Still waiting

Yup, still waiting. My doula says I sound too cheerful to be on the verge of labour, but I am feeling that coming to an end with each passing day. I am ready to meet the wee bit and get on with living the life I’ve been dreaming about and working towards for so long. Not to mention getting a break from the 8 or so pounds of baby that is currently pressing on my pelvis. Oy!

Not in labour

That is all – will write more later. Oh, and run, do not walk, to your nearest cinema to see “Where the Wild Things Are.”

state of the, er, cervical nation

Never thought I’d be putting this kind of info out to the entire world, but weird things happen when you are 38 weeks pregnant. According to my doctor, I am 3 cm dilated and 80% effaced. But I am not in labour. I learned that I need to include that with the previous info, cause I think I got my doula all excited, and my mother called while I was out at acupuncture, all in a tizzy. I pretty much need to make “I am not in labour” the subject line of all emails from here on out, and use it as my standard greeting when making a phone call. So while there is significant progress towards us meeting the wee bit, and it could happen any time now, it is not happening right this minute.

However, I am very, very excited. And a bit nervous and freaked out, because I don’t feel ready. My house is not the spotless shining bastion of coziness that I want it to be when I come home with a floppy newborn. You can bet that I will be working on that tomorrow, and for however many days we have left before we get to meet this little human. And also – can one ever be completely ready for a change this big? I sort of doubt it. It’s just too big for my hormone-drunk brain to fathom.

where has the time gone?

Napping, cooking, swimming, cleaning, preparing, processing, erranding, meeting with my doula, spending time with Manny. And napping.

Dear me, I think this may be a record for time between posts. So much for thinking that once I was off work, I would write more. Partly I’ve been cocooning myself as much as possible, preparing the space in my heart for what is about to happen to my life, to our life. It has taken all this time to bring some of the heavier stuff to light. I tend to work that way – the sign of a true introvert, I think – in that I just need a lot of time alone doing what feels right in the moment, not pushing anything too hard, not journalling, or thinking, or analyzing, but instead just being. And then insight will come, and things will shake loose, and the way will open up.

And the insights have come, finally. For the entire pregnancy until this week, I wasn’t feeling anything about the donor issues except gratitude and happiness that we were finally getting our chance. But on some level, I think I was always waiting for things to flare up, knowing there were things that were not completely resolved or at least that there are parts of this journey we have yet to make our way through. More the latter, really – that this is going to be a lifelong journey for us as a family. Not to say that I think it’s going to be a problem or a struggle – because I really don’t believe that – but more that our having used donor sperm to create this baby is part of our story as a family now.

So this week I’ve done a little bit of opening up to what this means to me right now, and I guess what I’ve discovered is that I have some fears about how we will connect as a family of three. In my heart of hearts, I have a lot of faith that all will unfold beautifully and that we will figure it out together with ease and grace. But there are still questions there, some vulnerability, some fear. I don’t know if it’s the hormones or a sign of my tremendous spiritual growth (the hormones, almost certainly!) but for right now, once I was able to see all of this with some clarity and could find words to express all of it, I feel really at peace with the vulnerability. I don’t need to figure it all out now or have any more certainty that it will all work itself out.

I’ve also got some anxiety about how we will handle the secret/not-secret of this baby’s origins. Lots of people close to us know, but lots don’t. I’m not sure how long that will be sustainable, but at the same time, I’m quite sure that certain people will be better off not knowing and that Manny and I and the baby will be better off with them not knowing. It just feels weird to go into this time of excitement and anticipation and joy and openness and vulnerability without being completely honest. Because I am so explosively proud of us, of our decision, of how we have worked through it all so far, and most of all, of this new life who will be joining us soon. And a secret just doesn’t seem to fit with all that right now.

Within a few weeks, my mind will be otherwise occupied and fussing over these questions will be put aside for a while. Which is fine, because there is no rush to figure them out. It feels good to know that – that I don’t have to make peace with every single part of this process before we can move forward. I remember realizing that around the time we were making the decision to pursue DI, and it is good to remember it now.

How’s by all of you? Anything you’re feeling peaceful about at the moment?

catching up

Dudes, I seriously need to set aside a specific time each week to write. So much to say, so many thoughts and observations, so much I want to remember – all evaporated because I can’t seem to settle down enough to actually put the words together and record them. It is frustrating to be so flighty. And also so sleepy by the end of the day that I just immerse myself in TV or books or phone calls to my family.

