cd23: return of the swamp thing

justin had to go into work at 6:00 this morning, so i tripped out of bed at 5:30 to put enough clothes on to drive him there. as i dressed, i vaguely thought, "what smells?", but wasn't awake enough to process it.

when i got back home, i wrinkled my nose at something sour as i peeled off my impromptu driving clothes and fell back into bed hoping to get two more hours of sleep before the alarm went off. as i nestled down in the sheets, i thought, "whew, need to change the sheets."

when the alarm went off, i laid in bed for a few minutes, trying to get fully awake before i got out from under the warm covers. but that smell.

and then it dawned on me. it was me.

i grinned from ear to ear and danced less than gracefully into the bathroom.

why? because i'm a freak who never had any body odor ever until i got pregnant with hans, when i got his horrible, rampant stench that set up residence in my nooks and crannies. in fact, the advent of the swamp pits was the first physical sign something was going on with me with both pregnancies (see my post of 10 august). thankfully, it went away shortly after each pregnancy.

i was actually giggling in the shower as i scrubbed my underarms, and lathered them up again, and again, and then put on deodorant twice. by lunchtime, i could smell myself through my thick sweater.

i have never been so happy to be so nasty.

i'm trying to be reasonable. the onset of rancid body odor is not recognized as a signal of conception in any medical text. and even if i'm right, it's so incredibly early that it may not last. so i'm going to practice some willpower; i will test on cd31 and not before. what happens then, happens.

but for now i cannot stop smiling. i will enjoy this ride as long as it lasts. may it last long and prosper. (the pregnancy, not the b.o.)

a plug for david

wow - a strangely quiet day at work, but at least it gives me a few minutes to check in with my LIFELINES!

despite the suggestive title of this post, i really was only talking about plugging my friend's play (although it could have been the title of some b-grade porn, don't you think). and so now, without further ado, a plug for my friend david's play, "i hate this", about the year his son was stillborn: if it comes to a theater near you, you should do whatever you have to do to see it. but in the mean time, the condensed/edited for radio version is now available here. have a box of kleenex handy, and allow an hour to hear all of it (or break it up into three parts if you must, but it will be better if you give it the full hour).

if justin is able to get himself pulled together, we are going to see "walk the line" tonight. looking forward to a rare weeknight together. tomorrow, he goes back to work. (sigh.)

i find myself failing to avoid the "i wonder if..." thoughts this month. before we conceived the tadpole, my cycles were running a bit long, and because of our travels days 13-19 were attempt-free. so who know. but you know, maybe, on day 12 or 20, we hit the jackpot...

i would test today if i thought it would do any good. maybe i should drink heavily tonight and have some sushi - that ought to guarantee that we've already conceived, don't you think?

must not obsess, must not obsess, must not obsess.

there's no place like home

justin finally got some resolution with best (not) buy (from us), so we're shipping off the computer today. it will probably be at least a couple of weeks. i can't access my email from work, so i may have to make a trip to the library. i've been meaning to get my own card instead of sponging off justin's for a while anyway, so it won't hurt to go - it's just a matter of the time. i'll read blogs as often as i have time to stay late at work, but it won't be daily, which pains me. kathy mcc will be having her baby, and several of you will be having ultrasounds, and there will be other things happening that i will miss. i'll catch up as soon as i can.

*****

i cancelled my therapy appointment for today. i left the therapist a voice mail - my husband was coming back in the country and i wanted to spend the time with him, plus although what we've worked hasn't been unhelpful, it's also not what i need to work on right now. and there's the fact that there's a month left until my insurance carrier changes and i hate to keep investing here and then stop. i didn't want to be cowardly about it, so i gave her my cell and told her she could call me if she wanted to discuss it, and thanked her for her time with me. i haven't heard from her. so that's that. now if i can just find someone for january...

*****

i endured the crush of cars to pick justin up at the airport last night, and we went to one of our favorite mexican places. it's good we did - he was hungry, and he was tired. if we had gone straight home, he might have been asleep by the time dinner was ready. he had a great trip, but it's even better for him to be next to me in the car with his hand on my thigh, or in bed, perfectly spooned up behind me. even when he's snoring.

he was going to download his pictures and show them to me when we got home, but i looked at him and said, "let's look at pictures tomorrow." i forgot about not having the computer as of today, so maybe he can download them when he gets up and send them to work to see. at any rate, i don't think he'll be complaining, since we went straight to bed, and not straight to sleep, instead of looking at pictures last night.

it's good to have him home.

back in the usa

he's back! as i write, justin is on continental flight 225, probably circling over lake erie, about to land. apparently, he and his buddies were staying next door to the band they were stalking, i mean, following in the czech republic and ended up hanging out with them the whole time. next time uz jsme doma is in the states, they're coming to our house for dinner or something.

i'm so glad he's home. i sleep a thousand times better when he's next to me. even when i'm mad at him.

if you need this kind of help, maybe you need more help

from the "are you kidding me?" department comes: egg alert!

i'm thinking if you need to be texted about when you're ovulating, you're not that serious about getting pregnant. everyone i know who's trying to get pregnant and aware of anything more advanced than "where babies come from" is already on top of this stuff. if you want to know when you're ovulating, you're already hyper-aware of when it's happening.

am i wrong? are any of you subscribing to this service? is this tool really useful to anyone?

let's end this holiday on a high note, or at least a comic one

meant to post this before i left. because we all need a laugh.

the funky turkey

how i avoided the big family holiday **now with pictures**

still feeling like a slug, but i need to shake it off so i can get some things done today. with justin gone, no one is magically making clean laundry appear in my closet, so i guess it's up to me. consider this post the first step towards getting stuff done i don't feel like doing.

wednesday: my mother's flight was delayed leaving jacksonville; meanwhile, i got to the airport and through security in record time for the day before thanksgiving, so justin was able to just barely squeeze me on to an earlier flight. according to our original plan, my mom was going to have to wait two hours for me to meet up with her in newark. instead, she only had to wait a few minutes for me, and we got over to our hotel much earlier than planned, which was wonderful, because we were both pooped. may i add how nice it is that my mother now qualifies for almost all senior discounts? her round-trip fare on the express bus from newark airport to manhattan was only half the regular fare, plus she got a nice ego boost because the ticket agent didn't believe she was 62 or over.

on the bus ride over, we had a lovely, lit-up view of manhattan, and we talked about my mother's previous trip there. it was the summer she was 12 - fifty years ago this last summer. the only thing she really remembered was going up the empire state building and putting a dime in the viewer. she was the second of seven kids, the sixth one being a baby on that trip, and the oldest daughter. they were all in a bright green new car, she remembers. they had been to a church conference in ohio, then they went to new york, then to washington dc, of which she remembers a bit more.

what she also remembers is how small hotel rooms used to be - she was reminded by our tiny room. i think she was disappointed; considering what she spent (she paid for the hotel, i paid for the transporation), she expected something at least comparable to every other hotel built since ww2. but it's not like we spent much time there, and the bathroom was clean, and when we turned off the lights at night, we could see into a number of apartments with the binoculars, so there was that bonus.

