Drum roll.......

It's our new home!!! Well, part of it anyway. The top of the stairs leading out to the porch to be exact.

So no, sorry to disappoint. I'm not preggers again. Praise Jah, Allah, Jesus, Latchmi, Buddha and The Universe. What do y'all think we are? Bunnies??? Angel ain't even 9 months old yet! Besides, contraception was the first topic of conversation at my checkup. I even begged and pleaded to have my tubes tied, for I was NEVAH going through that again! I would adopt, surely, if the Brangelina brooding itch started acting up. But doc said nay. ''EVerybody says that'' she proclaimed smiling. ''No no no no no.. I'm serious'' I countered. ''I really REALLY am SURE that I don't want anymore''. She wasn't convinced. But at least she provided a five-year-accident-free alternative. So unless fate seriously has other plans for me, that's one post you won't be reading for a while :)

Back to Mi Casa or Minu Maja in Estonian. It's a little box, made of ticky tacky, with other little boxes and they all look just the same. And I shall love it! Because there will be grass, and trees, and no horns honking, and kids playing outside, and other parents whom I can bond with and borrow eggs from if I run out. I shall be a hermit no more. Hallelujah.

So I've been busy learning about and trying to Feng Shui a very non-Feng-Shui layout. Imagine they put the bathrooms right next to and above the front door! Just flushing all our chi down the drain. It is amazing how un-harmoniously we live. I wonder if that's the reason the angel wakes up a million times at night, and I feel like death most mornings??

Did you know that :
You shouldn't put mirrors reflecting your bed? Sorry for all the pervies out there, but it brings a 3rd party to your union.

Using all the burners on your stove will open you up to multiple sources of income.

A bathroom over your kitchen will badly affect health and prosperity. And a bathroom in the middle of the house will undermine all the energy therein.

You should never store stuff under your bed or sleep with your feet pointed out the door.

A mirror reflecting your work desk doubles your work load!

Amazing stuff! There's lots more in the interwebs so Google away! Unless of course you know all that already. I just had to share :)

And thanks Kaisa for the tip on the art-shop. I went there yesterday and the lady is really cool! She was sooo helpful and her store is very baby-friendly. ''Put her on the ground so she can walk around... have a seat here and nurse her if you want... here's a doll for her to play with.'' If only everywhere was so open to babies, the world would be a happier place. Sigh.

And it seems I have chosen my pseudonym well. Van Gone. For the artist has left the building. I hope he just went out for some coffee. I shall doodle until he decides to come back. No pressure. I am open to the energy. Ohhhmmm.

Tragedy aboard the HMS Sinkeasy...a true story of some "trinis" in the Bermuda triangle

This morning I woke up to find this (below) actual email from my brother. He is not what you would call a wordy type of guy, unless he's had a few, or he knows you really really REALLY well. He recently vacated the warm comforts, home cooked meals and clean laundry that is our parent's home to strike out on his own in Bermuda. Every so often we hear his stories of life on the rock.



Good night all,

I am about to relay the events of August 10, 2008. A gripping tale of some "trinis" braving the Bermuda triangle in search of adventure. It is not a happy tale and for those prone to crying, please stop reading now!

Sadly, the moral of this story is not new - Too much man, too little boat. In economics, such a situation causes inflation...the opposite is true of the triangle.

Captain's log, Triangle date 10/08/08:

The day began with a clear blue sky and a hangover from the night before...thanks Jasen, that house lime was so worth it (for the non-trinis, lime means to hang out). I jumped on my bike around 10am and made for the refuge of Safraz's house. There we re-grouped and headed for the docks, where the HMS Sinkeasy was anchored and ready to go (sink!). It started to drizzle but that did not weaken our spirits...though if we knew it would cause a "Small Craft Warning" we would have thought otherwise. Seven of us set out in that fateful small craft for an adventure we would have never predicted.

After some quick instructions from the owner we set out with yours truly as El Capitan! Having been the only person to drive a boat before, I accepted this responsibility with much humility and excitement.

Our journey began through the smallest drawbridge in the world (yes folks its in the Guinness Book) only the HMS Sinkeasy was so small that they did not have to raise it for us to pass!!!

