Glory and I went to baby story time at the library on Friday. it was pure delight, even though she slept through the first half. I was quite proud of myself that I already knew four other moms who showed up, and met a fifth.
Big deal for me, really - in recent years, I've been enormously stumped by social anxiety. I can small talk with strangers, no problem, but I had long since forgotten how to make friends. Without an automatic connection like a Lodge, a cast or a class, I'd forgotten how to nurture that first spark onward into an actual friendship. Since moving to Eugene, I'm suddenly leveling up! I think this pregnancy and birth have hugely stimulated my personal growth in ways I didn't anticipate. I assumed I'd already experienced the changes that motherhood would bring; how humbling and exciting to be proven wrong!
I'm meeting such awesome, beautiful people lately, and am fueled by our time together, not drained and overwhelmed, as I historically have been with such things. Sure, I'm months overdue for a movie date alone or a massage, but yano, this growth is totally working for me. Just one MORE reason to be grateful for having another baby. The fact that she's the sweetest, cutest baby on the planet doesn't hurt, either. ;D
My anxiety is almost completely banished. Little remains to prepare for her arrival. Nesting is almost complete. My body alternates between clear signals of progress and feeling, if anything, unusually comfortable and energetic. Today is the Summer Solstice. The full, Cancer Super Moon is about to make her appearance. I'm one official week from my due date, but all my instincts and loved ones believe it will be sooner than later. On Sunday, I'm having my belly hennaed. I'm no longer worried about labor. I'm totally excited to meet her.
My habitual inner cynic cautions me that she may be very late just to mess with me. I'll be using all the tricks in the book, cone due date. She wants out, and we're ready for her.
Our neighbor John, the music professor is giving a lesson to an operatic tenor right now. The glorious sound of it is flowing down through the woods. The movers are entering the home stretch of unloading the truck. I am sitting on the courtyard porch with a fantasy novel and bottle of water.
I want to have voice lessons again.
The dining table fits. Whether is finally chilling out, sequestered in the downstairs bathroom. She finally let me pet her on my lap, after two days of anxiety at my presence, fearing another trip in the carrier. Finally, she is here to stay.
Victory is at her third day of school at Edgewood Community Elementary, and she loves it. This year is the first time she's asked to go in alone. She's dying to earn the privilege of walking alone to and from school, picking blackberries all the way. Her teacher is kind and "laughs a LOT". Math is challenging, but not disheartening. She's eating well and meeting new friends. Killer playground, impossible to resist for either of us.
Today is my brain and cervical MRI, in hopes of discovering the cause of my mysterious neuropathy. 7 months of weird tingling, numbness and buzzing in various areas of my body. I don't generally consider myself to be claustrophobic, and was in fact nearly agoraphobic as a child. Over the years, though, I seem to have slowly shifted, and periodically will have nightmares of being stuck in narrow cave passages. (Latent birth trauma? Who knows.) Last night I dreamt of the Paris catacombs, a place I've visited twice and adored. Neither visit was frightening or uncomfortable for me -- just fascinating and oddly soothing. Last night, though, I was anxious; I didn't want to go inside. I was there with K and V, and my parents and grandmother showed up at the last minute. I walked into the tunnels a short distance, but felt frightened and uneasy, so withdrew to the waiting line outside. Totally unlike me. I love haunted houses, tunnels, cozy crawlspaces. I can only presume this dream was referring to my anxiety about the MRI. I'm mostly anxious about what may be found, however, rather than the procedure. I fully understand that it will help to have more information, but I'm still anxious.
Good news is that I have a great group of folks on my side. K is an absolute rockstar of research and due diligence. Plus, the British pub near our house serves scotch eggs, so that definitely helps my mood.
Pisces via Brezsny: In my astrological opinion, you don't need anything that shrinks you or deflates you or tames you. Influences that pinch your imagination should be taboo, as should anything that squashes your hope or crimps your life force. To make proper use of the vibrations circulating in your vicinity, Pisces, you should gravitate toward situations that pump up your insouciance and energize your whimsy and incite you to express the most benevolent wickedness you can imagine. You've got a mandate to fatten up your soul so it can contain a vaster sense of wonder and a more daring brand of innocence.
I'm just going to think on this for a bit. Definitely good advice.
"We habitually serve children; and this is not only an act of servility toward them, but it is dangerous, since it tends to suffocate their useful, spontaneous activity. We are inclined to believe that children are like puppets, and we wash them and feed them as if they were dolls. We do not stop to think that the child who does not do, does not know how to do. He must, nevertheless, do these things, and nature has furnished him with the physical means for carrying on these various activities, and with the intellectual means for learning how to do them. And our duty toward him is, in every case, that of helping him to make a conquest of such useful acts as nature intended he should perform for himself. The mother who feeds her child without making the least effort to teach him to hold the spoon for himself and to try to find his mouth with it, and who does not at least eat herself, inviting the child to look and see how she does it, is not a good mother. She offends the fundamental human dignity of her son -- she treats him as if he were a doll, when he is, instead, a man confided by nature to her care.
Who does not know that to teach a child to feed himself, to wash and dress himself, is a much more tedious and difficult work, calling for infinitely greater patience, than feeding, washing and dressing the child one's self? But the former is the work of an educator, the latter is the easy and inferior work of a servant. No only is it easier for the mother, but it is very dangerous for the child, since it closes the way and puts obstacles in the path of the life which is developing.
