I have been watching a lot of television in Vancouver. Not because that’s the most fun thing to do in Vancouver: it isn’t, by a very long way. Vancouver is lovely, and filled with cultural things and interesting people and incredible food. But I am here to work, and doing mainly that, sandwiched between sleeping and eating. And watching television. And so end up seeing more adverts and trailers for local attractions and headlines for local news than I have seen in years.

Of course, local news is pretty much the same everywhere - it is about bringing small local stories and making them important enough to sit next to the global news stories, and about making the global news stories as local as possible.

That doesn’t, however, always work. Today’s trailer for the eleven o’clock news had me giggling for half the evening. It was the epitome of taking a big, global story, and making it just slightly too local.

Ahem:

“Were you feeling a little crowded out there today? Well, that might be because today, the global population hit seven billion. We ask a local city planner what that’s going to mean for the Lower Mainland…”

Now, I didn’t watch the news item in question, but I’m going to guess “not much”.

The population of the ENTIRE WORLD has increased arbitrarily and they’re going to ask a bloke from the council what measures they’re taking to counter this in the Greater Vancouver area? And what are they expecting?

“Well, since that 7 BILLIONTH person was born, we’ve decided to add a new cycle lane.”
“We’re increasing the bus frequency during peak commuting hours. Just in case those SEVEN BILLION PEOPLE decide to go to work downtown at the some time.”
“We’re building some new condos. Not quite SEVEN BILLION, but about 30, so, y’know, we’re on the way.”

It is my favourite localnewsism this week.

And that’s even in the face of the one about the local family whose house burnt down (this was sad) and who couldn’t find their pet ferrets anymore.
They weren’t sure if they were dead.
They just couldn’t find them.
(It was a very sad story, but there may have been slightly too much emphasis on the ferret detail, given that they lost EVERYTHING).

I will miss the local news of Canada.
I will miss Canada as a whole. But I will miss the local news possibly most of all.
It is a little like my ferret.

Before I became pregnant, I heard people talking about mysterious things like “trimesters”, and measuring time in weeks and days more accurately than I ever managed to arrange my life into months or years.

It is surprising how quickly you learn.
I know, for example, that right now, I am 30+1 - or “30 weeks and one day pregnant”. And I know precisely where I will be at 31+6 (on a plane), 32+5 (at a midwife appointment) or 40+0 (theoretically pushing a baby out of my hoo-ha. Of course, Doozer* doesn’t know anything about timetables, so is unlikely to conform to that. But the timetable exists all the same)

*Doozer is the baby. Who moves around a lot. In a very busy fashion. Always doing something, although I have no idea what can be so busy-making or important in there. But busy. Always busy. Like a doozer.

Trimesters I also know about. I know about them mainly because they have been marked clearly by moods.

First Trimester = Angry
Or “sleepy”. But seeing as Sleepy is more of a physical symptom than a mood (or a dwarf. It is also a dwarf), Angry makes more sense.

Not angry about being pregnant. Not angry about anything in particular, really. But just quick to anger.

During my first trimester - the first 12 or 13 weeks of pregnancy, depending on who you ask - if anything needed sorting out, or anyone needed telling off, from letting agents to handymen to banks to internet providers, my beloved sent me in to do the job.

Which is not usual. Usually I am the one at the back, mumbling that we really should be saying something, if we want to get anything done, but no, we probably shouldn’t, because that seems like a very aggressive and scary thing to do, and doesn’t seem like something I want to do at all.

In the first trimester of pregnancy, all of that was out of the window.
Suddenly, I was able to walk into every situation and let them know my mind, my laundry list of complaints, and my to do list for them before they had time to open their mouths.

Either that, or I was sleeping. My brain was on fire with irritation and short-patience with the world, everyone I knew in it AND my own inability to get any work done (due to ridiculously short attention span, irresistible urge to nap, and the fact I felt like I was motion sick from simply sitting upright quite a lot of the time), so quite often, I just went to sleep instead.
OOOH I was cross. Cross or anxious. Or both, overwhelmingly, at the same time. Or sleeping.
Or, sometimes, while sleeping.

Second Trimester = Capable
I want to find a better word for it, but I’m not sure I can. “Happy” would be a good word, but I was sometimes worried too, and sometimes anxious, and sometimes cross about things - but always, for some reason, more than ever before, I felt calm, and capable. Capable of anything. Capable (for once) of being calm. Whatever happened. To some extent this has not gone away. It has just been joined by… well, that’s later on.

