Raine-chan

A lot of things have happened, but what with the end of November and NaNoWriMo transitioning right into the madness of the holiday season, it's to be expected.

I had my first ultrasound on the 13th. Baby was a wiggly worm! Put on quite the show. I giggled. I cried. I had pretty much been in denial about my pregnancy the whole time, even after the blood test confirmed it. Me? Pregnant? I never get pregnant. Maybe the blood test is wrong. But there I was at the ultrasound, staring at the wiggly worm inside of me. They gave me pictures of the ultrasound. Baby looks like a Gummy Bear.

They confirmed that I was 9 weeks (actually 9w6d, so we were the day before 10 weeks).
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And that's where we are, now.

Baby was the size of a kumquat (10 weeks), fig (11 weeks), lime, (12 weeks), and is now the length of a pea pod (13 weeks).

Raine

"How is the pain?" he asked me as he flipped through my charts and his notes.
"Well... It hurt. But you said that my body was still under trauma from the surgery, and that the pain would lessen as time went. So I waited for the pain to come again, but it never did, because I got pregnant."
"Oh, so this is my fault?"
I giggled. "Yes it is."

They hooked me up. I have a bag full (no exaggeration) of books and pamphlets, some baby bottles, and they entered me into drawings for nursing pillows and belly baby carriers.

Though my blood test said that I should currently be 7-8 weeks, the OB said that it felt like I was 9 weeks. My first ultrasound is Tuesday. They can measure him/her and let me know exactly how far along I am.

I've had no morning sickness (thank the Gods!). I haven't had any cravings (... yet). Grocery shopping is a chore because I can't have sugar/chocolate due to my Interstitial Cystitis, or sodium due to my high blood pressure. I was taking something for my high blood pressure, but had to stop taking it because of the baby. And then there's everything that you can't eat because of baby: deli meats, most fish, etc etc.

I got irritated with my mother-in-law the other day. She looked up the meanings behind the names that we have chosen, and had the nerve to say that the boy name "is a Muslim name". I immediately handed the phone back to Thad. I don't have time or patience for her racism or... anti-religion-whatever-you-call-it. First of all, WHO THE FUCK CARES. Its my child. Second of all, the name means "Little Eagle" in ARABIC. So what? My name means Lily in Hebrew. Doesn't mean I'm Hebrew. My mum's name means Beautiful in Spanish. She's definitely not Spanish. Third of all, who the fuck cares. It's my child.

She's already planning the Baby Shower. That's fine. I want a Gender Reveal party, too. I've waited twelve years for this child, I'm going all out. XD

I had a dream of a gender reveal party. There were two balloons. One of them, when popped, contained blue and pink powder. Surprise! Twins! The other contained black powder. Apparently I was to lose the third one. :(

Anyway. Baby is either the size of a kidney bean (8 weeks) or a grape (9 weeks).

Raine

After twelve years of fertility hardships, I can finally say that I am pregnant.

I don't want to post this to Facebook yet, because I want to surprise my mum when I go visit her during the Christmas break. But I figured that I'd post it in Livejournal, that way I can record the journey I've waited twelve long years for (if we are friends both here and there, PLEASE don't tag me in anything and spoil the surprise to my parents!!).

What an annoying ride, so far.

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Today they called and said congratulations, and that according to the levels of Hcg in my blood, I am 6-7 weeks. I cried. I started crying just as somebody walked into my Lab, which completely caught them off-guard. They asked me if I was okay. I told them that I was better than ever.

Monday I will call the OB (they were closed, today). I think I'm going to go with the same doctor who did my surgery for my Endometriosis back in September. He's an OB-GYN, and he, unlike all the people at the fertility clinic, was wonderful, and I would love to tell him the good news.

If I thought that the wait to find out if I truly was positive was killing me, the wait to surprise my mum will be even more so.

In the meantime, Baby is currently the size of a blueberry.

Raine

It was a repetitive dream.

There was a sand dune. There were ceremonial objects on the top of the dune. I don't know what they were, as I was too afraid to get any closer.

Sekhmet and Sobek would run up the dune to the top. My friend Peter would cut off Sobek's tail (the sacrifice). And then we would win the war.

(I'm not sure what war was won... I never saw anything else or anyone else around...)

