Shot in the head

I just had the oddest dream that I feel like writing down because I know I will forget it otherwise.

I was attending a political meeting, together with top politicians from all over the world. Oddly enough my parents were there too, and this meeting was held at a junior high school.
The Russian president either to step out or he changed seats with me, because for some reason I was sitting in his seat.
Suddenly, I don't know, I became aware that there was an assassin somewhere in the room. A sniper with a rifle. And he was after the Russian president, and since I was sitting in his seat I became the target. In an attempt to shield myself I burrowed into the people that were sitting around me so that he wouldn't hit my vital body parts. However, he still managed to shoot me twice in the back of the head.
I just remember feeling a slight, stabbing pain, like a headache, other than that I was lucid and talking like normal. I was explaining to the people in the room that I had been shot twice in the head, and that I needed medical attention. Everybody kept assuring me that I would be taken care of, but the meeting still continued so I suppose any medical attention would have to wait for the meeting to end.
I started looking around for the assassin and when I looked up towards the ceiling I noticed four vents located high on the wall. Behind one of them I could make out a rifle and the outline of a man. Clearly this was the sniper that had shot me. He was just calmly hanging around.
I leaned over to my dad and whispered to him "I found the sniper. He's behind the third vent up on the wall. Look!"
My dad barely reacted. He just calmly said something like "Yes, I see".
It was all a remarkably subdued affair. The fact that I had been shot in the head twice was given no more attention than a hornet buzzing around the classroom would have. Yes it was a problem, but nothing that stopped the meeting from continuing. And absolutely no one bothered to go after the assassin, even though there were other presidents and top politicians in the room.
The meeting carried on with me feebly pointing out that maybe an ambulance was a good idea. Although I was feeling fine. Just slightly uncomfortable.
Then after the meeting there was another meeting for pregnant mothers, held in the same school. At this meeting, parents got to find out their unborn babies' IQ as well as 5 personality traits that the baby already possessed, even though it hadn't even been born yet. All you did was enter some information in a computer program and wham...the computer spat out a neat row of personality traits. These personality traits could be things like:
"Cheerful
Neat
Hot headed
Slow
Good cook"

For anyone who has ever played Sims 3, they will know that this is exactly how you choose your Sims' personality traits when you create them.
Because I still had the bullets in my head I had a hard time focusing on my computer screen, but I think my unborn baby had traits such as "Stubborn" and "Genius", and that's all I could remember. The IQ was high but again, I was too out of it because of my gunshot wounds that I couldn't remember.

Eventually I think I staggered off and finally got treated for my wounds. It was no big deal. I was out of the hospital in no time. The next day I was walking around like normal, and trying to tell people what had happened, and getting no reaction at all.
"You know that Russian president shooting"?
"Yeah"
"That was me, I was the one who got shot instead."
"Oh."

I kept trying to find a way to access that computer program again to find out for sure my baby's personality traits and IQ, by searching on Google, but I couldn't find it.

At this point I woke up.

Quite an eventful night.
The latter part of the dream is pretty obvious, I'm curious about what my baby will be like, and apparently intelligence must be something I would value because why else would IQ and genius be a part of it. The fact that the list of personality traits looked so much like it does in the Sims 3 tells me I have been playing it too much.

The first part of the dream about me taking two slugs for the Russian president remains a mystery though. The part about me not getting medical treatment and no one taking my getting shot seriously must mean that I feel I'm not receiving attention or care when it comes to some problem I'm having.

Dreams are cool, as long as they're not nightmares. As odd as this one sounds it wasn't a nightmare, even though the feeling of walking around with two bullets in my head wasn't exactly pleasant.

Leaving your baby alone outside

I always found this odd, that some parents will leave their baby in the stroller outside while they're in a restaurant or in their apartment. It would only take 10 seconds for somebody to walk by and grab the baby.
A Swedish woman is being charged with bad parenting after she left her baby in its stroller outside a restaurant while she went inside to order food. She claims that it's normal in Sweden to do this, and that she had her eye on the stroller the whole time. I don't know, is this normal in Sweden? I do know that I have lived both in North America and Sweden and while I have never seen a lone stroller with a baby in it anywhere in Canada, I have seen it many times in Sweden.
I wouldn't do it myself. It would be nice to trust my fellow human beings, but the fact is I don't and I would certainly not be willing to test out this life affirming attitude on my baby. Call me a cynic if you must. If I lived in a village where everybody knew each other I might consider it, if I was close to the stroller, but even then it seems like an odd thing to do.
If I had a crucial need to buy some tacos, I would just simply have to forgo that particular pleasure. If I wanted my baby to sleep outside for a while and get some fresh air, I would just have to bring out a chair and sit next to the stroller.
Like I said, it only takes 10 seconds or less.

