My house, about 5pm this afternoon.
Sean, yelling from downstairs: “Ouch!”
Melissa: “What happened?”
Sean: “I sat on something.”
Flora: “What did you sit on?”
Sean (still in pain): “Something important.”
Flora, without missing a beat: “The remote?”
After Sean and I laughed for a solid five minutes, Sean managed to say, “no, not the remote”.
Not sure if he’s walking quite right yet. Fortunately, we can still change the channel.
I love magazines. I’ve loved them for nearly as long as I could read.
When I was a kid, I stealth-read my mother’s magazines – she didn’t like me reading them even though the titles she read were pretty tame. My tween years were filled with pinup mags despite the fact I didn’t recognize half of the non-threatening teen boys they covered (we didn’t have cable till I was past the pinup mag stage). I spent my teens and twenties reading music, teen, and fashion mags by the armful.
Now that I’m in my thirties and a parent, my choice of magazines is changing again, but I’m struggling to find the perfect read. I feel like I’m straddling two demographics: woman and Mom. Of course, women can’t possibly be both of those things at the same time, so never shall the two demographics meet in one magazine. This makes me crazy. When will there be an article about how to clean kid’s snack residue out of your killer purse?
Recently I’ve felt like I’ve grown out of some magazines. I’ve decided not to renew my ten-year subscription to BUST because I think their niche is too small – hipster feminists who like to craft – I’m just not cool enough for that magazine anymore (not that I ever was, but I’m really feeling it now). I still read Glamour, but it’s a little fluffier (with a couple Serious Articles thrown in), and usually a bigger read.
I’ve subscribed to Chatelaine since their big redesign in 2008 and I enjoy it. I appreciate that they cover a bit of everything, but I wish they’d do more longer articles on Serious Subjects, as I think they do that very well. I’ve used several of their recipes and they have always turned out successfully.
I tried Canadian Family this month because I love their blog: Family Jewels, and their Twitter feed. I wasn’t disappointed, and will likely get a subscription soon. I love their down-to-earth tone. Parenting is Serious Business, but it’s also full of funny stuff, and I appreciate a magazine that gets that.
I saw an interesting ad in the May 2010 issue of Glamour magazine about “The Power of Print”. As a magazine-lover, the lead-in: “We surf the Internet. We swim in magazines.” really Has this ad come up in your monthly reads? Did you notice it? I think this is an American-0nly campaign, so it won’t show up in your Canadian reads.
If you know of any magazines that straddle the woman/Mom demographic, or are just good reads, let me know what they are in the comments. I would love to read them. Bonus points if they have a great online presence. Extra bonus points if that online presence works well in a mobile environment.
This morning, Sean and I tried to make the baby kick by putting headphones on my stomach. We played it songs we like, but Skeletor didn’t react in a way that I could feel. I thought I felt the baby move for the first time last Friday, but I don’t think I’ve felt it since. Maybe I’m just not paying enough attention. Or maybe the kid just doesn’t like our taste in music.
A couple of weeks ago, I had a blood test to assess my risk for some scary stuff (Down syndrome, Trisomy 18, and neural tube defects), and my test came back with a really high risk for spina bifida (a neural tube defect that results in the spinal cord not forming properly). This test doesn’t tell you if the kid has any of these things, only the risk/likelihood for the kid having them when it is born. So the next ultrasound we were to have was going to answer a lot of questions for us – how the baby was developing in general, how the spine was looking, and if we were lucky, the baby’s gender.
We had this ultrasound on Wednesday and Skeletor is looking less skeleton-like, and more like a baby. There was much squirming (the baby, not me – I was very well-behaved) and it look a long time for the sonographer to get all the measurements she needed to get. We were relieved to find out that being active generally means that the baby is healthy and incubating as it should. When the measurement part was done and the sonographer brought Sean in to see Skeletor on screen, the first thing he said when he saw the spine was “that looks like a normal spine!” And it did, but we’re not the experts, so how would we know. She showed us lots of Skeletor’s parts including the bum – I think we were mooned. We saw the heart beating, which was really neat. Just watching the kid swimming around in general is a wonderful thing. Ultrasound is really an amazing thing. And not just for seeing growing babies.
