the last of the good days

my excuse is that i am weather-sensitive. for the longest time i couldn't acknowledge that i liked fall, because i can't enjoy it fully, there's always that tinge of dread at knowing winter will follow. and preparing myself for cold weather is both necessary and depressing. so these days i've been like a crazed squirrel trying to make provisions of daylight, i.e. "park-fiending".
it helps a bit that b. likes any kind of weather, actually the variety of it in canada. (though i always point out that 5 months of winter is not that much variety). he likes rain because rain is joyful (and warm!) where he comes from, and ice because he can go skating. so right now i'm looking at some small annoying rain from the safety of my kitchen, and trying to appreciate the coziness; looking at leaves being blown off trees, and it's just time moving on.

this was last weekend. belly-watch: almost 25 weeks. i'm wearing both my new maternity jeans ( from apsobibi,http://www.apsobibi.com/en/ sooo expensive but hopefully worth it) and my new extra-long and soft top (in a last ditch attempt at displaying it before i have to wear it under sweaters). also this is when i finally figured out that i need to belt any pant below the belly, and discovered that i only have one belt long enough for this procedure, since the difference between my normal waist size and top-of-hip width is pretty huge. whatever works! ah, and the bag is also new. in my most optimistic dreams, it will double up as a diaper bag (it has a lot of compartments!) - we'll see.

 

probably the only hallowe'en- themed picture i'm having here this year. this marks the small sidewalk garden of foucher street retiring for the season.

we walked to henri-bourassa to evaluate the HB park relatively to parc jarry (context: we're considering other neighbourhoods we could possibly move to). is their lake any good? they seem to have a nice grass-covered slope which will be good for tobogganing. are there enough squirrels? obviously the park there is smaller, but pretty satisfactory. what i found unsatisfactory was the amount of stores and eating places on fleury street - i had been led on to think fleury was as lively as villeray or jarry, but after dark it looked kind of shuttered and mostly residential, apart from a couple of posh restos. anyway, this picture is from st-hubert on the way there, because obviously it got too dark for good pictures by the time we were in the park. maybe a re-evaluation visit in daylight?

oct 23rd, me wandering alone on back alleys around mont-royal/marie anne. had just gotten off a morning shift and was not ready to go home yet (my feet and belly kind of were ready, but they're not the bosses of me!)

back alley view of the patio at club espagnol, which was such a pleasant discovery back in the day

new cute place (cafe? pastry shop?) on a side street. all those pink details.

romanian inside joke: is that an actual green (though blue-winged) horse on a wall? is this world trying to tell me something?

this is the kind of light you get at 3 pm on a sunny end-of-october day. and this is the little parc du portugal, with leonard cohen's house right there across the street. also present there at that time: a gaggle of local ladies, some obnoxious pigeons, a guy sewing some cloth thing on a bench next to me, a guy eating takeout with a friend and his sausage-like dog roaming around for squirrels.

speaking of leonard cohen, i finally got to this mural with a charged camera handy: first corner east of st-laurent, on napoleon

parc st-louis, an old favourite mostly because of the fountain (drained now), houses (colourful!) and the multitude of squirrels very accustomed to the presence of humans.

we followed a squirrel subject for a while, but she couldn't sustain a pose. also b. had a project to take snapshots of falling leaves, but...no

here are the colourful houses in all their splendour instead

weekend morning! (oct 28th) - getting out of the house through the back, at 9 am, to get pastries from the portuguese bakery.

afternoon in parc jarry, and the first time i see this side of the lake drained. i had no idea that that's what the fountain base looks like!

castelnau going west to parc-ex. the colours of the trees match the buildings well.

aaand belly-watch, almost week 26. although this is more an outfit pic than a proper belly pic. again, i was just trying to use my trench coat and brown (patent leather!) (can you tell they're a gift from my mum?) shoes before the rains and the cold.