Yesterday we had our ultrasound, and George Foreman Jatania II is doing great — kicking up a storm and with biceps to die for. And before you ask, no, we didn’t find out if it’s a girl or a boy. It was nice to really think about the new baby for a change; I’m finding this time around that my days are so busy and I’m so focused on the needs of Captain Jelly Belly, that I can easily go whole days without remembering that we’re expecting at all. Yesterday, though, for a full hour, I got to think just about Georgie II, and it was nice to feel that excitement of being a new mom again.

Oh, and he/she looks just like the Captain. Who knew there could possibly be two kids of such incredible cuteness?

I just heard on the radio that an “elderly” man died in a house fire on the weekend. It got me thinking, at what age do newscasters start to call someone “elderly”? 65? 75? 85? I wonder if they have some sort of official guidelines, like, ages 18-24 counts as “young man” and ages 25-65 counts as “man” and 65+ pops you into the elderly category. Maybe some sort of infirmary is required to qualify — a 60-year-old that is confined to the house and uses a walker gets classified as “elderly” but an 80-year-old who his spry and goes sailing every weekend is just a man. Hm.

You know, if you say “elderly” over and over to yourself enough times, it loses all meaning.

When you’re pregnant, you have all kinds of really weird dreams and you usually remember them, which is really fun for Sir Monkeypants because he gets to hear about them and laugh about them in the morning.

On the weekend I dreamed we were going through the drive-thru at the Tim Horton’s, with my friends Sarah and Sean in the back seat. We all called in our orders and Sarah ordered a small hot chocolate and Sean ordered a large hot chocolate. When we got to the pick-up window, however, Sarah and Sean both realised that they meant to say “chocolate milk” but just slipped up and said “hot chocolate” instead. I had correctly ordered a chocolate milk for myself, and I felt bad because I didn’t share mine with them and they just sat there giving me the evil eye and not drinking their sub-standard hot chocolates. So, Sarah and Sean, I’m really sorry about that.

The other day I dreamed and I were interviewing Puff Daddy in his penthouse. He took Sir Monkeypants out to buy a sweater-jacket that, Puff claimed, was just nice enough to be used for black tie events, while providing your own stamp of style. Meanwhile, I stayed behind and tried to set up an indoor pond/garden in the penthouse for a photo shoot, but the custom cushions I had made and hand-dyed kept getting wet and the colour was running. Just then, J. Lo showed up and we chatted a bit and I showed her photos of Captain Jelly Belly, and she said he was the cutest kid ever. So now I love J. Lo even more than before, and I’m determined to never, ever let Sir Monkeypants buy a sweater-jacket, because that thing was fugly (sorry Puff).

Sir Monkeypants had an even better dream on Sunday though. He dreamed he formed a posse to go search for someone who was kidnapped. His posse had a spaceship with wings that folded down. Just as they were getting ready to launch, someone came along and started to strap something to the wings, and Sir Monkeypants and his posse got all ready to beat the tar out of the offender as soon as finished. However, the dream ended happily as the mystery person turned out to be Han Solo, and he was only strapping light sabers to the wings to provide added anti-kidnapper-fighting-power. Coolio.

Man, I really hate styrofoam packing peanuts. I just got a bowl in the mail — a regular, small cereal bowl — packed in a 1-foot square box filled with peanuts. It took about 30 seconds to get the bowl out of the box, and about 20 minutes to clean up all the peanuts. They’re so static-y, they stick to everything and I eventually resorted to licking them to get them off of my hand and into the garbage bag. Then I had a big bag full of clearly unenvironmentally-friendly trash that I had to triple-bag to prevent the damn things from getting out and sticking to the counter, my legs, and my hair all over again.

They suck!

I watched Ally McBeal for like, the first half of the first season, when it was still a half-decent show. Since then, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of a personal theme song — a song you sing to yourself to cheer yourself up or find your inner spirit or whatever new age crap. At the moment mine is “I’m Satisfied” by The Odds.

Sadly, however, Captain Jelly Belly has selected “Escape” by Enrique Iglasius. He got exposed to it as kind of a joke by Sir Monkeypants, when I was still pregnant. Our nephew, AvidReader, really loves Enrique (his parents are super nice people but really do have suspect taste in music) and back when “Be With You” was big on the charts, AvidReader would play it over and over and make everyone dance to it. So Sir Monkeypants thought that The Captain needed an Enrique song to love and cherish of his own, and “Escape” had just been released, so he downloaded it and played it to the baby over and over.

Now The Captain just adores that song — whenever he hears it, he stops what he is doing (even crying), calms right down, and starts swaying, bopping, and humming. We eventually broke down and bought him the album and he likes all of it, but especially “Escape” and its Spanish version, “Escapar.”

Not only does The Captain love Enrique, though, but he really likes Phil Collins. He has a Disney CD that includes “You’ll Be In My Heart” from Tarzan, sung by Phil, and it’s his favourite song on the album. Whenever I’m flipping around between my mommy-friendly radio stations, and a snippet of a Phil song is heard, The Captain starts right in with the swaying and general getting-on-of-groove. It’s very, very scary for parents who are slavishly devoted to the 80s alternative scene.

