So this morning Dad woke me up by calling at 8:30. It’s SUNDAY. What sick person calls someone at 8:30 on a Sunday morning? It must be one of those parental ‘you made me suffer while you were growing up so now I will inflict pain on you’ things.

Anyway, I forgave him cause he was calling to ask if we would like to accompany them to the Farmers Market at Alexandra Park. Sure, we like food. We’ve only been in Auckland for 6 years and completely failed to go to any markets, so it’s probably about time.

I briefly considered taking my camera and getting interesting photos, but eh. I didn’t feel like asking people if they’d mind, or explaining that it was for rambling intarweb writing purposes. It’s Sunday! Let’s be apathetic!

Apparently the market isn’t at its busiest currently, which is kind of obvious. There’s like… baked thingy places and fruit and vege places, and meat and cheese places, and honey and jam places, and not so interesting not-food places. But there could be MORE! MORE FOODS!

Dad and Diane picked up some Maori spudatoes and a selection of cheeses from Dad’s home town. Which is Waharoa, aka The Place Nobody Has Ever Heard Of. We gots some bacons. Just bacons. See the bacons? You can’t go wrong with bacons. Then we all grabbed pastries and waited approximately one gazillion years for coffees, while the guy at the coffee van made everything at the speed of extreme slowness – one coffee at a time.

Diane had an apple danish thingy, Dad had pain au raisins (BLECH, WHY?! It is an evil-filled spiral of wrong), and Sam and I split a jam donut and a croissant aux amandes. Our croissanty deal was quite nice, but I thought a little ruined by the addition of too much almond essence. The thing is like… full of almonds and almond paste. If it doesn’t taste almondy without artificial boosters, why bother? I HAVE OPINIONS! The donut was spherical deep-fried sugar-rolled awesomeness, but not nearly as good as the ones mother used to make. Of course, donuts greatly benefit from being eaten stonking fresh and warm, so what can you do.

On the way out we randomly bumped into Melissa Kim Schultz and apparently convinced her to buy beetroot juice. Which I think is fairly low on my list of things ever to try in juiced form. I mean, we warned her about the coffee wait, but that’s not the same as saying OMG, BUY NEON PINK VEGE JUICE! I think.

We detoured through Foodtown, which is functional but never exciting, then took the back roads to our place. We were pootling down Lunn Ave and decided to drop into Farro Fresh, which is a fairly awesome place to spend loooooooots of money. Diane had never been before, but we’d gone a while back and <3′d it (we think it has an edge over Nosh, which we didn’t find too exciting despite being more hyped). It’s within walking distance from home, and you can walk back via Wendy’s. Which is just awesome after you’ve spent a lot of money buying expensive organic or artisan foods.

We came out with more frozen ready to bake croissants, a lil lamby rolly loin roast jobby, and an exciting looking heat & eat focaccia smothered in pesto butter. MMM buttery goodness. Also picked up some peppermint tea for me, because I love it and it was a treat to buy actual leaf tea in a tin and not cardboard boxed baggy delights from the supermarket. Sam doesn’t like peppermint tea because he’s British. Or something. Dad and Diane got lamb! Dad is to be encouraged when he buys lamb legs, because they are awesome spit roasted.

We all passed on the $45 Wagyu steak though. There’s liking food, and there’s being an insane person with Too Much Money.

So that was Sunday morning. Now I need to go have a wee nap, cause for some crazy reason I’m really tired. I wonder why that might be.

He does so love his post-cereal (Cheerios with banana to be precise) milk leftovers. Excitable wee bugger.

If the idea of cat + human food bowl grosses you out in any way, you’ll be happy to know I will probably almost definitely clean the bowl before using it again.

You know, when they go on about the miracle that is incubating a parasitic organism in your previously fairly unsullied internal bits.

Chloasma

This gets a special name when applied to pregnant folk (cause we special), but is also known as melasma, or ugly stupid random patches of stupid brownness that appear randomly and stupidly on your face. It’s like mutant patchy tan sprinkles – apparently more common among people with darker skin, or those who foolishly spend time outside during (apparently) THE DAY.

Needless to say, I seem to have developed a (thankfully, so far) relatively minor occurrence of this on my forehead. It makes me feel old and liver-spotty, but doesn’t hurt or cause people to gasp and run in fear or anything. It’s just another of those little things you know nothing about because of the GLOBAL PREGNANCY CONSPIRACY. Oh, and thinking it’s like dirt or something, and scrubbing at it viciously – this does not help in the slightest. Just so you know.

The good thing about this mutation is that it apparently disappears once you’ve spawned. Unless it doesn’t. Then helpful people say stuff like ‘may require treatment to remove’. Joy.

Round Ligament Pain

I am, if not actually proud of, then at peace with my remarkable slothitude. I used to be active and play sports and stuff, and one day I’ll probably do it again. But for now, I rely on walking and constant fidgeting to work off some calories and keep me from ballooning into a gigantic person (which is now going to happen anyway, cause the universe has a sense of humour).

And as punishment for a very relaxed attitude to working any kind of muscle or keeping limber or toned, it seems pregnancy decides to do that stuff for you.

You’ve got this… magical baby holding compartment, right? And it’s anchored in place inside your innards by a bunch of ligaments. Check out this awesome pic I stoled! Haha… oh god, not attractive.

But anyway, your magical baby holding compartment needs to grow as its parasitic inhabitant feeds off your delicate body and expands. And as this happens, it pulls on the surrounding ligaments – which previously you never even knew existed. But you know now. Because it FREAKIN HURTS. It’s exercising your bits without any actual exercise, which would ordinarily be right up my alley; but it’s also pain with no readily identifiable gain, which is not so cool.

What does it feel like? Either horrible deep aches up the sides of the abdomen, or shooting stabbing pains (people who know stuff have described as following the path of a high bikini line – bi…ki…ni?) The one seems to start up when I go to bed. The other kicks in if I stupidly move too quickly, or wrench or twist or flex or bend. Or sometimes sneeze. It’s hard to say which is more fun. I think sometimes that if people at work were watching my facial expressions when the random stabbity ones kick in, they would think I was having some sort of spasm. I’m fairly sure I’m >.o most of the time.

Luckily if I stay really really still, I’m usually OK. Somehow I think I can manage that. >.>

By the way!

Because everyone keeps asking, no we don’t know the sex (heheh) yet! Our anatomy scan is next Thursday (Feb 7th), so all going well we’ll tell you then whether it’s a boy or a girl, or has horns and a tail. I leaves you with the above awesome icanhascheezburger pic.

PS, Fizzgig just came in with a Monarch butterfly. I believe I will now have ME a kit-kat.

Starting to get me some spam comments! WOO. *delete*

And it’s not even a cat! More over at the cheezy site…