Check out these buns

If you're ever in Kingston dying for a good burger, try The Toucan.
I used to booze there when I was a Queen's University student but because I'm much more a Shiraz girl now than a Keith's girl, I don't drink there anymore.
However, the pub food is yummy in my tummy.
Usually the BF and I have the tex-mex burger, six-ounce patty with cheese, salsa and jalapeno peppers.
Caesar salad is also good.
French Onion soup is good.
Fries good.
It's laidback and the burgers are cheapo after 5 p.m. on Saturday.
We just took two 13 year olds there for dinner and ate every single bite.
(I had salad and soup to try and stave off the 50 pounds I fear I'm going to gain.)

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Hulk-size happiness

You could describe it as a temper tantrum.
For weeks, I had been stuffing myself into my size 10 clothes, the bigger ones.
I could no longer wear my skinny jeans but I could still get into some of my bigger pants and skirts.
Everyone kept telling me where to get the best clothes. So the boyfriend and I went. And there I stood staring at mommy clothes. The bad kind. Ugly, thin cotton, made-for-60-year-olds. This is what I was supposed to wear for the next six months.
I threw a sucky fit. Stomped out of the section and headed back to where I belonged. With the pretty stuff.
I grabbed every size 14 and 16 pant I could find and stomped to the change room.
I bought green shorts that didn't really fit. They fit around my big tummy but the butt, well, I could put five of my butts in them. I bought black capri pants that fit around my big tummy but the legs, well, the legs are so long it looks like I'm wearing floods. And I bought white pants that barely fit around my big tummy so they'll be toast in a week or two.
My mother insisted that there were better shops where she lived but I was doubtful.
Obviously the cool pregnancy clothes that I'm always reading about in magazines were only in the big cities.
Last weekend, we went to a store called Thyme.
I walked in, saw black pants, green pants, white pants, and jeans, that looked normal. I saw black shirts, green shirts, white shirts and tanks that looked normal.
It was like the heavens had opened up, sunshine was filtering down through the clouds, and I was being blessed by the pregnancy gods.
The pants have this special design. They look low-rise and sit just under your belly but there's also a thick piece of cotton that gently covers your baby belly. You can pull it up to your breast bone and then when the belly gets a little bigger, you roll the cotton down to give your belly and baby more support. Your shirt covers the cotton piece so that it looks like you're just wearing low-rise pants. The cotton bit is just between you, your pregnancy god and the baby.
Shopping for nice mat clothes last weekend was like going shopping after you've lost weight. You want to do moves around the changeroom that you learned in jazz class when you were a kid. Step-hop sashay, anyone?
I tried on everything and everything looked, well, good.
The pants fit in the stomach and in the bum and in the legs.
The shirts fit in the stomach and in the boobs and in the arms.
I would bounce out of the changeroom and you could see it on my mother's face. She knew I felt good and she felt happy that I felt so good. Again.
Everthing I loved, I bought. I also had to buy one white tank that was a little too small. It was a small and not a medium but I had just had my hair done the week before and I got purple dye on it so it was a you-break-it-you-buy-it purchase.
I'll need a nice maternity dress in June for a special event but I didn't buy it when I was at Thyme last weekend. One of the salespeople gave me the best juice ever: Apparently the Belleville Thyme is moving to Kingston in a couple of weeks.
Bring on the pants with the expandable belly room.
(They're also great to wear when you go out for dinner ...)

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Mom, Dad, we have something to tell you...

