{"id":1015,"date":"2007-09-28T07:45:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-28T12:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2007\/09\/28\/revenge-of-the-rideau-centre\/"},"modified":"2007-09-28T07:45:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-28T12:45:00","slug":"revenge-of-the-rideau-centre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2007\/09\/28\/revenge-of-the-rideau-centre\/","title":{"rendered":"Revenge of the Rideau Centre"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been noodling a post in my head for some time now about how sick I am getting of the Rideau Centre<\/a>. For those of you unfamiliar with Ottawa, it’s the largest shopping mall in the city, and I traverse it daily from my bus stop to my office and back again. And then, of course, the magnetic draw of the food court pulls me back in a few more times a week. In the nearly three years since the end of my last maternity leave, I must have passed through that damn mall more than 2500 times. I’m truly and fully sick of it.<\/p>\n

But the mall must have been listening to these unfavourable thoughts percolating through my brain, because yesterday, the Rideau Centre took a pre-emptive strike. One minute I was getting off the escalator and striding purposefully past Club Monaco toward the bus stop, and the next minute my right knee and outstretched hands were slamming forcefully into the tile floor. Luckily, I had the presence of mind to lock my elbows, or else I would have ended up in belly-flopping on the ground. I was so shocked by the impact that I actually held the pose for what seemed like quite a long time as I ran various mental system diagnostics to make sure all the parts were still functioning. My first thought, of course, was for the baby, but although it was a jarring landing, my knee and shoulders took the brunt of it and I was reassured to feel the baby moving just a few minutes later.<\/p>\n

But the part that really surprises me is that not one person even looked at me, let alone stopped to see if I was okay. We’re talking the Rideau Centre in midafternoon – it makes Grand Central Station look deserted – and here’s an obviously pregnant woman on her hands and knees, tote bag splayed out at her side… and nobody did so much as a double-take. So I wobbled back to my feet and lurched on toward the bus stop, determined not to miss my bus despite my throbbing knee. (This morning, it’s sporting a lovely purple bruise most of the size of my palm… and wouldn’t you know it, that’s the same knee that’s been aching with a pregnancy-induced recurrence of my latent patello-femoral syndrome. Ouch.)<\/p>\n

Damn Rideau Centre. Of all the things I’ll be happiest to leave behind on a year of maternity leave, it’s at the top of the list.<\/p>\n

***<\/div>\n

Speaking of pregnant, and further to the post <\/a>earlier this week about cool photos at 21 weeks gestation, I was looking for something entirely different when I stumbled across a story from earlier this year about a baby who was born at 21w6d <\/a>– and survived. And by the wickedest of chances, the day I found this article I too was – you guessed it – 21w6d gestation. I keep thinking of the baby I’m percolating as some lime-sized amorphous blob at this point, but sheesh, that’s a real baby I’ve got growing in there, and aside from the fact that he’s white and she’s black, I’m guessing he probably looks a whole lot like this right about now.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

Click to embiggen. Photo courtesy of UK Daily Mail<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

So while I found that story both touching and reassuring, I found the story (hat tip to the lovely Brown Eyed Bex<\/a>, for sending it to me – haha not so funny, Bex!) of the Russian woman who just popped out a 17 lbs baby girl (!!!)<\/a> a little more worrisome. You have <\/em>to click through to the article, just to look at the photos!!<\/p>\n

Seriously! Seventeen pounds! I mean, I’ve always been absurdly proud of having birthed my 9 lbs and 10 lbs boys, and have joked that I’d better not continue the pattern this time around… but SEVENTEEN pounds? And it’s her TWELFTH baby, no less. The mind boggles. But the part of the article that truly chilled my heart was where she said to the reporter, “I ate everything, we don’t have the money for special foods so I just ate potatoes, noodles and tomatoes.”<\/p>\n

Um. Potatoes? Check. Noodles? Check. Tomatoes? Like they’re going out of friggin’ style. (Check.) <\/p>\n

Yikes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been noodling a post in my head for some time now about how sick I am getting of the Rideau Centre. For those of you unfamiliar with Ottawa, it’s the largest shopping mall in the city, and I traverse it daily from my bus stop to my office and back again. And then, of … Continue reading “Revenge of the Rideau Centre”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-postcards-from-my-uterus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}