However, next Wednesday is my last day of work, so hopefully having my days free will help me make the time. I really, really hope so.

Where to start – perhaps a list of pregnancy stuff that I want to remember? Because I know you are all just wetting yourselves to hear about the minutiae.

• Still feeling good, mostly. Have battled some crazy insomnia but it seems to have settled down the past week or so. It is horrible to be awake in the middle of the night for three hours and then have to go to work and pretend to be a normal human. I know it is just a harbinger of things to come, but it really, really sucks when you miss out on sleep. The worst part for me is just feeling like my entire body aches, even my eyeballs.
• I am amazed at my belly and I am in love with it. I could stare at myself in the mirror all day, truly. Manny must be getting tired of my nightly exclamations of how big my belly has gotten, but I am not. I’m trying to enjoy this time because I am in serious denial about what’s going to happen to my body afterwards – I don’t have a single stretch mark yet even though my skin is prone to them, and this helps feed the denial. Like, “Maybe I just won’t get stretch marks and my belly will just spring back to normal after a few weeks. I’ve seen it happen!” I have seen it happen, but it is absurd to think I might be one of those women. I normally wear a B-cup and I have stretch marks on my boobs from when they first sprouted – doesn’t bode well for the belly, which is significantly larger than a B-cup.
• At my doctor’s the other day I was measuring 30 cm even though I was at 34 weeks at the time. He told me not to worry as he said the baby’s head is very low in my pelvis and that some babies just engage in deep pelvic diving expeditions earlier than usual. So I’m trusting him and not worrying. Mostly. I’ve definitely been feeling twinges and jolts in my pelvis which I think is stretching and loosening, and there has been a lot of sensation way down low where he said the head is.
• My weight gain is good (i.e. right on the average) overall, although it has slowed in the third trimester, I think. It was during the second when I was constantly starving that I packed on the most pounds – now I can’t eat as much at once so that helps control things quite a bit.
• Fruit – how I love thee! Truly, I’ve never eaten this much fruit in my entire life. I tend to be fairly picky about fruit and only like what’s really in season – in the winter here, that means basically nothing other than tropical fruits. So I generally don’t eat much of it. But the BC fruit this year has been amazing – peaches, nectarines, apricots, pears, apples, cherries. I’ve frozen a lot of things for use over the winter – Manny was given a vacuum-sealer food thingy for his birthday and I am in love with it. I froze a case of peaches, a bunch of plums, and the few nectarines I managed not to eat.  It will be wonderful to be able to have peaches on my waffles in the middle of winter, or make a plum kuchen to munch on while I nurse my baby.
• I was starting to worry that Manny was freaked out by the presence of a moving, living human in my midsection because we hadn’t had sex in quite some time. But, uh, the other night dispelled all worry. And how!
• Have had some episodes of what I think are low blood pressure – no fainting, but feeling dizzy, woozy, weak and slightly nauseous. My blood pressure is always on the low side but a few weekends back I was really feeling like crap. What clued me in that it might be my BP was that I was insatiably thirsty. And I really mean insatiably – I generally drink at least 2 liters of water a day, and that day I was pretty much drinking constantly, downing pint glass after pint glass and never feeling satisfied. So I did some googling and found that it can be a symptom of low BP- essentially, dehydration and heat (it has finally been summer here this month) can cause your pressure to drop. For me I’m guessing that it just dropped slightly but it was enough to give me symptoms – when I checked it, it was 99/68 which is just slightly lower than it usually is. An interesting piece of information to have about my body, though, and I’ve read that epidurals are not tolerated well by people with low BP so, yet another reason to try to avoid one.
• Blah, blah, blah. Bored yet? Not me.
• We have hired a doula and have our first official meeting with her next week. She is awesome.
• I have attended a La Le.che League meeting – it was sort of weird and sort of great. I didn’t learn too much because my mom was a LLL leader when I was growing up, so I’ve been around this info my whole life and much of it has just sunk in. But it is great to know where to go for both general support and very specific questions and suggestions. If you are hoping to breastfeed and haven’t connected with your local LLL chapter, I highly recommend it. I was a bit worried about feeling like the lone infertile in the room, but then again I always worry about that when delving into that mommy world, and really, I’m kind of used to it. I shared my standard line that it took us a long time to get pregnant and a woman with a baby afterwards actually brought it up when we were chatting after the meeting. Not in a nosy way – she just asked whether we had difficulty conceiving. I said yes and left it at that – I need to prepare the next more detailed response because I tend to get flustered when I think people are pressing me for details, and I don’t want to spill the entire story. Sometimes I good at giving a vague but truthful answer, and sometimes I just don’t know what to say. I guess I’ll get lots of practice – I really do like to be open about the fact that it was not a simple process for us. People need to know that it happens, you know?
• We are taking prenatal classes and have been to two of them now. They are really great – based on the book “Birth.ing Fr.om Wi.thin,” which I cannot recommend highly enough. It’s probably not for everyone, but for me the focus on mindfulness and trusting my own instincts really feels right to me. I’m just not a planner or rehearser – more information often overwhelms me, and since I have a fair bit of experience (through yoga and meditation) with just working with whatever happens in the moment and moving towards those things, even if they are uncomfortable or painful, this approach just fits with me. Manny has rocked my world with his openness and participation in the class – it has been a really good way to connect on this stuff, which I’ve really struggled with throughout the pregnancy. Partly because he was away for 4 weeks this summer, and partly because we just sometimes struggle to find ways to connect and understand each other, and I get to feeling alienated and worried. Having a bit of structure around how we connect is good for us. Must remember that.

