Baby Face?

Went for an ultrasound today to check on the status of my low lying placenta. Tomorrow I will be 28 weeks and officially in the final trimester of this pregnancy, so I guess right now is the last day of the second trimester. 

According to the various charts and sites on the internet, the baby is the size of a plate of pancakes, eggplant, head of lettuce, butternut squash, Kraft Dinner Mac and Cheese box, and the list goes on, all being slightly different shapes and sizes, making it really hard to understand how big she is. However, the tech asked if I wanted to know the baby's approximate weight - which is exciting data! So apparently she is currently 2.4 lbs (or 1.08 kg).

While showing Jason over the phone at the end of the scan the tech was able to get the front of her face - Jason let out a little squeal! I asked if we could get print outs and the tech was very excited about how 'cute' the face was, with its 'chubby cheeks.' I have included the images but made them small since I think they are super creepy and look ghost-like, click the picture to see larger. Jason claims that when it showed up over the phone it looked a lot better (it depends what 'slice' the images are as to what they really look like.) It was the first time he had seen something that "maps directly to a real face, a real human thing."

Trivia Moves Online

I had been going to Oakville on Tuesdays pretty regularly over the past few years to play Pub Trivia with Teri and some friends. They had been playing together for a while, under the name Village Idiots, so I joined their team. We did well, and we did very well when I convinced Jason to come along too. We actually placed a couple of times - winning a giftcard to spend at the pub. The people where fun, the questions were the perfect difficulty, and the food was really good (for a pub.) About a year ago the game moved from the pub in the plaza around the corner from Teri's house, which we could walk to, to a pub in another plaza that we had to drive to from Teri's place. It still was worth the extra bit of driving because everything was the same at the new place, and the food was just as good.

Village Idiots, Playing Online Pub Trivia Together

April 14, 2020

Covid has closed the pub (though I think they are doing take-out and delivery) so the trivia hasn't been running. I ended up planning to my Virtual Trivia Nights on Tuesdays in honour of the Oakville one. Well, the guy who runs the one at the pub has decided to try to broadcast it online. I moved the one that I host to Wednesday and last night got to actually play for the first time in a couple of months. We set up a Zoom call with the Village Idiots team members on one of Jason's monitors and had the Facebook Live broadcast of the trivia on the other. We think we got third or fourth - the switch to virtual meant some confusion with scoring and communication.

It's A Bit Like A Party

I hosted my third Virtual Trivia Night last night and it was busy! There were 19 teams! It is a big collection of people: from close friends to extended family, friends of friends and more. I have covered up their names but you might recognize some faces among last night's trivia crew:

Participants for Covid-19 Virtual Trivia Night

Hosted by me on Zoom

March 31, 2020

This Or That

My Choices!

Steph, tagged me in her Instagram Story a couple of days ago with this list, she had done hers and then named a few followers to do the same. I guess it is a meme, or a challenge, or a chain, or something. I replied that I would do it for my blog. This was partly because it is Two who has Instagram - she doesn't use the story feature and doesn't like to share her account. Also I am constantly needing content for Always Standing so happy to have things like this to do.

The thing with Insta Stories is that they disappear in 24 hours so when I was ready to go and do it - the original one was gone. I looked it up online and couldn't quite find the exact one that Steph had done. (I know, because her's had White Wine / Red Wine listed and she had crossed both out, which I would have done too.) However, I feel like this is the same style and will do. I used Paint and the computer, which is also different, but it gets the point across. Now I challenge all who are reading to let me know in the comments where you stand on This or That? 

Also, if you have Instagram, Steph is a great person to follow @sbeachphoto because she posts regularly, the images are always beautiful, and sometimes you get a glimpse of her adorable dog Kaylee.

Alone Together

------- from The Internet, about The Internet

" When we place ourselves out there on the Internet, on social media and in comments sections and maybe even in overwritten reviews of TV comedies, we’re not really placing “ourselves” out there. We’re placing the version of ourselves that we want the world to see, the version that’s cooler or smarter or funnier than the real human being making those posts. We are, in some sense, reducing ourselves to fictional characters, less susceptible to pain or anger, at least until people needle at us, and we act as if that needling is directly attacking our core selves, instead of just some projection we’ve made to get more popular online. And that can turn destructive! The version of myself who writes these reviews is very different from the version who posts on Twitter, and both of those guys are nothing like the real me, who has insecurities and doubts and fears that the Internet doesn’t want to hear about. Yet the wish to be liked (or “liked”) is all-pervasive. I would gladly wear a party hat if you guys would give me some upvotes.

