Death sucks. Period.

I'm a week away from my due date, now.  And I'm suddenly hoping this baby stays IN for as long as possible...

I had an acquaintance. An absolutely lovely acquaintance who was such an integral part of some of my dear friends' lives it always amazed me that we never really ventured passed being well acquainted with one another.

She was so many things I aspire to be.

Anyway. She died today. She had breast cancer, and beat it. She was a superstar. She wasn't going anywhere for anything.

But then the cancer suddenly showed up in her spine, and ever since then, well, that was kind of it.

And she's gone today.

And I don't know what to do.

I'm not crying - we weren't close enough that hearing of her passing has me bent over a box of kleenex, though goodness willing I will be at the funeral and I am certain the tears will flow freely.  But right now...I'm just...forlorn.  It's the only word I can come up with.

I'm sad for her family, her friends. I'm devastated for one of my dear friends who considered her a mother. For her grandchildren here now and those that will come in future. What a horrible thing to NOT know her.  I'm devastated for her best friend, who, in my humble opinion, is dealing with WAY too much in her life right now, and has now, officially, lost her one obvious go-to person in the world.  Best friends are so important. I'm lucky to be married to mine, but not everyone has that in life. How do you get through it when your person leaves??

And I don't know what to do.  I messaged Mr. Man earlier: I wish there were something we could do. Anything. I wish death could be "helped" for those who lose people. I think that's one of the worst things, how helpless it makes us feel. There's just...nothing you can even SAY, let alone do. It just sucks.

I have appointments tonight, and I don't want to keep them. I just want to hole up in my home with my family, mourn, and hold them close to drink up every moment with them that I get. Little Miss is sitting beside me here at the table drawing pictures of me - "Mommy! Look how big and fat you are, being pregnant!"  The only thing on her mind right now is the any-moment arrival of her little sibling... She asks why we're sad and we say that a friend died today, and she says, with all the gravity possible by her five-year-old self "I'm sad, too, Mom, because you're sad."  And then she skips off to keep playing being a pirate, and drawing pictures of her people.

It just sucks. And I DO have some pretty strong beliefs, faith, what-have-you about the eternal nature of life. I know that there's life after death, and that it's a bazillion times better than what one would be experiencing in mortality while cancer ravages one's body. And for that, for her, I rejoice. I am happy to know she's free from the pain and suffering of being here.

But that doesn't make it NOT suck. Maybe it makes it better, but it still sucks. Death just sucks. It sucks it sucks it sucks. It's sad, it's hard. It's impossible for us to really wrap our heads around, because mortality is all we KNOW. It's all we can fathom or even pretend to begin to understand.  So, yeah. When death wins, and it always does eventually, it sucks.

I had to laugh, though. One of my dear dear friends posted an "RIP" status on Facebook for this wonderful lady, and it just made me smile.  I can't imagine her either "resting" or "peaceful" with her new cancer-free self!  She used to say of herself that her passion was the theatre, while her day job was at a desk.  She was always up to and into something. Always on stage, acting, singing, dancing. She was beautiful. She had four sons, and from the little I know of their family, what a riot they must have had! She was one of the most infectiously-delightful people I've ever been in contact with.

So no, I can't imagine her resting. Or "peaceful." I'm sure she's at peace in that she's no longer suffering, but my goodness, did anyone ever know her to sit still? When she beat her breast cancer she took up different types of exercise, not that she was ever idle before - she's always been one of those beautiful, healthy ladies everyone envies because of her poise - started TEACHING exercise classes. Participating in different fundraising campaigns to BEAT cancer. She bought and redecorated a house, painted the whole thing, renovated the kitchen... she worked her butt off in her volunteer church positions, and even took on extra projects like putting on a musical production about the stories of the various women whose interactions with Christ are recorded in the New Testament and Book of Mormon. She did that just because she could, because she wanted to. No one asked her to do it.

She had the greatest collection of shoes a girl has ever seen.  hahaha Which is such a silly thing, but I love that she loved herself enough to take the time and the money to make sure her feet looked fabulous.  We don't all budget for that.

Anyway. I've had a few blog posts ratting around in my brain the last couple of weeks, but this...this just had to come out.

We loved her. We'll miss her.  Our hearts break for her.  I look so forward to the day when I understand eternity. And in the meantime, this sucks. We'll all survive it, her family, her friends. But I so wish life could end without tears.  I don't know.