But between week 13 and, say, somewhere around week 27 or 28, I felt like I could do anything. I could convince anyone of anything; convince anyone of my ability to do whatever they wanted better than anyone else in the world - and then believe in myself for long enough to do it. I basically felt easily confident for the first time ever. It was amazing. Seriously. You think I sounded calm about being in hospital? That was those hormones. People wondered about my decision to go off to Canada on my own for a couple of months to power through enough work to earn money for when the baby was born? That was down to those hormones. If I could bottle whatever those hormones are, I would be a multi-gazillionaire. Or rather, I wouldn’t, because I would keep them all, and take them every day for the rest of my life. Because they were the best hormones that ever existed. In the world. EVER.

And then the crying started.

Third trimester = Crying
I am barely into the third trimester. I don’t know what the rest will hold (although I’m getting signs of some extremely promising obsessive nesting behaviours, but more of that in another post), but right now, I just know about the crying.

I keep crying.

Not for *no* reason. But for not as much reason as I would usually need. By a long way. ANd I still feel pretty capable, but something that would usually make me about 10% stressed suddenly makes me 90% stressed instead. And weepy. Very weepy. Something that would usually chart as ‘very low’ on the sadness scale is suddenly the saddest thing I have ever heard. A little tease from a friend that I would usually be able to brush off or bat back at them now sees me red-cheeked and full-eyed with heavy tears.

For the first week or so of this, I was a complete slave to it, and gave into it, and let my tears flow for as long and as hard as they needed, and reasoned that it must be something worth getting this sad about, or I surely wouldn’t be this sad.

And then I realised. The tears had nothing to do with anything, much. They’re just going to happen at the slightest provocation. They are going to happen whether I have a bad meeting in the office or when I feel like a tugboat blocking the aisle on a plane while waiting for the toilet, or just because somehow I can’t work out how to use the tin opener in my little rental flat.

And if I just pause for a moment, and breathe slowly, and think about maybe NOT crying instead, the tears will just (eventually) stop.

So I’ve been trying to do that instead. I can’t seem to stop them coming at all, but I can warn people that they might and, when they do, I can now mainly talk all the way through them, saying “There now, see, I told you I would cry, and here we are. Honestly, just carry on, give me a second, it will pass” and eventually the tears just stop. It isn’t very attractive. Or professional. Or useful. It is just what is happening. And that’s the way it is.

The most annoying thing is, I see absolutely NO physiological reasoning for this constant weeping. The anger I could reason out: being that fierce to keep away danger in the first trimester: very useful. The capableness had a clear use and purpose, and was all very good (and should be bottled, I say again. Hasn’t anyone thought of that? Why hasn’t anyone thought of that? I want it. Now.) But the crying? Apart from letting a bit of the water I’m retaining - and good garden SEATS there is a lot of that to let - I can’t think of any evolutionary reason why releasing so much liquid from the face would be useful.

Perhaps to drown tiny tigers in miniature tear-pools. Perhaps to frighten away any mortal enemies that happen to be water-soluble. Perhaps just to endear us to people who might want to look after us (that doesn’t seem to work, by the way. Not with random strangers, anyway).

But that is the way it is. So it goes.

Next up: I have no idea. But I think - hope anyway, since I’m getting home in less than two weeks and have very little prepared for Doozer’s arrival some time around new year - that the obsessive nesting bit where I get everything ready is what will come next.
That would be good.
That would be useful.

More useful than being Madame Drippy-face, anyway.

I was watching some local Canadian channel one evening last week, during one of the short sleepy evenings after the long typy days in the office. Inbetween adverts for canadian cheese (Slogan = “All You Need Is Cheese”, which is technically not true, as much as I wish it was) and promotional videos for some local radio station (a middle-aged man disco dancing badly in front of a blue screen to hits from the 60s right through to the 90s), there was a trailer for the upcoming news.

It was a well-spoken canadian news anchor relating what was going to be the top story on the programme that evening in an urgent, breaking news tone, over pictures of snow covered streets. And she said something like:

“…Coming up on the 11 o’clock news: the coldest winter on record is forecast for Canada this year, by a US weather website. But what’s the real story? Tune in, at eleven!…”

Which is all well and good, but there was just something about the tone of her voice that suggested that not ONLY was this website wrong, and that she (personally) knew more about the upcoming weather, but that this website was quite possibly purposefully misleading the good people of Canada because it was American.

Is there a history to this, I wonder? Is there a general history of Canadian News Organisations being wilfully misled by their downstairs neighbours? Is there any reason for this suspicious anchor to suggest the possibility of some kind of widespread meteorological conspiracy on the part of one entire nation, upon another, more trusting and sincere nation to their north?

