Maybe Expectant

Grateful One: Irish

2011-03-10T20:55:00.004-05:00

When I was in eighth grade, I gave up the holy grail of Lenten sacrifices for a thirteen year old: I gave up television. And I really did it. No one had explained to me at the time that Sundays are exempt from Lenten promises, so even on that most boring of days, I still didn't sit in front of the boob tube. I do remember sitting in a cedar chair in the kitchen, my back to the wall of the family room listening to the laugh tracks on shows and getting bored very quickly. Surely a book was better entertainment than listening to the television like an old time radio show. It was the biggest thing I have ever given up for Lent, excepting the years I gave up all meat, all the time. First I did this one year, and then my family followed suit. My youngest brother insisted lamb wasn't red meat and I remember he contacted the lamb lobbyists or consortium of lambers and they divested him of this belief very quickly. It's been years since I gave up anything for Lent, first because of indifference (honestly) and then in later years because I have consciously rejected this idea of God, preferring a more active approach.

So this year I have copied a friend and I am engaging in a practice of gratitude,naming one thing very consciously that I am grateful for in my life and writing about it in a public forum, either here, Facebook, or Twitter.

As I sat in the crowded church for Ash Wednesday, I started to think about things I was grateful for, and I'm happy to say that the list came flowing quickly, which is probably the most profound blessing, and when I thought about my friend Irish, who I have referenced on this blog before, I felt profound peace come over me.

I met Irish at the Gaelic League in Detroit-- I'd seen her come into the ceili dancing before, a tall dark haired girl in killer heels. She'd sit in the corner, surrounded by school work. She looked exactly like the girls in Dublin that I was completely and utterly intimated by: stylish, aloof, confident. One night when I was down for the ceili dancing, we were doing the 16 Hand Reel, my favorite of all the dances, and when I finished, a man beckoned me over to him and his wife. I went over, breathless from the dance, smiled and sat down in the seat he pulled out for me. I looked askance. "When did you come over?" he asked in that lilting accent.

"Sorry?" I said, confused.

"When did you get here? We've never seen ye yet."

"Oh!" The penny dropped. "I'm from here, America like. I'm from Michigan."

"Ye never are, those red cheeks, surely you're just off the boat. Go on," he said to me.

I laughed and the argument continued for a few minutes and then he said, "Here's me daughter Debbie coming, let's fool her." So I put on my best Irish accent and we had Debbie convinced and all had a good giggle when I told her the truth. Then I saw Irish coming toward the table, and she was introduced as another daughter. We talked a little and then I went back out to dance. In the early days, I probably saw Irish's parents more than her. They took me out with them to get strawberry pie and told the waitresses I was their eleventh (!!) child and no one doubted it. I drank in the details of their family and the back and forth exoduses from Ireland (with ten kids!) and eventually Irish and I were everywhere together. Such different people: I was enrolled in a PhD program and Irish had a GED, but is still one of the smartest people I know. She challenged my ideas of what it meant to be intelligent and it didn't mean having a degree or letters after your name. She was open, flirty, a character, quick with a laugh, and I knew she'd do anything for me and I'd do the same for her. She came into my life after I'd moved home from London and felt lonely and lost and was just getting my feet under me. She planted them deeper for me. We'd call each other on rainy sad days and talk about moving "home" to Ireland. We'd spill all the details of our love lives to each other. She sent me on rugby tour (with the men's team) with a little book of questions and answers for me to consult when she wouldn't be there. If I had a safety deposit box, I'd put that book in there because I still have it today. When I got married, it was easy to know that Irish would stand up next to me. And now some sixteen or seventeen years later, I still know that I can call Irish and cry or laugh and it's like coming home. It's like I really am the eleventh child-- and I've found my best sister ever. It's why I can close my eyes, take a deep breath in the middle of an over-crowded church, think of her, and feel the peace come down all over me: Thank God for Irish.

One Year, some days

2011-02-18T12:54:00.002-05:00

I recently was rereading through this old neglected blog and looking at the breadth of my life that I have laid out here over the years. From a relationship that I thought was solid and would last forever to something that became bereft of love and hurtful, from a PhD in literature to a daily slog in the trenches of health care, from childless and longing to completely amazed that my own Cricket is now four. It strikes me that last year I was dreading February because of the huge changes that would happen and this year the only reason I had to dread February was February itself, the bitter cold, whipping winds and icy freeways. That's not to say that I still don't dread certain aspects of life: I still wake up at 2:00 am with a sharp breath, "The mortgage! Jesus!" I step gingerly into the basement and peer around the corner holding that same breath praying that pipe did not burst. But the concerns, the small anxieties, seem so much more manageable.

This week I went to my friend Lilith's house to be beautified-- and then lounged about her bedroom, prone on her bed in a pile of pillows. I told her how brave I thought her daughter was for thinking of moving out on her own, so young and with a child of her own. Lilith shrugged. I noted that we all have things that seem brave to us that don't phase the other. I know that when people hear stories from the ICU, a common response is "I could never do that" but I know they probably could. Just as I probably could have lived on my own much sooner than I did. I pointed out to Lilith that after Partner moved out, it was the first time I really lived on my own. That in and of itself made this past year revolutionary for me, and made me feel very very strong. Capable. The woman that people have always perceived me to me.

It's interesting how people's perceptions don't match our own and maybe we need to pay more attention to that. If the world perceives me as an intelligent, capable, beautiful woman, I need to listen. Likewise, when the world tells me I can be bossy, impatient, and proud, I probably need to hear this message as well. It appears I am just as unwilling to hear the positive things as the negative!

The blog is a good barometer for life and as much as I have said it before, I should probably write in it more. I can go back and read posts written and those unwritten and clearly see what direction my life was headed. Once I was talking to a writer who ran a nationally syndicated column about her life and she said after she got divorced, many of her readers commented they saw it coming before she did based on her writing. As writers, we often use words to clarify our feelings, but sometimes we aren't good meteorologists for our own lives.

In any case, life feels like a sunnier place in the past few months-- Not necessarily a flat plain, but I've always been bored by landscapes like that. I want oceans and mountains and deep forests. Good thing that's what I've always gotten. Funny what one year and few days will do.

Beyond the Fence

2010-03-16T20:06:00.004-04:00

A large part of my youth was spent wandering around outside. I rode my bike everywhere, my little white Raleigh. I rode to swim practice in the morning, around the neighborhood, to the library, downtown SmallTown I grew up in, to my grandmother's house and to friends' houses. We travelled through parks with (suburban) woods and rolled out pants legs up and searched in the shallows of the local river. Judging the history of this river, we are probably lucky our legs still aren't glowing. Certainly all my youth didn't have this bucolic nature, and it's really only after a day outside thinking of how different it will be for Cricket that I look back with these rose colored glasses.

I left the Cricket outside in the backyard while I was cooking. He was standing at the back fence, looking through the slats with some degree of longing for the long abandoned sand box, I am sure thinking that it was damn shame for a sandbox like that to be neglected. I literally nipped into the house for less than two minutes and when I came out, Cricket had disappeared. I scanned the perimeter fencing fast. No Cricket. He could have zipped around to the front yard-- He's three and he's fast. I called his name, sharp-like into the new spring air: "CRICKET!" and I heard his little voice call back, "What?" which was more assuring than anything. But the voice came from the fence, and he was not at the fence.

I called again, "Cricket!" and he called out, "Mommy!" in no distress. It was then that I looked beyond the fence and saw him on the other side. Of my six foot tall fence. Either my kid is part wolf or the fence could be breached. I didn't see any evidence of an opening. Cricket does have some alarmingly pointy canine teeth, so maybe...? I walked down to the fence.

"What are you doing? How did you get over there?"

"I just went through the fence," he said. Oh, so not a wolf, just the Holy Ghost.

"Where did you go through the fence? Get OVER here."

"I went through right there. I stepped through. And no"

I pushed on the fence, yes, the panel gave way and it was easy to see how a Cricket could fit through the hole. A Cricket, yes. A Mommy, no way in hell. And he just did his first very defiant no to me, safe on the other side of a fence. "I mean it, Cricket. Get over here right now. I'm going to count." Counting. The stupidest parent trick ever and it works every single time with my child. "One," I started.

"No," he said, bending down to pick up a blue shovel that no one had probably played with for ten years.

"Two!" I continued. And he said again, "NO!" at which point I realized that my stupid counting trick didn't work when he clearly knew I could not get through the fence to get him. "There's going to be a consequence," I began. Crap. Here it came: bribing my kid with food. I have not wanted to do this, but he knew a peanut butter cup was waiting for him. And this child knew what the consequence was without even saying it. He was at that fence so fast. And I was pulling him back through. "March right inside, Mister" I said fiercely.