Nervously squeezing my partner's hand under the restaurant table, I looked at my parents, and told them I had something to tell them.
I had been worried about telling them for weeks and now, even though I didn't think it was exactly the right time, I had to tell them.
I couldn't think of another logical reason that I could give them for skipping my beloved glass of Shiraz. Surely, they were going to ask.
"Mom. Dad. We have something to tell you."
"You're going to be grandparents in August."
I studied their faces. My mom looked shocked but within seconds, she was jumping up from the table to hug us. My father got up and hugged me and shook his future son-in-law's hand.
My mother didn't know why I'd had butterflies about telling them such happy news: A first baby. A first grandchild. They're such beautiful, powerful phrases all on their own.
I think I was nervous because I felt like I was just springing this important news on them. In just a year and a half, I'd given myself a full-life makeover. Gone were my single carefree days when I'd drop hundreds of dollars in one day on hair, clothes, and lunch downtown with my girls. I was no longer just looking out for me. I'd started a new, complicated life with an older man who already has a family. We'd decided to share one car, my car, to save money. We went out for family dinners and planned family vacations. My downtown apartment lifestyle was no longer going to be able to accommodate our expanding brood. We needed a house. A large house fit for five people, plus friends, plus extended family.
And now, on top of all of this insanity (some might call it growing up), we are having a baby.
Of course they had a million questions: When did we find out? Who else knew? When is the due date? Do we know if it's a boy or a girl? Do we want to know? Names? Would the baby have my last name or his? What was the baby's first name?
I answered as many questions as honestly as I could (keeping in mind not to tell them too much so I wouldn't gross out my father). I told them we'd known for about two and a half months. No one else knew. The baby is due at the end of August. When we do pick a name, we're not going to tell a soul, not even our families and the baby would have his father's last name so that all of his children have the same surname. And I told them I'm sure, just based on a feeling, that it's a boy - to which my mother responded that she was sure it was a girl. It's a little unnerving proclaiming that our baby is a boy because if I'm wrong, I'm going to look like a bad mother, a bad mother with no intuition.And so far when it comes to baby, I've got a bad track record. I've been wrong before: I was sure that my parents were going to be shocked, speechless, even scared. I was, after all, doing this out of order. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby carriage but with us, the baby is coming before the wedding. But my parents are ecstatic. My mother has already claimed crib-buying rights. Circle your calendars: Aug. 27.

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Sticks and Stones ...

OK, I know I'm supposed to be 29 and mature and all that stuff but two weekends from now, I will be going to see Stick It. It's the Karate Kid but with gymnastics. It's Bring It On but with gymnastics. It's 8 Mile but with gymnastics. Why, you ask? Why do I want see a film made for the cool kids?
Because it has the best line, like, ever.
One rude girl who torments another girl says: "They don't call it GYM-NICE-STICS."

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Ranting on rudeness

Do you think it would be rude if I came to you and asked: "Just wondering, but can you tell me if your marriage was a mistake?"
What if I asked whether your hair was really supposed to be that hue of orange?
Did you mean to be so average in your job?
Is it an accident that you're such a lousy parent?
Why did you marry such a stinky jerk?
I'm pretty sure if I asked you any of these things, I'd get:
A) A slap in the face;
B) A well-deserved verbal licking;
C) Disowned;
D) The silent treatment.
And yet, maybe because I'm so nice, or maybe because I don't have much of a backbone, I have listened to many people - I lost count after the number hit 10 - ask me perhaps the rudest question I've heard in my life and I don't want to hear it again.
Men and women, young and old, have heard my happy news that I'm pregnant, leaned in too close, looked around to see who's listening, and whispered: "Was it intentional? I mean, did you plan to have a baby?"
What is the proper response to that?
Do you think I'm going to tell an acquaintance that yes, indeedy, me and the boyfriend drank too much one night, came home, and oops, produced a baby?
Or am I supposed to proclaim my love for my partner and go into great detail about how in love we are, and yes, it's true, this child was well-planned, fully thought out, and more wanted than any other child on this Earth?
It's perhaps the rudest thing anyone has ever asked me.
And I'm not sure why I get the question. I think it could be because some see me as a cold career woman who's blinded by the light of success. Others, who don't know me well, hear me talk about my purple hair and my knee-high suede boots and think I'm conceited and too full of myself to care about a child. But my No. 1 theory about why people have the gall to ask me the question is, I'm not married.
Whatever the reason, it's inappropriate so I have an offer for you: Don't ask me whether my baby was a mistake and I won't ask you why you choose to wear pants that creep up your butt.
It's none of your business and it's none of my business either.




