Adventure Abounds, Or So I'd Like To Imagine

Well, folks, the living room is making progress. It's beginning to look more like a home and less like a UPS shipping center. I'm quite proud of myself, really.

The phone has already been busy this morning with various business issues to accomplish before Grasshopper arrives.

Slowly a carseat issue is getting fixed enough to make me okay with Graco Canada, though not thrilled. (The car seat issue has actually been one involving more culture shock than I'd like to admit. Dealing with the French in Montreal, the laws of Canada that make Graco USA unwilling to even mail me a piece of fabric or a rain cover accessory to my Washington post office box, and the whole being an assertive American living in courteous Canada hasn't been exactly a walk in the park.) If companies hired folks with old-fashioned common sense and the ability to know what the golden rule looks like in customer service to be CEO's, I bet we'd be having a lot less bail outs, and a lot more satisfied and thrilled customers. And if Canada and the United States could work together to agree on safety standards, I bet there would be one very happy redheaded immigrant.

We have snow. This means I don't get to go anywhere today. BC's Lower Mainland handles snow about as well as Florida would handle frost. We just don't get it often enough to know what to do with it. It's funny how the rules change when you're married and about to give birth in just a few weeks. Suddenly, your average 16 year old has more privileges than me. But that's actually okay. I'd rather be safe and sound than stranded in a ditch in premature labor on my own.

We plan to decorate the tree this weekend. I'm hoping to make truffles today, and maybe do some other baking in the coming days.

My husband has work for at least the week, and that is a blessing. While I was looking forward to having him home, I know we need the work during this season more than I need his time. If I'm patient, I'll get 12 days of time with him, and then a week more after the baby arrives.

I was going to enter a writing contest, but am just not feeling the inspiration. Maybe next month.

We had a freezer adventure with our brand new upright, and it appears to be calming down at long last. We lost shrimp, scallops, and a few other things. My husband was able to save the rest of the meat, including the whole salmon we plan to make for my parents when they come to meet Grasshopper. My berries are all a little mushier for their time outside in barrels, which is kind of sad considering how long it took me to freeze them individually on cookie sheets before vacuum sealing them in bags for the freezer. But they aren't ruined or rotten, so I'm grateful. My hours spent making soups and sauces appear to be saved as well, for those stayed mostly solid in the barrels outside while we waited for the repairman to come. It is truly a blessing that we got one of our rare below freezing cold snaps of the year right when our freezer decided to malfunction. So far, it appears to be working with the adjustments made yesterday by the angel of a repairman.

Our boiler adventure is still ongoing, but we have warm water, so we're surviving nicely. We do need to get it resolved though so our heat will work properly. And we need to get our gas fireplace fixed so that corner of the house can be warm if BC gets another cold snap like this one. For now though, it's nice to actually feel cool even with an automatic little heater kicking and shoving his bum into my ribs. My husband wears a toque in the house and multiple layers. Too bad he can't take a turn carrying Grasshopper under his ribs.

And that is our life right now. My most exciting hopes for the week involve a trip across the border to get one box from my mom after seeing my doctor for my now weekly appointments. My mom is sending another box, but I'm hoping they won't both be there tomorrow, because the border guards might not be so generous with letting me pass duty free. So here's hoping it's spaced out well enough to enable me to make another trip early next week.

So maybe, just maybe, it will feel like Christmas while it's still December. The one good thing going for me in that aspect is where I'm at in terms of waiting for Grasshopper. It sure makes the whole Mary and Joseph giving birth in a stable thing a lot more real and understandable.