How I Spent My Birthday

In a nutshell, I spent my birthday extremely ill and and in tears.

Around Monday or Tuesday is when I first starting feeling like a cold was coming on. Wednesday when I saw my doctor for a routine exam, I told him I had caught a cold. He told me there was nothing I could take and said Tylenol was it. I also told him that I hadn't been sleeping well. Every night I'd sleep for 4 or 5 hours and often had a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep. The doctor chalked it up to Bipolar and had no advice for me.

Thursday I woke up at 7am after only sleeping 3 hours. I babysat until noon and then showed my car to a couple who was interested in buying it. Bob went out and bought 2 new bookshelves and a wall mount for the TV as part of my birthday gift. My good friends Jen and Scott live on the 3rd floor of building, so we went over there to play games and borrow some tools.

Even though I was sick, we stayed pretty late. When we went back up to our suite, I was tired, but sort of restless. I decided to sleep on the couch to avoid disturbing Bob's sleep. I started to play Superbad on Netflix to give me some background noise to help me fall asleep. I ended up watching the entire movie. At 3am I was still awake. And at 4am and at 5am too. My throat hurt and my nose was so congested, I couldn't breathe, but I couldn't blow anything out either.

Exhausted, I bawled my eyes out on the couch. This helped unclog one nostril, which was fantastic!

Finally at 6am I climbed into bed beside Bob and woke him up and told him I still had not fallen asleep yet. I had literally been awake for 23 hours straight. Bob got up and got me a meal replacement shake to drink because I was starving, but didn't have the energy to move again. I drank it and slept for 4 hours.

I woke up sometime after 10am feeling sicker than ever. Bob and spent the day redecorating and reorganizing the living room. I had previously made sure to set my Facebook Timeline so that nobody could post on it. I didn't want 100 Happy Birthday wishes cluttering things up. I still got private messages and text messages though, so that was nice to hear from my friends.

That evening, Bob ordered Chinese take-out from our favourite place and we invited Jen and Scott to come up and celebrate with us. Scott helped Bob mount the TV on the wall and we played Catan. It was another late night, but Bob had picked up some Nytol, a sleeping aid safe for pregnant ladies to use. I took it and it made me feel drunk. I could barely walk. It made my body feel very heavy and I couldn't keep my eyes open.

I couldn't have slept an hour before waking up again, feeling completely out of it. The sleeping pill hadn't worked. My forehead felt like it was on fire, but my entire body was shivering. I checked my temperature and it was on the high end of normal, but I know the reading was off because I couldn't take my temperature under my tongue because I couldn't breathe through my nose at all. I heated up some milk in a saucepan and made myself hot chocolate. I drank it and the most bizarre thing happened - I entered this state of mania that I have never experienced before. My thoughts were racing like never before and I suddenly had poetry on the brain. There was so much poetry, I couldn't keep track of it all, but I really wanted to because it was the most profound ideas I've ever had! I started writing it all down but I couldn't keep up.

I wrote two full pages, no spaces, of complete and utter nonsense. By this time, Bob was awake and in the living room. I showed him a page of poetry I had written and collapsed on the couch. I wanted to go back to bed, but I could no longer move my own body or stand on my own. Bob was frustrated with my lack of motor skills and very tired. It was just like I was drunk. I couldn't stand up straight or walk and I was crying very hard.

Bob helped me through the obstacle course that is our kitchen. Furniture and tripping hazards were everywhere from when we were redoing the living room. I got back into bed and starting writing more "poetry."

Slowly the thoughts died down and I was able to fall asleep for a few hours. In the morning I woke up and remembered how crazy the night was. I read over my poetry with Bob and it was totally out there and made no sense. I couldn't spell, had made up words, and there was no grammar rules in place or anything. There were no line breaks or any indications of where one poem started or finished. They just all ran together. It was just a mess of randomness. Here are some samples verbatim:

Eternally internally how does your garden grow? With peanut shells and clucking bells and inmates all in a row. Thank you! After Elvis leaves the building, do we leave our hearts on the porches of farmers like sleeping dogs wait? I shant shat on an idea so profound, I fondly found it floundering like a goldfish in my brain cavity swimming to and fro much like the proverbial hamster spins the wheel indicating the lights are on, but nobodies home

And,

Three tier tiramissu Trois pier one imported goods like angle dust and rockabilly rhythm guitarist Pierse Bronwyn Von Blunkle boon the third. Shan't you see upon the eyes of me that compelling compositions Betwoven composed irregularis probiotic Bionic Bunnies. Mustard yellow hallows hallways Colonol kernel kernhill furniture. Droling on about drooling drones prescribed to look like descriptive trolls.

