BMW X3 vs Hyundai Tucson

Hyundai Tucson $26k. Warranty: 5 years / 100,000km

BMW X3 $45k

Warranty: 4 years / 80,000 km

Ultrasound: Like tapping on the aquarium glass...

We had an ultrasound on Monday, which was pretty interesting experience. Andrew was with me for this one. The first one I had there wasn't really much to see except a pulsating peanut.

This time, there was WAY more to see. Arms and legs waving, hiccups, a head with eyes and a nose and mouth. Way more than a pulsating peanut.

Of course after I had a few moments of wonder and amazement I immediatly starting scoping out to see if I could see any dangler for a early determination of gender, and then scanning to see if I could detect any obvious problems with my Google medical degree. Two arms. Check. Two legs. Check check. Head. Check.

The sonographer was a very pleasant muslim lady who had a total poker face the entire time, she was calm, cracking a little joke here and there but I'm sure they are trained not to shriek in horror or gush all over someone and tell them its the most perfect fetus they've ever seen.

In order to get the shot they were looking for (the ultrasound was for a very routine test that measures something in the neck to identify genetic abnormalities) I had to get up and do a few belly dance moves to make junior change from its nice relaxed lounge chair position, when I got back on the table, it was upside down, and PISSED. Lots of flailing.

We thought it was amazing. We think the picture is brilliant and crisp and shows everything in perfect detail, we could see more on the screen, I swear. When we show it to other people they have to squint and stare and turn it on its end and then they say .....Oh....Iiiiiii see now.

Its like a magic eye poster. (or they are just being polite).

So many things. I'll start with the truck.

I bought a new truck tonight. Holy Crap. My first new car.

Its a Hyundai Tucson, V6, sparkly Mesa Red. I splurged for the auto starter so I never have to get in a too hot or too cold truck. Yay. Its is not the little white BMW X3 with black leather of my dreams but its close enough for less than half the money. As my mother used to say: The name is Ramsey, not Rockerfeller, and I'm more likely to be wearing Gap than Gucci.

What a draining experience buying a vehicle is. There is always another $20 or $50 or awesome special for you to get sucked into. Luckily Andrew was there to wheel and deal for me and we really milked the whole pregnant and too tired to put up with any crap thing.

I pick it up on Saturday am. I get to drop my piece of shit 11 year old Cherokee off, with its crappy air conditioning, crappy speakers, crappy brakes, no backup lights, funny clunking and rattling noises... Au Revoir!

Stay tuned for Vegas update and ultrasound photos....

Lululemon: My mother would kill me if she knew how much these shorts cost....

Being pregnant and seeking comfort around every corner has lead me to Lululemon. I used to pish tosh Lululemon. There was nothing there for me. Overpriced. Overhyped. Leave it to those skinny bitches in their McMansions and fancy SUV's and $1200 strollers and Bikram yoga.

Until now. There's magic in them there pants. I don't know what they put in them but they are soft and thick enough to make it look like your natural butt doesn't appear as if you've just gotten up after sitting on a textured couch for a LONG time. I swear there's even a little lift built in. On top of that they size things so often you need to take a size DOWN from what you normally are, which is marketing genius when it comes to spandex products.

I found a pair of long shorts that I had a hard time taking off to take to the cash register, which is saying alot considering I came in wearing stretch capris with a stretch demi panel.

I was afraid to try on anything else. If the shorts are that good on my really bad butt and legs, I can only imagine the impact a spectacular sports bra or support tank would have on my already magnificant bazongas right now.

Its totally out of control....

I'm totally wrecked this week. Andrew is in Halifax for the week and I'm a little glad the King is out of town so I can lay on the couch and lay off the household Martha crap for a few days without anyone complaining and moving all my stuff huffing and puffing like their office isn't a total pigsty and the clothes that are supposed to be IN the dresser are still ON the dresser 2 weeks later.

Apparently, our lifestyle is spiralling out of control since the Bodysnatcher came along. The magic fridge where all the yummy homemade food just appears for him seems to be broken and all that's left in the linen closet are the scratchy little towels. We have dust bunnies. He's been forced to eat canned soup for lunch SEVERAL times in the last few weeks. And all he's had to go with it is the same home made double chocolate banana cake...DAY after DAY. Its awful.

Its a dire situation. He's very protective of his meal quality and now that happy secure place is threatened now that I can't stay alert enough to responsibly use the stove past 6pm. AND ITS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE... Like frozen dinner and take out worse.

You have no idea what its like to only have one kind of juice in the fridge. If you let these things get out of hand, an inch becomes a mile, and the next thing you know you've gone from drinking organic strawberry mango banana to Tang made with tap water and without even realizing it you've hit Juice Skid Row.

So. Since he is way better at complaining than actually picking up a broom or taking a list to the grocery store, we're going to get a housekeeper to come in and look after the dust bunnies so I can concentrate on fixing the magic fridge.

I'm coming out of the closet....

Because hardly anything in my closet it still fits!

As some of you already know, we are expecting a special delivery this year at Christmastime! A new baby! We're very excited. Crazy excited.

How we knew:
I could smell my neighbors on the other side of our semi baking hot chocolatey fudgey brownies, except it turned out that they were just eating an regular old Easter Bunny from Shoppers Drug Mart, so I got suspicious that I could smell chocolate through a concrete wall and decided to investigate further.