It happened over and over and over, until at one point, after Peter had cut off Sobek's tail, a HUGE scorpion stung Sobek at the cut.

Sobek fell over and was quickly disintegrating. I was horrified. What did it mean for the war? Would Sobek die? And the scorpion was coming my way...

There were also dreams of running through boobytrapped Egyptian Temples, being inside a small Church where a guy (whom I apparently loved and he loved me back) played the piano, trying to save a cat inside said Church, working for Dennis again for Free Comic Book Day, and my rat TB sleeping under a waterfall, who, once I dried her, began eating concrete.

Raine

Song five: "Rock of Ages" by Def Leppard



Rise up gather round
Rock this place to the ground
Burn it up, let's go for broke
Watch the night go up in smoke

This is one of those songs that I have to turn WAAAAAAAAY up each time I hear it on the radio. Being an 80s Rock lover, there's really no specific reason as to why I love this song... I just do. I used to simply love it... Now I love it even more thanks to this scene from the movie "Balls of Fury":



Enjoy!

Raine

Song Four: "Bamboula" by Dragon Ritual Drummers



I spent the weekend at ConVocation. Long story short, I attended a Voodoo ritual by Witchdoctor Utu, which honored the legendary New Orleans Voodoo spirit Doctor John Montenet. I was allowed to play drums during the ritual. This was the first song that was played, and I've pretty much been mentally drumming/humming along to it all day.

(Story of my very strange trance after the ritual to come later!)

Enjoy!

Raine

Song Three: "Uptown Funk" by Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars



I'm too hot (hot damn)
Call the police and the fireman
I'm too hot (hot damn)
Make a dragon wanna retire, man

So "Uptown Funk" won Record of the Year at the Grammy's last night. This song reminds me of my summer Canadian Road Trip.

In August, Thad and I drove 9 hours from Detroit to visit my mum in Gatineau, Quebec. We usually make the drive for American Thanksgiving, but we were on a mission to drive to my dad's to retrieve a box of fragile items. So from mum's house, with my mum, my brother Kevin, Thad, and I in my step-dad's vehicle, we drove 13 hours to Fredericton, New-Brunswick. From my dad's, we drove 6 hours to my grandparents in Matane, Quebec. Then it was a 9 hour drive back to mum's, then 9 hours back home.

That's A LOT of radio listening. It's also a lot of the same songs over and over again each time to change station once you lose the other one.

Thad and I usually listen to Rock stations, but my mum listens to Rock, Alternative, Pop, Dance, etc. So it was a lot of songs I'd never heard before, on some strange kind of repeat where you eventually have heard the songs so many times you can sing along.

A few weeks after I returned home, I actually asked mum what some of the songs we had listened to were, so that I could download them.

She listed this one, amongst others. (And this song introduced me to Bruno Mars and his "Lazy Song"... which is a song for another day)

Enjoy!

Raine

Song Two: "Dead Drunk Friends" by Hollywood Vampires


It's 3am, we're back again, here's my toast...
The first one, goes to rock n' roll, the fortune and the fame
The limousines, the screaming teens, that yell our name

The Hollywood Vampires was a celebrity drinking club formed by Alice Cooper in the 1970s. To become a member of the club, you had to outdrink all of the members.

Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp, and Joe Perry formed an American rock supergroup in 2015 to honor the music of the rock stars who died. The band name is named after the celebrity drinking club.

Thad bought me the album for my birthday, and I fell in love with this song.

Enjoy!

Raine

In an effort to post to LJ more (I'm super lazy), I thought I'd take a page from herecirm's book and take part in the 100 things blogging challenge

I've been wanting to listen to some new music, lately. I was contemplating writing up a post in Facebook at the end of each month, asking people to tell me what their favorite song of the month was, but never went through with it. Music sharing is fun, though, so have some of mine! If you want to drop me off some songs, go for it! I'm more into Rock'n'Roll, but I like pretty much anything.

As herecirm said: "This list is going to be entirely random, non genre specific, and will just feature songs/bands that I happen to be enjoying at the moment or really want to share."


Song One: "Lucky Today" by Cloud Cult



I got two hands on the sunshine
I got one foot in the grave
I got 25¢ in my wallet
And I'm feeling mighty lucky today

Sari posted an indie folk song that she had heard from a Nikon commercial a few years back, which reminded me of when I heard the experimental indie rock band Cloud Cult in one of the Esurance commercials. I had heard the song so often that it grew on me, and I eventually searched it out and downloaded it.