A baby

I haven't been blogging much lately. The reason for that is that the inspiration hasn't really been there. There is also another big reason for my recent laziness.
In the beginning of May we found out that we're going to have a baby. I'm going to be a mommy. I entered my second trimester recently and we just found out the other day that it's a boy. So, naturally there have been a lot of thoughts flying around in my head. Am I going to make a good mother? Is he going to look like me or like Nick? Are we going to always be able to provide for him? Should we move to a bigger place? Things like that. The practical details don't seem to matter as much as the emotional ones. The biggest concern for me is, am I going to be able to provide him with an emotionally stable life? I never even wanted children until just a couple of years ago, when the idea started to fester inside my brain. Then when a girlfriend, who had told me that she was never planning on having kids, suddenly told me she was pregnant a couple of years ago it got me to thinking. I asked her why she had had a change of heart regarding children, and she said that she didn't want to grow old alone. This made perfect sense to me, since there are certain holes a life partner just can't fill. I suddenly saw before me what it would be like to never have kids and to watch your friends and relatives have their own families while your life always remains the same, quiet, low-key affair. And I realized that it's time I create my own family. I also think that at some point, most of us realize that we want someone to pass on our own legacy, or something to that effect. A part of ourselves. This and the fact that I started constantly seeing babies and kids everywhere, noticing them in a different way, and thinking of how my baby would look and turn out, made me finally take that plunge. We wanted to wait until we're back in Vancouver, but I'm not exactly 23 anymore and how long can we afford to wait? We were surprised at how quickly I became pregnant. In fact, due to my overly realistic assumption about how long it would take to conceive, our baby is due to arrive around New Year's Eve. Had I been able to choose, I would have wanted him to been born any other time but around the holidays. Imagine having your birthday on New Year's Eve, or worse, on Christmas Eve. Oh well, it is what it is now and what really matters is that he's born healthy and that the rest of the pregnancy is as relatively smooth as it has been so far.
Apart from fatigue, I have had surprisingly few pregnancy symptoms. Although this second trimester seems to so far be filled with emotional ups and downs. I feel like a walking bottle of nitroglycerin, waiting to explode at any second. I am feeling extremely irritable, but it's hard to tell with me if that's due to the pregnancy or not since I'm usually a rather temperamental person. I'm guessing it's a combination of hormones and my normal crabby self.
I'm also experiencing a fierce protectiveness of my unborn baby, and I get angry with anything and anyone that I feel is a threat to us. I think I'm paranoid when I think that any stress, emotional or physical, is a direct threat to the baby. I cringe at raised voices because I know the baby can hear everything that's going on, and I don't want him alarmed in any way. I guess I want to give him the stability and happiness that I didn't always have when I was growing up. That's why I worry about not being a good enough mom to give him that. I'm afraid that we're powerless against genetics and upbringing, and that we're doomed to repeat our parent's mistakes. I suppose it's normal to think that way. I'm just glad I can recognize my shortcomings and do my best not to let them overpower me. I know I'm far from perfect.
If I am to be honest, I had visions of this little girl with long, dark brown hair and my eyes. So yes, I suppose a part of me dreamed of having a girl. Probably because passing on a part of myself becomes all the more tangible that way. Now it'll be a little Nick instead, which is just fine.
But really, 15 years ago I would never in a million years have thought that I could be a mom. I didn't even think I had it in me. I didn't use to have a maternal bone in my body. I worry that I'm just enchanted with all the perks about having a baby, like be able to buy tiny baby clothes and dress him up like a little doll, and cuddles in bed and seeing him smile for the first time. In reality there are a lot of tough times ahead with lots of sleepless nights. And nothing will ever be the same again. Someone else always has to come first now. I realize all this. I wonder if everyone who decides to have a baby does.
Well, whether or not I will suck at it or be good at it will be apparent in about 4 and a half months.