Yesterday he got a hold of the TV remote and before I could wrest it away from him, he had flicked over to the Country Music station, CMT. He rocked along to a song called, I believe, “Redneck Woman.” Clearly the anti-parental rebellion has already begun. Aaaaah!

Here’s a website I heard about on the CBC the other day. It is run by an Ontario Conservative MP and it keeps a list of all the campaign promises that the Liberals have broken so far, since they came into office a few months ago.

www.promisebreakersclub.com

It’s a little over the top, but I’m happy to see someone keeping track of the numerous things the Liberals have already failed to deliver on. I did not vote for Mike Harris and the Conservatives in the previous two provincial elections, but I always pointed out how Mike did follow through on the majority of his promises. I had very little patience for people who did vote Conservative, then complained bitterly about cuts, when the Conservatives said as much that that was their plan right during the campaign! I was impressed that the Conservatives followed through on some unpopular choices in order to deliver on their campaign promises.

I’m quite disgusted at the track record of Dalton McGuinty so far (who I despise — he’s a shifty-eyed little troll). His broken promises so far include: to balance the budget this year; to cap Hydro rates; to stop development on the environmentally sensitive Oak Ridges Moraine; to reduce auto insurance rates by 20%; to provide 2 cents from every litre of gas sold for public transit improvements; and to extend medical benefits to autistic children beyond the age of 6. However, I can’t say I’m too surprised. During the campaign, it was clear to me that they were willing to say whatever to anyone to get a vote; they repeatedly failed to answer important questions on a) how they were going to pay for all their expensive promises while still balancing the budget and not raising taxes (another promise), and b) how they were going to resolve some apparently contradictory promises. I guess we now have our answer — they’d just break them, and hope the public would forget.

The sad thing is, I’m not sure the majority of voters in Ontario really care. It’s more than the fact that they just aren’t paying attention; it’s that people, I think, have a tendency to vote in a reactionary way. Instead of actually looking at the platforms and issues of each party at each election, they either vote for “keep things the same” or “change things around”. They’ll vote for their current representative if they’re happy, and they’ll vote for the other major party if they’re unhappy, and they don’t really listen to what the candidates are proposing. So most voters probably didn’t vote Liberal because they expected results on a specific issue; they just voted Liberal because they were mad at the Conservatives and voting Liberal is their next option.

Already I see this happening on a federal level, where the public seems to be getting pretty pissed off at the Liberals for scandals and favouritism. The thought of people voting Stephen Harper as the next Prime Minister — given his far-right views on some sensitive issues — just because they want to punish the Liberals is darn scary. I guess I just wish people paid more attention to what politicians say they are going to do when voting — and I wish people cared more about holding their reps responsible, maybe even in a legal way, when those key promises are broken.

Sigh.

Yesterday Sir Monkeypants and I went to get wills drawn up. This will be your PSA of the day: get a will!

Most people assume that if anything happens to them, their estate will automatically go to their spouse or (if not married), their parents. This isn’t true. If you die without a will, the government immediately freezes all your assets — and this includes any joint accounts, even if only one signature is required on those accounts. The assets remain frozen until someone applies to be the executor of the estate; the government will decide if you (or anyone else who applies) is the appropriate person. If no appropriate person comes forward, the government will appoint a civil servant after some period of time. The appointed executor will then distribute the estate as he/she sees fit.

The point here is that if you share assets with anyone, even your spouse, and you don’t have a will, you could be in a situation where all your assets are locked up/inaccessible for several months while this mess is sorted out.

In addition, if you have underage children and one spouse dies, some provinces require you to immediately set aside a portion of your estate in trust for the children (because they can’t petition the executor themselves). This could result in, for example, having to sell your house to get access to the cash legally required to put into trust for your kids.

As part of the will package, we are also getting Powers Of Attorney, which allow each other full access to all our assets if either of us become incapacitated in some way. Again, most people assume their spouse automatically has this kind of power, but it is not a default of marriage — in a case where no Power of Attorney exists, the spouse would have to apply to the government and go through a court case to get control of the family’s assets.

Many people think that getting a will requires a lot of morbid thought, but a will does not contain any detailed funeral instructions (because they are not legally binding, anyway — your family can do what they want regardless of your wishes), nor do they contain a detailed listing of your assets because this changes too frequently. Rather, you should give both these pieces of information to your executor.

Instead, to get a will, all you need to decide is:

• who will be your executor (if married, you probably want your spouse)
• who will inherit your estate (if married, probably you’ll want your spouse to have 100%)
• who will be guardian of your kids and executor of your estate, if you have underage children and your spouse is already deceased

Find a lawyer, plop down $200, and keep the government out of your family’s business.

Incidentally, a will’s executor would be responsible for the following:

• funeral arrangements
• finding out where all the assets are, and filing paperwork to claim them
• distributing the assets as the will dictates
• filing the deceased person’s last tax return and any other government paperwork required

Go now!

And many happy returns of the day!

So far Captain Jelly Belly has celebrated by giving us all multiple high-fives and having many Cheerios.