It sucks.

When Pregnancy Brain Attacks...

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So. I'm pregnant. 

You know how you hear stories about women losing their minds when they're pregnant?  And not ONLY in cranky-pants hormone fits (ummm....see my last post - totally NOT immune to those!), but we actually get DUMBER. 

As if growing human beings inside our abdominal cavities and all the fun physical repercussions of THAT insanity wasn't enough, the little parasites actually SUCK our brain power. 

(Funny story about that - Little Miss & I have been flipping through some anatomy texts so she can see what the baby looks like inside my tummy and what-not, and today she found a pic showing the baby, other inside bits, and up top, the brain.  She's all....how does the baby get all the way from down there to up to the brain? hahaha Because zombie-baby is LITERALLY sucking my brain... whoops. Parenting fail!)

Anyway. Yes. Brain power. GONE. 

Like, it's GONE. 

Let me illustrate: 

Standing at the checkout of a store with a girlfriend I was trying to pay.  I had cash & coinage to pay with. AND I had enough money.  

So I pulled out my money, in my hand, and held it out....

...waiting for the money to start making sense... 

I finally got the dollar amount together and passed that over, but then was faced with the challenge of counting out a whopping nineteen cents. 

I know, hard, right?  Once those numbers pass ten, it's just....WHOA. 

So I stand there.  With my hand out. Full of change.  And all I need to do is find nineteen cents somewhere amongst that change.  

I wish there had been nineteen pennies.  I think I could have done that.  

After standing there, stupidly, for what felt like an eternity... 

...and not just to me, because FINALLY my gal pal reached over and fished out the change I needed from my palm.  sigh

Another time, slightly more recently, I was preparing myself breakfast.  Now, a lot of the time for breakfast I will make myself a couple of boiled eggs, have some greek yogurt, and an orange.  It's delicious, keeps my tummy calm, and I stay full for at least a couple of hours O:-) 

Well, this one morning, I opened the refrigerator to get out my yogurt, which I buy in large tubs because it's cheaper and less wasteful than buying the individual cups, and then I just dish out a tiny bowl full of what I want to eat that morning.  I know, revolutionary, right?  Anyway, the yogurt had the night before ended up in a little tower of sorts on the top shelf of the fridge, stacked with a tub of sour cream and a jar of seafood sauce. 

So, I reach in to the tower, disassemble it to get at what I need, and retract my arm and hand from the fridge. 

Holding sour cream.  

Duh!  Well, that's understandable. The sour cream is the same size and shaped tub as the yogurt, and they were stacked together. No big deal. Plus, I mean, come on; we all pull that crap sometimes, no?  Your brain is just distracted and you grab the wrong thing?   No big deal. 

So open the fridge door goes again, and into I venture. Going for yogurt. Now this time the acquisition of yogurt requires putting the sour cream BACK into the fridge. Which task I accomplish with amazing accuracy - yay for me!  

I grab what I want, come out of the fridge again, look down at my hand...

...and I'm holding the freaking SEAFOOD SAUCE. 

WHAT THE HECK?! How did I confuse a JAR of SEAFOOD sauce for a tub of cherry greek yogurt?! 

And did I just go into the fridge twice for yogurt and come out with the wrong thing?? TWICE?! 

I'm happy to report that I paid enough attention during the third attempt to emerge from the refrigerator successful, and did eventually get to enjoy my yogurt with my breakfast that morning.  

But. Oh. My. Gosh. 

I'm so stupid on pregnancy my parents keep laughing at me and asking if I'm going to get better.... it's BRUTAL. 

Anyway. We're staying up late to watch Cap'n Jack Sparrow try to reclaim the Black Sparrow from mutinous Barbossa and I'm needed in the kitchen to help make the sweet popcorn.  Pray for my family that I get all the correct ingredients.  I can use all the help I can get at this point!  

To my pregnant friends - I wish nothing but the most resilient brain-power to you ever.  Or, enjoy laughing at these couple of my idiotic placenta-brain moments.  There have been many, and I'm sure a few more to come before the Nugget debuts in a couple of weeks. 

Then...on to NEWBORN BRAIN!  

Bring it on. 

It's a human being.

