Happy Birthday Mom

It's my Mom's birthday!

Anyway this is what's been happening this week:

I've started working at this financial company. It's a place where rich people hide their money from being taxed by making charitable donations. I got this job throught one of my many temp agencies who recently decided "Hey, this girl's pretty cool. We should give her work."

My job is looking through files to find specific documents, faxing the documents to the next room, then putting the files back where they came from. It's meanial, but it's easy and the people I work with are friendly.

The good thing about my job is that it's right near the lake, so I always eat my sandwich there at lunchtime. One time I saw a whole flock of monarch butterflies, beautiful. They must have been migrating because the very next day it started getting cold.

I work with this Irish lady who is totally amazed at how unpregnant I look and how enormous my breasts are. Yesterday we went to the employment agency together to pick up our cheques, and she told the employment agency that I was pregnant. I hadn't told them yet, and my Irish colleague felt bad to have outed me. "It's okay", said I. If I wanted to keep it a secret I wouldn't have worn my "Yummy Mummy" t-shirt. "Aren't her boobs massive?" said the Irish lady.

Anyway, once again, happy birthday MOM! (My Mom is the greatest. All my friends know my Mom and say how cool she is, even when they only met her once or twice. I'd give examples, but you'd really have to meet her to experience her full coolness.) Go Mom!

BTW: Yes I know this post wasn't really about my Mom, but she likes to know what's going on with my life.

The Name Game

As you can see on the right, my husband has created a mini poll so all you bloggers can have a say in the naming of our baby. I predict that all the names Adam likes best will win (he likes to cheat and vote several times). Oh look, I see the vote is 100% William. What a surprise. Anyhoo, I thought I'd provide you with some pros and cons to influence your voting.

William
Meaning "helmet of will" or "determined protector"
Pros:

• It was my grandfather's name
• It was Adam's uncle's name
• It has a bunch of different short forms to choose from: Will, Willy, Bill, Billy, Liam
• It's been around forever and nobody is likely to think that it's a weirdo name or an old man's name

Cons:

• My grandfather went by his middle name (Allen) anyway
• Our friends Becca and Drew are probably going to name their son William (and Becca's going into labour first)
• I'm worried that it will be too common. As a Jennifer among millions, I wouldn't want to do that to my son
  

Payton
Meaning: Village of the Warrior
Pros:

• I dunno, it's okay

Cons:

• But only okay

Rogan
Meaning: red-haired
Pros:

• It sounds okay

Cons:

• Our child is unlikely to have red hair
• It sounds a bit like a girl's name. I'm reminded of Rogue from X-men

Eret
Meaning: Honour
Pros:

• It's actually a fun bastardisation of my Mom's maiden name "Ehret"
• Other children are unlikely to have the same name
• The meaning is cool

Cons:

• I don't think my mom even likes her maiden name
• My husband's Polish relatives are unlikely to pronounce it properly

Allen
Meaning: Precious
Pros:

• It was my grandfather's name (or, you know, his middle name)
• It sounds good

Cons:

• It doesn't go well with Adam, which Adam wants to be the middle name.

Clayton
Meaning: clay settlement
Pros:

• It sounds okay
• We can call him Clay

Cons:

• I can't stop thinking of the kid from the Adam@home comic
• The meaning is lame

Bruce Wayne
Meaning: Thicket, woodland (Bruce), wagon-maker (Wayne)
Pros:

• My nephew will be super-pleased because it was his suggestion
• Batman's cool
• It actually doesn't suck as bad as 98% of the names out there

Cons:

• Oh, come on, it's not as if we'd actually consider it

Something Else
Your suggestions are welcome. Keep it mind it must go with the last name Filipowicz (so Philip is out, as is anything that starts with F.)