before we got to the hotel, we stopped so i could buy a hat and gloves from a vendor. i stupidly left mine on the airport parking shuttle, and only remembered them as i boarded my flight. justin, lovely man that he is, went out after i left (on his busiest day of the year) and rode shuttles around the airport until he found my stuff. he deserves an award. but i still needed something for the next morning, so i bought a red ski cap with a black/grey/white retro modern pattern on it and some black thinsulate gloves and we were on our way.

we stayed on 71st, between columbus and central park west, so once we deposited our things, we walked back up the block to columbus and settled on a little italian/ukrainian cafe because it looked like it would be quickest among the restaurants at that intersection. we got to sit in the cozy back room and shared a fresh mozzarella salad and a bowl of minestrone and lime italian sodas and a piece of sour cream apple walnut pie. by the time the pie came, we were both completely wilted, so as soon as we were done we went back to the room and got ready for bed.

my mother, who grew up in indiana and then iowa, has become terrified of the cold. when she came to see us last christmas, we had a record week of snow, and every time she was going to step out the door, there was this ten minute process of layering socks, scarves, hats and gloves. to deal with the cold in new york (high in the 40s/low in the 30s), she wore pantyhose, tights, and thick socks with courdoroy pants; fitted isotoner gloves under thick chenille gloves; a giant fake fur hat under the heavily lined hood of her coat; a scarf about twice as long as she is, wrapped around her neck so many times that it stood out further than her bustline; a silk tank, a t-shirt, a heavy turtleneck sweater, and a thick cardigan; plus the heavily-lined coat. it took her a long time to peel it all off that night. i don't know how she could walk under all that weight, frankly, but needless to say she about fried. as the trip went on, she began to shed some of her layers, but we still couldn't walk outside without the ritual of the accessories. we didn't discuss it, but i assume she had a bra and panties on under there, because she talked about not letting her "titsies" get cold. she laughed so hard, i thought she was going to wet herself at the word "titsies" which she made up for herself. i hope i never have to hear her say that word again. it was painful.

thursday: the alarm went off at 5 am, and we struggled to shower and get dressed at that hour, but we made it out of the hotel by 5:45. the parade starts at 77th street, 6 blocks north of us, on central park west, which was half a block from us, so we only had to walk up to the corner and then decide where we wanted to decamp. it was raining, and my mother had forgotten her rain poncho, so we settled on a spot halfway between 71st and 72nd where an apartment entrance awning stretched out to the curb. at that hour, there was a sprinkling of people out, the diehards with their tiny folding nylon chairs, who were staking out the best spots. under the awning, we could spread out my rain poncho and sit on it. we had three hours until the parade even started.

by 7:00, the frontline was filled and a second row was forming behind us. a woman came out of the apartment building alone and asked if she could squeeze in with us. her name was ginny, and she was a retired high school math teacher from carson city, nevada. her son lived in the building whose awning was sheltering us, and he was currently appearing in "wicked" on broadway, so he was too tired to care about coming out. the three of us formed a tight unit, guarding our excellent spot while we took bathroom breaks and went in seach of breakfast.

by 9:00, the spectators were ten-deep, as much as the sidewalk would allow and still give room for people to walk single file next to the buildings. the rain had stopped, and we had all had so much coffee we were no longer sluggish. the parade kicked off promptly, and we stood up and threw the now-disgusting poncho over the police railings. my mother stood on the street and took still pictures, which gave me enough clearance to video the proceedings from the curb. we could not have had a better spot.

the parade was lovely, fun, full of confetti, which i am still finding in my things. we saw kristin chenoweth, aaron neville and jai rodriguez from queer eye. we also saw rita coolidge and what remains of the beach boys (the two non-wilsons plus some guys that need hair cuts) and various teen/disney celebrities that i wouldn't know. the floats and balloons were lovely and fascinating, but it is a vastly different experience to see them from ten feet away than it is to watch them on tv. the floats are not nearly as big as they seemed on tv when i was a child, and the balloons (while huge) are pocked and shabby, with long, painted-to-blend strips of duct tape holding them together and making them looked scarred and tough. i can just see dora the explorer in a knife fight with sponge bob.

what was really fascinating was the operation of the balloons. each balloon has a captain that marches backward and conducts the rope handlers. the captain uses a whistle and also a lexicon of hand signals to tell them when to start, stop, turn, spin, make hands wave, bob, let out the rope or take it in, and step over the clydesdales' poop. i can't imagine the work it must take, especially when the wind kicks up, but the handlers didn't seem to mind. they seemed to all be smiling, and some of them even started dancing when they were at a standstill. of course, we were at the beginning of the route; they may not have been smiling by the time they got to macy's, especially if they were on the m&m balloon that crashed and burned (no, we didn't see it - it was much further down the route).

the bands and the clowns were great, but santa creeped me out. he was made up to look very pasty and antique, like a santa figurine that would appeal to someone with far more money than taste. but just as he went by, signalling the end of the parade, my phone buzzed. justin had just gotten out of the 72nd street subway stop and was headed toward us. we said goodbye to ginny after exchanging email addresses and found justin, who gave up trying to swim against the stream of people leaving the parade and let us flow to him.

we took the subway down to the village and then walked over to the red bamboo, on 4th street between sixth avenue and washington square park. but when we arrived a little after noon, the corrugated aluminum door was pulled down. red bamboo is justin's favorite place in new york, a tiny vegan restaurant in a basement with what they call "zen-soul" food. it's a blend of both asian and soul food, and it's so good that it makes you want to be a vegan, even if you're not. justin had called the day before to make sure they would be open, so he called again and found out they were opening in ten minutes. so we went for camera batteries and cash from the atm and came back as they were rolling up the door and were the first customers of the day.

they had a thanksgiving prix fixe menu, which we all had: sliced "turkey" or smoked "ham" or crispy "chicken" (we each had one so we could try them all), with mashed potatoes with the corn already mixed in, apple and walnut stuffing, mushroom gravy, peas and carrots, and cranberry sauce. also, everyone got two "turkey" drumsticks (the bone was a bamboo skewer), plus a deeply delicious curried butternut squash soup to start. to finish, we each got a giant scoop of vegan ice cream - caramel pecan for justin, pistachio for my mom and mint chip for me. and before this dinner, unlike last saturday night, i was able to say what i was thankful for: to share this meal with the people i love most in the world.

after dinner, we walked through washington square and watched the big dogs and the little dogs (why do the little dogs always form a circle chasing each other?), and i took my mother's picture in front of the arch, and we watched a performer juggle fiery batons. then we walked justin back to the subway and said goodbye; he left for la guardia and my mom and i went to times square.

it was raining again now and our outer layers were soaked, but we soldiered on. we covered pretty much all of midtown on foot and ended at rockefeller plaza, where we watched the skaters and the dancing snowflake show and took many pictures which did not come out. then we went down to the shops under rockefeller center and collapsed with oranginas and pastries. it felt like 9:00 to us, even though it was only about 6:00, and we agreed to call it a day. so we bought a couple of souvenirs of our trip (i bought two tiny espresso cups with the i heart ny logo on them) and headed back to the hotel. while my mom got ready for bed, i walked back up to the corner and bought two of the longest slices of pizza i have ever seen, and we ate them in bed while we watched "daddy daycare" (hey, we were tired).

