ten topics

to get back to all of those things about which i wanted to blog yesterday (or technically this morning):

1. "legalize bluegrass" - that's what this man's t-shirt had on it at the sharon jones and the dap kings show sunday night. the show was awesome, by the way, but the band had car trouble on the way and were super late getting there and so they didn't even go on until 12:30 am, but at least i got to keep being amused by that man's shirt for the 3+ hours we waited. i also didn't mind the wait too much because they announced that the band was late, and why, and when to expect them, which makes the wait more tolerable than when one is not told why one is being made to wait, no? my ob asked me about the show before we went into surgery monday and was a bit taken aback that i was hanging out in clubs until 3 am the night before; i wish i had thought to snap back that it all evened out, since my surgery was 3+ hours later than scheduled, and at least at the show they had the courtesy to tell me what was going on, unlike at his fine facility. hmmmph.
2. my mom must be at loose ends not being here to help us right now, as she is accustomed in our pregnancy crises, because she is showering us with gifts. first, we got the most beautiful arrangement of lilies and other flowers in rich fall colors from her. then today in the mail was a $50 gift card to our neighborhood microbrewery/organic restaurant/hangout with hot-in-a-sensitive-international-poet-kind-of-way servers. i'm blown away. my dad and his wife and my brother and his family also sent a lovely box of yellow roses and other yellows and purples, which i had fun arranging for our coffee table. i have neglected cutting flowers from my garden since i got pregnant with the tadpole and had forgotten how nice it was to have fresh flowers around. also, i am amused because the note with the gift card, which must have been ordered by phone, as my mother is 1500 miles away, misspelled her name; my mother shares the name of the famous cow that used to schill for borden, but the card said it was from "elfie". i'm going to call her that from now on.
3. in episode 4 or 5 of the second season of "six feet under", mare winningham's dead husband's spirit tells her to pick the low-budget casket model, and guess what it's called? "the cleveland". that's not right. another thing not right about cleveland, generally, is that when i last looked at the thermometer it was 84 degrees here. this is the month of october, in which, in my short history in this fine city at least, it generally snows at least once to kick off the season. i am running the air conditioner. the world is coming to an end.
4. justin had to go back to work today, which is depressing us both. actually, his human resources rep told him to take as long as he needed, but today he would have started not getting paid, which would be very sucky. this morning we were in the car, running errands, and he said to me that he wished we could have every day together like we've had this week, just not for the same reasons. i acknowledge upfront how vomitous this sentiment will sound to other people, but i must say that i feel the same way. i would like to have a trust fund that allowed me to not have to work, which of course would be necessary to make such a wish come true, but i would be happy to spend nearly every waking hour (and the sleeping ones, too) with justin. and before you roll your eyes and say, "sure, right, that's what you think," let me assure you that we know what we're talking about. last year, in january and february, we both took leaves of absence from our respective jobs and spent those months in chile, mostly, with forays into argentina, uruguay, brazil and panama; we were together 24 hours a day for two months except for one afternoon when justin went to get his hair cut while i took a nap and he came back to the hotel with a stack of second-hand english-language books he had bought for me for valentine's day, and we did not get tired of each other. we did have the occasional spat, yes, but nothing we couldn't survive. and then, of course, after hans died we had six more weeks together with almost no interruption, and except for the part about missing our son, it was paradise to be together so much. we're just dorky that way.
5. of course, as we were trying to get out the door to get justin to work on time, the ups man rang the doorbell and needed a signature. i was extra irritated because i knew what was in the box - maternity clothes. i had ordered them last thursday. i thought about calling to cancel the order friday afternoon, but i figured they had probably already been shipped, and i do hope to have a reason to actually wear them, and soon. i'm keeping one pair of pants but i 'm sending back the other pair (it has a giant shimmery tummy panel, which just gives me the heebie jeebies) and the top, which depressingly fits me now.