Here's the thing I realized. Cricket was right on the other side of a fence that I can see through, but when I came outside, I didn't see him. We are trained, for the most part, to only look so far and no further. We think we are looking at everything, but in reality we only look as far as we expect to see. It's my challenge to continue to look beyond the fence. In the past few weeks, I have either realized on my own or with help from friends how I only look to the fence. I might see everything at the fence, or around the fence, on the way to the fence, the looking beyond is a challenge. I know I need to prove myself against this since I am the very one who put up the fences where they are. I'm tired of fences. I want a wide open vista to view, but in order to get there I need to keep training my mind's eye.

Stealing from Eavan (again)

2010-03-13T22:45:00.002-05:00

I swear, if I have another child-- on my own-- and it's a girl, the name Eavan is on the short list. Eavan, Brigid, Aoife, Bernadette. But mostly I want a little Kit, named for her great-grandmother, who I feel giving me a lot of strength these days. Kit was my grandmother's hockey nickname. She wasn't a Catherine, as I am, since Kit is a common nickname for Catherine. She was like a "cat" on the ice when she lived in the Soo, so the nickname stuck. That should give more than an adequate idea of how feisty she was. She also became a single parent when my mother was six, although because of a tragic accident. Although one might argue this is a tragic accident too. Hers was different though: her husband, an esteemed general surgeon, was killed by two drunk teenagers who ran a stop sign. He was thrown from the car and the car landed on top of him. 1956. But still, she had to buck up some strength and she spent a lot of her life with me showing me how to do that CAPABLE thing. She's watching me now.

So, tonight I read some Eavan Boland, the poet who has spoken so closely to me. Last night I listened to her read on my way home from the Pistons game. It was breathtaking, so tonight I'm back to her work. I know going from the brief synopsis of my grandmother's life to this poem seems like a non sequitur, there is a strand-- See if you might spot it.

The New Pastoral

The first man had flint to spark. He had a wheel
to read his world.

I'm in the dark.

I'm a lost, last inhabitant--
displaced person
in a pastoral chaos.

All day I listen to
the loud distress, the switch and tick of
new herds.

But I'm no shepherdess.

Can I unbruise these sprouts or cleanse this mud flesh
till it roots again?
Can I make whole
this lamb's knuckle, butchered from its last crooked suckling?

I could be happy year,
I could be something more than a refugee

were it not for this lamb unsuckled, for the nonstop
switch and tick
telling me

there was a past
there was a pastoral,
and these chance sights

are little more than
amnesias of a rite

I danced once on a frieze.

--Eavan Boland

Romance

2010-03-13T11:14:00.003-05:00

I've felt pretty steady for the past few weeks, making decisions more or less rationally and thinking through things. I thought I wasn't ready to get involved in relationships of the romantic sort. Recently though I have called this into question. Maybe it's a good thing. I have re-read the blog from the past year and a half. I have been ignoring something I've felt. Maybe it's time to stop ignoring that. I hope it's not too late.

A Blessing

2010-03-09T15:18:00.002-05:00

It's become part of my thing at work that I regularly write "inspiring" quotes up on the central dry erase board. Most people I work with don't know it's me that writes the quotes, but I hear a lot of chatter about how they like the quotes. This week I may have given myself away by putting up an Irish blessing. I am the "Irish" nurse. Here's the blessing for you too:

May those who love us, love us.
And may those who don't love us,
may God turn their hearts.
And if He doesn't turn their hearts,
may He turn their ankles
so we will know them by their limping.

Not an Exciting Post, but Hey! At Least I'm Writing!

2010-03-08T14:59:00.003-05:00

I'm sitting in my car while the wee man naps behind me. It's time wake up him up, but I am so full of peace right now, the windows to our car down, the breeze blowing through the car and Mendelssohn playing on the iPod. Occasionally the big wind chimes will make a move, the sound of dripping water as the snow melts.

It's a good moment. I have decided I need a focus for my yoga practice, something to meditate on while I am pushing my body, something more for my soul. I know there are mantras already made up for me, but right now I want to listen to what my body is telling me. Yesterday at the end of yoga as I was supine on the floor in Savasana, this is what I heard: "Let me feel the joy in the quotidian and the joy in the joyful." Every in and out breath, I thought this and tried to let it fill me. Then last night I went to a good friend's house who plied me with Rose wine, let me sit in her sauna alone, and then fed me. I feel asleep on her couch. I drove home almost in a dream, and finally when I slipped under the covers, I felt so supple, so alive, I knew something about that meditation in Savasana worked for me. And it's working right now too. I'm going to stay with this intention all week. Joy is something I have been missing for awhile. I think about Kahil Gibran said, "He who has not looked on Sorrow will never see Joy." The sorrow will still come-- the first time Cricket is gone from this house to his new house-- I will feel the sorrow in that, painfully I am sure.

For now, let me feel the joy in the quotidian and the joy in the joy. Like right now, the promise of spring and green and sunlight all over me again. Just being here.

Circles

2010-03-07T14:52:00.002-05:00

I've been trying to circle my life in lately, but I can't help but wonder when I feel like the highlight of my Sunday is to wear my new workout bra to yoga if I've been circling in too far?

It also strikes me that I keep coming back here and writing, "I promise, I'm going to write more" and I get all sorts of support and then I don't write. In my effort to circle in, I have lost touch with the one thing that I have always done-- I mean literally-- I have been keeping a journal since I was seven years old but in the past few years, the really toughest years ever, I stopped writing. I wonder how I think this serves me?

In approximately a week, Partner (who will remain named such on the blog because she is my partner in raising Cricket), will be moving out and into her own place. A few weeks after that, Cricket will begin to spend 50% of his time with her. Not in my house. Not sleeping in the bedroom next to mine. We've been talking to him about this change, but yesterday we both sat down together with him and told him what was happening. Well, I told him with Partner there. She cried and I kept it together, thanks in large part I believe to the Zoloft I started taking.

Remember that girl from last year's blog? The sad girl watching the moon in the branches? That girl was so sad and lost and she finally took herself to her PCP (a month and a half ago) and said "I think I'm really really depressed and I think I have been since the Cricket was born, and maybe even before and I don't think I can feel like this for much longer." The PCP agreed wholeheartedly and the girl, me, was given a low dose of Zoloft. I hated in some degree that I was taking it, but I can't deny it's helped even me out, and look! I'm here! I'm writing!

That writing has to be important again. A few weeks ago two friends of mine came over impromptu with wine and chocolate (I have some good friends) and we sat and talked into the night sitting at my new kitchen table, candles burning, Cricket sleeping away in the next room. Somehow my writing came up and these astute friends asked when was the last time I wrote something. I felt my gut rise up; how long?

So I need to write. I thought about writing a password protected blog-- an appealing thought-- I thought about starting a new blog. After all, this blog was about my/our journey to have Cricket. But it's about more than that, even though that was our central focus for so long. This blog is just about me, my life. I'm always maybe expectant-- expecting good or bad, worry or joy. It's all there and so hopefully as I move forward into this next phase of life, I will come back here, write more. Write through, write even though... I will probably try to focus on the what is happening instead of the what happened, but that may happen. If you don't like what I am writing, my honest soul-exposing-writing that I hopefully engage in again, just close the page. No one forces you to read. Look for the soft spot of your own soul and think about how it feels to open yourself up and let people probe that spot. I always feel better showing people who I really am. I've circled in just far enough now (I think) to be centered again, and it's time to let the circle spiral out now.

Here I am.

Adagio for Strings

2010-01-11T04:57:00.002-05:00

I grew up on classical music. Saturday mornings we'd watch a little television and then the records came out. I can remember driving in the car listening to particular pieces of music, impressed my dad always seemed to know the composer. (I now can identify pieces like him.) Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto Number Two, for example, driving through mountains of North Carolina. I was fifteen. I was sick of listening to my dad's music on our long drive home from South Carolina to Michigan. I complained bitterly. My dad said to me, "Someday you will listen to this and think of me. You will think about how this was my favorite piece." That's all it took for my little sensitive 15 year old soul to burst into tears in the back of the Ford Econoline Van. It's always been easy for me to see the sadness, the drama. I'm a Libra, what can I say?

I know that I heard Barber's Adagio for Strings before I was in college, but I didn't own it as part of my own collection until I was probably twenty. It's been played so much now that it's almost a cliche, but the first time I listened to it, sitting still, with earphones on, I was overtaken with the sense of grief the piece imparts. There's a lot of sad music out there, but this piece is one of the most sorrowful haunts I have heard. (A few years ago, Brother K imparted to me the only other piece I know that is on par for sorrow: Henryk Gorecki's Symphony number 3, the "Sorrowful Songs".)

But back to the Barber: so there I am, an innocent, really, in terms of suffering in my life, and I never deluded myself I was anything but. I can go back to my journals of that time and I am fully aware of how lucky my life had been, how full of love. The worst thing I could imagine at the time was my grandmother's death, yet to come sooner than I would like. What though, I thought, had Barber seen that inspired such anguish?

