halifax!

so pretty. we parked hank at a public park; within walking distance to the waterfront, many bookstores, quaint public houses for the queen and a "restaurant with a conscience" that has the best gluten-free pizza i have found so far in the world. meat-lovers ... yum.

so far, we have spent too much money on books (the trend continues). this great book store had a lovely section of women authors, and i found an alice walker novel AND a jeanette winterson collection of short fiction i haven't yet read. so lovely. another bookstore down the road was overstuffed and incredibly daunting. though it had many more books, we didn't end up buying very much because it was exhausting simply to move through the melee of print. stacks upon boxes blocking the bottoms of all the shelves you wanted to look at. huge shelves that towered above your head no matter how tall you are. dark corners stuffed with books you might want, if you could see them. we wandered around, slack of jaw and wild of eye, then left slayed by fiction.

getting to halifax from north sydney where the ferry docked took us half a day, even when we stopped at a cute little market where the queen got some kind of pizza in a bun he claimed was awful. he often claims these things are awful, as i often watch him eat them with a glum look of gluten-free resignation in my eyes. it must have been terrible; he wolfed it down with quiet sighs and moans. such a stoic man.

the ferry itself, having taken eight hours to get to newfoundland, took thirty-two hours to get back. most of this time was spent fifteen minutes from north sydney, where it was too windy to dock. i went out to see how windy was too windy, and it was very, very windy. i had to hold on to the railing to grope my way forward. the captain said it was gusting to 45 knots, which translates to almost 84 km/h. yup, windy. so we got free lousy meals and an extra day off and some more lousy sleep. also, i finished the louise erdrich novel and pretended to start the john irving book i have been avoiding for several months. fortunately, i still haven't touched it, barring the fifty or so pages i read initially, before i gave up. oh john, who changed? you or me? perhaps both of us. maybe it just isn't the right time. ah well.

got my 26-week checkup started at a local walk-in clinic; still need to go to a lab to get some blood taken for something-or-other as well as an oral glucose test to make sure i don't have gestational diabetes. i have gained a bit more weight (i don't seem to be gaining very much, even though i feel like i'm eating with amazing frequency), don't have swelling around my ankles and still have low blood pressure, which is why i get dizzy occasionally. the solution, says walk-in doc, is to drink more water. more fucking water? eight to eleven cups a day is not enough? kiss my watery ass! but it makes sense, because usually the dizzies come in the morning. so i will make sure to drink marathon cups first thing, mom. (pretty sure mom doesn't read the blog, as i can't even convince her to log on to fbook to see the pictures the queen puts up of our journey).

next week, ameeeerickaaaa. noticing i can do less and less things like climbing hills and braving crowds, so my posts may descend into more book reviews and tales of hank naps. be warned. at least i am doing more writing than i ws at the beginning of the pregnancy. it's all balancing out somehow.