The water was choppy but El Capitan was both brave and on his 3rd beer for the morning. We made a straight cut through the Great something (I can't recall what the map said it was) and veered north towards the Royal Naval Dockyard. On the way, Jasen my trusting navigator, saw that a fishing spot was closeby - under Watford Bridge - and the crew asked El Capitan to change course to make for Watford Bridge. Not wanting a mutiny, I obliged.

Upon my approach I thought that the water seemed a bit rough and that Safraz's fat ass was weighing down the front of HMS Sinkeasy. It was here that the precarious nature of the triangle became obvious. A huge swell engulfed the HMS Sinkeasy and washed Safraz, his wife Shelly and El Capitan from the deck.

Yes folks, El Capitan was forcefully taken from his ship. Not letting down on the responsibilty given to me, I issued immediate orders for Jasen to assume control and take the boat out of the swells lest the rest of the crew be lost too.

A passing vessel picked up the 3 adrift "trinis" and took us away from the swells and back to the HMS Sinkeasy. We salvaged whatever we could from the water but alas....some did not make it back!

I commend my fallen comrades to the deep:

Name - Ring-a-ding Ricky. Rank - 1st Mate. Purchased 1 week ago at Digicel. Though pulled from the water, his rings were forever drowned in the deep blue sea. His heart still lives on and I will implant it into a new Nokia tomorrow.

Name - Snapping Mack. Rank - Chief of the Boat. Purchased yesterday. I took a total of 10 pictures with him. $130, never recovered.

Name - Steely Dan. Rank - Ordinary Seaman. Purchased Friday, stringed on Saturday, went down on Sunday. My poor fishing rod never stood a chance...round 1 to you mother nature.

We eventually made it back to the dock. The thought of my fallen comrades, Safraz weighing down the ship and Shelly trying to save the Heineken keg are forever burned into memory.


Humbly yours,

El Capitan.

Etc etc etc

I have a lot of little things running through my head, but can't seem to decide what exactly I want to say about them.

Like the one annoying fly that was buzzing around in my kitchen this morning. He's still here somewhere, but methinks he picked up on my ''I'm seriously considering swatting you'' vibe and decided it was time to chill out quietly. I was am reading The Seat of the Soul, and I reached the part about Reverence. Apparently reverence for Life extends to annoying buzzy bugs too. So to get the urge to squish out of my system, I squished the urge to squish the fly instead.

Then there's the bursting mommy-pride. The angel is crawling! Pulling herself up to stand! Saying Mama! Saying Dada! I have the most adorable (naturally) video of her crawling on the beach in Tobago which I am dying to post here. But she's naked. As we all should be on the beach. And I hesitate. To me there is nothing more beautiful than her michelin-man dumpling rolls and that scrumptious baby bum. And I want to show it to everybody. But I know that there are those out there who won't see it for it's innocent beauty. And that makes me sad.

Then there's the whole spiritual journey thing that I'm dying to talk about. I think it started when I was a teenager and couldn't get my head around the Body & Blood of Christ in the form of a wafer and vino. I've come a looong way since then. I recently refused to baptise the angel. That's a whole 'nother post by itself. Has anyone seen Zeitgeist???

And, I'm getting a serious itch to paint. I have some cool pics that I want to play with. What's the best medium for intense colours and reach-out-and-touch-me texture? Acrylics? Oils? Cotton balls soaked in food colouring? Something else I never heard of? And what kinda brushes do I need?

Ok, I think that's it for now. I do have some other MAJAH news, but I don't want to jinx it yet :)


My friend's country house in Vihterpalus, Estonia

Wordless Wednesday

Later edit: Bwah ha ha ha ha ha.. i just realized it is Thursday!! Kyah kyah kyah

Yummy Yummy Boobies

It is World Breastfeeding Week. YAY for the Lovely Lactating Lady Lumps everywhere in all their splendid shapes, sizes and spraying powers.

In keeping with my nature to compulsively over-share the intimate details of my life, here's what I've learnt about this so far.