I thought he must have written it in the aftermath of war, tumult, large scale destruction. Even the worst loss I could imagine didn't seem quite large enough for the music. (I was wrong, of course, imagining the loss of my Gramma was not nearly as awful as it was in reality. Yet still the Adagio wasn't the right music for her loss.) I always think of bombed out cities, starvation, weeping and gnashing of the teeth.

The other day I had on my iPod for my walk into work. I usually try to play upbeat songs on my walk in, something that will propel me through my shift, but as my iPod was on shuffle, the Adagio showed up unbidden. I passed it by quickly: my mood lately cannot handle Barber unless I am prepared with tissues and a bed to hide my tears in, but for some reason I went back to the work. It struck me that it was the perfect soundtrack for my job.

Don't get me wrong: There is much uplifting about my job. Some people do get better. Some people are here because they got themselves here or they are old and their families haven't realized it and want to hold on to them for some selfish reasons. But there are patients that don't belong here. That die here. They get worse and worse and their appearance in the ICU is a surprise to everyone. I listened to the Adagio on that walk into work without tears, thinking about the spread of humanity that is presented to me each day or night that I am here. I walked into the doors of my unit as the Adagio was coming to it's crescendo and turned it off to walk into a code of a 38 year old. We coded the patient for half an hour, four of us rotating out chest compressions. No one wanted to stop. The code was run beautifully. In any code here, I always talk to the patient, sometimes to tell him or her to fight, or sometimes I talk to the patient when it's over, or near time to be done, and tell him or her it's okay to stop fighting. I was sore for a day after this last code, my muscles aching from trying to keep someone alive. We coded again tonight. We code a lot. It's an ICU. I think now of these souls here in this unit, their families, for all the funerals and children, many of them young, left behind. I mostly love that I can be there for people in their final moments. I try to let them go after they are gone too. I can't keep every family in my heart.

I can listen to the Adagio and think of my own life now and an entirely new anguish I know: my child living half his life without me. Going to bed in a house that is equally his but is not mine. That some nights he will wake up sick, and I will not be there. That he will fall, and it will not be my kiss that makes him better. It's sad, but another blessing of this job is to recognize even this is not that bad. He has two parents who love him. He won't be with me, but the person he will be with does love him too. He's incredibly happy and smart. He's healthy.

It's perspective-- perspective on sadness and happiness. I only hope that I can keep that somehow as we go forward. Otherwise the waves threaten to bring me down, and I've always been a strong swimmer. I don't intend to stop now.

Sleep Music

2010-01-03T17:00:00.002-05:00

Long drawn out fight/conversation this morning, which I have said repeatedly I don't want to do in front of Cricket. It revolves around Partner saying she is leaving in February. I am not sure this gives us enough time to get into therapy and be guided on how to best separate for our Cricket. I might know enough to know it will be better, but I think this whole thing is going to suck for Cricket. For the most part, we have not fought in front of him.

Did I mention I go back to nights tonight?

When Cricket and Partner leave to do shopping, I keen. I outright keen. I can't stand the thought of being away from Cricket, not having him. We have been spending so much time together in the past few months. I need to be sleeping since it's the first night of three, but I can't sleep and I feel somewhat similar to how I did after he was born, so I tell myself to pay attention to the feeling, since this is the second time in life I have felt that way. All I can think now is that it's a feeling related to being forced to be apart from him, like those early days when he had to stay in the NICU. I get out of bed, I walk around the house. I tell myself it's going to be okay. I get back into bed. I try to pray, I talk to a friend, I practice deep breaths.

And then they come home. Part of me thinks, "Great, now I will never get to sleep." Cricket is not exactly the quietest kid on the block, full as he is of exuberance and joy. But the irony? Oh, the irony. It's that that I ended up sleeping full on five minutes after he got back and I heard his voice. He sweet little voice.

Preparing self and readers for sad times to come.

Opening the Open

2009-12-27T22:47:00.003-05:00

Listening to CBC one day (I think Bob Mackowycz), the announcer talked about seeing Sarah Slean perform. The host was talking about her ability to stand on stage and let her audience see into her heart, a gift he professed that not everyone was able to have. I thought about that from own days of performing, particularly when I was doing more poetry readings than I have lately. I thought about the poems I wrote then. And I ended up thinking about the blogs I used to write where I put my heart out there.

Then over Christmas I was reading a little book about being an artist. Some quote, by someone, noted that be an artist meant going naked.

I used to tell my students that being a good writer meant cutting to the bone.

I know the naked analogies, the bones, the showing your heart is the best adages. All of it, I know. And heretofore I haven't had a problem doing any of that, maybe because none of it was really hard for me share. For some people sharing their infertility stories was heart wrenching, and certainly our quest to have Cricket had its share of heart rendering moments. But something has stopped me from blogging about all the really really shitty stuff over the past three years since Cricket's birth. It's because this stuff really is close to the bone. I'm not even sure how to write about it.

I think I'll try. It entails writing about losing our livelihood, our businesses, our house, and ultimately our family. I will tell you that Cricket is a delight: smart, more importantly nice, and cute as ever. He's healthy and happy and secure in the knowledge that he has two mothers who love him.

And although I mean to try, I'm not sure I will succeed. I know that some of what I need to write will show me in a less than positive light-- a light I'm familiar with shining on myself in private, but not sure everyone needs to see. And what if some day Cricket should read these things? Things he might not need to know about his mommy...

I have always found my truth in writing, and I know that when we went through IVF this blog sustained me. Perhaps it can do that job again.

I'm still Maybe Expectant: Maybe expecting pieces to fall into place where they should, maybe expecting joy and optimism, maybe expecting peace. If I get too nervous, I may move some posts to a password protected site-- all you need to do is ask for the password and I'll oblige.

For now, let's just start with the expectation-- the hope that I will begin to write my way out.

just read...

2009-12-26T12:40:00.002-05:00

Delayed Reactions

After the hammer slams down on your thumb
or the hurtful word penetrated,
a stunned moment follows.

You're like a soldier who feels no pain until he sees the wound.

Happiness, too, is sometimes slow to register.

It was years after the rain haf sent
me and the girl huddled close to me dashing for cover
that I sudddenly felt the drops.

-Sherman Pearl

Cheating Blog: A Meme

2009-12-23T22:12:00.003-05:00

I have a crazy amount of things to say, but I have so little time I feel like to say them. However, in a fun attempt on a Christmas Eve Eve, before I have to go back to work again, here's a little meme, via MFA Mama. I swear I did not cheat. Just the uncool nature of some of these answers will prove that beyond a doubt.

1. Open your music library (iPod, iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every stage of life, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new stage, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool…

Waking Up: Pain in My Heart: Otis Redding
First Day at School: Knock Me a Kiss: Louis Jordan
Falling In Love: I'm Glad There Is You: Jamie Callum
Fight Song: Cooler Than You: Ben Folds
Breaking Up: These Foolish Things: Etta James
Prom: Qu'elqu'un Ma Dit: Carla Bruni
Life: Power to the People: Black Eyed Peas
Mental Breakdown: One, I Love: Karan Casey
Driving: Sister Christian: Night Ranger
Flashback: A Pair of Brown Eyes: The Pogues
Wedding: Audrey: Dave Brubeck
Birth of Child: A Case of You: Joni Mitchell
Final Battle: Guilty: Bonnie Raitt
Death Scene: Gutters Full of Rain: David Gray
Funeral Song: May Morning Dew: Dolores Keane
End Credit: Un Jour Comme un Autre: Brigitte Bardot

I mean, are you kidding me? Some songs, whatever. Some are crazy appropriate. I think I am going to make it a playlist.

Shards

2009-09-23T17:31:00.008-04:00

Every time I reach into the cabinet for a ramekin, I have to twist my arm around the spiky remains of my Cruzcampo glass. I imagine, vividly, each time, the glass slicing into my wrist and I can almost imagine the warm flushed feeling I'd get when I would start bleeding. I feel dizzy and then think it's time I threw out the shards of the glass. I'm not going to glue it together, it's just garbage. Just throw it out, Katie, I think. But it's still in the cabinet.

It's a remnant from our trip to Spain and France, maybe my favorite thing I brought back with me, and that's saying something considering the pilgrimage I made to E. Dehillerin in Paris. The glass was from a hotel bar, the pool a vanishing edge over the side of the Mediterranean. Partner and I had spent the day on the beach, tucked up next to a rocky edge, swimming in the clear blue sea. No one spoke English. Our friends opted for the pool, and we all met up on the patio before heading toward home. We had a few drinks and as I sat gazing out over the picturesque bay we were on, something at the next table caught my eye: a little beer glass, the word "Cruzcampo" raised on the side and a fat man drinking a beer. Both the words and the man were silhouettes of raised glass. Subtle. And the shape of the glass seemed unduly elegant for just a little lager, and suddenly I wanted this glass. I wanted to drink beer out of this glass at home on hot days, my hair piled on top of my head and my feet bare on warm bricks. This glass needed to be mine. I complained that I didn't get a glass like that one. I tried ordering a Cruzcampo to see if I'd get the glass too. I didn't. Just before we left, Partner reached out and snatched the glass, slipping it into our beach tote. I mollycoddled that glass all the way through Paris and back the United States.