.

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Of eggs, urns and houses

When I was a little girl, one of my favourite days of the year was Easter,
not so much because I loved chocolate but because I loved finding the
pink-foil wrapped eggs.

I was a bit of an overachiever and so every year, it was my mission to find
more chocolate bunnies, peanut butter eggs and yellow marshmallow chicks than my younger brother. I knew all of my mother's - oops, I mean the Easter Bunny's, hiding spots. Every year, eggs were tucked into the piano bench. They lined our front-hall banister and were always set on top of our Robert Bateman prints. Every year, when we thought the hunt was done, my mother, acting on behalf of The Bunny, would tally the eggs in our baskets and realize that we were missing a few. Some years we found them, other years, months after Easter, my mother would suck them up when she was vacuuming under the couch cushions. By the time my brother and I were older, we'd become masters at finding our treats and so The Bunny had to be cunning about where to hide them. One Easter, when I was about 13 years old and my brother was nine, my mother announced that there were still a few goodies missing. We'd been to the usual places - the piano bench, the banister, the prints and to the new ones - inside the Lazy Susan, in my father's running shoes (gross) and in between my Lady Diana and Casa Loma souvenir spoons that hung on racks in our family room. I remember when my mother announced there were missing eggs, my brother and I both honed in on what seemed to be a new vase in our front hall. We both made a dash to it. Just as we were about to try and pull off its lid, my mother and father both yelped at us not to touch it. The vase was actually an urn, a resting place for our dog Max, our schnauzer who'd died recently. My father had set it down there the night before and had forgotten to move it. Finding the urn took the thrill out of hunting for more eggs but now, more than 15 years later, the story has become the stuff of Crosbie legend. It has been 10 years since I left my parent's house and called Kingston home and during that time, I have lived in one university residence and six apartments. All the moving has meant that I don't have any strong attachment to any of my homes. That's about to change. This time next year, I will be buying chocolate eggs to hide around my new house - a three-bedroom, four-level sidesplit with air-conditioning, hardwood floors, a newer roof and shingles, newer windows, ceramic tile in the front hall, a fireplace in the living room and a new kitchen. Not to mention a second bathroom.
Bring on the Robert Bateman prints.

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What's in a 10-name name?

It's a good thing we as adults don't have to stick to promises we made to ourselves when we were children.

When I was a little girl, I swore my first car was going to be a red Camaro, the kind with the grey stripe at the bottom. I also said I was going to wear blue to my wedding. Oh, no wait a second. That could still happen. But the one thing I'm glad I got over was the name I wanted to give my first daughter. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the worst name that luckily never came to be:
Liberty Hannah Faith Zoe Samantha Jessica Stormi Kirsten Tory Crosbie.
I kid you not.

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The Truth

I read it in one of my books: Lie down flat on the floor with your hands at side and you will feel it.
Every day for the past few weeks when I've been alone, I've taken a deep breath and stretched out on the floor. And waited. And waited. And waited.
Sometimes, I think I've felt something. Was that it? Ah, no. That's my heartbeat.
Other times when I think I've felt something, I've remembered what others have told me: It could just be a gas bubble.
Today, just around noon, when the boyfriend was primping in the bathroom, I took to the floor again, put my hands by my side and waited. And waited. And waited.
Was that it? Nope, heartbeat.
Was that it? No, that was the broccoli and cheese quiche I had for breakfast moving around in my tummy.
And then, I felt it.
It was just one little pop.
I screamed, or maybe I yelped.
The boyfriend came running and saw me lying on the bedroom floor with soaking wet hair, wearing nothing but underwear and thought I'd toppled over, fallen, tripped.
"What's wrong?" he said, staring at me, worried that I'd hurt us.
"Nothing," I said and smiled sweetly back at him.
"I just felt the baby move."

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