Well, here we are.  I haven't written on this blog since last June? July? I think it said June when I logged in.... anyway.

2012 was a pretty crappy year in the Red+ household, frankly.  I mean, some awesome things happened, but it was a tough year.  Just lots of....crap.  hahaha And while dealing via writing helps me a lot sometimes, I just couldn't be bothered to take the time.  Spent my me-time kickboxing, reading, and playing with my friends.  

You MAY have heard, probably most people who would bother to read my blog, that in 2012 I FINALLY got pregnant. FIN.AL.LY.  My gosh.  FINALLY when inappropriate, nosy people asked about our procreation plans we had good news.  For those we felt like telling, anyway. O:-) 

I count it amongst my greatest blessings that thus far in my life I have been pregnant twice and had no 'serious' problems or complications. I haven't had the horrible misfortune of miscarrying early on, and while this baby still gestates the computer is bouncing around in my lap with kicks and punches, so with less than a month to go 'til Number Two's debut all appears to be fabulous and healthy with both myself and the fetus.  Which. Is. AWESOME.  

After waiting so long for this baby please know I DO NOT take this for granted.  

Anyway.  

You may have seen (and voted about me blogging! hahaha) on Facebook that I have a bee in my bonnet. I'm sure it won't surprise anyone who knows me at ALL to know the bee is baby-related, and YES, has to do with people who continue to prove my theories about the ever-increasing stupidity of humanity.   

So. Here it goes. 

What is the FIRST thing that someone asks when she finds out you are, or anyone else is, pregnant?

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WHY is that the first thing people ask?!?! WHY?! WHY WHY WHY?! Why does it MATTER?! Seriously?! Does it really MATTER if someone is expecting a girl or a boy? Is our society still so unevolved that you would PREFER for someone ELSE to increase the boy vs. girl or girl vs. boy numbers by contributing offspring to one or the other sex?  Is it BETTER to have a girl or a boy? Is a boy less worthy of celebration or a girl more worth shopping for because you HAVE to dress her in pink and lace?

Can we not just be thrilled that, assuming everything goes okay, the family is expanding at all?

Yes. WE, the PARENTS like to find out. We like to know what our medical professionals think the baby is after the ultrasound. It helps us wrap our heads around the fact that I'm NOT just getting ginormously huge for no reason, and to connect a little bit with the idea of another being showing up in our lives.  But neither Mr. Man or I CARED that Little Miss was expected to be a girl, nor do we CARE about the sex of this baby. Quite frankly, we're both hoping that the ultrasound tech made a mistake and we'll end up with what we're NOT expecting, just to spite all the what-are-you-having-ers. Or a hermaphrodite.  I mean, honestly. It HAPPENS.  It's not so uncommon as NOT to happen.

And while I am ALL for gender roles and girls and boys being different - we ARE different, and I believe VERY strongly that our differences are God-given gifts and/or assignments in life - I DO NOT, nor can I ever imagine myself agreeing with the mindset that forces girls into pink and pearls from BIRTH and boys trucks and sports. WHY just because their genitalia are different should they be denied opportunities to pick favourite colours or toys or activities?  I even saw one "friend" on facebook post that she had to quickly CORRECT her daughter, who preferred playing with her brother's hockey stick than with her barbies. WHAT. THE. CRAP.

Little Miss has been a fabulous introduction for us into raising a daughter. We love her unbelievably. And we're not the only parents to feel this way about our kids - we KNOW we're uber biased, but gosh darn it, I LOVE being her mom.  She is just an absolute delight.

And you know what? She is HER. SHE likes pink, glitter, making jewellery, crafts, colouring, writing "stories" and reading books. She likes Batman, Lego, video games, Mouse Trap, martial arts. She loves princess movies and Barbie movies and Transformers and Power Rangers. She LOVES animals. She wants to be a zookeeper when she grows up.  She loves her stuffies and Little Pet Shops to all be in little families of Mommies & babies - any toy she has one species of is an incomplete set until she can pair it up with a mom or babe.  She loves computers. She loves cooking.  She loves climbing, swinging, sliding. She plays imagination. She wears dresses and skirts and dresses up as Batman for Hallowe'en.  She loves sword fighting. She loves doing manicures and pedicures.