Whenever I was in a slightly bad mood or felt I wanted a simple thing to cheer me up, I'd take out that glass and pour a lager into it. I never ever put the glass in the dishwasher, preferring to wash it by hand. When we moved, I put it in the same box as the ceramic plaque with Cricket's hand and footprints at three months of age. I have no idea why the glass meant so much to me; maybe it symbolized some European aesthetic I long for in my life, or the dream of living there again some day. Who knows, but I didn't drink out of the glass everyday, preferring to save it for times when I felt I needed a treat.

When Partner was gone in Africa, one night after Cricket was in bed, I took out the glass and had a beer. I left the glass at the side of the sink. I worked the next day and when I came home that night, I noticed that super nanny had cleaned up, placing the glass into the dishwasher. I took it out, washed it by hand, and left it on the drainboard to dry. The next day I worked again and the ensuing night was a hectic as usual. I wanted to spend time with Cricket; we bathed, read stories, and I put him to bed. When I came out of his bedroom, I headed to the kitchen, and that's when I noticed the shards of the glass, placed on the counter.

I wanted to call super nanny and ask what happened, but my sensible side said, "What happened? It broke, that's what happened." I didn't want to make SN feel bad about the glass, as I was sure she already did. Why else save the shards? I kept the glass on the counter for a few days, and finally put it up into the cabinet to get it out of the way. And there it sits.

Every few weeks, I do a search on eBay and Google for "Cruzcampo glasses. I sometimes get returns that bring up small goblets, a printed "Cruzcampo" on the side. Although... even if I ever found the same glass again, it wouldn't be the same glass. In some bastardized version of Benjamin's aura, I know that every other glass would be a replica, a poor stand in. As if the glass itself was the work of art, and everything else the mechanical reproduction.

I can name a dozen or so objects that have some almost ritualistic meaning to me. I have found myself looking at certain things in my house over the past few months and wondering about their meaning. Is a meaning unattached to my life or meaning that captures something else? Pictures, invitations, old papers, books. I'm not sure why I felt compelled to write about my Cruzcampo glass. Perhaps writing about it will free me to throw it out. After all, the memory is not attached to the glass. The memory is intact regardless.

Perhaps there's no larger meaning than the meaning of that moment. Maybe there's nothing left to say.

Otay

2009-09-04T07:18:00.002-04:00

At six am, I can hear my baby rumbling and finally he calls out, "Mommy! I'm afraid! Come hold me." The mommy, it propels me and I'm there, holding him, stroking his hair and he's folded into me completely. Fifteen minutes later I ask him, "Are you okay now" I'm otay, he says. "Can you go back to sleep for a couple hours?" Yeah, he sits up, put me in my bed.

I won't go back to sleep. Instead I'll return to bed and think about the day laid out before us. Later this afternoon we'll be attending the state fair, slated to be the last one. We'll look at sculptures made out of butter, marvel at animal husbandry, maybe Cricket will milk a cow. We will watch pigs race, and amble along the midway. My father has requested specifically to spend this time with my child. I hope it's not the last year for the state fair. I hope we do this year after year after year.

My windows are open, and soon I can hear the wisps of piano from across the street. My neighbor is up too, but his windows are dark. He's playing passionately, full, and complete with melancholy; minor chords and spinning riffs. I know his wife died this past winter and I imagine him up with all his sorrow, his stocking feet on the pedals, filling his house with emotion. I lie very still in bed to try to catch the chords.

Later this week my dad will be having surgery; I'm almost positive that everything will be fine. Odds are with us, but this is something new in my life. I'm used to seeing my father in a certain manner. I called him last week and asked if he'd be intubated for the surgery. I watch my own patients get intubated. It always seems so violent to me in a practiced way. I picture my dad, lying on an OR table, knocked out and someone manipulating his jaw, applying crich pressure. "I imagine I will be," he says to me. I know it's standard. I was intubated for my surgery, my future sister-in-law just intubated for her surgery, but it still springs instant tears to my eyes. I'm too visual. I think about him lying in a PACU alone. I pray the nurses are good. I think about my dad all night with my own patients and I'm extra gentle, arranging sheets around my people, rubbing their heads before I leave the room. I whisper to my vented patients, tell them they are doing so good. I put their hands in my own and squeeze, remind them through their sedation haze there are people watching them. Me. I'm watching.

I'm just losing a version of my dad, but it's okay. I think about him in the summer at our swim club, on the diving board. Everyone loved when my dad would dive, me especially, my heart I'm sure beaming out of my chest, swelled with pride. He'd step, one, two, three, bounce up, his hands high above his head, so high he'd bounce and then back down, and up again before he was over the water: in pike positions, in somersaults, once, twice, two and half times. Sometimes he'd throw his body backwards and flip around, his hands breaking the water, his feet pointed following in a narrow splash. On the high dive, it was even more impressive. Sometimes he walk to the end of the board, balance on toes, stretching his arms out to his side. The sun always bright. Me either waiting my turn behind him, my arms on the ladder waiting to climb up after him, or sitting on the side of the diving well. My dad, that's my dad that can do that. There's something you need to abandon to dive like that, something I never could do. Not like him.

There is loss sometimes before there is even loss. Maybe this won't be the last year for the state fair after all, maybe some miracle will happen and we'll all be back next year. For now, I'll let the continuum take me; it's the oldest continuously running state fair in the US and I'll be there with my dad and my child. I'll be watching them, whispering again my own hopes about the day: I hope he takes him on rides, holds his hand, points out the blue ribbons. We'll drown out the hint of any melancholy with music from calliope and we'll all be, in the words of my Cricket, otay.

Needed: A Wee Bit of White Light

2009-08-23T01:48:00.003-04:00

There's something I'll blog about soon, but for now, many generalized prayers, thoughts of white light, and goodness are needed.

In the meantime, let me give you a poem by Eavan Boland, a beautiful poem, the aesthetic of which inspires me.

This Moment

A neighbourhood.
At dusk.

Things are getting ready
to happen
out of sight.

Stars and moths.
And rinds slanting around fruit.

But not yet.

One tree is black.
One window is yellow as butter.

A woman leans down to catch a child
who has run into her arms
this moment.

Stars rise.
Moths flutter.
Apples sweeten in the dark.

Festival

2009-08-20T06:41:00.001-04:00

It was that time of the year again and the girl decided she'd go back to a place she previously found love and peace and understanding, but this year she would go alone. Well, not entirely alone since she would be meeting friends there, but it would be the first time she'd pack up camping equipment, trek into the Land, and pitch a tent alone. She worried how she would find her friends, if she would be lonely. She thought about taking her boy baby, but decided it would be wrong to use him like a teddy bear. She was an adult and didn't need her boy to sleep with her in the bed.

When she left the house, a full moon sat above her head. She was always drawn to the moon and it seemed like it was leading her where she needed to go. The path wavered, but when she made it to the Land, the sun was high over her head. Women called out to her, "Welcome home!" She could smell the grass. Crickets were everywhere. (Cricket!) On the dirt road she had to pass a car that held two women, kissing each other passionately just before the gates, a safe place for them. For her too. But the kissing women made her longing intensify and she thought about turning around. She got out her ticket instead, had the red tie circle her wrist, worried it was too tight.

The shuttle bounced her deep into the Festival, the familiar landscape looked different alone, from the view of an old bus. Usually she hauled all the equipment across woodchipped paths, huffing and puffing with a partner by her side. This time she sat silently, thought about how different, how easy this seemed. The bus let her out, someone took her gear down and placed it next to her. She looked down, lost, and then next time she looked up it was into the eyes of a friend. She wasn't alone. The friend helped her put up the tent, locate other friends, meet new ones. The girl took her first deep breath and felt it stick.

Later that night the first tears came. Usually she camped in the deep woods where she didn't hear much of anything at all, but this time she was in the thick of things. Women sang karoke, from another direction the primal sound of a drum circle, and yet another an open mike and someone belting out Purple Rain. It was all beautiful until there was torch song about someone not being able to make someone else love them, and the then tears, the snotty grovelly tears into an air mattress and the hope that no one could hear her. She turned off her battery powered lantern so she could cry into the dark the night. And then she stopped, turned the light back on. Read her book, fell asleep.

She cried a few more times, under a huge oak tree, the rain falling around her, listening to love songs sang for other women, children running all around her with glow sticks. She watched her feet walk down the path alone. She looked up at drawing clouds and lightening and got into the tent alone, trying to be strong as the rain the came down hard. She laughed loudly with friends, nursed some women's wounds, held her friends closely to her. She was alone. She was connected. She made new friends.

