If you read my first post you know that I’ve come out of the closet. I am Canadian.
While I won’t bore you with all the pros and cons of my nationality right now, I will say this: Unless you’re in the market for bagels or obscure European home appliances, shopping sucks up here... especially in Montreal, where I live.
Here’s a quick snapshot of what it’s like trying to buy the basics, or even just take in 4800 calories in appetizers alone while breaking for lunch...
What We Don’t Have:
* Cheesecake Factory
* Pottery Barn, in all its incarnations
* Abercrombie and Fitch
* Restoration Hardware
* Gymboree
* Crate&Barrel
* Pretty much every other obnoxious yet bewitching chain of overstylized retail institutions anchoring each of your glorious malls from Maine to Malibu.
What We Do Have:
* <<crickets chirping>>
No Seriously... What We Finally Got, Like, Last Year:
* Banana Republic (whoop-dee-doo)
* H&M (not bad for disposable maternity clothes)
* TiVo
What We Finally Got Last Month:
* Sephora (and now I owe the Devil my third-born)
What I’d Sell My OWN Soul For:
* Trader Joe’s
* Anthropologie
* three magic beans
How I’ve managed not to starve to death, naked in the streets, is a miracle. As it is, my kids can hardly sleep up here from the dearth of Indonesian-made pastel-hued gingham sheeting with ric-rac trim. And it’s not like we can buy any of it online, either, since shipping to Canada is way too complicated for most of these Fortune 500 companies.
(Remind me later to tell you the story of how I once smuggled a Pottery Barn Kids 8x10-foot Bunny Rug over the border from Plattsburgh, NY, when I was nine months pregnant with Abby. Dan was beyond furious when I got home, of course, though not because his wife almost got arrested and/or might have delivered his first child alone in a foreign land. Rather, he was worried that my illegal antics might retroactively get him disbarred one day, even though he was only in his second year of law school at the time. What a nerd!)
Anyway, the good news for my creditors these days is that Dan and I are going to Vegas next week for our Big Babymoon Blowout, the guilt of dumping my kids on my mom for a week being only slightly less compelling than my urge to splurge. And so, in addition to the empty suitcase I’ll be toting along to accommodate any impulse buys, I’ve also been shopping up a storm online in order to take full advantage of our temporary U.S. mailing address. When Dan sees what’s waiting for us in the hotel mailroom, he may actually go into cardiac arrest. But since he’s worth way more to me dead than alive at this point, that may not be such a bad thing.
Okay, enough about the shopping already.
Instead, I’d like to leave you today with a more serious question, one I’ve been quietly meditating on all week:
Is lorazepam really safe during pregnancy?