There is more, but I’m going to just hit publish now instead of saving this to work on it later. It is nearly time for me to leave work – my boss left a bit early and although I was slightly irritated at that decision, it meant I had the opportunity to write this post, so ultimately, I suppose I must thank him.

I hope to write more about this in future posts, but for now I will just say that I really, really love you, my dear readers. This community has been so good to me and even when I’m not writing, I am reading and commenting (although I am shamefully behind on things this week) and thinking of you all every single day. And it sustains me, knowing you all. So thanks.

heavy sigh

Dudes. So much has been going on here and I’ve had neither the energy nor the time to write about it. It’s been a rough week with some good parts – so let’s recap, shall we?

As background info, Manny is quite a bit older than I am, so his folks are in their 70s. His mom has some unnamed form of dementia – she still remembers who we all are and functions in daily life to some extent, but is unable to do things on her own like shop, cook meals every day, etc. She has also, in the 9 years that I’ve known her, undergone some personality changes – she can get quite anxious and is just a bit more abrasive and short tempered. Not abusive or out of control, but she can be unpleasant, especially when she is under stress. Her short term memory is basically shot, although sometimes she surprises me – she seems to remember things with an emotional component the best, so she remembers stuff like that I am knocked up. My father in law is still fairly sharp mentally, but physically is a bit frail and has slowed down significantly since he had a T.IA a couple years ago. Since my MIL is not really able to do things on her own, he has taken over a lot of the day to day stuff, like preparing meals, feeding the cat, etc. All of that combined with living with a person with dementia equals some serious stress, which I think has contributed to the state of affairs we now find ourselves in, or at the very least is something we have to work on alleviating in the future.

Last week Manny had been keeping in touch with his folks who move out to their cabin at the lake for the summer, and learned that his dad had come down with a nasty sounding stomach bug. He was keeping in touch and making sure that things were going along ok – our brother in law was headed out there for his vacation, so we knew that they would have someone around to check on them and help if need be. On Friday, Manny was speaking to them again and decided to head out to the lake immediately, because his dad had had a minor fall when he was feeding the cat – nothing broken or seriously injured, but he was very weak and not walking very well at all. Both FIL and MIL sounded extremely stressed and both wanted to move home (over a two hour drive from the lake to the city where they live) which was a big sign that all was not well – usually, we have to tear my MIL away as she really likes it out there. So off Manny went. I figured he’d be out there for the weekend and that all would be figured out shortly. Um, no.