The girl walked through the rain at the Festival, walked through the humidity, danced to a drum orchestra where the leader told the fierce women around her to "work it all out through the dance." She pounded her feet on the ground, raised her arms to the sky. She closed her eyes and felt the tears dance back, and then opened them quickly. She didn't want to cry just then. Later another friend lead her up to the water, to anoint her fears and help to heal her. She knew she'd be back next year.

She will go back there again: Maybe alone again, maybe not. She might take her boy or she might leave him with his other mom. She will know though that land will always be a haven, a place where she will be taken for what she is and the women there will celebrate her flaws and beauties as a part of the whole. These women who know without flaws, there is no beauty.

See you next year....

2009-08-12T09:51:00.002-04:00

Here's a secret: Before I started working as a nurse, I was less than proud of being a nurse. "Congratulations" everyone said as my BSN was conferred with honors. "Woopee" everyone said when I passed my boards and became a bona fide RN. "Well done!" were the exclamations I got after securing a job in ICU as my first nursing job, and I smiled a weak smile. Great, I thought, with chagrin, to each accolade handed my way. That is until I started actually doing my job. Now I love taking care of my people, holding their hands, hugging them, being there when they let go of this world, take their families into my heart. I feel my job in my core, and my patients know it and I think they love me for it.

So I went off the farmers market this morning, tired with the night still on me after working 12 hours, but pleasant in the memory of the job I did. And then I ran into a professor I had in my doctoral program, a very very staid British man. Before I started the doctoral program in English, I was working towards an MAT in teaching elementary education. On a whim, I entered a poetry contest through my university sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. And then I won. This professor called me at home to let me know I won the first prize.

"Get OUT!" I yelled into the phone, a la Elaine Benes. He was taken aback, to be sure.

"No, really. You have won the first prize," he said in his very upper crust grape-in-mouth accent. "And now I must know, who are you?"

I had no way to answer that question other than the poems he had splayed on his desk. I went on to write much more in the doctoral program, entering other contests, winning some, placing in others, but this professor remained a staunch fan of mine, so today when I saw him, he was surprised to see me; he thought I was off somewhere teaching writing, doing poetry.

"Oh, yes. I am definitely going to get back to that now that I am settled in my job. I'm working as a nurse in an ICU," I said, chest puffing out a little with pride.

His face fell. "Oh no," he groaned. "Oh, that's terrible. Just terrible. You aren't writing? You should be writing your poetry." And he went on and on as I stood there, wishing I could pull a prize winning poem out of my pocket, cite some publication from last month. Instead the publication I have is from probably two years ago and a dreadfully woefully neglected skein of poems. He assured me that he encouraged me to forward only because he thought I did have the metier to write, and he wouldn't just tell anyone this. I smiled. After all, it was compliment.

I promised him now that I am settled in my job, I'd write more. I told him I have so many poems in me that the problem would be having the patience to get them out right, an anxious muse has landed next to me, and I think I will start writing again.

I think I'll start here again, this old faithful blog, dusty, but still worthy. Watch this space.

Thanks, Professor B. Thank you ever so much,
Katie

P.S. I still am proud about being nurse today. He could only add to my mood, not detract.

"I'm havin' a great time!"

2009-06-06T15:02:00.005-04:00

It's been one week precisely since Partner left for Africa. She's back in nine more days. I wish I could say that it's been horrible and awful and I can't do this on my own, but in reality it's been fantastic. It's helped by the fact that our babysitter is incredible. She gets to my house at 5:45 a.m. on the days I have to work. One day she vacuumed. Another she emptied all the trash baskets. The only thing she could possibly do more is empty the cat liter, but seriously? I hate doing it so can't imagine anyone doing it who didn't have to do it.

Cricket and I have been all over town doing stuff too. Today we ventured out to lunch and to the petting farm. He ran all over the place exclaiming, "I'm havin' a great time, Mommy!"

One of the things I have not blogged about is Cricket's clear preference for Partner. He usually wakes up in the morning and calls for her. After nap, he wants her. When I come home from work, he'll cry, "No! Go away-- I want MAMA!" It's been pretty hard for me, as one might imagine. He will actively push me away from him if Partner is around. I think we both worried about what would happen for these 16 days that she was gone. In my heart of hearts, I could not have hoped for as a good an outcome as we've had. I am treasuring this time with him. When I hear him calling "Mommy! Mommy!" in the morning, I nearly fly out of bed. One night I let him sleep with him all night even though that is not a precedent I want to set.

I wonder if it will last when Partner returns from her trip. I hope so.

For now, I think I'll go look at my sleeping child and relish in our enforced time together.

Boring Post

2009-05-30T12:32:00.002-04:00

I'm on my first day of solo parenting for 16 days and so far, it's going pretty well. Granted it's only 5 hours into the gig, but we went to airport, breakfast, Lowes, farmer's market, and met some old friends at the local deli for a mid-morning snack. My boy came home and asked to take a nap and is there now, snoozing away. I have laundry spinning and we're going shoe shopping this afternoon and maybe to the mall. If things go really well, I'll mow the lawn.

I am all get and go when I am alone, but a couch potato with Partner here. Hm.

On a different note, my job will change right when I get off orientation, which should be interesting to say the least. The bright side is the rumor that we will be able to get plenty of overtime while our new unit opens up and to start with we'll only have 8 beds. Four to five nurses a shift... I will be starting midnights in July. Maybe sooner. I have to decide how to schedule myself: should I clump all my nights together or spread them out? I sorta think it would be better to get them done together, but I've never worked midnights... I don't really know.

Cricket is like a little boy now. How has this happened? He's even getting text messages from friends on my phone (Hi, Frog!). He loves to tell me "not yet" which I love. He also declares "On y va!" anytime we are going anywhere. I think napping is a good idea and I think I am going to put my head down for a few too.

Nothing poetic or insightful in this post, just general rambling. I'd look forward to any insight about midnight shifts...

'Round Midnight

2009-05-21T00:00:00.004-04:00

....I'm no Dexter Gordon, but around here 'round midnight is nice.

I'm still sitting on my back deck after having the wine night here tonight. I made cheese grits (y'all) and some shrimp to put with them. A homemade lemon tart. I like the details of things, so I pulled out my favorite yellow placemats, put out the wine glasses, arranged white roses and purple flowers in a blue and white pitcher in the center of the table. Primed the iPod. Had a pitcher ready for the friend who doesn't drink wine, but makes mojitos with the mint from her own backyard. Candles on the table ready to go. The shrimp marinating, everything mise en place.

Mise en place: this is how my life felt today. I had a list, and I tackled it. Never felt overwhelmed. I sat in a bookstore and read snippets of novels before deciding which one(s) to buy. I made a decision about my future job. I contacted people and got things moving in all sorts of different realms. And now I sit on the back porch that I own (yes, I own), and I look at the flowers in the light of candles and listen to a subdued interpretation of Faure's Sicilienne.

Is it possible that the summer makes that much of difference for me? When do I think about leaving a cold place for someplace else? How much of that question is metaphor and how much is grounded in reality? Maybe time to blow out candles, go inside and get under my covers. Read one of the books I bought today, drink a little green tea, and offer up my intentions.

Just don't want to lose the midnight mood, the feeling of warm, the candles reflecting on white roses.

Into May

2009-05-06T23:17:00.003-04:00

Tonight-- Drive out to friends house interrupted by spring, yellow flowers and earth so fresh from heavy winter that it looked purple. The trees were as they can only be in Michigan, in May, at dusk against a sky that thinks it might rain.

The friends-- Intelligent, introspective, quick, witty, and nice. How did I get blessed to meet these women? Laughter is quick and hugs are always long. I do, however, note that drinking red wine, eating chocolate, Meyer lemon cookies, key lime pie, have made my stomach hurt.

The remedy-- A train going through town and from here I hear it blow its horn. My window is open and I am hoping so that the 30% chance of thunderstorm happens. Mint tea is at perfect temp now, not piping hot any longer, but cool enough. A memory of my big baby's smile and curls when I came home.

Tomorrow-- Twelve hours at a job I am thoroughly enjoying. Patients who are sick, but some still can talk to me. Knowing enough but knowing I will learn so much more. I am still in the foothills, heading toward the mountains, but everyone around me is confident I'll make it.

The weekend-- Three days off in a row and already gatherings with the same friends above, brother and future sister-in-law, a dear friend and her three children on Saturday morning at the market.

The mood-- Now? Quietly introspective. Serene, with underlying blue tones overlying yellows. Content and understanding. Opening the heart to know why people try to hurt people they love and feeling calm settle in that cleft.