The ultimate consequences of such an attitude on the part of the parent may be very serious indeed..."
When I walk, it is largely intuitive. I am in a state of spontaneous flow. I become my element. I seep through grasses, branches, vines and leaves. Bob through like a raindrop. Trudge through waist-high meadow grasses like an ox, all the while smiling. I stop myself on purpose at new places each walk, look around with intention and awareness. I discover something new every time I do this. Perhaps something grand and jaw-dropping like the faerie house and crossroads; perhaps a new caterpillar – silvery fuzz too precise and even to seem natural – perfect, long, black accent whiskers at each end. I blew gently and it ducked its head in surprise. I stop, breathe, absorb. Such rich colors – almost super-saturated, they are so intense. The greens glow and sing – sunlight igniting chlorophyll until the sky seems full of emeralds. Looking up into the branches of a very tall tree is like clinging to the leg of a beloved parent, knowing that I am sheltered and regarded fondly, despite my weaknesses and flaws.
Trees are a gateway to spirituality for me: trees and water. Like swimming when the water is blood-warm and cool at the same time. Slipping effortlessly through with strong arms and legs, my lungs and heart chakra full to bursting. I flow, blend and connect with my element.
Today I saw egrets standing on cows: twelve adult cows and one baby. I saw butterflies mating on ivy. I felt the thrill and the bliss of being in woods that require mindfulness to be safe. They are so lovely as to be stunning and humbling… AND, there is copious poison ivy. There are thorns, hidden holes, spiders, snakes, mosquitoes, ticks and cow shit. It is NOT all sweetness and light. It is a very REAL place – vital and mutable. Welcoming yet indifferent. A survivor. There are bones and scat of numerous animals in those woods. There are deer, coyotes, rabbits, cattle, birds, lizards and frogs.
It feels like edge play to walk at twilight. The light fades fast, deep in the woods. I watch the fireflies begin their dance – their conversation with each other. I imagine they are the sentry of the faerie. I hear the sounds begin to change. The crickets and frogs turn up the volume. Day birds give way to night bird song. Mosquitoes hum and hover. I begin to feel the other side of this forest’s potential. The warm colors have muted and gone out, and all is cool, dark blue and shadows. When I emerge into the lighter meadow to return to the house, I look back into the trees and am almost alarmed at how dark it is inside – knowing that I was just walking alone in there with every confidence. My mouth’s a little dryer, but it smiles in contentment and triumph.
Happy Father's Day to the sexiest man in the bidness. Thank you for being such a spectacular parent to the light of my life, our sweet little Monkey Fish, Princess Larry: Queen of the Chickens. You rock.
To all the fathers out there, and fathers of fathers, fathers-to-be, and children of fathers... (i.e., to everyone NOT cloned from an exclusively female genotype,)
HAPPY FATHERS' DAY!
And Happy Summer. Cherish this moment of full fruition, longest days, shortest nights. Full flower and full steam ahead. The solstice has passed, so it's all ebb from here until Winter.
Sip some sunshine today, love the men in your life, and love each other. That is all.
We have these two, enormously heavy volumes of the complete Far Side comics. Victory will sit there on the couch for hours reading them. Tonight, she had her non-working 'Secret Teacher' cellphone and a tiny, plastic Wizard's staff for a stylus. She exclaimed, "oh, there is NO WAY." I asked her what she was doing, and she told me she was checking the internet. I asked what she was checking for. She explained that she was checking the internet to see how true the situations in the comics were. "For example," she informed me, "the internet just told me that there is NO WAY a person can grow a second mouth." I grinned and left her to her research project.
This makes me laugh AND gives me a headache... Rather like the 11 steps towards parent readiness...
Rules For Work via Joke of the Day on 1/19/09
1. Never give me work in the morning. Always wait until 4:00 and then bring it to me. The challenge of a deadline is refreshing.
2. If it's really a rush job, run in and interrupt me every 10 minutes to inquire how it's going. That helps. Or even better, hover behind me, advising me at every keystroke.
3. Always leave without telling anyone where you're going. It gives me a chance to be creative when someone asks where you are.
4. If my arms are full of papers, boxes, books, or supplies, don't open the door for me. I need to learn how to function as a paraplegic and opening doors with no arms is good training in case I should ever be injured and lose all use of my limbs.
5. If you give me more than one job to do, don't tell me which is priority. I am psychic.
6. Do your best to keep me late. I adore this office and really have nowhere to go or anything to do. I have no life beyond work.
7. If a job I do pleases you, keep it a secret. If that gets out, it could mean a promotion.
8. If you don't like my work, tell everyone. I like my name to be popular in conversations. I was born to be whipped.
9. If you have special instructions for a job, don't write them down. In fact, save them until the job is almost done. No use confusing me with useful information.
10. Never introduce me to the people you're with. I have no right to know anything. In the corporate food chain, I am plankton. When you refer to them later, my shrewd deductions will identify them.
11. Be nice to me only when the job I'm doing for you could really change your life and send you straight to managers' hell.
12. Tell me all your little problems. No one else has any and it's nice to know someone is less fortunate. I especially like the story about having to pay so much taxes on the bonus check you received for being such a good manager.
13. Wait until my yearly review and THEN tell me what my goals SHOULD have been. Give me a mediocre performance rating with a cost of living increase. I'm not here for the money anyway.
calm