Bullets but no points

• I got a job and then lost it without working a shift. It was part-time office work through one of my employment agencies, a trucking company that needed a "woman's touch" in the office (no kidding that's how the job was described to me). Apparently the truckers randomly decided they needed someone who had worked at a trucking company before.
• This morning my husband made himself a sandwich for breakfast: swiss cheese, turkey meat, and strawberry creamcheese on a cinnamon raison bagel. Ew!
• I'm going to see a movie this afternoon with my sister and my nephew. Something called Everyone's Hero. Looks cute.
• My husband made a looping version of my ultrasound DVD. Now I can leave it on the tv all day and see my son everytime I walk by.
• For about $150 I can get a 3-D ultrasound (where the baby actually looks like a baby rather than an alien skeleton). I think I'll ask for it for my birthday.
• We're having trouble with names. We had picked out William, but suddenly I'm seeing Williams everywhere. As a Jennifer, I know how sucky it is to have a common name. I don't want to do that to my son. My husband doesn't care as long as his Polish relatives can pronounce it.
• My nephew wants his cousin to be named "Bruce Wayne". It was also the name of his fish.

Jailbreaks, Geishas and Hamburger Yogourt

I dreamt last night that me and my friend Eireann were cell mates in jail. Except our "jail cells" were more like the pens you find in petting zoos. At first we were just hanging out, doing our make-up to look like geishas (because we thought there might be some activity at the jail where we had to look like geishas) but then we decided to escape.

All we had was a backpack each. I pulled something out of my backpack and picked the lock on our pen and we ended up in the pen right beside ours. Our plan was to convince the guard, who was a geisha, to let us out of the building. When the geisha/guard came, she stepped over the the fence to join us in the pen (yes, it was that low). She was nice, but she wouldn't let us out of the building because she was afraid to get in trouble. The warden came by just then and all three of us hid (really obviously by ducking down and covering our heads, since there was no furniture or anything to hide behind).

Seeing that we had managed to get out of our cell, the warden put Eireann and I in another cell. This one was outdoors and was basically a chain-link fence with a hedge on top of it. The warden wanted to be sure we wouldn't escape, so he asked us (first Eireann, then me) to demonstrate how we might climb the fence to get out. I climbed over easily by grabbing onto the hedge and putting my feet in the links of the fence. The warden left, to get some barbed wire or something.

Fortunately there was a very obvious hole that someone had cut in the fence and it lead right onto the street. We were going to leave but we didn't have our backpacks. I called for the warden and told him that I needed a change of clothes and could he bring me and Eireann our backpacks. He agreed and went to get them from the trunk of his car. Our plan was to leave through the hole as soon as we had our stuff.

The warden got us our backpacks but he didn't leave. Instead he sat down with us to eat some yogourt. I kept wishing he would go away so we could escape. I took a yogourt that looked like peach but when I opened it, I saw that it had pickles, grated cheese, and a little hamburger meat in it. I realized that I had picked hamburger flavour by accident. Gross. I ate it anyway.

BTW: If anyone wants to view a slightly better resolution of my ultrasound, check out this google video link:
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-1013516036862659327

It's a boy!

My son (that's right SON) is now the star of his very first film! Hopefully you can view this masterpiece above, I don't know, I'm a video-posting virgin (though obviously not an actual virgin). The husband transferred it from the VHS they sold us at the ultrasound place (VHS is all they had. I think they just upgraded from cave painting.)

Anyway I'm super duper excited that there's a real person in my uterus, with genitals and everything! I really hope the video shows up, you can see his little hands, and his little feet, and his little brain (well, actually it's quite a large brain, you can tell he'll be a smart kid). It's a boy! Woohoo!

My life as a working mom (temporarily)

For the past two days (Mon, Tues) I've been temping at this place called Claybrooke, enjoying many hours of mindnumbing menial labour. My duties included:

• Rolling up posters,
• Sorting posters and other in-store signage for Future Shop and Telus Mobility,
• Taping up boxes, sometimes using that super gluey tape that makes fingers all uggy,
• Putting stickers on boxes,
• Packing skids with boxes (this is kind of like setting up to play Jenga).