In the beginning:

IT HURTS!!! Boy does it hurt. Those first few days are agony. Especially when the midwives you are relying on for information (because you are a clueless first-time mom who has knows nothing about what to expect despite having read the book) don't tell you that you should be using nipple cream until you are already chaffed and bleeding. Even though you told them IT HURTS, they will still pinch and squeeze your poor tender titties and force them into the mouth of your precious new angel, whom by the way, you are seriously considering bottle-feeding by this point. They will ignore your cries of pain and tell you in bad english to get used to it... until a few days later (when you are lying there exhausted and topless because even the slightest breeze causes you to wince in agony) one midwife notices that your boob has a crease down the middle. And this should not be so. AH HA! The baby was not latching on properly. Hence the crease, hence the pain. It will take some time to figure out yourself how it should be done. Because they won't show you. And your angel won't do what the books and videos say she should be doing.

Oh yeah, and, NOBODY has milk for the first few days. Nobody. You have other healthy, gentle, important stuff in there for your angel, but your milk doesn't come in until a few days after. It doesn't mean that your supply is low or anything. Just keep nursing away. The more you nurse, the more you will have.

Then overnight, your chest will go from zero to torpedo. You will wake up on the morning of the 3rd day or so with 2 MASSIVE ROCKS. You will wish that you could go clubbing in a slinky little top just so you could show them off. Not really. But you will be very impressed and show them off to your hubby. ''Look at these!'' jiggle jiggle... ouch. They still hurt. And they are HARD!!

That's when you turn into a firehose. The little angel whom you feared wasn't getting enough will now be choking. You will spray everything in your path including hubby, the bed, the floor, the mirror, and of course, the angel. You will spray her in the eye, up her nose, all over her clothes. Especially those times when she nurses just enough to get things flowing and then decides she doesn't really want it after all, and leaves you in full blast.

But it gets better :)

By the fourth or fifth week, things begin to settle down a bit. You feel like you have been doing this your whole life. It has stopped hurting. Now you look forward to laying down side by side and nursing your precious angel. Even if it is 20 times a day. It is beautiful, calm, relaxing.

And boy does it take the weight off! Hello pre-preggy jeans! Or maybe I'm just lucky.

It has been 8 months now and I can't imagine not being able to bond like this with the angel. When I think back to the torturous first weeks, and how it was sheer determination that got me through, I am beyond grateful that I kept at it.

There is nothing that soothes an angel's cries when she bumps her head trying to crawl, is scared or overwhelmed, or maybe the moon is in the wrong phase, than cradling her to my now normal-sized and once again soft chest.

I hope to self-wean, and mentioning this has met with looks of shock and horror. ''You going to be nursing a 4 year old?? That's gross!''. Well, maybe she'll be 4, maybe she'll be 2, maybe she'll be 7. Who knows how it will go. I do know that right now, I'm pretty determined to let her decide when she's ready.

And I also know that I am nowhere near ready to stop.

back grinding

I am up to my very tanned neck in wafting cat hair balls, piles of clean, not-so-clean, and definitely-not-clean clothes, half-empty suitcases, granola bar crumbs, beautiful white sand that somehow also made the trip but looked much prettier and felt less annoying in Tobago, and jet lag.

Whew

But of course I must find the time to blog!

I shall keep it short and sweet.

To commemorate a wonderful vacation, I present to you :

ME! Trying my darndest to squeeze every last drop of fun out of my last day :)

P.S. Sorry about posting the video via facebook, but this darn thing won't let me post it here :(

I'm baaaack... kinda

I'm still on vacation, but I have returned to the land of internet connections and laptops. Not that they were missed really.

My wonderful friend Nan, and her equally wonderful hubby (who I have known since i was I-don't-even-remember-how-old) put up with me, the Angel and the Funny Dude for 5 whole days on their family vacation down the islands.

Thanks be to God that she isn't crawling yet though, whew. Jetties and crawling babies, methinks, are a heart-attack-inducing combo.

But how wonderful to have lots of aunties around to drink tea, and the occasional baby-is-sleeping-beer, gossip, trade tips, and do other female bonding things with! And rambunctious little boys who can transform and be oh-so-gentle. And the beach just outside your door laden with cool shells, driftwood and rocks for Angels to explore. And warm, calm water for hours of splashing immediately followed by mama-gets-a-break-naps in a breezy hammock. And huge spreads of yummy, tasty, mouth watering, trini food!!!

And all in one place, surrounded by close friends.

It is going to be really hard to leave this time :(