friday: we had decided the night before to go down to ground zero before we left, but we didn't set an alarm, and by the time we had breakfast and were packed and ready to go it was after 9, so instead we went to the shops at columbus circle, who in their brochure made it sound like they were going to have lots of christmasy things; instead it was just their regular high-end mall stores that wanted to sell us christmas presents. we were lugging our bags with us and had no room to carry anything back anyway, and we weren't sure what the traffic would be like, so we went to penn station to take the express bus back to newark.

so we didn't really *do* anything on friday, but we got to spend hours talking. we talked some about hans, and about therapy, and about our plans for the future. we talked about my mom's church, and about the denomination in which i grew up and to which she still belongs, and about an underground, progressive movement building in it, which encouraged me, since i've been mostly disappointed in recent years with what the church has done. we talked a little about my dad, and about his cancer, and we talked about my mom's living trust. we talked about what everyone wanted for christmas, and my mother apologized for forgetting to bring the christmas ornament she had gotten for hans and promised to send it to me. that made me tear up. my mother hasn't mentioned him much since the day in april when she told me she had been down about it and just decided she wasn't going to let it bring her down any more. i was so touched that she remembered him for christmas. last christmas, she bought him his first ornament - a pair of red, wooden ice skates.

after i put her on her flight, i went to get on mine and realized that because of the reduced holiday schedule, there wasn't a 4:30 flight to cleveland and i had to wait until 6. while i waited, justin called from prague, which gave me a chance to ask him where he had parked the car at the airport. he had no idea. so when i got back i had to ride around the lot with the shuttle driver until we found it, but he was kind about it.

yesterday, i slept late, then watched two movies i had rented: "bewitched", which was just silly, and "dot the i", an okay thriller with gael garcia bernal, who makes me want to do dirty things to him. then i got dressed and went to see "rent" and "pride and prejudice". in the previews for rent, i thought alanis morissette was in it; it turns out that angel, the drag queen in it, looks an awful lot like alanis when in drag.

so that's my thanksgiving weekend. i have one more movie to watch - "king of the corner" - and laundry to do, and if i'm very, very careful, i may not have to leave the house. which means, i may not have to get out of my pink penguin flannel pajamas.

baby got back

made it home from nyc, had a great trip. justin made it to prague this morning; he called me this afternoon from the the first of four shows he and his buddies were going to and was having a great time. but he couldn't remember where in the employee lot at the airport he left the car, so i had to ride around on the shuttle until the driver and i found it. good times. i'll write about my trip more tomorrow - too tired tonight.

also too sad. i feel heavy with thoughts of hans tonight, 39 weeks pregnant kind of heavy, physically overloaded heavy. i wish i had pictures of him snuggled up with his nonna in the cold at the parade. instead all i have is pictures of him right after i delivered him, cold and snuggled up, but dead. dead baby pictures - not that cheery.

cold burn

i hate ice.

i know, i know - it keeps drinks cold, food fresh in the cooler. it soothes burns. it keeps the oceans from flooding us (sort of). it provides decor for many weddings. it made much of the progress of our civilization possible. yada yada yada.

in reality, modern refrigeration makes ice unnecessary for food and drink purposes. so it should be banned, because it just wears me out. it's dangerous, slippery, always sneaking around, trying to trip me up. when there's ice on the ground, i get exhausted from the anxiety it causes me, from the tension i hold while i walk across it.

when i was nine, my first winter in iowa, my mother sent me to take something to my dad at his office, which property backed up to our back yard, with an alley in between. i marched through our snowy backyard, across the ploughed alley, and met my waterloo. the back door of the church was at the top of an incline - not a big incline, mind you, nothing you could ski down. the incline was no more than three feet long, at perhaps a forty degree angle, but it was covered with a smooth sheet of ice. i walked up it, and promptly fell down. i tried again, and again. i tried climbing it on my hands and knees, but i couldn't get any traction. in retrospect, it was probably my first panic attack, but such a label hardly existed in 1978, at least not in my world, and so (in the vernacular available to me then) i became hysterical. fortunately, my mother was watching from the kitchen window, and she called my father, who came to rescue me. or rather, he came to stand in the door and tell me i in fact could walk up that ice for a good five minutes before finally extending his long arm for me to grab so he could pull me up the ice slide.

ever since, i have had an uneasy relationship with ice. when i lived in nashville, i actually let one of my employees live with me, rent-free, because she would drive me to and from work every day. the office was less than a mile from my home, but it involved several steep hills and valleys, and when the roads iced over, i would be exhausted by the time i got to work when i drove myself. so we found a mutually beneficial solution.

the big trend now for retirees to settle in north carolina, eastern tennessee, northern georgia - places with far more moderate winters than the north but not nearly as much heat as the traditional retirement targets of florida and arizona - makes no sense to me. these moderate climates are the most treacherous: they're cold enough to get snow, but not cold enough to keep it frozen, so it melts as it hits the ground, then freezes into ice overnight. what retiree would want such a thing?

at least in cleveland, when it snows, it stays snowy. there may be ice covering the streets, but there's a good, crunchy layer of snow on top for traction. and the snow stays soft enough for us to be able to shovel our sidewalks; just try shoveling a sheet of ice.

my vote is for ice to stay where it belongs - at either pole of the planet - and leave us in the middle alone. but since the climate will not bow to my bidding, and since i have had enough of living in florida and texas, with their eleven months of heat per year, i choose to live in cleveland, where the cold means business, unlike those wussy, in-between climates.

now if i can just get the parking lot attendants at work to get the salt spread before i get to the office, my world will be a better place.

*****

in a few hours i leave for new york and leave behind my computer access for a couple of days, so to all of my blogland friends, i wish a happy thanksgiving. you all are what i'm thankful for this year.

the strategy for avoiding holiday cheer

yikes. i was feeling a bit snappish as i wrote my last post. i see that in the haste of my anger i referred to the tadpole as a "side" of sweet potato, rather than the size of one. or maybe i was just hungry.

i'm over it now, maybe because i'm focused on the holiday. my co-worker in a southern city whose daughter died shortly after birth this summer called me today to see how the holidays were going, because hers were sucking. she feels like i do - so not in the mood for communal celebrations - but nonetheless will be cooking for the 24 people her husband has invited for dinner. i told her if she can't get out of it at this late date, then she deserved drugs. she told me she has a prescription for xanax she's never filled. i assured her the time is now. if anyone deserves it, she does.

although saturday (our private thanksgiving day) was emotional, our overall holiday strategy is working for us, i think. when i was first pregnant with the tadpole, justin and a friend planned a last-chance, pre-fatherhood trek across the czech republic, following their favorite czech band. i agreed to it, because i know how much fun it would be for justin, and figured it would be a good time to go to my mom's and then be done with traveling for the holidays.