Later we will be going to playgroup where he will continue to offer high-fives to the other babies, but they aren’t good at it, so probably we will be seeing quite a few hits to the head. All in good fun, I say.

High-five!

About six months before Captain Jelly Belly was born, I changed all the pre-programmed radio stations in my car from alternative/rock stations to “mommy-friendly” stations — mostly pop and easy listening. I wanted The Captain to hear soothing sounds, not people screaming obscenities, and besides, I was getting awfully tired of the so-called “alternative” music format, which is basically a Top-40 station that just plays the same 10 “alternative” bands all the time.

One of my new mommy-friendly stations was the CBC (91.5 in Ottawa). I had a few friends who listened to the CBC, but I had always thought of CBC radio as being really stodgy, purely for grandparents, university professors, and pretentious blowhards. However, my friend Izabela said it was her top source for new book-reading ideas, and they’d interviewed me on the air for my old website Sidekick Magazine, so I figured they couldn’t be all bad.

Now, I’m a total CBC junkie — it’s my station of choice, and I even listen to it at home now. I can’t believe that I’ve been totally converted to talk radio, but every show during the day is just fascinating. They’re always talking about something relevant, interesting, and cool, and I know way more about Canada, Ontario, and Ottawa now than I ever did. I love the hosts — they’re all excellent interviewers and they ask exactly the questions that I want to know the answers to. It’s not all issue-oriented, either; there’s plenty of human interest stories and call-in shows featuring actual intelligent listeners with meaningful things to say, plus, on the weekends, it’s my top source for actual alternative music. The Saturday afternoon show, Definitely Not The Opera, is really the only place in town to hear about new, offbeat bands that don’t have major record deals, and Friday and Saturday evenings there’s actual alternative rock being played. Who knew?

It amazes me, too, how popular the CBC is around here. Often when I bring something up — “I heard on CBC the other day” — whoever I’m talking too was listening as well. I don’t know if this is because of the crappy state of Ottawa’s other radio stations, or the fact that I’m getting older, or just the high-tech brainy atmosphere that is prevalent around Ottawa. In any case, I’m just loving it and I recommend it to everyone. I think I even have Sir Monkeypants converted now — he was lamenting just this morning that The Current, the issue-oriented morning show, doesn’t start until 8:30am, so he couldn’t listen to it over breakfast.

Listening to the CBC almost exclusively has even turned me on to CBC television, in a small way. While I was pregnant I became a huge fan of Rick Mercer’s sitcom, Made In Canada, which I think is one of the funniest shows on television. We watch his Monday Report as well, and This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and I even like the throwaway humour of Corner Gas.

Pretentious talk radio and inferior Canadian television? What is my world coming to?

(With apologies to Sir Monkeypants; this morning I swore my next post would have something funny in the subject line that he said this morning, but I can’t remember what.)

My dream job used to be Governor-General of Canada — cool house, cool garden (where they play cricket all summer long), lots of fame, and the chance to plant trees with folks of different cultures. But I think the travelling is too much for me — heaven knows, I can’t stand being away from home for more than a few hours at time — and I’m not really qualified.

So these days, I dream of being a Hollywood screenwriter. That way, I could get in big with the hip stars of Hollywood (Laura Linney, call me!), everyone would admire my wit and cleverness, I’d get to go to the Academy Awards and wear lovely dresses — all while working at home and not being required to lose any weight. It’s the best of all possible worlds.

But in terms of getting famous, being a screenwriter is not the way to go about it. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about screenwriters I like that could serve as role models, and I’m ashamed to admit that although I have an extensive knowledge of actors, directors, and even cinematographers, there are few writers that I can even name, let alone admire. I can name plenty of cool directors who also happen to write — Cameron Crowe, Sofia Coppola, P.T. Anderson, Kevin Smith, M. Night Shyamalan, Quentin Tarantino, Baz Lurhmann, the Coen Brothers — but I like them mostly due to their directing abilities, their ability to create a certain mood and atmosphere onscreen, not for their ability to turn a phrase. Really, there are only two writers I can name that would draw me to the theatre based on their name in the credits alone, and they are Charlie Kaufman and Wes Anderson.

Charlie is the legendary writer of Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. He’s unbelievably creative in terms of characters and storylines, but he also is just so great at manipulating the English language that every scene is a delight. Here’s how I know he’s a great writer: when FameThrowa and I went to see Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind last year, it had no pre-credits, and we both specifically stayed for the end credits to see who had written the film, because it was such a fantastic script — and lo, there was Charlie’s name. Amazing! The dude rocks.

Wes is really a writer/director like the others I named above, but unlike them — who I see as writing a script because they want to direct it — I think Wes is a fantastic writer in his own right. Anyone could direct his scripts and still come up with a great movie. His work on Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums is more than enough to get me to go see his next movie, no matter what the plot or stars or whatever.

So sad as it is that I can’t name the writers of most of the Best Picture Oscar winners for the past 20 years (who wrote Driving Miss Daisy? Unforgiven? Braveheart? Gladiator?), I’m starting to pay more attention.

Who’s your favourite screenwriter?