Or, put another way, think of these comments, and how so many of you used to freak out at the notion of downvoting (before Disqus took away the ability to see how many people had downvoted you—which I think was the right call). Or think of maybe when you make a post on Twitter, and nobody interacts with it, or when you say something on Tumblr, and nobody reblogs it, or, heaven forfend, when you post a cat picture on Facebook, and nobody cares. None of us wants to feel like we are all alone in the universe, calling out to nobody in particular. And the Internet has made it that much easier to find communities of people we feel like we belong with. But it’s also made it that much easier to hide the pieces of ourselves we don’t really like from those people, when even the act of sharing your deepest, darkest secrets can be a kind of performance art. There are both good and bad sides to this, but when somebody breaks the compact—when they don’t notice you or downvote you without saying why or just generally behave like assholes—it makes it that much harder to react without going Vesuvius all over the place. "

---- Emily Todd VanDerWerff

This has been said so many times, in so many ways, but when I ran across these two paragraphs recently they resonated. They were actually written as part of an AV Club review for an episode of the show Community. (Highly recommended for anyone who hasn't watched it. Also great as a re-watch which Jason and I are doing at the moment.) This context is probably why some of the sentences above don't make sense. The episode being reviewed was called “App Development And Condiments” which has a phone app called MeowMeowBeenz where people at the community college campus that the show is based rate each other in real time out of five.Obviously things spiral way out of control. It reminded me of a Blackmirror episode, which actually aired later, that was, like all Blackmirror episodes, super upsetting/disturbing.

Online Learning

I am working towards my Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, since I have noticed this qualification showing up more and more in the public service jobs I am applying for.

Requirements for PMP Certification:
- Four-year degree (CHECK)
- Three years leading projects (CHECK)
- 35 hours of project management training (Exam Prep Course)
- Write a 4-hour, 200 question exam (See above)

I am starting my prep course today and have no idea what to expect. I have been planning projects for over 10 years but this makes everything look so formal and standardized. I want to write the exam before they change the format in July so hopefully it isn't too difficult to learn everything quickly. My course is from 10am to 2pm weekdays, for 8 days. I am doing it online because it cost a quarter of the price of heading into a classroom. I did some training last month in a digital meeting space and it was fine. I love learning and am pretty excited to see what this is all about!

A Good Resolution

So it is more than a week past New Years but I decided to make a resolution, in fact I am stealing one that I heard. Watching Stephen Colbert (The Late Show) this morning, as they post content online, and he had Larry David on who mentioned making this resolution a few years ago. I think it is brilliant.

Pee Before You Leave - Anywhere! Don't be ashamed to go to the bathroom. Just say, "I have to go to the bathroom before I go," you know. People aren't going to look down on you for doing that! No. go to the bathroom, then leave, you'll be so much happier than sitting in the car cursing yourself, going "Well, I don't know why I didn't go to the bathroom?" --- Larry David

I have gotten good about doing this at restaurants before leaving, mainly at Trivia Nights in Oakville because many times I have been on the highway driving home - mad at myself for not peeing at the bar before heading out. But this year I am going to try to extend it to when I am visiting people and here at home before leaving to go somewhere.

So Tiny!

It was a good appointment today! My doctor is very excited for us, so her and Jason will probably get along great. What is awesome is that even though she is my family doctor, she also has additional training in obstetrics, with hospital privileges to provide obstetrical care at St. Joseph Health Centre Toronto. So she can manage my pregnancy!

We got some information sheets with dos and don'ts, talked about my care options (I chose staying with her, I wasn't interested in a midwife or OB-GYN specialist), got requisition forms for blood tests and she is sending me next week to day a dating ultrasound. While I thought my cycle was consistent, apparently it isn't regular enough to date the pregnancy accurately.

The estimate is that I am around 4 weeks pregnant, since I JUST took the home test yesterday! Everything seems to measure baby size by fruit, which I think is weird and depending on the fruit it can be confusing. I found a fun article that does a Millennial Baby Size By Week using things other than fruit comparisons. Apparently this early on the fetus is the size of spec of eye shadow glitter. For reference that's 0.014 to 0.04 inches in length and not quite 0.04 ounces. So very very tiny!