Enjoy!

Raine

So, alright. Lets talk about this.

- Lemmy Kilmister. I don't think I've listened to Motörhead unless it was on the radio. And even then, I don't think that the songs were particularly memorable enough for me to even notice that what I was listening to was Motörhead. So when it was announced that he had passed away from cancer at the age of 70, it really didn't affect me. It did, however, affect a lot of my friends on Facebook. I saw numerous posts about it for weeks, and even still now.

- David Bowie. Wow. That came as a shock. A few friends and I were randomly quoting Labyrinth Sunday night. Monday morning I grabbed my phone to check Facebook and ran to the bathroom real quick. While in the bathroom, I loudly exclaim my shock. "Oh my God!" Thad, who didn't have to be into work until 9am instead of his usual 7am, was playing videogames peacefully in bed when he heard me. Usually if I'm loud in the bathroom, it's because there's a spider, and I want it DEAD. Thad opened the bathroom door and asked me what was wrong.

"David Bowie died of cancer." I said.
Thad's eyes grew wide in surprise. "Wow..." he then says. "I thought he'd live forever."

iheartradio had a David Bowie tribute station going on. Now... I loved Bowie in Labyrinth. And I recognized his songs on the radio, unlike with Motörhead (and often found myself singing Freddy Mercury's lines from their duet "Under Pressure"). I listened to it during my car ride to and from work for a few days. That was my tribute to him.

- Alan Rickman. So on Wednesday night, I was cooking supper and thinking about David Bowie. My thoughts somehow lead me to thinking about Alan Rickman. "At least Alan Rickman's still alive." I thought to myself. "If he ever died, I'd probably cry." Thursday was crazy at work. I hadn't had a chance to peruse Facebook first thing in the morning as i was being particularly lazy and not wanting to get out of bed. I had to do some training, so I spent most of my day running between my office at the front of the shop, to containment where I was training, at the back of the shop. Thad had left me a text message around 8am. At work, my phone is on silent (nobody needs to hear the Tetris theme when my phone rings, or Navi saying "Hey! Listen!" every time I receive a text), so I didn't actually check my phone until 11:30am. I looked at Thad's text.

"Did you hear that Alan Rickman passed away?"

Oh, I was furious with Thad for a split second. How DARE he?! I thought he was messing with me, teasing me because Bowie had been on my brain for a few days. That is NOT something to fucking joke about! I almost texted him back my displeasure when I decided that I better just double check first. I Googled Alan. Sure enough, the first thing I see is J.K. Rowling's tweet about it. My heart sunk. I almost cried then and there, but quickly snapped out of it and went to continue training.

I eventually broke down in the lunch room. I'm still devastated. I'm in denial.

I have loved Alan Rickman's work for a long time. Thad often referred to him as "Lord Rickman" whenever he'd happen to be talking about him in my presence. (In fact, just before leaving for Georgia for Christmas break, Thad was helping me look for the DVD version of "Lord Rickman"'s Rasputin. I have it on VHS. It's VERY rare to find on DVD! $300+ worth of rare!)

"What are you, the Grim Reaper?!" my boss says to me, when I tell her that I had been thinking of him just the night before- the same thing i said about Bowie the night before, as well. "You need to stop thinking about people!"

- René Angelil. Numb from three cancer deaths and still depressed and in denial over Alan Rickman, we were sitting at a friend's house playing board games. I was scrolling through my phone. I don't know how many Americans know Céline Dion, let alone her husband, René Angelil, as well as we Canadians do. As well as we QUÉBECOIS do. But valerie_inlove posted on Facebook that he, as well, had lost his battle with cancer.

- Jay Elkins. While RolePlaying last night, and waiting for my turn to post, I scroll through Facebook to see a post from Circa Paleo informing their fans that Jay had also lost his battle with cancer. But this time, unlike with Lemmy, Bowie, Rickman, and Angelil... I knew Jay personally. I sighed and called Thad to let him know.

I think I'm done talking about this, now. My iTunes randomly decided to play "In Demand" by Texas. Alan Rickman is in the music video.

Fuck you, cancer.

https://youtu.be/X4-gNN8WRHo

Raine