now, though, my brother has announced he is not coming to my mother's for this or any holiday this year, and my sister will be popping in briefly before going to her in-laws', plus she has to work on friday. and the last straw - i couldn't get a flight home.

so i proposed to my mother that we chuck it all and meet in new york. and she agreed. so our big plan is:

• wednesday night - we meet in newark, take the train to manhattan, check into our hotel (within a block of the parade route, i think), go to bed early.
• thursday morning - get up eeeeeeeeearly, go to the macy's parade. with the masses. in the rain. i'm taking the video camera.
• thursday afternoon - justin will fly into newark, meet us in manhattan for thanksgiving dinner, then fly out of jfk.
• thursday night - my mother and i will look at lights and sights if we have any energy left.
• friday morning - if we can get up, maybe the today show. if not, a little shopping, and lunch, then back to newark.
• friday afternoon - we fly back to our respective homes.

my mother is 63, and has not been to new york since she was a child, so i really hope this is a magical visit for her. i am thankful to just have an agenda, and for it to not involve sitting around a table with people who love me but either (a) do not get why i'm still a bit mopy or (b) analyze my every move for traces of anger [and report it back to my mom if she's not present].

then i'll have saturday to myself to lay around and watch movies or go to them, and sunday i'm hanging out with my friend kath, and monday night justin will be home. in case he needs the extra time for travel troubles, he has tuesday off, too, so tuesday when i get off work we are going to go out and maybe see the new johnny cash biopic.

then we just have to get through christmas and we're home free.

the weekly updates resumed

dear mother (or not):

because you publicly disclosed that we had failed to maintain our weekly updates to you regarding the progress of your now defunct product of conception, we are obligated to punish you. please be advised that the aforementioned, now defunct, product of conception would currently be the side of a large sweet potato (as is appropriate for the week of thanksgiving, no?), and that you would be experiencing an increase in appetite and perhaps the quickening. so there. take that.

our failure to consistently provide you with some or all previous updates does not preclude us from continuing to provide you with updates of your non-existent pregnancy at a future date, at random intervals, as we see fit or whenever you begin to feel your mood lighten.

sincerely,
the universe

happy holidays

since justin and i will both be out of town and apart from each other on thanksgiving, we had our own private thanksgiving at home yesterday. this is our sixth thanksgiving together, and it was the first time i gave in and bought a tofurkey. i have to say, for not being turkey, it was fantastic. texture and taste were both exceptional. the only drawback was that it didn't emit any juices with which to make gravy; i made a mushroom and onion gravy which under other circumstances would have been fine but as a substitute for turkey gravy sucked, well, turkey balls.

do turkeys have balls?

we decided, since it was just us, to not go too overboard but to concentrate on what we love. so our menu was:

• tofurkey and stuffing, with onions and mushrooms and carrots
• skins-on garlic mashed potatoes
• mushroom and onion gravy
• sweet potato praline casserole
• steamed broccoli, carrots, cauliflower and green beans
• crescent rolls (for tradition, of course)
• sparkling cranberry juice (because neither of us really likes cranberry sauce)
• french silk pie

i know french silk isn't very thanksgiving-y, but my co-worker's son is in a culinary program, and his school bakes pies throughout the holidays for sale, and while they offered the traditional holiday favorites, they also do french silk, which i had tasted last week and found to be the most perfect pie ever in the history of the universe. so we ordered a french silk for thanksgiving. we can have pumpkin or pecan any time.

so everyone talks about how hard the holidays are after a loss, which i always thought was just so much bullshit. i was wrong. yesterday sucked the aforementioned turkey balls, too. something that's been simmering between us for ages just exploded yesterday. it was one of those horrible times when we contemplated whether we should stay together. for the record, we decided in the affirmative, but the process of making that decision was horribly painful.

and then before dinner it occurred to me that we were going to sit down at a dinner traditionally preceded by a recitation of those things for which everyone is thankful that year. what could i say? i'm thankful i knew my son in utero and got to hold his increasingly colder body for a few minutes?

we decided to get hans's box down from the shelf and put him on the table for dinner. in this respect, it's probably better that this dinner was private; i can't imagine anyone else with whom we normally would have shared thanksgiving being comfortable with our dead baby's ashes forming the centerpiece for the dinner table.

i've been wanting to decorate his box for ages but haven't done it. we started thinking last night about what we could do to dress him up for dinner. stickers were too permanent. i thought about gluesticking on some fall leaves, but that didn't seem right. in the end, we taped on the monkey from his soft calendar we found in belgium last year. it was just right.

i'm thankful for justin. i am thankful i knew hans for a little while in a little way, even if what came after i don't appreciate. i'm thankful for friends and family who love me and try to understand, even if they don't. i'm thankful for our home, which i love even if it frustrates me. i'm thankful to have survived this year. now let's finish it and move on to 2006.

what do you get when you fall in love?

after i blogged yesterday afternoon, i felt myself getting too worked up to work, so i got out of there as fast as i could. it was all i could do to get out of the building without crying. the tears were already flowing in the disney-sized parking lot, before i could get in the car.

i was so despondent that it occurred to me, as i approached the giant interchange where my interstate forms an axis with another, that i could just let go of the wheel and my car would almost certainly drop off the side on to the other interstate below me. then i saw the line of tiny headlights backed up in rush hour traffic, and i knew it wouldn't just be me i'd be taking out, so i gripped the steering wheel harder.

remind me to never drop acid, because flashbacks are hell. i don't know how i survived the first few months after hans died without taking my life - i had almost constant flashbacks then. now, they leave me in peace mostly, until something stupid (like a toddler food e-mail ad) reminds me of that day, the 16th of february, when i was told my beloved son, my firstborn, my hans was dead.

why are my therapist and i not talking about this stuff? at thursday's appointment, we talked almost entirely about my marriage. after we had already run over, she told me she was surprised to see things going in this direction; from our initial conversation, she thought our sessions were going to be about pregnancy and loss. hey - i did, too. i only have three sessions left with her before the end of the year and the change of my insurance; at my next appointment, after the third chime, i need to get down to business.

i made it home last night (obviously) and decided i didn't want to go out to a movie, so i rented two ("in good company" and "me and you and everyone we know") and ordered in spaghetti with mushrooms, but then my mom called and we got involved in very elaborate travel plans for thanksgiving, and then justin came home and we just went to bed. i woke up at the usual time, but justin is still sleeping off all the beer he drank at the cavs' game, so i'm going to let him be and watch "in good company" (which justin apparently has already seen, at work). when he wakes up, i'd like to walk our recyclables up to the west side market and pick up what we need for our private thanksgiving tonight. i could stand to feel some sun on my face.

is your toddler a healthy weight?

when i got pregnant with the tadpole, i signed up once again for those "what size is your baby this week?" e-mails. i loved boring people with exclamations like "it's the size of a raspberry this week!", both times.

when i went back to work after the d&c, i dreaded having to delete the two weekly e-mails i would have gotten. but they weren't there. no one else has access to my e-mail, except for vague information protection people in other cities that have never had any contact with me. i cannot for the life of me figure out how the e-mailers knew to cut me off.