Also,

Trobopple Toppleopolis where fruit punch runs a plenty. Kerbopple Kaboom Kon Keisterdoor, a frame without a hue. Workopolis hired me to renovate the metropolis. I took the metro to the paperstand to read the metro's currant raisin events. It was uneventful and I felt awake with sleepless slumber. Tumbering tumoltously.

 I have never written anything like this in my life before. After being awake for a few hours, I was so delirious from sleep exhaustion, or possibly I was rapid cycling, but I went into the bedroom to try to sleep some more and I ended up crying inconsolably. I told Bob I couldn't take it anymore and I wanted an abortion because I couldn't keep living like this... There was no end in sight... My body wasn't meant to give life... My baby would be born retarded anyway because I wasn't eating or sleeping or having a clean pregnancy.

I eventually calmed down and started having this weird lucid dream where I thought I was carrying Satan's baby and I had to abort it or it would eventually kill me. I cried softly to myself and Bob was there comforting me the whole time.

Later on I checked online to see if the Nytol I took had anything to do with my out of character behavior. Turns out the active medical ingredient, diphenhydramine hydrochloride, has been known to induce a manic episode after only a single dose.

A list of symptoms that matched mine included: impaired motor skills, unusual weakness, chills, low fever, dizziness, difficulty breathing, and manic symptoms. Apparently we should have immediately sought medical attention. I may or may not follow up with my family doctor.

This year will go down as the absolute worst birthday I have ever had in my entire life.

Decorating Baby's Room

On the internet, people like to talk about the different economical ways you can decorate your newborn's room. There is always at least someone who writes in the comments, "I don't think the baby's going to care what the bedroom looks like."

Au contraire! A room that is decorated properly helps give the baby visual interest while awake in the room and can stimulate that growing brain. A baby would much rather be in a room with colour and different shapes to look at as opposed to a grey prison cell with nothing to look at and nothing to stimulate the mind. I would have to say that most, if not all, humans would rather be in a decorated room as opposed to a prison cell.

That being said, while the baby's room doesn't have to look like it came out of a Martha Stewart catalogue,  I do think parents should try their best to give their baby a first bedroom to be proud of.

Bob and I have never had the money to decorate our apartment to our tastes, buy all the matching furniture, and have everything set up just perfect. We pretty much just make do with what we have. The baby's room is going to be a hodge-podge of second hand items donated to me by friends and family members. Bob and I really grateful for this because we can't afford to buy any of it! My entire adult life I've been living with second hand furniture and I think it would be wasteful to go out and buy all new baby gear when perfectly good items, some hardly used, are just sitting there for me to take home!

I'm in an apartment. I can't paint the white walls, nor can I rip out the off-white carpet. The venetian blinds are white and really don't block out light very well. If I'm going to spend any money on anything, I am going to buy a curtain rod to hang over the window and new curtains for better light control in the room.

I could get a fun, little area rug to break up the dull carpet, but the cats would ruin it in a week, so I'm not wasting my money on that. To break up the walls, I might put up shelves to house some of my stuffed animals from when I was a child. Mom kept all my favourite children's books so those are going up on a shelf, or taller bookcase. I even have my pink ceramic bunny that my Aunt made for me.

Finally, I want to get some wall decals, but not just any old baby or toddler decals. I want these decals to reflect mine and Bob's tastes. I want them to be fun, but not an advertisement for a show I never watched as a child. I want them to be something that will last for several years. So far I've found these.

I like the silly fruits and vegetables and obviously I love cats! I hope I can find better cat decals too. I was also thinking of using something more abstract, like different sized shapes or just any other weird looking design.

That's a design that will stand the test of time and not get outdated in 2 years. They stick on the wall and peel off again easily, so as our child grows, he or she can start placing them around the room however which way he or she wants.

And even though I do plan on finding out the sex of the baby, I want the baby's room to be decorated in a unisex sort of way. Perhaps talking about gender stereotypes is beyond the scope of this particular blog post, but when your little girl's wardrobe consists of pink and purple, and her bedroom is decorated pink and purple, and even her fucking plastic cups and bowls are pink and purple, and all her fairies and princess dolls are wearing pink and purple I just want to puke. It starts when they're infants you know!