Wabi Sabi Me: A riff that might be continued

2009-05-04T12:55:00.004-04:00

When I was in college, I dated someone long distance. We spent many hours on the phone. He was committed to living in the south, and at the time, I was committed to living in Michigan. I wrote about it in a poem, my love the seasons here-- the softness of winter, the renewal of spring. It was the main sticking point (in college) between us. I wanted him to capitulate, to know how wonderful I was, so I tried an old stupid trick: I thought I'd try to make him jealous. (He's probably reading the damn blog now, so I guess I'm laying it out there for him to see. ) Along with my college bff, we made up a boyfriend. She's a writer now in Hollywood and I have my predilection toward fiction myself, so I am sure we created a great character. We used all get online and chat, and we even had "Niles" online too. Little did I know about the great Internet then, so I was blithely unaware that the ex was probably never fooled. I don't know if he looked at IP addresses or what, but there we were: Me, the bff, and the made up boyfriend all chatting away from the same location. I don't suppose Jose was ever fooled. We're still friends to this day, and every now and then he'll ask me how "Niles" is doing and I'll sheepishly change the direction of our conversation.

When we are young, immature, or maybe just vulnerable there is an element of life that we are loathe to show the world. No one wants to admit to being lonely or hurt or longing. I didn't want to let Jose know just how much I liked him, so I made up a boyfriend. If he thought I was dating someone else, maybe he'd want me more.

For a long time I didn't want to admit how my life, once big and tall and seemingly successful in all realms, toppled a little. Or a lot in fact. But pretending that things are perfect and happy and better than ever when they are is a thin caper. It probably doesn't really delude anyone either. Just like I didn't delude my ex boyfriend-- and really what is to be gained? I haven't even openly blogged about the shit storm that we've endured over the past year because if I face the facts, I am still circling around that space that wants to be seen as perfect, happy, content, on my way up.

But how boring is that? Life is in the small moments,the slips and the interesting part is to see how people pick themselves up. I intend to be a happy and content person. But if I am not all the time, that's okay too. The sum of all my moments together comes out to an unequivocally positive number, and it just happens to be a more interesting and complex equation getting there than straightforward one. (Which is fitting for me: I like a challenge.)

I'm on the bed in the small house, looking out the window at a tree with branches, not perfect branches, but lovely in their scraggy glory, dark pink blossoms against deep bark, like a Japanese painting. I know who I am, and that has to be enough. It's not perfect and I can't help other people's perceptions about me. I can only learn from that past and go forward honestly, me.

Small Brief Updates

2009-04-26T21:01:00.003-04:00

Tonight: Again a sweet foretaste of summer with windows open and music playing in the living room. Do I go with the mood and just open my book or turn on the idiot box and veg out to the drama of working class England on Corrie? I'm so far behind on what's happening on The Street and a hot cup of tea with a McVitie Digestive actually sounds good too.

I'm "intending" per the advice of my friend Lilith. It worked wonders for her, so I am trying it all over the map. The key is to be positive in whatever you intend. Intend to "do" rather than "don't". I'm intending to respect myself, I'm intending to be a strong woman. I'm intending that my intentions are clear. I saw I'm trying it all over the map, but that isn't necessarily true. I'm not sure what I intend in many realms yet, so I have only a few I am working on, mostly about my physical health and, by Jove, I believe it works.

I'm finally reading a good book. I knew it would be. There are some authors you can just count on. Speaking of which, could Kingsolver or Atwood please write a new fiction novel? I'm happy to add Brooks to my list of favorites. I like everything she writes. I'm open to other novel suggestions.

Last night was party to say goodbye to friends from last job. Despite being on the opposite side of the political spectrum from one of them, I think we have become very good friends. I can't stand to hear him talk politics, but I think we'll definitely stay in touch.

The new job: exhausting in every realm. Physically nursing is a demanding job. There's no sleeping or downtime, especially on my unit. I'm impressed with my hospital thus far though-- maybe my unit, but the nurses are smart and good at what they do. I'm emotionally spent from the day. I want to know answers and how to do everything fast, but learning, I remind myself, is a curve. My preceptor, who I thought might not like me, does. She is worried about my Type A side and feels I might have to start saying the serenity prayer before work. She took me walking today at lunch. I am also making friends, which helps so much.

African music on the iPod: Partner leaves in a little over a month to go to Africa for a public health nursing project. I wish I was going. Part of the reason nursing appealed to me was to do outreach just like this. I have been practicing French in a more concerted effort, it will definitely help me to work in areas where I am most interested.

That's enough telegrams from my life. There's no overt narrative there and even I am not particularly fond of the short story genre. I appreciate a tale that I sink into and live in. Snippets aren't my thing and I'm stop them here for now. Snippets and sniping-- thumbs down to both.

Calling All Crossed Fingers

2009-04-25T16:01:00.003-04:00

Breakfast on the deck-- Hot tea, scrambled eggs from the farmers market, English muffins. This is the back deck I tried to remind myself all the cold long winter. I could sit for hours on the deck, rocking my chair back to look at my small backyard. I can't wait to plant tomatoes and herbs in the small kitchen garden. I am going relish climbing a ladder and cleaning out gutters. Paint is calling out for Cricket's room-- All this in my future, maybe, if this damn house will ever close and come out of underwriting. Why, oh why, is there always one more document that needs to be handed over? I'm ready to own this tiny house with extraordinarily good energy.

It needs to close this week-- Cross fingers, pray, send out ministrations, make a burnt offering-- I'm ready for some good vibes and good things to happen.

Pragmatics Question

2009-04-21T19:07:00.002-04:00

I'm back to a car seat question. Last Friday our super nanny was in a car accident-- I'm happy to report she is fine, just sore in all sorts of places where one does not expect to be sore. She was rear-ended by someone going, she thinks, 30-35 mph, which seems really fast to me. Apparently a paramedic witnessed the whole thing, came right over and told her not to move. She was boarded and collared and spent far far too long on that board in a busy ED, got all the requisite scans and was cleared. Thank God. We love her a lot.

The car, however, is apparently totalled. It struck me as I was listening to her story that I might need to get a new car seat even though no child (another thank God) was in the seat at the time. Her air bags never were deployed and I haven't seen the car. The seat appears to be in good condition....

Does anyone know the answer to this question? Do I need a new car seat? I sorta hope the answer is no because it is sooooo not in the budget right now, but safety is paramount.

Vigil

2009-04-11T22:21:00.002-04:00

It's a little silly, but I watch this British soap. I have since 1994 when I lived in Dublin. We're far behind the times since I watch it on CBC, and I'm about two months behind even that, with weeks and weeks on the DVR. I'm having a sorta marathon watching it tonight, loving it with a cup of tea and a little toast.

There is a young couple on the soap who has lost their child and I know, I know, it's soap opera, but as I was looking at the tiny coffin I thought about another conversation with a friend earlier today. She was talking about living the moment, something that both of us have a problem doing, but recognize that is what life is, living in the moment. We both manage to do it on occasion with our children, but spend so much time otherwise ruminating. Marinating.

When I stopped living in that moment, I slid. I'm done sliding. I'm counting blessings and thinking about what I want in friends and family. I'm leaving my soul open. I'm counting on Easter.

In the morning when they found the stone rolled back, do you think that one of them was thinking about email or texts or wondering about posts? Or did they look up and notice how the sky was lilac before the dawn, hold each other hands as smell of day came forth, the dank smell of the stone tomb, the oils settled into the rocks, the sheet left behind, the sweet smell-- nothing dead or of death and the sky lightening into pink and orange and the sun coming up over the hill... I hope they were fully in that moment, I hope realization of the miracle crept over them and they weren't thinking of anything else.

Like now, my boy sleeping in the next room, the smell of lavender, the blooming hyacinth, the plugged up sink in the basement, the beauty.

Something Good

2009-04-01T17:09:00.003-04:00

Sometimes I hate living in a little Midwestern suburban house, albeit in a quirky city. I think that I should be living in a major metropolitan place. This morning I said to Partner that I could see myself in places: London, Manhattan, or Toronto. "What about Vancouver?" was her rejoinder. "I don't know about Vancouver. I have never been there. I'm limiting myself to places I've been." Because you know, I could very well love living in Rome, as the Facebook quiz suggests I might, but I've never been there. I went on a limb and suggested I could probably hack Barcelona, but my time there was brief. There's something appealing about living next to bright blue sea with mountains ringing the city. Tapas. Red wine...

But there is wine to be had tonight at the weekly gathering of my friends. And now I have the child that has been sick for days curled up under a blanket that I used when in college, its baby blue cuddling him close, sleeping. It's just about warm enough for the door to be cracked open, and the cats are all sleeping in the streaming sun coming through the picture window. I could be anywhere in the world right now and this scene in front of me would be the same: gentle and soft and ephemeral. Soon the boy will wake up. The cats will scatter. The night air will set in, cold and damp and the door will close. And if I was in Barcelona, Roma, London, Manhattan, or Toronto, I wouldn't be going to wine night with the fabulous group of women I get to see tonight. There are other things about Michigan I would miss too... Quite a bit, actually.

When I was in college, my neighbor across the hall and I admitted to each other that some nights even though we were exhausted, we'd go out because we both feared missing something good. That feeling dissipated over time with me, but I think I still hold on to its vestiges. I stay here because I might miss something good. I want to leave because I might be missing something good. If I am always looking for what I might miss, am I missing what's right under my feet, literally? This boy, this moment, the sound of Coltrane and Hartman sifting from the kitchen, the wind blowing away winter, the small domestic symphony of light and dust motes to the percussion of the neighbor boy's basketball thump-thumping...