6. what also fits me now are some non-maternity clothes that i had not worn since before we went to south america last year, which makes me say, woo-hoo! today i wore a shirt i had never worn (at least out of the house) before because it really was too small when i bought it two years ago. and now it isn't. i am now 19 pounds less than when i got pregnant with hans, but it won't last for long if i keep eating reese's miniatures. i have eaten a whole bag of them in less then 24 hours. god help me, they're just so good. the miniatures are the best variety because they have the perfect proportion of chocolate to peanut butter. you know it's true.
7. tuesday night we went to david and toni's for dinner. if you haven't already, you should check out the "i hate this" link in my list, which goes to david's website for the play he wrote about the stillbirth of his son calvin. (and if you want to read weird goth shit about which he's blogging in support of his play "the vampyres", currently playing at cleveland public theater, click on the "coffee and blood" link in my list. but only if you want to read creepy vampire and goth shit.) it was such a good night. i was just getting my appetite back as the last of the anesthetic was getting out of my system, and toni had made ginger lentil soup, which was divine on its own, and then we drizzled it with really good balsamic vinegar, which made it beyond divine. we got to play with zelda and march in a parade with her, in which i shook a maraca and wore red pointy devil ears affixed to a headband. the last time i was in a parade was when i was seven; for reasons i cannot remember, i was dressed vaguely like a gypsy and rode in the back of someone's el camino. anyway, after zelda and orson went to bed, the four of us adults finished off the malbec and had a long conversation about hospital protocols and religious communities and gay sex - those were all separate topics, just to clarify - and it was just so good to have meaningful conversation.
8. i told toni tuesday night that the tadpole's loss felt so much different than hans's loss, because to me the tadpole was not a child yet. it was the opportunity to give birth in april. it was the potential to have a living child. i am adamantly pro-choice, and my experiences with my two pregnancies have only made me more so. while we were waiting at the hospital on monday it occurred to me that what i was having was an abortion, only that i was doing it to end a pregnancy that was already over but my body was still trying to support, and that there are people in this country, most of them ignorant men, who don't even think i should be allowed to do that, and it made me so angry. but i digress. the point is that, all politics aside, i just didn't feel like the tadpole was my child yet. i was going to blog about this topic at length yesterday. and then i started to miss my tadpole. i would have loved it with all my heart. i already did.
9. justin's stepfather came over last evening to help us with the flooring we're putting into our carriage house and promptly announced that it was all wrong (we were about half-way done with the downstairs, which is all we're doing). i love him dearly, and he has a special place with me as hans's grandfather and probably the one to which he would have been the closest, of his three grandfathers, because he's the only one that lives in the area, but i wanted to knee him in his naughty bits. i said i had to go back to our house and change the laundry so i could get out of there. justin came in a few minutes later and begged me to come back out; i told him how angry i was. his stepfather is always so negative and completely skeptical of anything new, and i'm just tired of it, and if he was going to just stand around and shake his head instead of discussing how we could make the best of it and get it done, i'd prefer if he just went home. but justin was miserable and feeling intimidated (because we are not handy people, and his stepfather is one of those overwhelmingly handy people), plus he begged, hard, so we went back out together, and i asked him what we needed to do, and he said we needed to take up all the boards. so we did. it's amazing how much less time it took to pull them all up than it did to lay them all down. after we got it all up, i came back in and fixed them dinner, and tonight my father-in-law is coming back over to start laying boards, the right way. we will survive this, too.
10. i finally figured out what was causing my abdominal tenderness. when they did the d&c, they must have used ultrasound to see what they were doing, and it had to be held in the same place for the ten minutes or so it took to do it, and it left a little bruise, which is getting better, thank you, as is my sore throat. i'm still bleeding, but it's not nearly as horrendous as i thought it would be, for which i am supremely grateful. i just hope it's down to next to nothing when i go back to work monday - i do not want to have to carry a purse big enough for my humongous pads meant for urinary incontinence to work with me. i'm also worried about having to carry a donut to work to sit on, but not because i have hemorroids; it's just that my tailbone has been out of whack since monday, and i can't sit on it for very long without excruciating pain. i don't mind sitting on a donut, but everyone will think it's for hemorroids, and i could do without that.

that ought to cover it for now.