She confirmed that we wanted to know the gender, then told us that the baby looked to be a girl. She didn’t want to commit 100% (I suppose so we don’t paint the nursery pink and sue when Skeletor comes out with a dink), but showed us three lines on the baby that usually mean that the baby is a girl.
So, as far as we know, we’re having a daughter in September! It’s funny because I finally dreamed about the baby after it was born a couple of days before and it was a girl then too. Sean has been suspecting girl all along, but I wasn’t sure. I had been looking at baby clothes last Sunday and I was dying to purchase some adorable girl outfits, but since I wasn’t sure, I didn’t want to risk it. Girl clothes are just so much more fun. Not to compare babies with Barbies, but no one I know ever put as much effort into Ken’s outfits as they did into Barbie’s. Ken just had a couple changes of clothes, and he’d stay dressed for six months at a time. However, I always tried to dress my Barbies as tarty as I could. I don’t think I’ll be doing that to my baby.
Sean and I took Leia to the vet on Saturday for her annual checkup. She’s healthy, but did not want to get up on the examining table at all. Watching Sean trying to lift her up and hold her there was pretty funny since she is around 50 pounds and all legs. I tried to help, but between Sean, the vet and Leia, I figured there were enough arms and legs in the mix.
The funnier part was on the way home though. We were driving down Gerrard Street and we passed a middle-aged guy riding his bike. This would have been an unremarkable occurrence, but Sean pointed out that the guy’s butt crack was hanging out and we could see almost half of the guy’s behind.
Sean was mean and refused to slow down so I could take a picture and post it on this website. It’s not like I would have shown the guy’s face – that would be cruel. The picture would have been all butt, with some bicycle thrown in.
I don’t know how the guy didn’t notice – it’s late November and it is cold out. There was snow on the ground! Bums just aren’t meant to be exposed to this kind of weather!
Oh! My Ovaries! (Sound file)
I totally get where Bart is coming from.
I went and had some medical stuff done today. The mysterious ovary-area pain is back. Oh hooray! It’s been bugging me on and off since I got the all-clear back in January of this year (see this post and this post for what I had to say about it at the time), but it’s gotten more pronounced in the last couple of months.
I went to my doctor last Monday about it, and when she examined me, she didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary. This is good as it means that it’s unlikely that there is something obviously inappropriate in the area. However, since we don’t know what exactly *is* causing the pain, we’re doing the whole “process of elimination thing” to figure things out. Hence the tests. For starters, I did a urine test after my appointment. I hate peeing in a cup, and I’m sure most other women do too. I don’t know this for sure, but I imagine men have an easier time with that. Once that test was confirmed to be clear, I had to go and get both a pelvic and an abdominal ultrasound, as well as an abdominal x-ray. I did those this morning.
I was smart this time preparation-wise. I only drank half the water I needed to drink before I left the house. I left the house early enough that I could drink the other half on the subway. This resulted in a much more comfortable train ride. I ended up at the clinic about a half hour before it opened so I tried to ignore my now very full bladder by doing the crossword and sudoku in the paper. I didn’t finish either of them but they were welcome distractions. Considering that I was a walk-in patient, they had me in and on the table less than ten minutes after they officially opened. This is much better than the times that I have booked appointments and have sat with a bursting bladder waiting my turn. Getting there first thing was a good move.
The examinations themselves went well. I do wish they’d shown me the screen while they were doing stuff. It would have been neat to see various body parts from the inside. It was also lots of fun to walk past a bunch of people sitting and waiting for x-rays clutching my gown closed to finally empty my poor abused bladder. They were in gowns too so they were probably sympathetic, but it was a narrow hallway, so I hope my behind or my crotch (I don’t remember which way I was facing) didn’t get too close to their faces.
The funniest part of the morning was when my x-ray was just finishing up. I was lying on a glass table, and they had just taken the last picture when the table started to move really slowly. I thought I was done so I asked why I was moving. The technician rushed over and put a stop to that. I asked where the brakes were – turns out she had forgotten to set them, and she was very apologetic about it. I thought it was funny and was a little giggly about it, but I figured the table couldn’t move too far as it was on a track and was attached to some pretty large hardware. No harm, no foul.
I won’t know the results of any of these tests for at least a couple of weeks. I’m mostly not too worried about them, but I am puzzled. What the heck is going on with my ovary? And how can I make it knock that shit off?