My final thoughts on decorated the baby's room includes a SpongeBob SquarePants theme. It is my favourite cartoon and dear to my heart. I have quite a bit of paraphernalia in my house already. Bob is a huge sci-fi nerd and loves shows about the universe. A space theme would be neat to do as well. Glow in the dark stars are always fun and I bet Aunty Carly would love to recreate those constellations on my ceiling like she had in her bedroom growing up.

Hypomania and Pregnancy

Today I feel groggy. I just woke up from a 10 hour sleep. I finally crashed! I've been having sleep disturbances since starting my hypomanic phase. I just don't feel sleepy. I'll sleep for 3 hours, wake up for 3-5 hours, and then go back to bed for another 4 or 5 hours. I don't feel restless, I just feel like I don't need 8 hours of sleep at a time. These little naps ramp me up and I feel like I could go out and play some sports after waking up or something stupid.

I'm also forgetting to eat. I just don't feel hungry! I always try to eat at least something first thing in the morning, usually I drink one of my meal shakes, but yesterday I ate a large orange at 8:30 in the morning, a small granola bar at around 10, and that lasted me until 1:30, when I ate a banana with peanut butter. That lasted me until 4 when I ate 5 butter crackers, and then around 6 or 7 I ate a full steak dinner with a baked potato topped with butter, sour cream, and green onions, corn, broccoli, garlic bread, and a trifle for dessert.

It was lucky for me I was at my mom's for dinner yesterday night and snuck in those calories right at the end, because a lot of times Bob and I don't eat a real dinner. Yesterday, I ate about 19,000 calories, probably a little less, 3/4 of those coming from my steak dinner, so it was a good day, but I know I don't take in that much every day. Sometimes I forget to take my prenatal vitamin too.

I'll talk to my doctor about it when I see him next week for my appointment, but I'm not worried. Starving women in 3rd world countries can give birth to relatively healthy babies. Women addicted to crack cocaine can give birth to relatively healthy babies! There's no Pregnancy Police living in my brain making me question every little thing I do or don't do!

My sex drive has leveled off for now, but it comes in cycles, so it will be back soon enough. Bob couldn't keep up, which wasn't really a problem, since I would do it to myself as many times as I could in day whether we had sex or not.

An Ex once said to me, Masturbation is like mini chocolate bars. They're good, but they're not enough. You just want the full bar because it's more satisfying!

That does not apply to me. As soon as the sex is over, no matter how amazing it was, I want more all over again. It's exhausting, even for me, and gets in the way of my daily life. Just to give you an idea of what it's like, on my meds my sex drive is lowered so much, I can last 3 days to a week at most in between sexual episodes. That's a big improvement from everyday, thrice a day and definitely more on par with normal people's sex drives! That's like a 90% decrease in sex drive!

Moving on... I feel more creative. I don't have racing thoughts, but I do have many ideas and notions and thoughts about everything. I just want to talk and talk and talk and write and write and write. Narrowing my focus down is difficult, so I don't actually write that much, I just sit on the couch pondering everything! I think about so much stuff, I can't even begin to remember it all. I also crave alcohol like you wouldn't believe. Sometimes I feel like alcohol is a tool that I can use to help me relax and focus my thoughts, especially when I'm with friends and family.

My friend invited me out for coffee not too long ago. We spent something like five hours sitting in the Tim Horton's. I definitely dominated that conversation too. It was so exciting having a real person to talk to, I just went on and on about so much stuff, I can't even remember what. I had so much to say! I didn't want to stop talking.

Bob doesn't have time to talk to me. He comes home from school, spends all evening doing school work, even doing school work while watching TV and eating, and then goes to sleep. I can't go to bed at the same time he does because even though he's so tired, I feel like we finally have along time together and I just want to stay up all night talking because I'm not tired at all. I usually end up on the couch doing research online. I don't know what I'm researching exactly, I don't remember, but it's often pregnancy related, or stuff I thought of earlier in the day and didn't get to finish thinking about because I was interrupted by other pressing ideas.

Then the crash comes. After not having eaten or slept properly in days, I get irritable, frustrated, and I definitely start to lose touch with reality. I feel like all these goals and plans I had made for myself can never be achieved and I become very pessimistic and angry, but not depressed. The feelings are so overwhelming I totally break down.