They got moved home ok, but it quickly became clear that they couldn’t manage on their own. Manny had booked two weeks off work for his summer vacation, so at least he had the time off, but he has been staying with his folks ever since last Friday. I saw him on Sunday when we drove out to the lake to pick up the IL’s vehicle which had been left behind in the hasty move, and we had a chance to talk about how things were going. Basically, this incident has shown us how much more support they really need, and how if my FIL is unable to get around or keep on top of things in the house, that they are unable to live on their own. Right now, we think that a combination of having meals brought in, possibly some home care, and family support will let them stay in their house for a while, provided my FIL keeps getting his strength back, which seems to be happening, although very slowly. I’ve had a sense that this was coming for a while, and actually tried to push everyone to have this discussion a few years back when FIL had the TI.A. But they didn’t, really, and it gives me no satisfaction to be right. Now my MIL is going to be much less able to cope with change, and they have a lot fewer choices than they did back then. We are just starting to investigate what is available in terms of support and in terms of alternative living arrangements for them, but it is scaring the living shit out of me and, I suspect Manny, his sister and her husband. Whatever change is coming is most definitely not going to be easy on any of us.

Some of you may know that Manny had just returned from being away on a work trip for 2 weeks, and now he is gone for another two weeks helping care for his folks. I know that sometimes I come across all calm and zen and generous, because, you know, I try to come across that way. The reality is that I spent last weekend and the earlier part of this week having a complete fucking wallow in my misfortune, because I’m pregnant, damn it, and want to be the center of attention, and have my husband around to talk baby stuff with, and have people fuss over me, and be all princess-y and shit. Instead, I’m stuck in charge of a messy house, a dog that needs walking, and a hungry and extremely fucking weepy beast that needs feeding at 3 hour intervals. Oh, right, I am that beast.  A self-pitying, anxious, teary, and fatter-assed-by-the-day beast.

It took me a few days, but I’ve mostly snapped out of it. The self-pity and anxiety at least. I realized on one of my and Lucky’s morning walks (although they are scarcely walks anymore – I’ve taken them to calling them “our morning toddles”) that I don’t have to carry around the whole enormity of the situation with Manny’s folks – all the what ifs were making me crazy and miserable. Right now, I have to cope with the fact that I’m living on my own, and I need to be as supportive to Manny as I can. I can handle that, even if I’m finding it hard sometimes. All the rest of it – what comes next? what are we going to do? – I can just put down for now. One thing at a time and all that.

Manny and I had tickets to the folk festival that weekend, but he ended up skipping the whole thing. I went with friends to the evening shows – Iron & Wine was great, although marred by the idiots who kept talking all the way through. I went up to the front for my favourite song, and there was a clueless girl behind me who would not shut up and was sadly ignorant of how ridiculous she was being. The whole time, she was going on and on about how much she respected musicians, how she was, like, in awe of them, and how, if she ever had the good fortune of dating a musician, she would just worship him, because, like they are so amazing, how they can play instruments and stuff. Meanwhile, not 30 feet away is a particularly brilliant musician, singing a particularly powerful and moving song, and she can’t find it in her to shut her fucking yap. It was all I could do not to just turn around and stare at her – she was like one of those hilariously oblivious people out of a Jane Austen novel. It makes a good story, but it sort of ruined the magic of the moment.

There is more, of course – I have been having deep, deep thoughts that I would like to write about some day when life returns to some semblance of normal. I am nearly 29 weeks, I’ve hired a doula, I’m feeling good most of the time, although today when I was getting my hair cut I was subjected to the unpleasant sight of my thighs in gaucho pants sitting down. You know how usually when you get your hair cut you need to put on extra makeup and make sure your face isn’t too hard to look at? Yeah, today, I could not have cared less about my pale and exhausted-looking face. Once I caught a glimpse of those thighs…unflattering.

I’m making progress on the baby’s room and am finding myself unexpectedly wanting to do more to decorate it. I am essentially anti-nursery (for myself, not others) because we plan to co-sleep and because, well, babies don’t care what their rooms look like. But I’m finding myself wanting to make it a nice space for myself – likely, this will be limited to sewing a different cushion cover for the rocking chair I got a while ago and perhaps some snazzy wall decals. Maybe a nice little table for a glass of water and snacks for nursing time. Basically, a sitting room for me that happens to contain a dresser for baby clothes and somewhere to put diapers.

I promise more fun stuff soon – photo of my glasses will be possible now that my cold sore is gone, with the added bonus of my fresh haircut. I know, I know – you can’t wait.

