw pillows to the mix also. Plenty of procrastination material there.

{Do any of you have Society6 shops? They're so much fun. You just post your stuff, and then people buy it and the money shows up in your account at the end of the month. If you don't have one, consider it. If you do have one, leave me a link in the comments so I can see! Mine's here: www.society6.com/suzy}

{the adams family}

On our last day in Vancouver, we had a chance to meet up with Barclay's sister and her little family. We walked across the bridge to Granville Island, loaded up on bread and cheese at the market, and ate it by the water while her son chased birds and threw leaves in the air. We hadn't seen them since last Christmas and so it was that we learned something about babies: they grow up. Fast. From there, we headed over to Kits Beach and hung out on the sand for a while. I could've stayed there for days, honestly. Oceans get to me the way that orchestras do.

Why doesn't every city have an ocean? If I were elected prime minister, or mayor, or class president, or whatever, I'd make that happen. I give you my word.  But the sad truth is that you can't just sit in front of the ocean forever. People will start to wonder about you and you'll start to grow seaweed instead of hair from your follicles and, besides, you'll get very cold come November.
We finished off the day the same way we began it: searching for food, finding food, eating food. Too much food, probably.

I mean, too much food, absolutely. Them's the breaks.

The great part about them living in BC is that you have to go somewhere beautiful to see them. The hard part is that you can't see them by staying where you are. Saying goodbye is always sad because who knows when we'll see them again?

Hopefully soon.