then today a remnant of the first time around somehow got through to me. i went to the breakroom to cut up an apple, and when i got back to my desk, there was the e-mail pitching me toddler food.

would hans have been considered a toddler already? i thought after a year they were considered toddlers. he would have been nine months old yesterday. the tadpole would be 18 weeks tomorrow. this day suddenly sucks.

i've stopped counting milestones and anniversaries. all they do is bring back memories of lying on the ultrasound table and hearing the worst news of my life.

damn those baby food people for dredging this stuff up today.

justin is taking his buddy to a basketball game for his birthday tonight, and i had planned to go home and go to bed early. i'm sleep deprived from a week of justin going to work at odd times and more frequent, well, world-rocking than usual. but now i'm not sure i would sleep so well. maybe i'll go see a chick flick instead. anyone have any recommendations?

hormone therapy

broadsheet (salon's lovely womanist blog) brought to my attention this solution to holiday shopping stress: it would all be better if i shopped according to what cycle day i was on. uh, what?

according to the editor of 28 days (the magazine/movement, not the movie), whether i go to funky boutiques or department stores should be decided by the time of the month. i don't understand the reasoning (there doesn't seem to be any), nor do i see any explanation for those of us who have anything other than a 28 day cycle. i guess if my cycle is not 28 days, i'm defective? i don't deserve to go shopping?

on procreation

last night when we got home, after we had both been awake nearly 18 hours, justin offered to (and i paraphrase) rock my world.

i am of course pro world-rocking. i also require eight hours of sleep. and it's difficult for one's world to get rocked when one yawns mid-rocking (i know this fact from experience).

and yet, i still considered his offer, because it immediately occurred to me that this offer might represent a well-timed spo initialization. and as soon as i realized that consideration was my motivation, i declined.

of course, i would like to see a spo get underway, but i still cling to the romance of our previous conceptions. it seemed a charmed start to a child's life to be conceived in a haze of parental love and magic...even if neither ending could be labeled "charmed."

but previous - ugh - unsuccessful outcomes don't seem to justify forced procreation. it seems a waste of a century of my foremothers fighting to liberate me from being a breeding machine so i could claim my own sexual pleasure for me to now engage in intercourse strictly for the purpose of...more breeding.

it also seems dishonest to me to accept such a proposition purely for procreative purposes (if you'll pardon the alliteration). i can't frame my acceptance under those circumstances in any way that does not result in me using him. justin is the love of my life and he deserves better. i suppose if we sat down and agreed to have sex for the purpose of procreation at prescribed times, regardless of whether either or neither of us felt anything in the neighborhood of desire, it would technically be okay. but let's be honest: even when two adults make such an agreement, where sex is involved, someone is always desirous; such an agreement would be a recipe for resentment.

i acknowledge that, even with my losses, and even at my age, there is a certain arrogant luxury in this attitude. we have had an almost embarrassingly easy time conceiving thus far. and i am so lucky in that i am married to the person i love and want more than anyone in the world, and who loves me back, and who is a world-class feminist who recoils at the thought of me agreeing to sex i don't absolutely want.

then there's also the underlying fact that i am not good at trying things for trying's sake. if i do not have at least a fighting chance to win, i do not want to play your game. and so i find myself, like a petulant pre-schooler, stomping my foot and turning my face away and refusing to go on record as trying to get pregnant. if i actually try to get pregnant, and do not, i will be devastated. but if it "just happens" along the way of love and lust and magic, then i get to feel lucky, charmed, exceptional. and i get to evade the anxiety of will-we-or-won't-we. it's too bad that if and when i do get pregnant, there's no way around the will-it-or-won't-it anxiety.

i suspect that ultimately i don't control my destiny as much as i'd like to think. all of my carefully considered strategies may only cause my path to swerve off course periodically, but ultimately, biology is captaining this ship. every member of a species feels the urge to keep the species going, and i am no exception. i may hem and haw about higher meaning, but eventually biology will win out. the urge will take over. sex will be had with little to no thought given to it at all.

the thing is, thinking about how amazing justin is inspires some interest in offering to rock his world. that thought process doesn't seem like biology, but what do i know? maybe i'm just lucky that when biology does its thing, i get to be with the one i love AND love the one i'm with.*

* with apologies to crosby stills nash & young. although maybe i shouldn't be apologizing to them for borrowing their lyrics but to you for inflicting them on you. or maybe they should be apologizing to us for writing them. whichever. choose your apology.

rock-a-bye, spo*, in the tree-tops

vixanne has linked to some thought-provoking articles today on abortion, and those articles have me thinking about how i view fetal life, and whether i've become a bit hardened about the whole topic.

exhibit a: i refer to our future child as a successful pregnancy outcome (or *spo, for short). i think the term is a pretty good indicator of a hardened heart, don't you? in all of our conversations at home, i find it increasingly difficult to say, "if we have a baby...," or, "when we have a child..." it comes out more like, "well, you know, if we have a, b- (large pause), successful pregnancy outcome..."

if you're playing along at home, the italicized phrase should be said with overemphasis and a touch of sarcasm.

maybe i'm entitled to a little heart-hardening. i let myself love hans and the tadpole fully, each in their own way. i wished for them. i hoped for them. i dreamed for them. and i lost them. i'm wary, gun-shy, afraid of jinxing myself (or a potential spo) with my investment. as if, if i didn't want them so much, my children would have lived. i know it's hogwash. but it's what i know.

in two recent conversations with my ob, in which i've recounted my fear of being doomed, he's said to me, "you can't think that way." of course, i can think like that, and sometimes i do. my ob is wonderful in many ways, but in this respect, he does not get what it's like to be in my shoes. i know all of the data; i understand the statistical unlikelihood of another unsuccessful pregnancy outcome. but what i know, firsthand, is that when i get pregnant, it does not result in a spo.

that knowledge is what makes me wary of the new therapist, too. she understands anxiety and tools for dealing with it. but she doesn't know, the way that i do, that pregnancy does not necessarily equal baby. how can i possibly trust her? maybe it's a moot point - she is not on my new insurance plan, so i won't see her past the end of the year anyway.

it occurs to me now that what i want, someone who knows but can still look me in the eye and offer encouragment, represents a quality i used to assign to god. experience has not born out that youthful assumption.

boy, does that suck.

and yet, despite my despair, there must still be some hope left alive in me, or i would not be coloring my hair tonight...in case there's a, you know, spo in the works.

a girl can dream, can't she?

everybody do the limbo!

why is it that it's colder in the house than out? i'm sitting here wearing my giant fake fur hat in a vain effort to not shiver, but when i went outside, to take justin to work, it was too warm with it on. it's not right.

