My dearest friends Amanda and Ryan are expecting their second little boy TODAY! She’s in labour as I type this post, so I’ve decided to do a few RANDOM THOUGHTS… about babies, pregnancy, and fetal matters…

1- I know it happens every day, hundreds of times probably, but I still can’t believe that we women can GROW another human being, maybe even a little penis, inside our tummies and then squeeze it out of our you-know-whats. It’s the freakiest, most miraculous thing in the entire world. I hope that when it’s my turn I feel more miracle-y than freaky…

2- When I was little I loved my dolls. I also had a Fisher Price play kitchen. I would line the dolls up in the morning to feed them – there would be plastic eggs cooking on the stovetop and plastic slices of bread in the toaster, and I’d have all my differently-sized baby bottles boiling in air in a pot… and then my friends Katie and Julie would come over and I’d abandon it all to go and play hopscotch. I could starve my children and burn my house down (the plastic eggs were COOKING on the stove!). This worries me.

3-I really hope I can be as much of a Suzy Homemaker Mommy as I’m envisioning now… I have the feeling I’ll read this blog in a few years and laugh at my ambition and naivety, but I’d love to make my own baby food when I have kids. I want them to eat all types of foods and not be into junk food as much as I am (which will be hard – I’ll have to find a good hiding spot for my stash of Lik-A-Maids and Nerds – stealing mommy’s candy will be grounds for boarding school). I also want to try cloth diapers (I can hear the snickers from my mommy-friends now). And I’ll sew all their clothes (haha NO I kid…)…

4- It’s scary being the last of your friends to have babies. It’s like being the last in line for a roller coaster – you have to stand there and listen to each person’s opinion of the ride as they get off: “No this was the scary part,” “No, THIS was…” I’ve heard tales of labor that would make you beg for mercy, stories of children who can projectile vomit across a room or test their parent’s patience like a teenage seasoned pro, experiences of cracked nipples and hemorrhoids and acid reflux – oh my! I’ma sceeered!

5- But then, you see the smiles on the people’s faces as they get off of that scary roller coaster, and they’re overjoyed and excited, and I see the smiles of little Michael, and Katelyn, and Chase, Mayson, Jake, Kylie, Gerrick, Peyton, Sydney, Frankie, and all the other kids my friends have brought into the world, and I cannot wait till it’s my turn to take that crazy ride!

I’m not usually a huge 60 Minutes fan (the ticking stresses me out), but I caught a segment recently about this incredible video that was shot from a San Francisco trolley back in 1906 as it travels down Market Street. The people, the clothing, the mass chaos as cars, horse-drawn carriages and the trolley crisscross each other on the dirt road – it all looks like a movie. It’s hard to imagine that people really lived like that. It seems like forever ago. The video was remastered and it’s just amazing to watch. You can see it here: San Fran 1906.

I hate to admit it, but Little House on the Prairie was one of my all-time favourite shows growing up. I would curl up with my mom on the couch and watch morning episodes of it on TBS while I munched on fence bread (my Nanny’s creation – thick-sliced French bread slathered in butter and honey). I still watch the Christmas special every holiday while I wrap presents and sip on my gingerbread latte from Starbucks. There’s something so pure and simple about those times. I’m sure the people who lived in the late 1800s and early 1900s would disagree – they would probably describe their lives are difficult, hard-working, and oftentimes tumultuous. But compared to the stresses of today, I think it would be great to revert back to a simpler time where a day was spent gathering eggs from the hen house, walking to and from school, and then reading by candlelight at night. I’d love to wear a bonnet and carry my lunch in a metal pail. Does that make me strange?

In any case, I was completely engrossed by this film… check out some of the others on YouTube too. I love the little boy in the back of the wagon who peeks out at the trolley (and videographer). I delight in the fact that everyone is wearing hats and weaving in and out of all the chaos on the street. I can’t get enough of the signage and other details that make it so evident that this took place what seems like eons ago.

I’d have made a great prairie girl!

If you could go back to any time period, what would you want to relive?

Wanna know what my name would look like on the cover of a book? It would look like this:

No, I didn’t write this book (but boy do I wish I had – I’ve been asked so many times if I was the author of this funny tale, and never once have I lied and said yes – I just don’t want to jinx things! Haha). But seeing my name on a book cover, my name, is the ultimate goal. Isn’t it every writer’s dream to write the next great novel?

For as long as I can remember I’ve been writing books… it started when I was young. I would pound out a story, line by line, on my mother’s typewriter (which had a broken correction key, meaning if this perfectionist mistyped a word I would furiously rip the paper from the grips of the rollers and start again), and I did my own illustrations. The first book I ever wrote was “Save the dolphins while a tragedy happens” (intriguing eh?!). I wrote murder mysteries and love stories, some of which involved whales (I would go to middle school early, floppy disk in hand, and work on my book in the computer lab) and others that entailed mystery-type Nancy-Drewish stories.

Eventually I graduated from a standard typewriter to an electric one – I could erase any mistakes with ease, and when I reached the end of my line the machine would beep so I would hit return and the print would magically appear across the page.

But nothing made me more excited than when we got our first PC. My parents needed it for their business, but almost every day after school, I would come home and frantically type out five, 10, or 15 pages of my latest book, print it out on our extremely loud and ear-piercing printer (REEEEEEEEEEEE!! REEEEEEEEEEEE!!), and make my parents sit and listen while I read them every last word (they were such good sports!)

After high school I barely did any creative writing. I was in university for five years and all my writing was based on actual assignments – I didn’t have time to write “fluff.” And, of course, university was followed by a myriad of jobs, all of which were very time-consuming and left little to no time to pen the next great novel. However, since venturing into the world of freelancing, and working diligently to “brand myself,” I started my own website and blog. The blog has been a true gift, a way for me to reignite my passion for creative writing, and it led to me working on a book, which I actually finished. It’s 77 pages of 35,000 glorious words about a young girl going through her 8th grade year in Montreal in the late ’60s. Even with all the book-writing I’ve done, I have never actually completed a book – this is the first one. I’ve started the process of applying to literary agents and publishing houses. I’ve received slews of “no thanks,” but I often think about renowned authors like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling, who also dealt with their fair share of rejections before really making it as a writer, and I’m keeping the faith.

And I still dream about the day I’ll see my actual name on a book cover…