I leave tomorrow morning, just in time for the sky to clear. Vancouver's weather has had the same dampening effect as pregnancy — with the landscape sopping wet and the belly increasingly cumbersome, I've been relegated to office hallways, wholesome bedtimes and tall glasses of homo milk.

I got a glimpse of the mountains as I flew in, heart catching in my throat, and another as the clouds lifted just before dark tonight. The ground is a sponge, and every excursion is an umbrella-toting, puddle-hopping dash. I'm told these days have capped a two-week downpour. Even the locals are complaining, the radio glutted with talk of imminent mudslides and north shore evacuations.

When I was here last June, it was glorious. A five-day trip felt like two weeks, packed with reunions and dinners and adventures and I-never-want-to-forget-how-this-feels photo ops. This time was a head-down slosh through the rain, wincing at long walks from meeting to meeting in lovely dainty shoes, contemplating the potential sciatica I'm nursing more than the lifestyle we miss. This time, five days have felt more like two days… worthwhile and appreciated, but a relative blur of limitations and restraint.

You know the scene in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation where Clark Griswald proudly emerges from the kitchen with the Christmas turkey? He places it on the table, bulbous and glistening, and presses the point of the knife into a breast to start the ritual of carving. The bird then implodes in a whoosh of overcooked steam, dehydrated to a crisp.

I am the turkey.

I cup it, hold it in, will it to stop stretching, to slow down. People glance sideways at me and say, "Oh look, maternal sweetness.. she's caressing her belly without realizing she's doing it… how sweet... quick, someone go exhume Norman Rockwell so that we can capture this…"

But they don't realize: I HAVE to hold it in. If I don't, it’s going to pop like a too-taut balloon and it's going to be, like, TOTALLY grody, and YOU will have to clean it up.

I have had the same conversation 1,276 times every day with every person I've met, from corporate VPs to café baristas:

• No, I haven't just eaten too much.
• July 26.
• Yes, quite a while still to go.
• Yes, only five months along.
• Because there's two.
• <insert jaw-drops and mouth-claps>
• <hush falls over room, small crowd gathers>
• Yes, I'm "going to have my hands full!"
• No, I didn't "plan it this way."
• Yes, twins are in my family but they have no bearing on me because mine are identical and identicals are a random egg-split and only fraternal twins can be genetic because that's multiple eggs released in one cycle and the trait of being an egg-rich woman comes from the women in your line and there aren't any twins on my maternal side.
• (OR No, twins don't run in my family.)
• No, I didn't take drugs.
• <insert incredulous stare, as though I MUST have done SOMETHING to make this happen other than playing too much ordinary hide-the-pickle)
• No, I don't know if I'm going to need a c-section.
• No, it's not really up to me.
• No, this isn't my first pregnancy.
• <insert incredulous stare #2>
• He'll be two-and-a-half when they arrive.
• Yes, we're having all-boys.
• <insert incredulous stare #3>
• Yes, I'm "going to have my hands full!"
• Yes, we'll have three under three. Thanks for reminding me.
• Yes, we'll need so very many diapers indeed. Thanks for reminding me.
• Thanks (for saying I look nice despite the... the... you know. <insert hand-gesture offered towards general trunk region>)

I can only imagine what life will be like when they get here — we'll be mobbed everywhere we go. We'll be The Beatles. I'll have to turn Goth and dye my hair black and get tattoos and scowl, look unsavoury enough to offset the world's curiosity.

It's already a spectacle. A chance for folk to revel in their own bullet-dodging prowess. It's got the entertainment value of the Point Pleasant Park Annual Polar Bear Swim, during which dozens of completely deranged gee-golly-shucksers storm into Halifax Harbour for a winter swim (ill-advised in mid-summer, let alone in mid-January). You watch with a smile on your face, bemused at someone else's bravado-slash-idiocy, tingling with cosy warmth in your fortuitously-chosen puffy down jacket.

That's the right word: bemused. Ha! Twins. Check it out. Yikes! Can you imagine how shrunken that guy's cubes must be right now? Ha!

A mixed blessing, I think, to have landed in Vancouver when it was on hiatus. Maybe she spared me, my mistress, by not answering the door when she had on her acne-treatment face mask and a grubby old houserobe. Maybe she decided I'd be best off not seeing her that way, in the interest of keeping the fantasy intact. She didn't answer my knocks, hoping I'd figure she was out on the town, swinging. And I walk away with a shrug, thinking I'll try again some other time.

Like maybe ooohh, in say, 2026. If The Rabble lets me.