That's what happened yesterday. I was feeling very confident in myself going into a job interview for a sales position I was not qualified for in the slightest. The timing was so poor because I was feeling on top of the world walking into that interview. When it didn't go well, it set off some sort of trigger and I felt extremely deflated and that's when the crash began.

I felt so ordinary and mundane and not special. I get all these crazy visions for myself  and I think I'm some sort of prodigy with secret untapped abilities, just waiting to be exposed at the right moment. I cried driving home, I cried riding up the elevator, and I cried on my couch, feeling so sorry for myself and my lack of imagined abilities and strengths. Luckily my cousin called at the exact perfect moment and calmed me down and then raised me up. After being on the phone for an hour, I felt so much better and relaxed. That night I was quiet, not feeling the need to talk so much, I was hungry, eating that huge steak dinner, and I was tired, sleeping for 10 hours straight.

I feel very plain and boring today and I've got a headache, like I'm hungover or something. I feel void of thoughts and emotions. I feel normal. I feel reset. I'm glad I have the day off with nothing planned at all so I can recoup and gather my strength for when it starts all over again.

Practice Parenting

I've been doing this babysitting gig for some weeks now. The girls are 3, 5, and 7. They are all beautiful, intelligent, creative, funny girls, who love being artistic and have no problem singing loudly or talking my ear off. I genuinely have a fun time when I'm with them! Their parents are down to earth, easy going, good people and I'm glad I was hired by them.

I'm starting to recognize patterns in the way I care for the girls. For example, I noticed how "hands-off" I really am, despite the fact that I am literally on the floor on my hands and knees playing every game with them. The girls are very polite and always ask permission before doing anything, (which I love!) but I never do anything for them. If they want a toy, they can go get it, if the older one wants more water, she can get it herself, ect. They're independent, capable girls, so why would I wait on them hand and foot? Their parents don't seem like the type who would do that either.

When they come home from school, they throw their stuff all over the place, and I tell them to hang up their coats before we can start any activities. I'm not picking their coats and bags up! The 3 year old asks for help with things like wiping her bottom and taking her shoes off. If she's just peed, I make her wipe herself. I say Front To Back! And when she's throwing a fit because I won't take her shoes off for her, I just encourage her to keep trying because I know she knows how to do it herself. I saw her do it before, she can do it again! There's lots of praises of course when she completes the task herself!

The two youngest will cry if I don't give them their favourite colour straw, or plate, or cup. The five year old wanted a cookie for snack, so I let her choose her cookie, and I grabbed the orange plate because it was the first one on the top of the pile. She said she wouldn't eat her cookie unless it was on a green plate. I said, fine, then you're not eating your cookie. She ate it without another word! Problem solved! I'm not digging through all the plates to find her favourite one! Obviously the cookie was more important to her than the plate it was on.

I make them clean up their own toys and games before starting a new activity. I make them share and take turns. Sometimes the tears fly because one person refuses to share or isn't playing properly. I give adequate warnings and chances and encourage fair play, but sometimes even I can't take it! I'll say, "No more playing this today! That's final!" I clean the game up myself and put it away. This causes a break down and crying, but luckily children are easily distracted, so it doesn't take much to get them interested in a new activity. In time they'll learn how to be more diplomatic and judicious to avoid having games being shut down by the man.

I'm firm in my decisions and the girls caught on to that pretty quickly. I give them fair options for things that matter, but ultimately, they run their own day and choose what they want to do. I let them get loud! I let them make a mess! That's when they're having the most fun. I can honestly say the longest anyone has ever watched TV while I was babysitting, is 10 minutes. They have so much fun playing with me, they don't care about TV at all!

Because I'm the babysitter, I'm deeply involved in most of the activities since that's my job to play along, but I'm not dictating, micro-managing, or hovering over them every second of playtime while I'm with them. I can see myself being even more hands off with my own child once it's born, since I'll obviously not be playing with him or her all day like I do when I'm babysitting.

Now that I have a pretty good understanding of what kind of parent I'm probably going to be, it makes me wonder what kind of parent Bob will be.

Wasting Food

I waste quite a bit of food and I don't feel bad about it.

When I go to a restaurant, I eat until I'm full. If half my plate is leftover, I will usually pack it up, depending on what I ordered. If it's not going to taste right reheated, I won't take it home with me. Or I'll ask Bob if he wants to eat it later. If he doesn't, there's no reason for me to bring it home and let it take up space in my fridge.

