How Canadian Am I?

So it's the start of hockey playoffs. The Canucks played last night. Quadruple Overtime blah, blah, blah. I imagine DJ is salivating over this for a blog topic. I on the other hand could care less. I am SO not a hockey person. I used to be. Once upon a time. You know when the seasons were all in their proper places, there was no global warming, penny candy was actually a penny, you could get a popsicle and chocolate bar for a dollar and summer holidays lasted an eternity. Yes those were the good old days. In those days I watched hockey on my dads knee and cheered for the Canucks (of course) and Montreal because my dad did. I might have even known what "icing" was even if I've long forgotten it since. Now when I hear icing I think of a lovely confection that melts in your mouth. So hockey just makes me hungry.

Then again everything makes me hungry these days. Thankfully I've reached the point in my pregnancy where my stomach is finally starting to look less like what the pregnancy books call "maternal fat" and more like an actual baby bump. That's always uplifting isn't it? You're already feeling like a bloated whale, too big for your normal clothes, too small for maternity clothes, living in track pants and elasticized waistbands and then they have to go referring to your "maternal fat". That HAD to have been written by a man.

In this hungry-all-the-time phase all I want to eat is pickles and thankfully I have the perfect excuse to indulge. You might think this pickle thing is another pregnancy symptom but that's only if you don't know me. Pickles and I go WAY back. It's been a very long love affair. Once, for my birthday, a friend bought me an entire case of pickles. I think that still tops the list as the best gift I've ever received. For me, Heaven will not be streets of gold but mountains of pickles. Last pregancy I was actually turned off them and was completely devastated. It was an enormous relief, after 8 pickles, to discover that I suffer no such ailment this time.

Last night while eating pickles, watching America's Next Top Model and balancing the laptop on my lap to write a new blog entry I discovered I've reached yet another milestone of pregnancy. This is the part where sneezing equals peeing. Typically when you reach this part of pregnancy you feel the sneeze coming and you do certain things to minimize the leakage. You flex unseen muscles, plant your feet or cross your legs and sort of brace yourself. Well I was on the couch and in no position for flexing or bracing. I sneezed and well, let's just say I was getting tired of those pajama bottoms anyway.

In addition to reaching the sneezing/peeing milestone of pregnancy I've also become rather emotional. Again for those of you who know me well you're probably thinking become? What are you talking about you've become emotional? But I swear my last pregnancy I was way less emotional than this one. Just the other day while watching more eye-glazing, mind-numbing tv I cried during that A&W commercial. You know the one where the son and his wife take the parents for dinner and they get the dad the grandpa burger to tell them they're having a baby? I cried. How ridiculous. I mean how long has that stupid commercial been on tv? What's even more ridiculous is I cry every time I see it. I have these kind of senseless emotional episodes on a daily basis. My last pregnancy I only had one and it was for a very patriotic cause. I cried over Don Cherry.

Yes you heard me, Don Cherry, Hockey Night in Canada, Coaches Corner, shouter, loud tie wearer. That Don Cherry. Hugh was watching HNIC and I was sitting with him reading. He went upstairs to get something and when he returned I was sitting on the couch sobbing over Don Cherry. This was the year that was supposed to be his last doing Coaches Corner and they were honoring his contributions to the sport by presenting him with a painted portrait of himself when he played for Toronto. Hugh was bewildered. "What on earth are you crying over Don Cherry for?" "It's just...he's just...it's just that he's so CANADIAN" I wailed.

Go figure. I guess we really are born with hockey in our blood even if it only makes the most rare of appearances. We'll just have to wait and see what happens with our Canucks this playoff/pregnancy season.