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.

i could live here

i just had the most amazing bath. words cannot do it justice.

we came in overnight on the ferry from cape breton and slept a bit in port aux basques before heading up to gros morne national park (this pic captures what i like best about the park; fog and valleys). we parked by a dock for the night and stepped out to watch the little fishing boats bobbing up and down in the dark (going for crabs or lobster, i think the queen said. not actual fish, anyway. that's morning fishing) and the lighthouse swooping around.

the next day we took a brief hike before heading back onto the trans-canada and east to st john's. given the size of this rock, we made it to clarenville and parked for the night (not finding a decent pub, to the disappointment of the queen). today we got into st john's (pronounced st jahn's, apparently) and nearly went crazy trying to find a b&b. lesson: google and newfoundland are not friends. everything on google has been closed for three years. just park the damn bus and walk around. once we did that, we found this. oh! yeth pleeze.

let me tell you about the bathroom. it is large. very large. spacious is definitely a word you could use. there is a bidet. and a chandelier. and stained glass windows. there is a shower separate from the tub. let me sigh about the tub. long enough to stretch out in with my head underwater and my legs straight. wide enough to sit sideways comfortably, which i did to get the jets to pulsate directly onto the perfect spot in my lower back. the queen kept coming in and giggling at how perfectly happy i looked. then he went out in search of a pub. which he has found, on the street rumoured to have the most pubs per square foot in all of north america. i don't expect him for hours.

so i sit naked in a room with central heating and running water and electricity, all of which i have grown to appreciate recently. not that i am dissing the ever-steady hank. hank rocks. but this is nice too. i'm sure hank understands i have a little romance going on with B&Bs and bathtubs. i feel very lucky to be here, both newfoundland and this gorgeous place. i have wanted to come to this rock for years. and it is gorgeous. desolate, rocky, rugged; this is a place i love very much already. i feel sorrow that we are barely touching it before we leave. it would take a month to rush through. we have four or five days. bittersweet vacation, bring it on.

bump picture!

welcome to nova scotia; we found an irish pub. the queen is pleased. it's like both of us are home (i was born in nova scotia, but moved away as a toddler and haven't been back since i was twelve). the sand dunes in pei were fantastic. they are actually dune-like. who knew?

we're stopping here quickly (took the ferry over from pei) and then off to newfoundland, where i am not counting on finding a lot of internet. after newfoundland, we'll spend more time wandering around nova scotia before heading back to new brunswick and into america. it sort of seems like we're rushing, but we talked about how much we have left to do and i am amazed. i didn't realise how much road lies ahead of us. i think we'll probably not make it to the west coast. another time, pacific friends.

we left our pei friends; they are such a sweet couple. it was really warming to hear them talk about how they don't know what they're doing in terms of parenting (when they're clearly doing quite well). also, she gave me a body pillow, for which i love her forever and ever. it's so joyous to be able to lie on my side and keep my hips open.

i am losing bodily functions one by one. i can barely cross my legs. my body has been hijacked by a hungry, fussy gymnast. the queen looked at my breakfast this morning and said "that looks neat. complicated and tasty, like you." i was eating whole-grain cereal flakes with yogurt and blueberries, a vain attempt to stimulate my stagnant, brick-laying bowels. i looked at his loaf of tuscan bread with butter and merely scowled. more poignant breakfast conversation:

me: anyone who calls menstruation a curse has never been pregnant. yeast infections, bladder infections, constipation, backache...

the queen: well, that's not every woman's pregnancy.

me, with bitter cheer: no! some women get hemorrhoids and heartburn!

the queen says nothing at this point. wise man.

i could live here

ah, the maritimes. currently in fredericton, new brunswick; a cute little government city on the river, with beautiful old houses. as much as i had fun in montreal, this is more my pace. though we nearly lost our minds today in a sneaky hate spiral. true to recipe, our day started poorly; in a mall parking lot, the queen couldn't sleep, i had to wait in line at a medicentre to discover i still have my UTI :( and then we went to the hospital so i could pee in more cups. after missing the easy pharmacy, we got lost finding the complicated one, then the queen realised he had lost the cap to the diesel tank and we'd been pissing money away for half the day. the clincher was not being able to find a place where we could replace it, and then losing a small but important tool somewhere in the depths of hank (still haven't found it) and i desperately needed a nap but felt too stressed out to take one. the queen doesn't mind hardships and challenges if he can do something about them, but take away his ability to solve and he swears like a very angry irishman.

eventually, we ate chips and calmed down. the sneaky hate spiral is difficult to climb out of, but it can be done. the queen found a way to fix something, i lay down for a brief nap in the parking lot of canadian tire, and it got better. we even salvaged enough of the day to make it worth having awoken at all. the queen took some pictures of the quaint downtown while i took an epic nap, and then we went out for supper at the blue door. we had the duck, and it was incredible. i had never had duck before, and i don't know if it will ever be this good again. damn. that was some fine duck.

we then went browsing through bookstores. the queen found a vonnegut he didn't have and i found a really cool book on time by sean carroll. i will keep you posted on how that is. it reads quite well at the beginning. speaking of books, have i raved about the book of flying yet? i'm more into sci-fi than fantasy but this fantasy book is gorgeous. the style is really lyrical, but it doesn't eclipse the plot, which moves at a faster pace than most fantasy books do. one thing that drives me a bit crazy about fantasy is the amount of time the author spends describing the land and the customs of the land, whose brother owns what castle and what the fuck that creature is. sometimes, that's really well done and i love it (the silmarillion, for example). but most of the time i yawn and put it down. the book of flying does not fall into this pit of masturbatory boredom. it introduces each character simply, describes the land that pico, the librarian, is travelling through, and then moves on. the writing style is so... i want to say pretty, but it's dreamier than that. the marriage of dreamy style and succinct plot keeps me engaged while letting me dwell on specific phrases; like a chocolate mousse that is neither too rich nor too sweet - you can just keep eating and you don't overdo it. anyway. rant rant rant.

back to our evening, it's a perfect date. which is nice, because we had some relationship stress in montreal. i won't go into it now, since it's all over and pretty well resolved, but it was rather stressful at the time. so it feels nice to have some intimacy. dinner and a bookstore; that's our style all right. then go rock the bus, har har har. as i was done napping this afternoon, i heard a woman walk past and say, in a disdainful and disbelieving tone, "they live in a schoolbus?" i decided afterward i should have yelled out "and we're in your neighbourhood!" the queen thinks i should have added "and we're breeding!"

i guess we do live in a schoolbus. i tend to think that we are on a roadtrip, but in most people's worlds, roadtrips are maybe slightly less lengthy, and they are still paying rent or mortgage somewhere. i tried to think if i use that tone of disdain for anyone, and the queen and i agreed i use it on people who use that tone on other people (in the nature of being intolerant of intolerance).

tomorrow, PEI. i want to write about the fog, the mistiness, i want to write about this amazing love, i want to write about the little gymnast inside me (the queen took some good bump pics, i promise i will post them. they are more bulge than bump now; i just entered my third trimester! woot woot!). but the cafe is closing. soon.