When we cook a meal at home, we don't always save the leftovers. I rarely enjoy eating leftovers. I don't care if there is a full meal leftover, if I know nobody is going to eat it later, I don't save it. What's the point? It will take up space in the fridge, eventually grow mold, and it will get thrown out anyway. What's the difference between throwing it out that night and throwing it out a month later?

I always throw out unused food that is passed the best before date too. I don't do a sniff test because I don't like smelling things, I just read the date and throw it out. Dairy, canned goods, dry goods, I throw it all out, even if it's never been opened. I don't care if "still good" because the thought of eating expired food churns my stomach.

The old, There Are Starving Children in Africa speech was given to me more than once while I was growing up. Me saving my french fries from McDonald's for later doesn't solve world hunger. Me overeating until I feel sick doesn't help anybody either.

A person said to me, Oh that will all change once your baby's born and you need to save money.
If I'm not going to put expired food in my body, what makes you think I'll put expired food into my child's body? That's disgusting. And I'm not going to force my kid to clean his plate either because I'm terrified of wasting precious food!

AND I'm not going to be some mommy-vacuum, sucking up my kids leftovers so there's no waste. That's almost as disgusting as eating expired food! I do not eat off other people's plates, share cutlery, ect. I will never put something that's been in my kid's mouth into my mouth. Ever. So many mothers do it, sucking on baby's soother after it fell on the floor and whatnot, and that is something I guarantee you I will never, ever do!

When I go grocery shopping, I try to buy only what I know I'm going to use up. When I cook a meal, I try to make just enough so there are no leftovers to deal with. Anything that freezes well goes into the freezer to prolong it's shelf-life. It's not like I take joy in throwing food out! I do make an effort to reduce waste.

Dropping Babies and Cameras

I used to be very interested in dream analysis. I would write down my dreams every morning and use my dream dictionary to interpret the meaning. I learned a lot about myself and how I was feeling about all kinds of different things going on in my life.

There's this one dream in particular I keep having that's sort of a recurring dream, but different each time. I had it last night and that's why I'm posting this. It's the dream where I drop shit that's expensive, valuable, and should never be dropped ever in real life or there would be major consequences.

I can't remember when these dreams first started, but when I was in college, I used to dream that I was holding the news camera relaxed at my side, usually walking somewhere with it, and my hands would ever so slowly loosen their grip around the handle and suddenly I would let go completely, watching the camera lens smash before me. I was always horrified when it happened. I would have this dream once a week for sure.

After a while I became more comfortable with the camera and the dreams stopped until I started working at CBC. I used to dream about dropping and breaking the news camera there all the time. Sometimes it was from letting the camera go while walking, but other dreams depicted me balancing the camera, usually on the ledge of a balcony, and watching it fall over. I dreamed that dream off and on for the whole 3 years I worked there, even during the months when I wasn't scheduled as a camera person.

Sometimes while walking with the camera in real life, I became conscious of the dream. Fear would come over me just like in the dream, and I would grip my camera so tightly my hands would sweat and I'd have to switch hands to keep from actually dropping the camera.

When my girlfriend gave birth to her daughter, I used to dream I was holding her infant baby in my lap, her head supported by my knees, but then for some reason I would stretch my legs out without holding on to the baby and she would very quickly slide down my legs and smash her head on the floor. What's funny about that dream is in real life that's how I held the baby for the first time even though I previously dreamed I would kill the baby by doing that. In real life I knew I would never drop the baby.

The night before meeting my cousin's newborn baby, just 2 weeks old, I dreamed about passing her baby into another person's arms, fumbling the baby and it died. I also dreamed about holding her baby swaddled in a thin blanket. Somehow my arms went weak and the baby started to fall out of my arms, but I was holding on to the end of the blanket. Like a yo-yo, I watched in horror as the baby rolled down the blanket and fell to the ground, dead. I didn't even try to catch her!

The next day, in real life, I held that little baby like a pro. I even passed her on to another woman and everything was fine. Not once did I feel like I was going to drop and kill her.

When I was with Dave, I would sometimes dream that I was fondling his Canon camera, sort of caressing it in my hands like a surface juggler and it would slip through my fingers and smash beyond repair.