Great Love Song

Watch the clip above, or go check it out on YouTube. If you don't have sound then at least read the lyrics. Afterwards, see my thoughts in the comments section of this post.

Lush Bath Melt Review

ERin and I recently did a trade. I had a facemask kit that I bought a few years ago and never found the right person to give it to and never used it myself - she needed something for a secret Santa thing. Then she remembered that I like to take baths, and she had received some bath stuff over the years that she didn't think she would use - which I was excited to have. She gave me a couple of bath bombs and a "bath melt" from Lush yesterday.

This morning I dropped the bath melt into the tub as it was filling up and the result can be summed up as basically disastrous. Mid-bath, I had to look up on the Lush website what even was a bath melt and was I using it correctly, and I was, but they are called bath oils even though they are in solid shapes. Then I looked up tips from the official Lush YouTube channel on this product and it still said that I should be using the full thing. But I gave up, and pulled the last third of it out of the water and put it beside the tub to use next time. (Yes I will use it again, maybe the smaller amount will improve things.)

According to Lush:
When it comes to bathtime luxury, there's no holding back. Our bath oils deliver an enchanting experience for those times when you truly want to transform your body and mind. Decadent butters and loads of essential oils melt into the water, then into your skin for a supremely softening and scented utopia. These little confections nourish your skin with moisturizing butters and softening oils to counteract the drying effects of a hot bath.
1. Run your bathwater making sure it’s just how you like it
2. Drop your bath oil into the bath and its oils and butters will melt to soften your water and skin.
3. Be careful when you’re getting out of a bath with one of these, because they can make your tub a bit slippery.

So, I am glad that they call them oils, and not melts, but they are really really greasy. I had to use shampoo to clean off my hands before looking up the stuff on my phone. The main issue was the sparkles, I have always thought of glitter as the herpes of craft supplies and the same applies to the body/beauty kind. It was a bit exfoliating and gritty but it also doesn't wash off! I am covered in gold sparkles, and I mean COVERED! I don't even know how you would achieve this look for a costume (say if you were wanting to be a shimmery sea monster or 1990's porn star for Halloween) apart from a professional makeup artist. I have a very even coat of teeny tiny gold sparkles, everywhere. When I videocalled ERin, to explain that this gift given to her might have been some type of sabotage, she thought I was still wet from the shower. Nope, just covered in sparkles, I was bone dry.

Also, the warning at the end of the Lush instructions it true, it is so oily that getting out of the bathtub is downright dangerous, I was worried I might die. The rest of my day will be spent trying to clean the gunk out of the tub before Jason needs to shower tomorrow morning, I am guessing this will take multiple attempts. Don't even want to think about what the glittery, greasy, goo is going to do to the pipes.

At the moment though, my skin is very soft. It is hydrating, and I feel great, except for itchy nipples from the sparkles. I will finish up the last bit of it, I do love how smooth my hands and feet feel.

Clean Up, Clean Up

Everybody Clean Up! (And re-design!)

That is the only part of the song that I can remember at the moment, I think that it has more lines and they involve putting away toys.

In my case it is really just deleting scam blog posts that have shown up on Always Standing during my 8-month hiatus. As I have mentioned before, it happens because there an email address that I can use to send a posting to the blog, that is included in my Yahoo Email contacts.

It hasn't even been a year since I last changed the design but I designed I wanted a redesign. In October I changed the look to this:

But I wasn't feeling the humming birds any more - so am going to have maple leaves for a while (like my tattoo!)

Such Major Changes

As I mentioned before, I am in the process of launching a business. Well, actually, we are open and have been for over a week, so I guess we are launched (doesn't feel like it - so behind where I want to be on this.) Here are just some of the things doing that has meant
- I haven't written on Always Standing in two and a half months
- Catching a cold and wearing socks to bed to try to get over it quicker
- Going for weeks without seeing my friends (this has been the worst part)
- Having over a hundred unread messages in my personal inbox
- Not cleaning or cooking or even BEING at home
It has been a surprising adventure, nothing at all like I thought it would be. I love it but I am exhausted. Hoping to get some updates and photos onto the blog soon. Though also looking to get a blog going for the shop too. But, with what time?

Just Like Us

Driving home today, yesterday we visited Harvard and MIT campuses in Cambridge, just across the river from Boston. (We also went kayaking on that river and had a picnic lunch in Harvard Yard.)