Otherwise, I can’t help but assume that this is fighting talk. I mean, i don’t want to start a conspiracy myself, but I can’t help but wonder if, years from now, history books will remember this moment as “The long-brewing build-up to the Canadian-American war, sparked by a lone, maverick newsreader with a misguided belief that poor winter weather in her beloved home nation was all a malicious plot on the part of someone else’s weather forecasts”.

If it is, remember, I totally called it first.

I have now been in Canada three weeks. More than, in fact. And am here for about the same again. And yet, I have managed to write very little (shame on me). Mainly because I have been working very hard, and becoming tireder and tireder in the evenings (may possibly be something to do with the stage of pregnancy I am in, I have no idea, I’ve not done it before). But partly because My Beloved came to stay and keep me company for the last ten days or so, and that was more important than doing extra writing once my writing day in the office was finished.

Also, we were exploring.

I like exploring.

I have discovered

a) Granville Island, and the donuts that live there. In fact, Vancouver has an awful lot of delicious food, and Granville Island is where a lot of the gourmet food stalls and little sellers seem to be gathered. Of course, I have no idea about many of them, since there is a Donut shop called ‘Lee’s Donuts’ just inside the front doors, and frankly, that’s been as far as I’ve got several times. Shut up, I’m pregnant. Baby likes donuts. I sense that baby would also like doughnuts, but they don’t sell those here.

b) Some other bits I have gone to wander around neighbourhoods, for curiosity’s sake, and wandered around the seawall, which is a beautiful long walk around the outside of the peninsula that downtown Vancouver sits on, and I have wandered around shops and not bought much, and I have discovered, while wandering, that being in the sixth month of pregnancy tends to put quite a bit more of a limit on wandering endlessly than I had previously expected. It is, to be honest, a bit tiring.

c) Some wet bits Most of the bits I have explored have been wet. Vancouver remains very beautiful, very lush, and very green. It turns out there’s a bloody good reason for this.

d) Unsubtly named things
There are quite a lot of unsubtly named things, I think, of which I will remember more in the morning, and when I examine my camera to see if I have any pictures. But one of my favourite unsubtly named things is this breakfast cereal.

I’ve not tried it yet.
If I’m honest, I think I fear it a little bit.

I have been exploring Vancouver since I arrived, two weeks ago.

Not during weekdays, so much, because I am mainly sitting in an office during daylight hours, writing ridiculously fun things and calling it ‘work’ for Glitch (a game that is almost impossible to describe).

But at the weekends I am doing exploring. Well, last weekend and this weekend. This weekend was more fun, as My Beloved is here with me for a while - but last weekend, I explored alone…
…And, almost inevitably, found myself in the scuzziest part of Vancouver before I could say “Wait, there ARE even scuzzy parts of Vancouver?!?”

Now, I hear what you’re saying. You’re saying “Wait! There ARE scuzzy parts of Vancouver?!?” - to which I can only say: I know! I said exactly the same thing. But apparently, there are. But they’re relatively small, and really quite mild. Well, there ones I have seen are, anyway. There may be some real humdingers hidden down dark alleyways that I haven’t noticed yet, but the ones in the middle of town - the stripjointy, porncinemaish sexshoppy bit that lives in an otherwise attractive bit of Downtown is quite mild on the scuzzometer.

As far as I can tell, anyway. I mean, I’m no expert. I’m mainly going off the fact that half of them seemed to be advertising 25c PEEP SHOW! in florescent tubed writing in the windows. I was going to take a picture of one of them for you, but I thought someone might charge me 25c for it, and frankly I didn’t have any change on me.

Did leave me wondering what kind of a peep show one would get for 25c, though. It’s not really very much. I mean, the Canadian dollar is strong, but even so that’s not really *that* much in Her Majesty’s Sterling. It’s 16p. I’m not sure her Majesty carries that kind of small change around with her either. So she would, if she came to Vancouver planning to get a peep show, probably end up quite disappointed.

I think NOT ending up quite disappointed would be quite difficult, though. It’s 25c. Does that represent
a) the length of the peep
b) the quality of the peep or
c) both the length AND quality of the peep.

Is it a millisecond’s glance of something really quite naughty? Or a three minute film of someone ironing? Or a 5 minute film of someone bending over to sort out their welly cupboard, but in really slow motion and with only a fleeting glance at the back of their knees?

It is an important question. And one which, I fear, I will never answer. Not for myself, anyway.
Perhaps I should ask the queen. She knows about these things, doesn’t she?
Or was that something else?
I know she came into this somewhere.

Have I mentioned how tired I’ve been getting now? Well, I am.