So, yeah. If this baby is another girl, we're kind of stoked about that because our last experience has been amazing. Little Miss is just...HER!  And if this baby is a little boy? I'm super stoked about THAT because it's a new challenge - diapering around extra bits? What? But he will have the same choices and opportunities that Little Miss has had - if he wants to sing and dance and play with dolls, you'd better believe that's what he's going to do.

 Even "knowing" what we're expecting, there's a fairly high chance that these most educated of medical personnel are mistaken and we MIGHT have a baby of the opposite sex.  So no, we don't KNOW what we're having. Except that we assume at this point, with everything pointing to awesome, that we ARE having a baby. A wee teeny tiny bitty human being.

And because we seem to be oddities in our feelings about gender-stereotyping BABIES, we have decided, twice now, that while we know what we're EXPECTING to have, we don't share that information with very many people.  Because, really. WHAT in the heck does it matter? And no, I won't be ONLY using blue or ONLY using pink for whichever my new offspring turns out to be.

So...what set me off specifically today??

Well, we've told SOME people. Not too many. Only people we know who love us and regardless of whether or not they understand our opinions love us enough to smile and laugh and respect our opinions, and keep the information to themselves.

And yet, the gossipmongers are working their magic.  I hate them. I HATE them.

The anticipated gender of my baby is NOT your news. It never has been your news. It never WILL be your news. Any and all information concerning the contents (or more often emptiness) of my uterus is not nor will it EVER be anyone's information except for ME and Mr. Man's. You do NOT get an opinion, nor should you get to know unless expressly told by ME or the FATHER.

Ever notice how I did NOT stand up in church and share my "good news" with you meddlesome lot? Yeah, that was on PURPOSE. Because it's NOT YOUR BUSINESS. You don't get to pick and choose what of my life events you find worthy of celebration with me, and I did NOT ask you to care about this.

I am so infuriated with the gossiping and with the assumption that my life is public just because I now happen to be very noticeably pregnant.  Half of you didn't even find out I was pregnant until after Christmas, and guess what, folks? Baby's due THIS month.

Anyway. I'm HAPPY for you people who like to broadcast your pregnancies and baby's anticipated sex from the tops of buildings. Really, I am.  I have as much say in your doings as you have in mine, so it's not like your "I'm having a boy!" announcements bother me at all. Everyone celebrates and does things differently. I am not RIGHT, this is just how I am.  (Though I do believe I'm right in thinking "correcting" a female from hockey is WRONG WRONG WRONG, but then again, I have a degree in gym class so I'm a little biased towards enjoyable physical activities).  I'm just infuriated with people who so blatantly disregard my wishes and willfully misunderstand and/or ignore everything that Mr. Man and I want in these regards.  Just because you don't comprehend our thinking doesn't mean YOU'RE right, nor does it give you the right to step on our toes or make us feel second-rate or judged.

And I believe it is never ever ever ever ever ever EVER appropriate to spread news about someone that you haven't that person's explicit permission to share, and we definitely have NOT green-lighted ANYONE sharing the sex of the fetus.

And that, dear folks, in a rather large nutshell, is what got me so insanely riled up today.  And why I  DON'T confide in many of you anything about anything because, frankly, you can't keep it to yourselves. You care more about getting and sharing information in your "good intentions" than you actually care about us. And so I will continue to be tight-lipped about my life, my choices, my decisions, my family, my plans, because instead of listening, caring and appreciating, you judge, mock, and gossip. Goodness, if you can't keep the sex of my baby a secret how could I EVER trust you to keep something actually IMPORTANT and "juicy" to yourselves??

(Obviously "you" above doesn't necessarily mean YOU, specifically....it's one of those general yous to the yous who suck the happy out of things. YOU yous. Grrrr to yous!)

Anyway. Apologies for offences, but, hey yous did it first. ;-) hahaha And a bunch of you asked.  Bring on the negative comments - I know I'm a minority in my opinions, but I don't care, and it doesn't make my feelings invalid.  Go ahead and judge and tell me what a horribly cynical miscreant I am.

But just so you know, this miscreant is kind of awesome, and you're very probably missing out because you can't be bothered.  Your problem, not mine.

...I'll try to write again (maybe something less scathing? hahaha) before 2014. Maybe I'll even tell you about the baby when it's here! 'Cause...you know. That IS pretty exciting!

Cheers, all!