Improvising

For the past 5 months or so, we have been taking improv classes. This all started with our friend Carla introducing us to improv whilst she was visiting earlier in the year. She had taken a class a long time ago whilst in the US and during the most recent visit she took another class and invited us to a performance. It was really fun and let me tell you we really had no idea how HARD improvising is! We took two series of classes, the first one was more games and the second went into long format improvising. I really liked the second series better. At the end of the second series (which makes it last monday) we had a small performance where we performed two types of long form improvisation: The harold (which pairs up two people and it's like flipping channels, we see a bit of scene 1 and then the second pair of people wipe the first pair off the stage and we see some of their scene etc. it wraps around. The second type was the montage which was a series of small scenes made up of random groups of any size.

In the harold, surprisingly A and I got paired up together but I must say we didn't do too bad (we have done a lot worst together)! The suggestion from the crowd was cupcakes and A used that and another suggestion from the crowd (robots) to create scene about me and him being robots trying to eradicate mankind by poisoning people with cupcakes :-P The second set I managed to use my pregnancy to good effect in one scene by pretending to be the pregnant mistress of some guy!

It was really a fun time and we all did a lot better than i expected. Now days A and I really appreciate any improv work!!

Fight On!

Happy International Woman's Day!

Human planet

If you have a chance, watch this audio slideshow from BBC. Amazing photos and explanations of each photo.

Funny statuses (... or stati?)

Last night's facebook browse gave me these two gems of status updates from friends:

"I figured out why I'm fat! The shampoo I use in the shower that runs down my body says "For extra volume and body". I'm going to start using "Dawn" dishwashing soap. It says " Dissolves fat that is otherwise difficult to remove"."

‎"People who have more birthdays live longer"

well then!

well my attempts of regular blog updates started out well but crashed and burned the moment things turned busy at work. Be gentle with me since the last month has been crazy. At work I had this crazy project which I thought was ending at the end of Jan, so i thought ok great I will work and leave all my pregnancy classes etc for Feb and hope that the baby doesnt come early. Feb arrived, my deadlines were all met successfully and i got more deadlines! %-) I didn't work as hard as Jan, but still... man between work and pregnancy classes at least 2 nights a week and improv classes another night, by the time weekends arrived I was either exhausted or sick! :-)
Anyway so now Feb is gone and all my pregnancy classes are done. I am also on leave from work for the next 2.5 weeks waiting for the baby to make her appearance. There is now a tonne of work in the house that needs to be done. Poor baby wants a place to rest her hat, no? that's where i come in.
Of course this WOULD be where I come in if I wasn't procrastinating so much! :-) I did a marathon shopping session yesterday and today instead of fixing the house I decided I need to bake cookies!
I wanted to use my cookie press and so I made these chocolate press cookies. They were ok. alas I really should get to work. I will put up the recipe for the cookies and some photos. Maybe this blog can also chronicle my cooking adventures. And also my improv adventures. And all other stuff.

Push not kick

Today, Mini showed me her new trick... many times over! She can now push, instead of kick. I am telling you that's quite a difference and I much prefer the kick than the push. She had two favourite places, possibly where her two extremities are: the first is to my right side, almost below my ribs. The other is about 1.5 inches left of my belly button. On these two spots, Mini has pushed and pushed, for prolonged amounts of time. A couple of times, I decided to push her back to see what would happen. Well of course my pushing her, pushed her away from where she was so i was no longer lopsided but the cheeky girl then came back with a vengeance and pushed at the same spot again!

Domestic Zen

My friendship with lovely CD has had two definite benefits, both of which are of domestic nature.
The first is that I have started knitting. I remember I used to knit and crochet with my grandmother when I was kid. She was a tailor when younger and when we were younger a lot of our clothes were sewed or knitted or etc by my mother and grandmother. It was part necessity, part of pleasure but man, I look back at my clothes and am impressed!

My grandmother was also the best cook in the world. No exaggeration! :-) My mum does a pretty good job of following her goodness closely, however (and unfortunately) I have not been able to continue the line. But this is related to the second benefit of my friendship with CD. I have been baking a lot more!!
For Xmas we had a cookie baking session where I made Rosettes which is the same as shirini panjerei in Persian.
You simply need some rosette irons and a cooking thermometer.
I also learned how to use cookie press and (didn't make but ate) a whole bunch of yummy sugar cookies. Cookie presses make such goodlooking cookies! In fact both these cookies have a very high impress-effort ratio. Maximize that utility function and you are gold.

I was also introduced to chocolate crinkles which are easy and delicious. The other plus is that they look pretty good!

