Oh, the drama

It's been a bit of a difficult week for a few reasons.  First good parts:  We had a nice little family getaway this weekend, and I was proud of myself for driving 2.5 hours on a slippery, mountainy (ok, it's Ontario, it was only hilly) road all alone with Anja in the car.  She was happy listening to her music and said a total of four things the entire trip.
"Yes, I want plum"
"Mummy, fire truck!
only one "Mummy, are we almost there?"
and "I can't hear my music."

She is a world-class traveller.  

She also said to me the other day "Mummy, what are earwigs?  Because in my dream last night Daddy said if I wasn't quiet, earwigs would crawl into my ears. So I was quiet."

Of course, all this family time together caused Kirk and I some tension.  Our communication patterns are sometimes not the best, and we have developed not-always-healthy ways of expressing frustration.  Since I've been pregnant, too, I've been less willing to accept eye-rolly behaviour and untidiness (will you grow up and pick up after yourself already), and sometimes I do feel blamed for everything (i.e. not knowing exactly where the school we had to register Anja for kindergarten was driving, because we usually pass it on a walking path).  In other words, I express my own frustration very quickly, usually in the form of raising my voice just a smidge.  Anyway, Monday ended up with me saying "I'm this close to being done being married to you," weeping uncontrollably for 3 hours, then, when he went to work that evening, googling "how to ask your husband to leave," planning who he could move in with while he worked on his communication skills, and wondering who I would invite to the birth if we were separated and would I name the baby on my own? 

The storm has blown over (unasked, Kirk even hauled out my huge u-shaped body pillow, which he hates, as a peace gesture), but I forget sometimes how emotionally volatile pregnancy can be.  The thing is, though, it is so very easy to stay in the same tired old patterns, and I'm not quite sure how to get out of them.  Sometimes I think it is ok to explode and say "enough!  Breaking point reached here!"   Is it bad to say it sounds like a huge amount of work?  Is it shunting responsibility when I say that I would like, just once, to be the one not to take the initiative (counselling, what have you)for once?  (Oh, I know it is - still, must it always be me?).  Who here has good marital strategies?

 All of this of course made me very tired, and I have subsequently gone to bed at 8 each evening.  This bed time does not leave much time for writing.  I had a good stint on the weekend, though.

Another thing that I'm trying not to let stress me out, but it is, is that the college teachers' union and the colleges have been involved in a tumultuous contract bargaining process with plenty of strike threats.  I do not want to strike.  I don't beleive that all negotiation options have been reached for on both sides.   I can't lose pay, and I don't want this loss of pay to affect the amount of maternity leave EI I will get for the next 6 months (I don't get a top up.)  And I don't want, if there is a strike, for the semester to be extended, because I don't want to be waddling into class 40 weeks pregnant. Also, I want to have this baby at 38 weeks, because I don't want an 11 lb baby.

Finally, I am feeling very round.  I have lost sight of my collar bones.  This is very distressing.  I am going to the midwife and getting weighed on Tuesday.  Sigh.  I was reading some pregnancy forums tonight and many people have only gained 5-6  lbs at my stage.  I have to remind myself that I am in a healthy range (not to point fingers - I have a friend who had hyperemises gravidarum her whole pregnancy and threw up multiple times a day and could not gain weight...)

Anyway, I am watching House as I write this, and am very impressed with how they go in for surgery and start all kinds of treatment without true diagnosis.   I do like crotchety Dr. House none-the-less. 

Can I also say that finding boys' names is very difficult?