*****

we had a lovely, condom-free night at home, and i was able to really be in the moment and not think about procreation, which was fantastic. until about five minutes after it was over, when i started ticking off cycle days in my head. it is way too early in the month to take on this particular variety of anxiety.

and it's not like i would risk taking a xanax now, dammit.

and then there's our travel plans. we were supposed to go to italy next month, but our flights are all messed up, so we're just going to have to wing that vacation. i love italy, and it has been almost five years since i've been there, and i was so ready to do some shopping in rome and to eat my way around naples. we'll go somewhere, and it will be nice to relax, and we'll be together. but it's not the trip we've been planning since the summer.

and then there's next year. we like to make a big getaway from the great lakes winters, which we didn't get to do last winter because i was eight months pregnant. we've been planning on a week in buenos aires in february, because buenos aires is my favorite european capital not in europe, and then a week in beijing in march, as my intro to asia. it occurred to us last night that we can't commit to either trip right now.

before you start singing "cry me a river" to me: one of the perks of justin's job is cheap, cheap travel. it would be irresponsible for us to not take advantage of the opportunity. you would do the same in our shoes, or at least you should. and travel is something we're both passionate about.

some people knit. other people collect shit. i travel.

except that i haven't done much of it lately. other than a few days in canada in august, i haven't been out of the country since a year ago september - in the second trimester of my pregnancy with hans. travel is what feeds my soul. my soul is about starved to death. i want desperately to get pregnant and to have a living child, but i need to get the hell out of dodge.

wake up call

i woke up to the sound of a baby crying. it must have been someone walking their older kid to school, with their younger one in the stroller, passing by our house. we live right in the middle of a triangle of schools - two strangely zoned public elementary schools and a jesuit k-8 school. i'm used to kids in uniforms with humongous backpacks making noise as they go by, and i enjoy them. the baby thing is unusual, though. i hope it doesn't happen again. all of the sudden, it's 8 1/2 months ago, and i'm waking up to the realization that the bassinet in the corner is empty, and hans will never fill it.

i still want him back.

action! action! we want action!

i haven't been able to post or check up on blogs in days. i feel untethered. i've stolen a few minutes now by begging off the ride to the airport to drop off my father-in-law. but my brother- and sister-in-law are still in our carriage house, and i'm sure before long they'll troop over, and there'll be coffee to be made or at least juice to be poured and small talk to be made and all i want to do (besides catch up on blogland) is to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head but only to just below my ears, so i can hear the rain on the windows.

my father-in-law came for the weekend to check up on us but also to help lay the trim on the new floor in the carriage house. instead, my in-laws' condo was flooded by a backup of the sewer thursday night, so justin and my fil spent friday meeting with the insurance adjuster and tracking down the responsible people in the condo association and no work got done. friday night, we went to sokolowski's for pierogies and then to the cavaliers' game, which was fun although a little disappointing as lebron james was having a substandard night - i think he only scored 16 points (by comparison, a couple of games back he scored 30 in the first half).

yesterday, instead of getting the trim laid, the entire floor was brought up again and is now about a third of the way relaid. did i mention this is the third laying of the floor? frustration is high and tempers are hot. justin's aunt and uncle came over after dinner last evening and it was a nice evening of his rich, republican uncle and i debating, well, everything, but then when they left justin and i got into a far too public fight in front of his family, which ended things on a sour note.

on the bright side, justin's brother and his wife now want to sell their sewer-flooded condo and may want to rent our carriage house. they would be low-key tenants, and our schedules are such that we'd never be here at the same time, plus it would save us having to look for someone new and appropriate to rent it - if and when the floor ever, ever gets done. so there's that.

i know our fight last night was in part because it was 11:30, and we were worn out from all our manual labor yesterday, and because we were deeply discouraged to be starting back from square one (or rather, slat one) with the floor. and yet, it's more than those things. we're in a holding period.

we're waiting to hear about whether i get accepted for school. if i am accepted, i may be in a holding pattern until summer if it's too late to start in january. when i go back to school, justin will then probably put off his schooling for a couple of years. i'm stuck in a holding pattern with my job until i get through school. we're in the too-familiar inter-pregnancy period. we don't have a baby at home. i got my period, yea, but we can't start, you know, doing anything yet. and we're not entirely decided about, you know, doing anything yet or waiting until december or waiting until january or waiting until february. hold, hold, hold. i'm so tired of holding.

welcome to the world, spookster! also, my middle name is control

the sweet coalminer and her little spooky girl have finally met in person! i'm so happy and so relieved for them! now let's have some pictures!!!

*****

i plumbed the depths again with the new therapist, and we discussed control and projects and the like. while there's value in giving up trying to control that which cannot be controlled, she thinks i've gone a bit far. by nature, i'm good at directing and organizing...and controlling, and i've been denying my personality. she agrees that going back to school is a good project for me to direct for now. she also sees me treating this round of therapy as a project i'm directing, and thinks it's a good approach for me.

next week we're going to get a bit more specific on addressing my pregnancy anxiety in particular, but in the mean time she gave me tons of homework. when she learned i enjoy writing, she gave me several writing assignments, which i eagerly took, because there's nothing i like better than blabbering on about myself for pages and pages and pages.

as you well know.

*****

i've been a bad blogger this week, but i haven't had much to say (for me). i think i'm in a germination period. i have the beginnings of some new thoughts sprouting. expect new revelations, fantastic ravings, and maybe the meaning of life to appear in this blog in the coming weeks.

consider yourself warned.

like you needed to know

five weeks and one day after the d&c - the crimson stream has returned!

i am back in the game, dammit.

toothless tuesday

i applied to a school yesterday. i completed my application, my essay, and my app fee. i'm working on my transcripts. it's probably too late to start in the spring semester, but i should be in class by the summer. the wheels are turning.

*****

is this year over yet???

i woke up this morning, rolled over, threw an arm over justin, puckered up to kiss his ear...but it didn't feel right. i was missing a front tooth. i kid you not.

panic and hysteria ensued.

when i was eight, i had a run-in with the trapeze bar on my red-and-white-striped swing-set. the trapeze bar won. i've had a crown ever since.

the last time it was re-done was december, 1992, when i bit into a piece of pizza crust, hours before my cousin's wedding (the same cousin i ran into at the hospital last week!) in florida. another cousin's wife rushed me to their dentist who came in on a saturday morning to give me a temporary crown so i wouldn't look like a freak in the family pictures that day. when i got back home to texas, i got a new permanent crown, which has been firmly affixed, lo, these many years, until sometime last night when it just got tired of adhering to the little toothlet i have left.

nothing like finding one's tooth in bed next to one.

but at least i found it. if a new crown would have been required, my wallet would have been sorely squeezed. what i owed after insurance for re-adhering the crown: $7. i wish all medical procedures only cost me $7. i just got the insurance statement for the d&c, and it's not pretty. if i had money to burn, sure, i'd be happy to pay for all kinds of dead-baby-related procedures. or not. not that it matters, because i don't have money to burn, anyway.

so my crown is back on although not without some trauma. i had not one but two, count 'em, two breakdowns in the dentist's office, as i explained to the hygienist and then the dentist why i haven't been flossing for most of the last year and a half (rampant unsuccessful pregnancy-related nausea triggered by anything being stuck in my mouth - and keep your tasteless comments to yourself, thank you - i've already thought them all, anyway), but they were kind about it, and at least i won't be denied college admission because the interviewer takes me for a toothless hayseed.*

* with apologies to any of our lovely, urbane and intellectual readers who might be missing one or more teeth.