Tonight, for the rest of the night, is going to be the challenge of living here in this moment, with only myself. No other dreams of what-if, or where-should-I and let the present come over me, scare me with its reality, and make me realize that here I am. And that's powerful enough.

Inch by Inch, Row by Row

2009-03-22T13:02:00.003-04:00

How he grows:

My wee Irish Cricket.

More than one person volunteered to take him home with them, but he's mine, my little Cricket, who is suddenly not so little, but a very sturdy wee man, who is two and loves to sing. We recited a litany of all his likes the other day before bed. Cricket likes, in no particular order: mommy/mama hair, trucks, books, clean sheets, salmon, Cheerios, playing outside, shoveling snow, the sandbox, comfortable pants, his evening tea, his bear, Tintin (who is not really Tintin, but instead Tintin's dog, Milou), driving, dogs, dinosaurs, singing-singing-singing, play-doh, painting, being Mommy's sous-chef, cupcakes, the Gaelic League, parks, letters (or as Cricket would say, "A-B-Ceeeees!), baths and swimming, his cats and sidewalk chalk. That's our short list.

On days when I am my most sad, I am still filled with this incredible awe at my child, his beauty, his little wisdom, the way his mouth rounds out when discovers something new, and his incredible capacity to take it all in, to learn, to love...

Clean Up, Smartypants

2009-03-20T11:10:00.002-04:00

Today when Cricket naps:

Should I clean the kitchen from top to bottom, wash the cabinets down, get on my hands and knees and scrub the floor until it gleams, wash out the fridge shelves, organize the pantry, figure out what to cook for dinner? It will make me feel super to have a kitchen that clean. I love the clean, the sparkle, the way the room looks as light slices into the room in the morning. I may even like the cleaning process, enjoying the way I can see the dirt lift, the grime swipe away.

Or should I get out the acute care book, study EKG patterns, look at hemodynamic case studies? Will I really learn anything from doing this? I can read the book all I want, but in nursing school, it was the doing that taught me. I never learned as much as I did as when I was in the ER, doing things fast and watching changes happen to the patient in front of me. Studying in prep for the new job might not feel as good cleaning this afternoon, but it might feel great when I start the new job to not be a complete idiot. Because I like knowing things. I love when I see people now and they try to tell me drug they are on, and I know it. I like knowing the side effects, I like knowing the studies. I like to have the book smarts behind me.

Smart or clean? Clean or smart? Which one....

In the Wind

2009-03-17T14:54:00.002-04:00

In my front garden, there are two copper bells hanging from a wide branch of the tree. They are connected by a semi lunar metal alloy. When the wind blows, one bell, the one that hangs a little higher than the other, rings often. Its clapper must just catch the breeze that much easier than the other. Sometimes I love hearing the bell, but other times I long to hear the deeper bell, the one that doesn’t sound off as often. The bells were given to Partner and me on the occasion of our commitment ceremony. To say the bells might be representations of us, well, it’s poetic license, but not a far leap. I’m the loud bell, often having my clapper rattled. Partner is the low sounding bell, not often pushed about the wind. Both bells have value.

It’s not a secret if you are reading this blog that we are having some problems. Over the years we polarized our personalities, which is easy to do but not fair to either partner. I’m sorta sick of being the thunder in our relationship all the time, just as Partner has gotten slightly sick of standing behind me. I never imagined having a relationship where I was the BIG personality all the time. I’m attracted to other big personalities, so I thought my life would be a joint front to the world. Suddenly I’m the ringing bell.

Yesterday Partner was accepted to a brief program where she will participate in a nursing outreach in Liberia. I’m so pleased for her, but more than a little jealous she is doing something I have always wanted to do. I sent her a text today to tell her how happy I was for her, but acknowledging my jealousy as well. She noted that she is changing to be more of a front man and wasn’t sure how that was going to affect our relationship. And I’m not sure I know the answer to that question, to tell the truth.

Answers used to come to me fast, and I would just know. Now I feel answers sneaking up on me, slowly rising as if I was walking into a shallow lake, slowly, slowly getting deeper and realizing things just before my hair gets wet. So I have no answers today. Just that it’s beautiful, it’s St Patrick’s day, and there’s a warm wind. And I sorta wish that damn bell would stop ringing for a few minutes.

From the Cinders

2009-03-14T15:36:00.002-04:00

One of the nice things about my wee house is that it is a short walk to another friend's house, up and down some hills, but just about a mile away (much closer as the crow flies) and a pleasant walk. I like living in a neighborhood where I know friends are near. In the opposite direction, another friend has moved in. Today my friend walked over with her little dog and we had tea and talked. I loved to see her face light up with laughter. My child snored from his back bedroom and her small white dog whimpered, wanting to see him.

It's sunny today and believe or not, little shoots are pushing out of the ground, the tentative green a purely happy sight. I believe (for right now) that everything in life is going to work out.

Quite a few years ago now, I had a friend whose house caught on fire. She brought me to the house to witness the destruction. My heart caught in my neck and when I saw her melted bed frame, I started to cry. I don't think I had any idea of the ravages a fire brings, melting and destroying literally everything. As a positive I tried to focus on the idea of fire as rebirth. The images are out there, namely that Phoenix. I'm not sure that anyone who is dealing with the aftermath of having all her possessions destroyed can rightly imagine life as Phoenix. But the fact of the matter is having things reduced to ashes forces a person to rebuild. There are choices to be made consciously that were made unconsciously the first time around. If I had had my forehead smeared this year on Ash Wednesday with those symbolic ashes, I might have come to this conclusion sooner and more peacefully.

I wonder if a cold frozen winter is like fire in some ways. Everything taken to the ground, burned off by ice and snow. In January when I fell at my lowest of the low, I hoped that spring would be an apt metaphor for me. I'm not sure yet if it is, but it helps to see the snowdrops pearling out of the ground, the sap running in maple trees, and warm enough weather to bring friends to my door.

Image Workshop

2009-03-12T16:14:00.002-04:00

Cats are lolling in the patch of sun that is sifting through the bare branches of the tree that I hope I will own in my front yard. I am going outside soon to strip the Christmas lights off the tree. They haven't been on in a while, but they are still tightly coiled around the tree branches. In one month, the tree still might not have leaves on it, but hopefully new buds will have come forward, softening the edges of winter.

And I can't decide if my own edges are soft or hard. My jaw feels hard, angled out from clenching. My legs feel soft, my spine a line of scales sticking straight up like the dinosaurs in Cricket's books, but my shoulders melting.

Lately I have no where to rest my thoughts. Everything I think of is another worry. My relationship, my kid, my house, my family. I resort to images: the sea on a sunny day in Spain, the sound my bike tires make when riding fast down a wooden boardwalk on the way to the beach, the smell of salt water, the feeling of having windows open and bare feet on warm asphalt, sweet Michigan corn.

When I couldn't sleep as a child, my mom would say to me, "Think of something happy and cheerful. Think of Christmas. Think of the Easter bunny." I never thought about those things, but instead thought about diving into a pool, gliding through the water, my grandmother's house, the smell of percolated coffee, the sweet musty smell of church incense.

My mom-- she never knew she was giving me good exercises to see me through this early mid-life depression.

Cats in the sunshine. Cricket's hands and toes. Long stem red tulips in a vase.

Home is Where

2009-03-10T21:15:00.002-04:00

We're living in the little house I fell in love with this summer. There's a longish story behind it, but essentially we were able to make an offer on the house that involved us renting the house for six months before we could buy the house. The supposition was that I would get a job and be able to qualify for the mortgage with no problem. Partner ran the numbers and the mortgage payment was going to be a little steep for a few months while I was the sole earner, but we felt we could do it.

Then life happened. It took me longer to land the job. I had offers, but in places I didn't want to work. I finally got the "dream" job offer, but the Big Urban Hospital wasn't able to offer me a place until April, starting me after we were supposed to close on the house. Our mortgage broker pre-qualified me and noted that she thought she'd be able to get me the mortgage with just the letter of offer. We're waiting to see about that.

In order to make it happen, I need to continue to borrow money from my parents, something I am more or less loathe to do, but it's necessary to make life spin for the past few months (like being able to afford diapers and milk, and yes, it has been that bad). Borrowing is something I will keep needing to do in order to be able to afford to make this house work. My mother finally agreed to help me with the house, but noted in a voicemail that although they would continue to loan me the money I needed for the next few months, neither she nor my father thought I was making the right decision.

I'm lost a little. Is it a good idea to buy a house that we can easily afford when we seems to be splintering more every day? Is it a good idea to continue to borrow money from my mom and dad?