Lets end this post with a bit of philosophical soul searching. Since you bake cookies, why aren't they called bakies instead of cookies?
[I heard this from someone but I can't remember who so I can't give them their due credit.]

and the second gem which I attribute to Jessica B is that STRESSED spelled backwards is DESSERTS.

Think about it.

Home Stretch

Tomorrow our 30th week of pregnancy is going to finish and we will officially be starting the 31st. The fact that there is now a 3 as the second digit of my decimal gestational age scares the crap out of me. In theory, the baby will be considered full term in one and a half month. Let the freak out begin.
Maybe I should count using the fetal age method which would mean the baby is still 28 weeks which has no mention of 3.
Repeating a curse that I learnt during the New Year period, God damn shit. :-P

ok lets be serious. No even serious I am starting to freak out.
ok forget the seriousness. Lets put the freak out on the side.

Our class schedule for the following months is crazy. We had a late pregnancy class last week which was about 2 hours and covered at a high level what goes on during labor and delivery and aftermath. (Did you know the baby's first poo is a black tar mess which is really sticky and hard to clean? lovely.)
There was an ahhhh moment or two in there especially when they talked about the hospitals preference for skin to skin contact for the baby and mother/father during the first couple of days, esp the first couple of hours. How gorgeous is the thought of having a naked lump of breathing baby on your chest? (as long as the tar poo is kept away!) (Did you know that this type of skin to skin care is becoming more prevalent and is called kangaroo care? it was invented in Bogota, Colombia http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/the-human-incubator/). Oh and another interesting thing is that it seems the mother's body temperature can adjust itself so that the baby is never overheated however the father doesn't have such a feedback loop and so the baby can overheat and so fathers if your kiddo starts sweating, you know why.

We also have a breastfeeding class (multiple people have told me how hard breastfeeding is, argh!!) and 3 childbirth classes and a new born care class. All petty much in Feb. So much!!

Meanwhile we are taking improv classes once a week, we have a dance class for Feb and I have two huge work deadlines by end of Jan.

My freak out makes more sense huh!

so you thought...

you have an uncommon name? What do you say about this!!

Do I need to say more?!!

On a more serious note, I love the following song (mostly the first half):



One of the comments in youtube has the following translation:

ZANKO11 "Rough translation: 0:0-3:50 Being brotherless has killed me not the fire of bullets If your brother dies your sword will be blunt A father, without a son a sister, without a brother make all hearts sigh Sky is so dark, so dark oh God let no kafir see 2 brothers dying My pains are so heavy the cure for my heart is in Lorestan people, my pains cannot be told my legs are so weak and cannot walk the road"

29 weeks!

oh btw I have now finished my 29th week of pregnancy! woweee! time flies! :-)

One other funny thing that has been happening has to do with my baby shower. Several people have come and asked me when i am holding my baby shower and I don't know how to tell them that generally other people hold showers for the pregnant person! I don't want to have a party and ask people to buy me things! sigh!

Dear Abby, what do I do with this situation?!! :-P

Blood

This pregnancy has turned out very different to what I expected ...not that I really knew what I expected. I don't think I had really thought about it, more about when a baby was here and the baby growing up. I did think experiencing a baby inside me would be an extra-ordinary thing but didn't really appreciate how extraordinary (notice the difference between the spellings? it's intentional!)

But it really has been and I have been loving it and loving the little one kicking. Oh that's another thing, people wonder how they can make their mini stop kicking and I am more along the lines of oh how can i make mini kick me more? :-P Am I a masochist? quite possibly! but it's really cool knowing the baby is alive and kicking and moving inside you :-)

So where was I going with this post? right, blood. My blood in particular.

I have been pretty healthy so far in my pregnancy and I haven't had to do the dreaded glucose test where supposedly they give you a high sugar drink and take your blood sample before and one hour after and they see how you are absorbing that sugar. This will indicate if you have gestational diabetes.

Anyhow on various pregnancy forums which I have been perusing, the glucose test is supposedly this horror of a test, where everyone dreads it and the sugary drink that you have to take. People throw it up, throw it around and generally want to throw it.

Seriously I think people over react so much! I had to do mine yesterday (I started it, I spilt the drink when I tried to take a phone call and wham! I have to take it again because it is very important to be precise with the amount of sugar in your blood. arrghh!). Anyway the drink was a sugary orange which was fine. Just like any soft drink. I didn't love it, I wouldn't drink it if it was optional but it was fine.

It makes me wonder about all these people!

Then again, every pregnancy is different and some people have a lot of problems with their pregnancies... but sometimes I think people also use it as an excuse!