Hair and belly photos

As promised, here are some shots of my new haircut and also my first publicly available belly shots. The hair is awesomer than it looks – I forgot to take a picture before flamenco where I got all sweaty and made the hair slightly flat. I think my head is cut off in the belly pic – we can all blame Manny for that. Also, sorry if the formatting is off – I’m testing out the iPho.ne Wordpr.ess app for posting and adding photos.

the road to nowhere is paved with good intentions

Really, truly, my friends – I do have the best of intentions when it comes to writing more. It’s just that it’s summer here, and our Prairie summers are short and must therefore be savoured and absorbed with great gusto. And then there’s, you know, life. I’m trying to get back to the blissful unscheduled existence I had a while back, but it’s tricky, cause I really do like doing everything I have scheduled. I think I just need support staff – someone to handle the grocery shopping and house cleaning and garden weeding and planning and organizing – and then I will be liberated to catch up on blog posts and emails and the like.

Yes, that sounds awfully good right about now.

My sister’s FIL did pass away, and while it has been hard on everyone, I think they are doing as well as can be expected. My nephew is doing ok with it although like all grieving people, he will be going through a process for quite a while yet. I was able to spend the day with him and his little brother the day that his grandpa died, and it feels good to know that I could help in some way, even if it did just involve playing in the yard and going on a shopping expedition for sidewalk chalk, washable markers and popsicles.

I am starting to look pregnant. For reals. I have to say that I get completely humbled and amazed at least once a day at it all, and Manny is no doubt becoming quite sick of me exclaiming, “Dude! I look PREGNANT!” in a tone of complete awe. I am 22 weeks today and seem to have hit the stage where I cannot possibly eat enough. I need to eat around the clock, like I was on antibiotics or something. Last night when I was going to bed I was just about to turn off the light when I realized I needed to eat. How sad that a homemade wheat-free banana muffin with a thick slab of cream cheese on it has become a sort of a chore.

I have a feeling I’m going to have to start watching myself a bit with my food intake – my ass and belly are the only things that have really gotten bigger, but that could all change in a couple weeks if I keep downing the calorie-rich snacks the way I have been. On the other hand, I have also been eating really well overall – I made a fabulous quinoa-black bean salad last week that provided a number of tasty lunches. If you want the recipe, you can find it here – it is definitely worth making. I skipped their crazy quinoa cooking instructions because I am too lazy – I just used less water, fluffed it with a fork and then chilled it overnight in the fridge before making the salad and it turned out fine. I also omitted the jalapenos because while they would be very delicious, heartburn is currently my mortal enemy and I fear excessive spice. Mild green chilies might have made a good substitute, though. Will try that next time.

Um, boring much, Anna? Here’s even more:

I have been wanting to cut my hair short for the past couple weeks since it got hot. My last haircut wasn’t with my usual person and she left it way too thick, and then I haven’t gotten it cut in about 3 months, so it’s feeling pretty heavy right now. Every week at flamenco class I turn pink like a lobster and fantasize about chopping it all of so it doesn’t make my neck all sweaty, but then I hesitate. Partly because everyone tell me not to cut it (why I even ask is beyond me since I know I look good with short hair and most people I ask have only seen me with a bob or longer hair) and also because I always had it in my mind that I would cut my hair really short when I have my baby. I do like to change my hair as part of big life changes and for some reason I just want to have a super short and cute haircut when I have a new baby. But my sister correctly pointed out that short hair is a lot more work – you can’t just ignore it like you can with my trusty current bob. So I am going to cut it fairly short now and over the summer, and then probably let it return to the bob into the fall and once the baby is born. I am going to get it cut on Thursday and promise pictures unless it’s a total trainwreck. Or maybe especially if it’s a total trainwreck. Although I rarely get truly bad haircuts – the worst one of my life was circa 1989 when the gal spent about 15 minutes cutting and 45 minutes crimping it with a huge crimping iron and hairspraying and teasing it into oblivion, and even that wasn’t so bad once I washed it. I was heavily into The Cure at that point, but had no desire to actually resemble Robert Smith.

I am dying to go swimming but I am loathe to spend big money on a maternity bathing suit. In an attempt to find a bargain that might work, I tried on some bikinis the other day and not only was the sight of my pale white belly not exactly attractive, I also had trouble with the tops providing adequate coverage for my veiny, swollen boobs. Going up sizes didn’t help either because the band around the chest was too loose, so I don’t really know what to do. Manny might find it sexy to see me displaying ample boobage but I would prefer to avoid the very real possibility of flashing my browner-by-the-day areolas to the world at large.