all the leaves are brown

there's something to be said for a low-key weekend: it gives one time to think.

yesterday: i managed to go back to sleep after being up for three hours in the middle of the night. and then the phone started ringing. i really need a personal secretary to shield me from all things unnecessary.

so we escaped and went to the west side market. i managed to eat my shrimp noodles in the balcony without having a meltdown; two weeks ago at the market, after we ate our breakfast/lunch in the balcony, which involves watching seven million parents with children in strollers and/or snuglis, i had me a good cry, right there in the balcony. but yesterday i was just thinking this hans-related thought: i wish he was here. but if he was, how would we have gotten his stroller up the stairs? he'd probably be too big to wear in a carrier now, wouldn't he? we had enough trouble getting our fold-up shopping cart up the stairs, and it was still empty; a stroller, especially one with a baby in it, probably would have started world war three between us.

mike and kath and charlie came for dinner: chips and guacamole (i accidentally doubled the lime juice, so it was extra...zesty), mushroom soup with spinach tortellini and gruyere puffs, blue and brie and crackers and apple slices and dark chocolate with crystallized ginger in it. charlie warmed up to me more than usual, and we played with the hot wheels and beat drumsticks against my copper water pitcher, and it was lovely.

more importantly, we got into the discussion of how laura is wasting her life. kath said something to me i needed to hear: i can't afford not to go back to school. she's right, of course, although they see school as the cure-all for everything. mike just finished his phd in anthropology, and kath, who got her undergrad in english, has now gone back to get her phd in genetic epidemiology. school is all they know. but:

i'm in a dead-end job i took when i first moved here to ease my way back into the job market after a year out of it; three and a half years later, i'm still there. i could go back to my old career i abandoned five years ago and make three times as much as i make now. we'd also have to move, and i would be miserable and generally impossible with which to live and justin and i would be divorced within a year, tops.

mike has talked to me before about becoming a therapist, and i take his encouragement seriously because he is not generally devoted to inspiring others or giving much of a damn about what anyone else does. or exerting any unnecessary effort. my primary physician also recently said to me out of the blue, "i could see you running a grief support group."

what neither of them know is that i had planned to go into counseling when i was 17. i majored in sociology (my school didn't have a social work program), but i was just not ready to buckle down, and i frittered away my full ride and finally dropped out of school. over the years, i've taken enough hours for a bachelor's degree but never completed one. in my first "real" job, i had a great mentor who invested in me and taught me everything about that business, and from there i advanced quickly on my reputation, and then i never had time to go back to school.

so my options now are: (1) stay where i am (or go to another pointless job) and not make what i am worth and continue to be unsatisfied, (2) go back to my old career and make scads of money and be miserable, or (3) suck it up and eat ramen and get the fuck back in school so i could eventually do something actually worthwhile and, with a master's, make more money while not feeling guilty about it. i could be the therapist for which i've been looking.

i haven't seriously considered the last option. ever. why not?

matt and sara came for brunch this morning, and we talked a little more about it. sara is finishing her mba, and then when she gets done, matt is going back to school, so obviously they're pro-school, too, but it was encouraging to talk to them about it.

justin and i talked about what it would take. we would have to scale back. we could go out basically never. when i got to the point that i had to go full time, we would probably have to sell our houses and get something smaller or in a first-ring suburb. but we could do it. as much as it scares me to take on more debt, in the long run a good therapy practice would more than pay for it. justin's grandmother is flexible and could help us with childcare. so i'm going to work on getting my transcripts this week.

it feels good to be formulating goals, especially ones that aren't baby-related. maybe this is the project my therapist thinks i need.

for now, though, i need to go clean up the kitchen and think about dinner. i've been avoiding the kitchen all afternoon. i had my stuff (herbed scrambled eggs, more gruyere puffs, peach slushies) ready and cleaned up when matt and sara got here, but then they cooked their stuff (waffles, berry compote, coffee) here, so the waffle iron is a mess and there was a grinder incident so there is coffee debris on every surface, so i've just been pretending it isn't there. i wish i could will the mess away.

congratulations, it's an earl!

we were all excited about having the weekend together with nothing planned and then within 15 minutes of when i got home we had friends coming for dinner tonight and for brunch tomorrow. and we're so boring that we were in bed at 9:00. and no, "in bed" is not code for wild donkey sex.

i woke up at 3, needing to pee, unable to stop running money matters over in my head, and hungry. for an hour, i read this incredibly dumb, so bad it was at the dollar store, regency romance novel (and i use that term loosely) that someone gave me as a joke (i think. i hope.) for my birthday. the teaser on the back cover actually starts out, "congratulations, it's an earl!," which may be the funniest thing ever to appear on a book cover, or at least on a romance. the story involves our heroine traveling from her family's exile in portugal back to jolly old england with her six month old nephew and suitable matron of an escort to claim her nephew's rightful place as the earl of camembertandstilton or whatever. the nephew is the result of the secret (!) marriage between the former earl and our heroine's sister - now both conveniently deceased. the last earl's cousin has become earl, and our heroine storms his castle (and his heart) even as she fights to unseat him as earl. i'm about a third of the way through, but that's what i've gotten so far. that, and lots of laving apparently took place in the regency period; the verb to lave in all its forms is very big in this book.

i was annoyed enough with it (and hungry enough) to finally get up and come downstairs and toast a pita and smear it with roasted red pepper hummus and tuna, but the tuna doesn't taste right, and it's not a bag of reese's miniatures, which is what i really wanted. i could live on them. truly. two hours later, i'm still awake. it's going to be a long day.

my wakefulness did at least give me a chance to catch up on blogs and only now did i learn of julie's news. i'm so sad that another baby has slipped through her fingers. she deserves so much better.

i cried today like i've never cried before

i'm not sure what it was that set me off. well, yes. i do. it's been anything and everything, yet until this morning i haven't been able to capture all of these emotions at once: a precise moment of ebulliton.

i started to sob.

"cry" isn't a strong enough word to explain the audible burst of sorrow, anger, fear and rage that just poured out of me. tears, they were very few - just a burst of warm breath and screams.

i feel much better now.

gee, your hair smells terrific! also, therapy reconsidered

i can smell hans today. i don't know what triggered the memory, but there it is. i haven't smelled him in months. it's lovely. the best way i can describe it is a mix of hospital antiseptic, toasted walnuts and old-school crystal bic pen ink. everyone should smell so good. if they did, the world would be a better place.