Harvard Students - They are just like us!
Seen on campus: 
Student with an armful of obviously stolen toilet paper.
Overheard:
"Yo, if a girl matches you on Tindr means she is go to go!"

MIT Students - Less like us
Seen on campus: 
A juggling club practicing in a hallway with a variety of materials.
Overheard: 
"When you amplify the sample size, you decrease the error rate."

A Tiny Advantage

I won't get into how horrible it is that Premier Doug Ford, in the Provincial Government, has cut the size of Toronto city council. Basically it is a terrible idea, but on top of that doing it in the middle of an election is unethical. However, because The City is now 25 ridings instead of the previous 47, Vote Compass has been expanded to include city councillor races as well (maybe it was always going to do so for this election but I really like thinking there is some tiny silver lining in the disgraceful city council meddling.) In 2014 they had information for the mayor stuff, but the ward details are a great addition.

Vote Compass is an amazing tool, I love it so much and use it every election. So glad that I used it because the incumbent councillor (from my section of the ward, since there have been mergings) visited the house and I enjoyed talking to her. However, she isn't at all progressive and I didn't fully know her voting record. She voted to cut transit routes! So, good to get an idea of a more appropriate candidate for our neighbourhood. Here are my results:

This didn't tell me anything new for the mayoral race, I knew that I aligned more with Jennifer Keesmaat, she is an urban planner and I thought she was awesome in the role of Toronto Chief City Planner when she did it a few years back. I will be voting for her. However, I think John Tory is doing a good job and I will not be disappointed if (when) he is elected.

Grrrr Two

The cat has cost us over $1,200 this month! That is just medically, not even looking at food or litter.

It started early in September with a scheduled surgery - she has these strange Cutaneous Horns on her paw pads and they had reached a size that I decided to get them cut off/back.

Cutaneous horns are composed of keratin overgrowth. They may affect one or multiple footpads. Often thin and horn-like (hence the name), they may appear like second "nails" close to the nails on the digital pads. If not on a weight bearing surface, these lesions usually do not cause lameness. Cutaneous horns may be spontaneous, and this is often the case on the footpads. If the horns are not causing lameness the lesions are often ignored. The horny growth can removed by trimming, however, the horns will often recur. Horns causing discomfort should be removed and, if it is possible to do so without causing a large pad defect, the base of the lesion should be excised to prevent regrowth. -- DMV360 

They have be growing for years and were never something I felt comfortable trimming myself. This summer they reached a length that was bothering her when we were trimming her claws. I decided to have her into the vet for surgery and get them cut them down (they weren't able to dig everything out to prevent regrowth and they are already regrowing, but it helped). Also had them clean her teeth at the same time. That was $585 and she went in for it about a month ago.

Then a couple of weeks ago, I got concerned about a mark I noticed on her bum, because Binx had an abscess issue once that was awful. After a $85 examination it was determined to just be a scratch and I was told to watch it for the next couple of weeks but that it would just heal up and go away - it did.

Last night she tore a claw - another trip into the vet. She did it back in December too but I don't think we caught it right away back then because the fur around it was all clumped together. In December the vet had a hard time determining the issue, having to cut back the fur first. Last night we noticed it quickly (just by chance because both times she was walking fine) and I took her in this afternoon. They treated it and it cost $610. In December, it had been $470. The difference was that they didn't sedate her last time. I guess by the time they had trimmed and cleaned the fur she was in enough distress that they just cut back the claw, cleaned it up and gave her antibiotics. We weren't given a choice in the method at the time, she was taken to another room and treated. This time the vet explained that style to be a bit more 'down on the farm' and while it was an option since this time he could see everything and knew what needed to be done - sedation and pain killers were recommended. Of course I agreed, I hate pain why would I make the cat suffer.

Basically this rant isn't about the cost of veterinary services - because while they are more expensive in The City, it is an understandable increase for more expensive rent etc. Across all vet practices I find the costs are almost always worth it - I value the expertise and care. Mainly this is a rant at the fact that my particular cat keeps costing me money, or that it has all been concentrated recently. Luckily she is cute!

Follow Two's life in her own words with photos on Instagram - @twodeecat

New Look Too!

For the past two and a half years, Always Standing has looked like this:

Before making the design change to the basic burgundy appearance above, the blog was purple and had a pretty filigree-ish pattern.  I think this new one has humming birds in the background - I am almost always using a split screen on my computer so the window for the blog is too small to see much of the edges. What do you think of the new peach-coloured look?