Rarely I'll dream about fumbling dishes, like water glasses and such, but in real life I do fumble my dishes and often break my own glasses and chip my plates. In those dreams it's never a big deal compared to my other dreams where I know I've just done something so horrible, I may not be forgiven.

I tried looking up the meaning of these dreams and found these two entries:

To dream that you are dropping things indicates that you need to let go of some project, relationship, person, or idea. Also analyze the significance of what is being dropped. Alternatively, it may represent your carelessness. Perhaps you are expressing some dismay or regret in how you let something slip through fingers.

and

Dropping a Baby:  Carelessness in dealing with your basic needs, especially in relationships;  mishandling an opportunity;  betraying trust; feeling that you have been dropped by someone, perhaps in a relationship.

These meanings are quite telling actually and coincide with some issues I've had in my adult life, especially surrounding when these dreamed occurred. Sometimes it's not even about the baby or the camera, but about a completely different person or problem I was having at the time.

I've yet to dream about dropping my own baby, or breaking something valuable that actually belongs to me.

Atheist Parenting

Bob and I are not passively non-religious. We are atheists.

If I could have it my way, I would plant that little atheist seed in my baby's brain, telling him that we are an atheist family and he is atheist by association, much like all the other religions indoctrinate their children. And why shouldn't I? All the religious parents do it! Or would that be too oppressive of me to declare my child's (non) religious stance for him at birth? Sometimes the children follow in their parents' beliefs and sometimes they don't. My child will have every right to convert to something else later on in life if he wants to. I sincerely hope he doesn't, but I would not shun or disown him if he did.

A large part of me doesn't think that will ever happen though. Right from day one, I plan to teach our child that we don't believe in the existence of gods or goddesses because we believe in evolutionary science. (I would rather come out and say God definitely does not exist, but Bob thinks that might be a little harsh sounding to a child.)

Learning about all the different religions is important as our child gets older and can comprehend what it all means, but as a preschooler, I want our child to be able to identify us as an atheist family that believes largely in science just like Christian children identify themselves as being part of a Christian family that believes in God. It's all part of forming an identity, a sense of belonging, and also familial pride.

To be atheist is to think critically, ask questions, and be skeptical. If our child grows up cautiously curious, but not gullible and facing an identity crises, we've done our job as atheist parents and I highly doubt our child will be easily swayed by religious brainwashing cults as an adult, or even just normal religious groups for that matter.

Teaching tolerance is also important to me because I have friends and family members that believe in different faiths, and I want our child to be respectful of others' beliefs. It's inevitable that our child will be bombarded by questions about our family's complete lack of faith in any supreme power and I want him to be able to have a conversation about religion without starting a fight. Asking questions like, Why do you believe that?, and How do you know that is true? are a great way of finding out what someone else believes in without being confrontational or judgmental.

It's been my personal experience that most believers really don't like having their faith challenged like that because it makes them think about why they believe in their particular religion, but at the same time, it opens the door to allow them to ask questions about atheism. It becomes an interesting and enlightening conversation instead of an emotional debate.

If the conversation ever turns into, You and your whole family are going to hell! I want our child to be able to cover his smile politely and say, Thank you for your concern, but as an atheist, I don't believe in heaven or hell. And abruptly end the conversation there, ignoring any other comments made afterward.

As time goes on, I hope the more our child learns about the different religious ideologies of the world, the more he'll come to cherish and respect the positive atheist upbringing Bob and I gave him and hopefully our grandchildren will be raised atheist too!

Grass is Always Greener

For almost a decade, I've been trying to ascertain the meaning of life, more specifically, the purpose of my own life. What do I want to do, or have before I die? Is there some specific goal I can work towards so that once I achieve it, I can die happy?

Yesterday, the boyfriend told me a quote his teacher said in class, saying, "The grass is always greener on the other side, but what if you spent some time watering your own lawn?"

That's such a profound thing to say. We always want what we can't have, but if we work with what we've got, we can turn it into something beautiful. Easier said than done, but it got me thinking.

In this life, I want to feel happy, grateful, and loved. It's a struggle for me, especially now, and I'm always consuming myself with guilt, anxiety, and apathy.

Years before I became pregnant, I felt a baby would give my life meaning and purpose and direction. I was selfish, giving my baby a job to do before it was even conceived. A black hole had started swallowing me up, like quicksand, and it was easier to stop struggling and just let it consume me until I died. Connecting with Bob helped me to prepare my slingshot and escape from the darkness. His pace of life was slower and he taught me to enjoy simple pleasures again because it's the little things he cherishes most.

