If I could stand in front of my bathroom window for the rest of my life, I would not count it a waste. The breeze that thing catches is frankly astonishing - especially when you've been soaking in a tub half-filled with cold water. Christ, it's hot.

I mean - Christ it's hot.

We spent a great deal of time yesterday at the Metro Toronto Zoo, part of Rocketbride week (a time stretching from my birthday to my wedding anniversary. Mark it on all calendars, sundials and white boards.) Our plans were ambitious: get up at nine! Out the door by nine-thirty! At the zoo by ten! Home when they kick us out! We were going to do all the trails, even the really far-flung Canadian Domain trail. What we hadn't counted on broke down into two factors: low blood sugar crankiness & pregnancy. The first made our morning packing slow & irritable. The second greatly humbled our distance ambitions (although we did manage the longest trail: Around the World). The first was solved by a quick trip to Tim Hortons for two hot caffeinated beverages & some baked goods. The second will only be solved with blood, sweat & tears near the end of November.

We had a pretty excellent time, nonetheless. The Boy, despite his boundless curiosity into the natural world, was very patient with me even when I descended into muttering & grousing the likes of which are simply not attractive in a 27-year-old. We brought a full picnic, and ate it at a restaurant pavilion among some truly atrocious parenting displays. We filled up our water bottle at the many convenient water fountains (the zoo was built before the public was expected to purchase their own damn water at $2 a bottle) and thus remained very hydrated despite the punishing heat outside & inside. We didn't end up spending one cent over admission and parking, a fact of which we were perhaps unduly proud.

The thing I love about the Zoo is that the habitats keep improving. When I first went as a young child, there were a few impressive habitats and a lot of promising rooms. Now almost every habitat seems to bring the inhabitants, if not joy, then serenity. I leave the orangutans out of this assessment; they looked extremely depressed to me. But the rest seemed okay.

The animals were wonderful, as always. I got really into the gorilla troop, the Malaysian butterflies & the naked mole rats (the only mammals to form an insect hive structure). As the day went on and the heat worsened, quite a few animals lay down for naps but this was expected. We got to walk about the kangaroo & emu enclosure, which is a new feature. There was a tank replicating a pond filled with one kind of fish that has, like Darwin's finches, evolved to fill every link in the local chain. The octopus was upsetting, creepy & hypnotic. The hippopotami won over the Boy. It was a great time.

Around 5 o'clock we decided to go home. We had seen most of the animals we had wanted to see (except the giraffes) and we had outlasted most of the screaming day camps. As we'd watched, the light had gone off in the boa constrictor tank - but since there were signs about nocturnal schedules everywhere, I figured that the boa's day was done. It seemed like a good idea to head out. The gift shop was closed, which kind of freaked me out - I've never been to a public attraction without a gift shop. I figured that since so much had changed about the zoo (like the fact that they got rid of the monorail! Gasp!), maybe they were trying to be less consumer-oriented in the modern age. The Boy thought about getting a camel ride, but was daunted by the line-up of people all at least 20 years younger than he. After a day in the punishing heat I wasn't hungry at all, but I realized that I would soon pass out without a few calories.

"Can I have an ice-cream?" I asked

"Let's see how much they cost. $4?! Let's go to a convenience store."

"Dude, it's Hagen Daaz! That's how much they cost everywhere."

"We'll see about that. [pause] Are you mad at me?"

"Nope. Either I'm right or you're right. Either way, I get an ice cream bar."

Oh, such foolish words.

On the way out to the highway, we saw that the traffic light was out. I made what I thought was an obvious connection between the closed gift shop, the boa constrictor light and the heat wave: "guess they're having a brown-out here." We spent quite a few minutes marvelling over the absolute efficiency of the zoo personnel - they didn't panic, they didn't try to get us out, they just moved quietly from place to place fixing the habitat details that must run on timed electronic breakers. We wondered at our luck - of all the places we could be when the power went, a non-air-conditioned zoo lighted by massive skylights seemed to be just about the least traumatic place in the GTA.

It was then we noticed that the traffic lights were still out the farther we drove. And, well, the stores were closed. We turned on the CBC and discovered what everyone else had known for 45 minutes: the power was out on the Eastern Seaboard. Then CBC1 dissolved into static.

Oh crap, we thought. It's the end of the world. Fortunately, Q107 was still pumping out "Sweet Home Alabama," so we figured that modern life hadn't quite turned into the Planet of the Apes. (In retrospect, that's not a particularly convincing broadcast if you want to prove that monkeys haven't taken over.)

The highway was clogged as hell, but we figured that it would be safer to get to my parents' house (3 dead intersections from the highway) than our house (at least 2 dozen dead intersections). Besides, they have a barbeque and a pool. You don't want to scorn these things when you're hungry, pregnant and the power goes off in a heatwave. We started to see cars by the side of the highway, abandoned by drivers unable to get gas. The Boy decided to read up on emergency childbirth.

The really odd thing was that I was perfectly calm. I rode along in the car, unable to predict if we'd ever get gas again or see our no-doubt sweltering guinea pig, and was content. The baby wiggled away in my gut without the benefit of electricity, and my appetite was returning (crises do that to everyone, I suppose). And even though he was remarkably uncommunicative, the presence of the Boy was perfectly reassuring to me. I found that I couldn't care about the world ending as long as I was safe, my baby was safe and my babydaddy was safe (and protective).

This oddly chilled mood lasted all the way to the next afternoon, while my mom grilled pizzas and I read Jerome K. Jerome with my bottom half submerged in the shallow end of the pool. My only regret is that we had to return to the city this afternoon to make sure that Cuddles was ok. Now I'm trapped in our airless apartment with the Premier's admonitions ringing in my ears...okay, okay, I won't run two fans at once. I know my duty.

Booty Call: Day 161 - Length: 22 cm crown to rump (30 cm or 11 3/4 inches head to toe). Weight: about 700 gm.