The Warmest Water

I cannot believe how warm the water is here!! We went out on a sailboat trip yesterday, that included kayaking into a mangrove tree island thing - totally looked like what I pictured the floating island in the Life of Pi book to be. We also went snorkeling but I didn't really like it so took off the mask and just floated/swam around in the water.

I have never been in natural water this warm in my life! (However, after saying that Jason reminded me that I have been to quite a few hot springs, but let's not count those.) The people crewing the boat kept saying it was 27, degrees Celsius, and then everyone else on the boat complained about how cold that was. At the time all I could go by was the fact that it felt like bath water, and I knew that one year we did a Toronto Try-Tri in 19 and the Azores was 16. Looking it up online now, it seems that the super quick swim that Kristen, Noah, Jason and I did in the Indian Ocean near Durban in South Africa probably had water temperatures close 27, but it was very wavy and windy, so didn't feel that warm. I found a website that details sea temperatures around the world - so cool! The great lakes don't ever get much over 20.

Unrelated - Here is a bird photo inspired by Mom's Blog, which now even features bird pictures on her 'at home' posts. Jason and I did a short stroll along a boardwalk in The Everglades named after this bird. There were quite a few of them, some making quite the racket as they did mating displays. I preferred the quiet ones that just hung out on logs near the water. Saw one trying to eat a fish, that I think was way too big for it, greedy bugger.

An Anhinga in The Everglades

Photo by Jason, with his phone, April 2018

Much Nicer!

Fun staging tip - Use boxes under a blow-up mattress to give the appearance of a bed. (The suggestion online said milk crates, but we didn't have those.) Obviously you can't sit on it, and we used a king-size sheet to cover the boxes. I looked into renting things from a professional staging place but it was all really expensive. I figured that using ideas from the internet and borrowing from friends if we didn't have the right stuff to use would work out just as well. Luckily we have friends with awesome taste and were able to use some really great pieces to highlight our basement.

Also, this picture below is perfect for the end of our demolition photo reel that shows the progression from inspection to the end of the tear-end.

Staged The Apartment -- Posted To Rent

The Bedroom

April 2018

More Rhymes For March

I am really into this whole March - In like a lion, out like a lamb thing! I keep going back to it. Have to say, it is a much better than my usual internet wormholes that normally end up with me reading long, detailed Wikipedia articles about serial killers.

Here are some other proverbs related to this month:

A dry March and a wet May? 
Fill barns and bays with corn and hay.

As it rains in March, so it rains in June.

So many mists in March you see
So many frosts in May will be.

A Peck of March-Dust, and a Shower in May
Makes the Corn green, and the Fields gay.

March many-Weathers rain’d and blow’d
But March grass never did good.

I can't really get that last one to rhyme. How are they pronouncing blow'd so that it matches good? Also, it isn't a word, the past tense is blew. Really that one is just terrible. Lastly, there is an expansion on the well known one, that includes March:

March winds and April showers? Bring forth May flowers.

One of my favourite jokes as a kid was, "If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring? Pilgrims." Oh, so clever. (And distinctly American.)

The Reckoning - Using The Anger

Jason was very supportive in Ottawa while I was having my fitness-related emotional breakdown. I explained how I was feeling and what was happening to me as best I could. He was understanding about my desire to leave and return to Toronto, identifying it as a desire for safety and comfort - something I hadn't even figured out at the time. Before he agreed to cut the trip short, and pop in on a few of my friends in my place, to do the various item pick-ups and drop offs that were required - he posed an important question: "What are you going to do with this anger?"

I can complain about the way I look, or being out of shape, or whatever, but this was a level of distress that couldn't be ignored. He didn't want me to run away from Ottawa and ignore what happened. I also, never, ever want to feel that way again. So I vowed to use the anger, to remember it and start moving towards a higher fitness level and better relationship with my body.

The following day, Monday February 12, I started making a point of 'moving' for at least 20 minutes every day - walking on the treadmill at the gym or doing a YouTube fitness video. I also do some type of cool down each evening, either a mindfulness/meditation activity or a short bedtime yoga routine.

So far I have only missed a couple of days and even though this is a small, slow start I hope to increase and expand it. I would like to return to my previous carefree, happy relationship with my body where I don't really ever think about it.