How I feel:
I seem to have pulled the lucky straw, very little morning / noon / night sickness. At least nothing that can't be remedied by a can of hot steamy Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli and 10 hours of sleep a day.

How I look:
Like I've been eating too much Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli and its catching up to me.

My current positions on pregnancy and childbirth:

• I am still going to dye my hair. There is no clinical evidence to suggest it does anything but distract you from feeling fat and ugly.
• I'm taking a pre-natal vitamin and making every effort to eat more fruit and vegetables, but when I want something crappy I will have it.
• I'm not trying to win any awards by making it to five months in my regular clothes. Elastic waists ROCK. I'm not waiting until I have muffin top, camel toe and PCIB (Pants stuck in bum) to embrace a nice stretchy waist. In fact, I might have a hard time giving the stretch panel up and have plans to market it to a wider crowd of plus size and man-pants called the 'Six Pack Pants' (when you'd rather drink a six pack instead of have one) No more exposed hairy guts or plumber butt crack.
• I will respond to rude comments like "YOU'RE HUGE!" with an equally rude comment ('Wow, so is your mouth!")
• I hate people touching me and I will not hesitate to give anyone who tries to a good honk back. Close friends and family may be offered a narrow window of opportunity to maul me from time to time during which time I will stiffen and tolerate it without scratching or hissing.
• BRING ON THE DRUGS. Drug free childbirth sounds about as sane to me as novocaine free dentistry. Don't drug me Dr., I want to FEEL you scrape that nerve along with hearing and smelling the drill so I can get the total experience. As long as its safe for the baby, I will have my big juicy veins all ready for the big needle. I know myself in pain. I have been through several gallbladder attacks with unrelenting pain for 12 hours straight and I would have sold my poor little mother to get the morphine drip in faster.
• Immediate post partum support. I'm hiring a DOULA. Here's why. I would prefer that most of my friends and family assume that the stork brought the baby and underneath my clothes are smooth generic Barbie parts. There is alot of adjustment junk, partial nudity and gross personal issues to deal with before there is any hope of being comfortable or discreet. So I am thinking I'd like an impartial professional whose seen more pendulous bare boobs than the Pam Anderson fan club helping me with my latch than people who I love and have to sit across the dinner table from later and look in the eye. No CSI crime scene photos of the birth either.

That's all I know so far.

Next week we will be in Vegas and I have the Faith Hill song "Hey Baby lets go to Vegas" stuck in my head...

Antiques Roadshow Fantasy Brought To Life....

So today I was contacted by the auction company and asked if I was interested in re-selling my little painting that I bought at the last auction.

Apparently there was another interested buyer who missed out on it and gave them a big sob story about how it looks just like their family cottage, blah blah blah and they missed it when it came up for bidding. "They don't care how much, they REALLY want it"

Reality check. I'm sure they don't really mean they would pay anything for it. They are probably thinking $50. I like it more than $50. I sat through ALOT of boring little china figurines and teacups waiting for it and I was expecting more competition for it.

Another little known tidbit about this painting. It looks just like a Kathleen Morris or Nora Collyer style of painting and I loved that about it as soon as I saw it. http://www.klinkhoff.com/beaver-hall-ex/index.html.en The last Collyer I saw go up for auction went for over $100k. That's One Hundred Thousand Dollars.

Art doesn't need to be expensive. No one should ever buy art that they don't love, no matter what its 'worth'. If you love something, don't worry about 'what it goes with', just get it and you will find a place for it. Above all else art should make you feel something when you look at it. I got my painting for $15 and it makes me just as happy as the 100k Collyer.

Knowing that someone else is still thinking about my painting reaffirms for me that its a great piece, and exactly the kind of thing that me and my guests will enjoy looking at for a long time.

That said, if I found out its a rare 100k painting that has been lost for 50 years, that sucker is out the door and we're buying a house.

I feel so bad for little old men...

There is a little old man I see on my way to work every day. He's very little. He lives in a neat little bungalow with an impeccably groomed yard, and he always has on a clean pair of pants, a pressed shirt and suspenders. He looks like a little old farmer who is in his good clothes visiting town for the day.

He's obviously very capable of looking after himself, he looks healthy and he always has a steady stream of people walking their dogs and pushing their strollers and fellow yard people chatting with him. What makes me really sad is I'm pretty sure that he lives alone and when he goes in the house he's by himself most of the time. He seems so happy and animated when he's talking to people but sometimes I drive by when he's alone and he looks like he's just waiting and wishing for someone else to come along and talk to him.

Mostly its because I think about how lonely my own husband gets if he's left alone for a few hours and I can't bear to think of him alone.

Old ladies are tough old broads, when I see an old woman I tend to have respect for her and think she's probably taken a lickin' and kept on tickin'. They get snarky. Most women I know long for people to leave them alone, time to themselves..they don't want to be alone all of the time so they call girlfriends or join little clubs. Old men seem to get rumpled, isolated and eat canned beans and start to shrink without women in their lives.

Women (I think) are a little tougher than men and a little better at taking their lumps. Women can take the crap in life and make a crappy quilt and fluff a lumpy bed and make the best of it. Men practically kill themselves working to change stuff. And sometimes its all that work not for anything better, just for something different. Silly boys.

Bottom line is, I seem to be fine with my getting old, but the thought of my husband getting old and being lonely, wandering around in the front yard every morning hoping people will talk to him for a little while just makes me want to eat more fiber and take my vitamins and live forever to save him that fate.