*************

i'm re-thinking therapy, at least for now. since we've officially decided to wait until january to work on the next heir to our throne, i think i want a break from thinking too much more about it. writing about it nearly every day already serves as my emotional metamucil, so therapy seems like more melt-on-the-tongue zofran (see september's fecal incontinence escapades if you need help translating).

i went online to read about a workbook the new therapist suggested, "mind over mood," and i think what it contains are techniques i already know but just haven't been ready to re-deploy lately. it doesn't seem too encouraging.

i don't think i'm going to cancel my appointment next week. i want to know what the therapist had in mind when she talked about the concept of having another project, one which i can control. but then i think i'm going to take a break until the first of the year. it will give me some time to bake a cake (as lorem ipsum suggested) or maybe bake a bunch of cakes and take a cake decorating class or something similarly inane. inanity seems like a good idea through the holidays.

one less thing about which to worry

i've done all this hand-wringing over medical coverage for next year only to learn i've been comparing apples to oranges; the quotes from justin's employer are by the month, while mine are bi-monthly. if we switch to his coverage, we can get slightly better coverage than we have now, much better coverage than is available from my employer next year, and pay significantly less than we would have to under my plan and only slightly more than we're paying now.

the catch: we have to wait until january first to unwrap the sperm gun. justin has agreed to it, and while i don't want to wait, i haven't had a period yet anyway. so what the hell.

we have to buy a hpt tonight and take it in the am just to make absolutely sure my period hasn't started because we had a leaky condom. barring that unlikelihood, we're making the switch. which means if i find a better job in the mean time, i can take it.

woo hoo!

who says i'm not positive?!?!?

don't worry, be happy!

one of my co-workers e-mailed me a chain letter about choosing to be positive this morning. i call it a chain letter because it ends with "You have two choices now: 01. Delete this. 02. Forward it to the people you care about. You know the choice I made. " (i suppose you can't threaten people with the usual bad luck if they don't forward it to ten people in ten minutes in a message about choosing one's fate.) she only e-mailed it to me. it really, really pissed me off.

this co-worker is the motherly one, a grandmother, although she's only six years older than me. she was a daily support to me through the roller coaster of my first pregnancy, but towards the end she joined the chorus of people telling me to stop worrying, for which i hated her, until i came back from maternity leave and saw her tears and she told me how sorry she was. if i ever leave my job*, she is the person i will miss. because i love her, i didn't respond to the e-mail. i just deleted it. it makes me sad that she still doesn't "get it" but how can she? i hold the people i love to an impossible standard and resent them for not upholding it.

i think everyone who loves me should be required to read "the year of magical thinking" as a prerequisite to continuing to love me. if you switched the deceased from joan didion's husband to my son and her stories of her marriage to my stories of pregnancy, this book would be the one i would write if i could express myself so succinctly. i read some more of it while i was on the bus this morning, and it made me want to shout. i don't yet have a plan for how to get everyone around me to read it without hitting them over the head with it, but i'm working on it.

*************

* now that i've made peace with staying with the company until i have what is known in the medical community as a successful pregnancy outcome, in order to take advantage of the flexibility and relatively low stress my job allows me, i find i may be leaving my job involuntarily. the last director not intimidated by the competence of others was let go today, as was an utterly incompetent one, and two others were demoted to fill lower-ranking openings. our niche of the market is in a downturn. our investors are itchy. it's not a good day for job confidence.

wicked or crazy? you decide.

my brother tells me that my dad survived his surgery and is now in the icu. i'm considering the surprising fact that i feel a little bit of disappointment. i'd like to think it's because he's in so much pain and i think it would be better to be done with it than to linger in pain for two more years. and yet underneath there may be a bit of a wish to be done with him. i made my final peace with him, within myself, this weekend. i'm ready to be done managing the parameters of our relationship. if he rests in peace, then i can.

am i wicked? inhuman? not as at peace as i'd like to think? just tired of it all? i don't know.

but what i surely must be is premenstrual. there's no other reasonable explanation for the seesaw of emotions i am experiencing over whether or not to stay up to watch the cavaliers' season opener or from which shelter we might adopt a family for christmas or which mini candy bar to select from the bag my co-worker brought to the office because her kids are young enough that they don't like chocolate.

if i'm not the queen of pms, then what the fook is wrong with me???

i'm going to go look at crate & barrel's site. their merchandise always sedates me.

two dreams

1. we got back the pathology report on the tadpole and the cause of death was running into a tree. i hoped he hadn't been drinking and driving.

2. i met pengo and some very old man for breakfast at a diner that looks like the one on the cover of elton john's "songs from the west coast" album. pengo looked like he might have looked ten years ago, with darker hair and bigger glasses, and he was wearing a really, really ugly golf shirt - maybe the ugliest i've ever seen. i don't know who the other man was. they were both pretty gruff with me because i was late and they hadn't gotten my message that i would be late, and it made me uncomfortable, so i slipped out without ordering.

more therapy is in order.

it's got a good beat and i can dance to it

the new therapist: she sounds a chime three times at the start of the session, letting each chime resonate until it dies completely, to transition into the session, and does it once, for one to compose oneself, at the end. new to me. the first chime, i gritted my teeth and endured it. the second chime, i thought, i'm here for a reason; i need to make my best effort. the third chime, i started to cry. it sounds hokey, even now, to me, who benefitted from it. but it worked for me.

she reminded me of my mother, physically. i felt comfortable speaking candidly. she took down my history. all of it. she was pretty interested in my father. i have to confess, however little regard i have for him, he's charismatic - even without being in the room.

so far, she would like me to have some time off before i try to get pregnant again, but for a somewhat different reason than i've considered previously: she would like me to have some time for a project i can control. i'm still mulling that thought over. i'm not sure what that even means. i've been practicing at relinquishing control, not gaining it. if anyone reading has any further interpretation of this consideration, i'd appreciate hearing it. i may completely poop on it, but it would give me something to which to tether this concept.

she was also sympathetic to the fact that my risk for more pregnancy pickles wouldn't get any better or even stay the same if i did take time off, and also to the continual growth of my anxiety while i wait. she committed to try to help me get better equipped to deal with the anxiety if i want to see her again. that's a deal i'll take.

i'm going to make a mushroom and spinach broth now in which to float tiny cheese ravioli, and then justin and i have to sit down and make the definitive 2006 benefit decisions. the good news, at least, is that i learned today i have several change options which would not penalize a pre-2006 conception as a pre-existing condition. so, yea for that.

in which popular media make me even sadder

i was just not into halloween. it's never been my favorite holiday anyway. there's enough scary stuff in the world; i don't need more scary stuff to be created for my entertainment. plus, justin was at work and i didn't want to greet eight teenagers at my door alone. so i went to see the new movie "prime" with uma thurman and meryl streep.

***SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE "PRIME" OR DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU!***

the premise of the movie is an older woman dating a younger man and talking about him extensively to her therapist who is the younger man's mother. i thought i couldn't go wrong: therapy, older woman/younger man couplings, dysfunctional family hi-jinks. the movie did have all those things. but the couple split up at the end, because she wanted a baby, and he wasn't ready, but he was willing to "give" her what she wanted because he loved her so much, and because she loved him, she wouldn't let him. the last scene showed them running into each other a year later; she was not with someone else, not pregnant, and she had lost a perfectly good if rather neurotic therapist. it just sucked.

***SPOILER NOW OVER; FEEL FREE TO RESUME READING.***

when we got home, "the year of magical thinking" by joan didion had arrived. i read the first four chapters before i went to sleep. she's writing about the year after her husband died, but what she experienced is much like what i experienced after i lost hans, and reading about it brought back things about which i haven't thought in a while.

it's a good thing i have my first appointment with (i hope) my new therapist today. please let it work out.