Now we're preparing our lives for our baby. A baby I've wanted for so long because I thought it would change my life for the better.... While it's given me something to focus on, I feel selfish and I'm not sure if my life's any better. I feel like I have nothing concrete to offer him or her. I feel unstable, unworthy, and weary of my ability to give my child a happy, solid home to grow up in; a home that our child will look back on and remember more good times than bad.

I don't feel depressed, I just feel like another black hole is forming slowly around me and I'm powerless to stop it. I feel low-functioning, like I can't help myself or do anything productive. I feel badly about a lot of things, some of them I have no control over. Actually most of them I have no control over. The rest of me is still searching for myself. What can I do to feel happy, grateful, and loved while minimizing feelings of guilt, anxiety, and apathy? How do I stop wishful thinking and peering over the fence into other yards and start taking the time to water my own damn grass?

The baby feels real inside of me, but I am a lifeless vessel, creating life without trying. I wish I had the energy to try to make a life for myself too. I want a life that my child can observe and mimic and be proud of and will say at my funeral that I lead a full, satisfying life.

First GeoCaching Adventure

Yesterday I went geocaching for the first time, and I have to say I am totally addicted! If you've never heard of geocaching, it's when you use a handheld GPS device to track the coordinates of "treasures" hidden around the world. There are thousands of geocaches in Manitoba alone, so just think of how many are hidden elsewhere on the planet.

I went with Daroll (my mom's husband,) and my friend Carly and her dad Gerry. It was sort of (step) father-daughter bonding time. We went to Kilcona Park and found roughly 10 caches in about 4 hours. I personally found 2 of those 10! Plus there were at least 2 or 3 that we searched for and never found.

The neatest part was opening the cache and seeing everybody's "calling card." People throw in buttons, pins, stickers, trinkets, toys, and pennies. Some hardcore geocachers put in personalized tokens that have their handle printed on them. I threw in an expired bus fare ticket into all the caches we found. Daroll had these green, plastic coins with four leaf clovers on one side and "Get Lucky" on the other side. Carly brought gold pipe cleaners and fashioned them into little bows and stuff.

After you find the cache, you have to sign the logbook included inside. Everyone just puts the date and their handle. It's crazy how old some of these caches are!

Daroll said he's found more than 50 geocaches since he started. What he's interested in finding are the trackables: GeoCoins and Travel Bugs. He's found travel bugs originating from the UK and Washingtion! Trackables each have their own unique code printed on them so that when a person finds one, they can go online, read the purpose of the bug and then attempt to fulfill its destiny. For example, the owner of the bug from the UK wants his bug to travel the world and get to as many places as possible.

We never found any today, but Daroll planted a travel bug in one of the caches we found. His bug is on a Take Me Home journey. He wants to see how long it will take for the bug to get back to Colorado where he lives. The first person to return the bug to the cache Daroll created and hid in Colorado will be able to collect a First To Find memento that Daroll has placed there.

There's all kinds of award and milestone tokens you can collect. It's so cool!

Geocaching is one of those affordable hobbies that you can get very serious about without spending a lot of money. The most expensive, but necessary, part is the GPS device. You could spend hundreds of dollars on your device if you wanted to, but if you keep your eyes open, there are deals to be found. Calling cards can be home-made or bought in a dollar store. If you wanted to start your own cache, you just need a waterproof container and a small note pad. But you could buy official log books and crazy containers that look like pine cones and stuff online if you really wanted. Even the travel bugs and geocoins cost under $10!

By far the best part of geocaching is you walk a lot, for hours even, getting tons of fresh air and exercising, without even really realizing that's what you're doing. You're so focused on finding the caches, and excited when you find them, you just want to find more and more! Plus so many different people can do it! It's a kid-friendly family activity, but can also be a really fun and challenging adventure for those who are more experienced and aren't afraid to roam the back roads and get lost in a forest.

Some caches are really large, meaning the container is big, but not necessarily easier to find. Some are so small, and so well camouflaged, they could be smaller than a film canister, or be decorated to look like something else, like a fake rock. We found one today that looked like a sprinkler pipe.

I don't know when I'll get to go geocaching again, but I hope one day soon because I totally can't wait to do it again!