I have had some deep thoughts lately but need to work harder on formulating them into coherent blog posts. One of the big things has been around identity, and one of the other big things that has been plaguing me is how weird I find it that once I started to feel the wee bit moving around, my anxiety actually increased. Like when I haven’t felt any kicks in a while, I just sit still and start jiggling my belly until I feel a thump. Or I eat something or drink a glass of juice. It occurred to me this morning that I’m starting to get into this pattern where I am deliberately bugging my baby to make myself feel better, and that seems a bit wrong to me. So I am going to work on finding other ways to manage my anxiety when it comes rather than just harassing this little being. Not all the time, but at least some of the time.

Manny and I hit a garage sale on Saturday that was all baby and kid stuff, and we scored some pretty sweet deals. We picked up a glider rocker for $20 – it is oak and in really good shape and its only flaw is a fairly ugly cushion. Fortunately, said cushion just velcroes onto the chair and will be very easy to re-cover. I also got 6 sleepers, 5 very sweet onesies, a couple blankets and a little fleece bunting thing that my oldest nephew had but my sister has since gotten rid of – for some reason, I found myself getting almost weepy that I was going to get to put my own baby into something I had lugged my nephew around in. It is really sinking in that there is a baby coming to us.

swamped

Oy! I have been meaning to write more, and there is plenty to write about. Time, however, has been in short supply ’round these parts. I am resorting to bullets to catch you up on the happenings of the past few weeks, and hopefully soon I will get around to writing a few of the deep posts that have been swirling around my head lately. 

• My dad was in the hospital for 8 days because he had one of these. He’s ok, they caught it in time, and they’ve finally sorted out the medication enough that they let him out.  Scary as hell, though, especially since it was his second episode.
• During the time my dad was in the hospital, my mom was struck by a terrible stomach bug, so not only could she not even visit my dad, but she couldn’t even leave the house.  She’s sort of on the mend, but it’s been ugly. 
• My parents live a 3 hour plane trip from me, and I can’t afford to just fly out on short notice. Even though I wanted to, really badly. 
• Between talking to both my parents separately, my sisters and my grandparents who are here in town, I spent a lot of time on the phone over the past week and a half. 
• During that time, I was also putting the finishing touches on the article I was writing and getting it submitted to the editor, working on revamping how our support group works (more on this in a future post), carrying on my yoga and flamenco classes, working, living, AND dealing with the thrice-or-more weekly rehearsals of Manny’s first punk band that is reuniting for a one-time only gig opening for a band they used to play with many, many years ago.  Fortunately, said gig is happening tonight and therefore I will soon get my house and my evenings back. 
• Now, my youngest  sister, who lives at least in the same province but a 2.5 hour drive away, is facing her father in law’s health crisis and the very real possibility of his death within the next few weeks. And I am upset for her and for my brother in law and also, especially, for my sweet 5 year old nephew who has just been starting to have his existential crisis about death and what it means. I am sensitive about this kind of stuff at the best of times, but it’s really hitting me hard at the moment – just feeling helpless and shaken by the closeness of death and wanting to do something to help ease this process for my nephew in particular. But also feeling, because of the events of the past couple weeks, completely drained and exhausted and depleted. 

I think that about covers it. Other things have been going well – we had our 19 week u/s this week and all looks good. The wee bit has turned breech and has been kicking me in the bladder and cervix and other down low things. It feels really, really weird, but every single thump is about the best moment of my life. Physically, I’ve been feeling quite good, and I’m sure if I can just get some good rest and time to really re-connect with myself, I’ll feel better all around. 

Tonight, however, punk rock beckons.

recent conversation

Starting on Monday, I have really been feeling the baby move. I was feeling it last week but it was very faint and usually didn’t last very long, so it was hard to be sure. But Monday was the day when it became clear that there is a human being in my belly. I was talking to my sister last night and asked to talk to my nephew, O, who is 5. Here’s how it went down:

Me: Hi, O! Tantie has something really special to tell you. 

O: What is it?

Me: Remember how I told you I have a baby in my belly?

O: Yes. 

Me: Well, I can feel the baby moving all around now!

O: (Long pause as if he’s thinking of what to say.) Sweet!

 

I can’t believe how great his slang usage is – before we know it, he’ll be swearing like a trucker to make his Tantie and her homegirl, Eden, very proud.