Not too bad, easy stuff. My body isn't used to working though and I'm pretty tired. Especially since yesterday I had to go directly to class afterwards. When you start work at 8:30am, getting home at 11pm is just not cool.

The offspring has been kicking a lot lately. Not while I was working, but on the train to class, during class, and at around three in the morning when I was sleeping. I think that last time the little tyke was providing a service, waking me up to tell me I had to pee. What a good little baby. Even though it's way too early to feel the baby move from the outside, Adam puts his hand on my belly everytime I say I feel a kick. Pregnancy is a little one-sided and I can see how a guy can feel left-out when he gets none of the signs that his kid is on the way (other than the fact that his wife is getting curvier and occasionally pukes). Adam also got a stethoscope because he read somewhere that at this time you should be able to hear the baby with it. (BTW: the brand of the stethoscope is "Colorpro". The hell? What kind of colours can you get from a stethoscope exactly?) Anyway, the husband had fun listening to me digest pizza and pretending it was his son/daughter.

Pig update: Lokai seems okay, not showing any signs of sickness, or grief. With Bele gone though, he does seem a bit bored. He chases himself around the cage and it's just not the same. I've been feeding him carrots to ease the pain (he'll have fewer treats now that he has noone to steal them from).

Adam's got a blog too

Not to steal to much limelite from Jen's Blog, but I have one too
and ive just posted! http://simianguy.blogspot.com

Bele Filipowicz 2005-2006

Yesterday he was his usual chubby furry self. Today...

I went to the Lokai and Bele's cage to make sure they had enough food and water. Lokai squeaked and chirped the way he always does when there's even a slight possibility of carrots coming his way. Bele has always been the shyer, more skittish of the pigs so I didn't think it odd that he wasn't coming out of his hut to greet me. Then I saw him, lying stretched out, not moving or breathing. I knew he was dead, but I didn't really believe it. I still don't.

The thing is Bele was so young, a teenager by guinea pig standards. So why, why, WHY, did he go so soon? I don't know. Here's some things I do know:

• Bele died in his favourite place, his Riu Palace wooden hut.
• He had plenty of food and water, so he didn't go hungry or thirsty.
• He was loved.

Bele is survived by his adoptive parents, myself and Adam (though my husband hates it when I refer to the rodents as his children), and by his brother Lokai.

Algonquin Anniversary

It seems like only yesterday that Adam and I knotted ourselves together, but it's actually been a whole year (and one day). We celebrated the milestone by taking a weekend camping trip (bonus that our anniversary falls on Labour Day Weekend). I still have that cold (no pukies though), but at least I had plenty of used Kleenex with which to kindle our campfires. Anyhoo here are some pictures:


Some fine campfire cuisine. No, we were never able to get the corn quite right even though we tried soaking it, not soaking it, wrapping it in foil, not wrapping it in foil, and cooking it at various lengths of time. We finally declared it the fault of the corn and vowed never again to buy corn for 99 cents/dozen. The potatoes turned out yummy though. And the S'mores. Yum!


No moose this trip, but we did enjoy the antics of the chipmunks that lived around our campsite. Here they are having a meeting. Even they wouldn't eat our corn.


I asked Adam to send me some pictures that truly represented our trip and he sent me this one. I assume it represents our trip because a) it was taken during our trip and b)I am wearing Adam's shirt in the picture, something I often do while camping. He also sent me a picture of yours truly coming out of the washroom. My darling husband pointed out that I spent most of my time there. True, my bladder isn't what it used to be, but to be fair my body is trying its best to get rid of a nasty virus (and whose fault is that Mr. Filipowicz?). Anyway, I looked horrible in the washroom shot and refuse to post it.

In other news, I heard on the radio on the way home that The Crocodile Hunter was killed by a manta ray. I saw a documentary on manta rays not too long ago and they seemed like such nice folks. You just never know.