I'm annoyed and angry about this. I already blogged about it a little, but I just feel that as a working nurse in a major metropolitan hospital, I should be able to afford a home in a safe city on a nice street. My house I want is 925 square feet. It's small. It's not extravagant. It has a nice little backyard and a detached garage. There are window boxes on the front the windows. There are cherry cabinets, only a few, in my tiny kitchen with lino floors. There are two small bedrooms, the "master" only big enough to fit a bed and two nightstands. There's a beautiful back porch I want to sit on this summer with friends, a tree branch full of leaves brushing over our heads.

Sometimes I think maybe we shouldn't go forward with the purchase, but the fact is that I love this wee house and I love my neighborhood and I love my street. I love the way Cricket already knows the name of his street. I don't want to move again. I just want to win the fucking lotto and have a healthy down payment that will make the monthly mortgage payment reasonable and I just want to live in my little blue house at the end of a cul de sac.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for with this post-- I don't know that I want advice unless it's telling me to go for it. I am as scared of buying the house as not buying it. I'm again, in a whirlwind, like everything else in my life right now, lost about not know up or down. Looking for change in the cracks of the couch... Literally and figuratively.

2009-02-28T01:22:00.003-05:00

I had this day. One of those days... First of all, I didn't sleep well. I was awake all night until, of course, the alarm went off. Then I could sleep immediately. I snoozed too long, which meant I was running late to work. A shuttle comes to take us to work, so I sped to work worried the shuttle was going leave without me. I got there four minutes late; no shuttle. I panicked, but figured someone would have called me. I sat in the parking lot, 6:30 am. I thought I'd finish my tea and read my magazine, wait until people came at 7:30. And then 7:30 came and went. No one. I started calling everyone I knew who might be up, anyone who could check my email for me, see if I had gotten the time wrong. Finally after waking up my youngest brother, the lead for the job called me back. 8:30 was the meeting time.

I felt like crying. I'd be sitting in the parking lot for nearly two hours before I even started work. And then, my car battery died. Ordinarily a pain, but with money as tight as it is, it felt even more looming. My partner was not answering the phone. I felt pretty alone in the world.

At work little things added up: the button popped off the sleeve of my shirt. Nothing seemed to go quite right, until about noon. I got my stride, but still, the morning stayed with me. I finally got through to my partner, who came and jumped the dead car, changed out the car seat, took the dead car to get a new battery and left the working car for me. People I worked with commented about how nice that was. It was. A huge load off.

I ate dinner at nearly 10 at night. I wish I could say the morning faded away, but it seemed like the day came around full circle. Sadness and things I can't control back with me at the end of the day. I'm so tired.

1:00 am

2009-02-25T00:52:00.003-05:00

Domesticities: The girl likes them. She likes to look at the little wind-up speed boat next to the tub. She likes to hear the sound as her child turns into this back and his legs hit the slats on his crib. Tonight she doesn't even mind the dishes in the sink, something she usually hates.

When she finally gets home from work, she checks her email. She talks to her partner about the visit the partner made to her dead grandfather's house. She changes into her pajamas. She sits on the toilet. She cries. A big dead dropping tear. She pushes it back down. She doesn't have therapy next week. It feels like forever until she can drop back into the plush couch in her therapists office.

Her feet are cold.

The kettle boiled. Sleepytime tea awaits. She got home from work at 12:30. The girl works again tomorrow, early-- 7:30. Work is long and she is tired, but at least at work she has direction to her hours. She looks around her living room, small detritus of a 2 year old. Little guys that ride in trucks, puzzle pieces, board books. She's said it elsewhere, but she doesn't know what she wants.

She slides into her bed. She closes her eyes.

Deep End

2009-02-24T10:55:00.004-05:00

On a sunny day, the girl is back. The sun makes her think about things she misses like beaches and pails and buckets. Water lapping at the shore. She knows that those things will come back, but the color of the day has changed in her mind.

She reads in a short story: "But sad-- sad means there is love to be missed, or had and lost and maybe had again, or at least to be longed for, missed and remininsced about and carried in you in a place where safe has never been. Sad is the deep of feeling. Sad tells a person that good is." She thinks the writer of this story is brilliant for writing this. When she reads it, she thinks, oh yes, this is exactly what I think too but never knew.

The girl thinks about pulling everything out of her house, just throwing out stuff and cleaning everything down. Bleach on the floor boards, sinks scrubbed and scrubbed. Right now her hair seems to be falling out everywhere. It's her hair too, no one else's. Pieces of her floating around the house. She vacuums twice a week, but still, the crumbs and cat fur and hair. The dust and spiders.

Is that what her sadness means? That good is? She hopes so. She thinks about Oscar Wilde: "What seems to us bitter trials are often blessings in disguise."

Maybe that's true. Maybe the sad is like a fire, bringing things back to the core, making her brave again. It's hard to believe today. The bitter cold. The biting sun.

Money Depression

2009-02-21T14:27:00.002-05:00

In the myriad of things that pile up on me making me feel as though I cannot breath, money is definitely one of them. Funnily enough, despite the nursing shortage I did not find a job for quite some time. Well, a job I would want to take. Finally I got a great offer in a CICU at Big City Hospital. I don't start until April, which thankfully gets closer every day. I'll have benefits! And will gain immeasurable experience! I'll be challenged! But still, I graduated in August. This is a long time for a family to live without a paycheck. I'm doing a temporary stint in health education, which is fine and bringing some money in for us-- that is, if my check ever gets mailed to me.

Luckily I have a family who is willing to help me out to a certain degree, but there are a few things I have noticed about not having money as opposed to my days with money, and the most troubling is the judgement. It seems that everyone is rife to judge what I spend the little money I have on. Pay for coffee? Huh, probably could use that to go toward therapy. (Ha! And therapy itself is a judgement too, but if you've been reading here at all lately, you know how vital it is that I am there.) Bought a lotto ticket? That's a silly choice when you don't have any money. Bottle of wine? Well, don't you need milk more than that? (Of course, I do. And I'm stocked on milk right now, thanks.)

It's slightly annoying. When we had money and made big decisions about the money (house, trips, cars, fertility treatments), no one questioned those decisions. Somehow in the process of getting poor, people we know seem to assume that we have become less smart, that perhaps it's our own stupidity that caused our fall from grace. But if you know me, I don't think I'm in any danger of dumbness. Perhaps there were some unwise choices with money. Maybe the dim decision was being involved in the housing industry, but when we were pulling in bucks, no one would have questioned this.

It's a testimony, really, to how people implicitly feel about the poor, which is unfortunate. Maybe, however, it's self protective. If we believe people are poor due to some defect, we can protect ourselves from feeling it will ever happen to us. After all, we're smarter/more resilient/better savers/harder workers/etc. The problem is that there are thousands and thousands of people, more every day, who work damn hard but still can't make ends meet and lose a little ground every day.

It chafes me every day that I may not be able to buy the wee little house we found on my nursing salary. How is that one can work as a nurse, a vital profession, and not be able to afford a 975 square foot house in a modestly sized town the Midwest? I could leave Ann Arbor and perhaps afford a better living, but I want to live in this liberal town, more or less safe place, and our little quiet street. I'm not living palatially anymore. I just want to be able to qualify for and afford the mortgage on a this little blue house. How could that even be questionable while working full time in nursing?

I get angry and my stomach starts roiling. I feel annoyed with the judgement I feel from people closest to me. No one is better than me for making more money. I feel horrible to think I might have thought that way once, albeit unconsciously. I hate not having money right now. I'm pretty sure I see an end in sight, but it's a little ways off-- it certainly doesn't stop with the advent of my full-time gig.

Until then, pardon me if I continue to have a little glass of three-buck-Chuck at night while I watch my cable tv. And if you don't like that decision, I'll ask you to hold your tongue.

Another Sunless Day in Michigan

2009-02-13T10:49:00.004-05:00

Back the first person, with no beautiful images attached:

There are any number of things dragging my mood down. For a few minutes, I catch a glimpse of the aul' Katie: I tell a story to a friend and she laughs and laughs (and God, I love to make people laugh), I admire the beauty of the spare branches of the tree in my front yard glistening even in the grey Michigan day, I lose myself in the warm tones of my friends' conversation. Just as quickly as I am aware of those moments, they are gone. I was at a Red Wings game last night in fantastic seats (thanks, Lynne!) with good friends, one of whom I hadn't seen in awhile. She came and sat next to me. "What's new?" she smiled. I could only stare straight at the ice and mutter about the same-old-same-old. Luckily this friend is adapt at conversation and drew me out. We ended up having a nice talk about the random.

I did find myself looking at people during this game almost more than the game. When there is a break, the cameras pan the fans, look for someone interesting. Happy. Beautiful. I knew it was never going to be me. Once upon a time, it might have been-- I would have been mugging for the camera, dancing crazy, yodeling. In fact, it did once-- even internationally-- I was at a rugby match at Lansdowne in Dublin, the cameras came on and I was there. Friends of mine watching this match back home at the pub in Michigan saw me on the television. Last night that particular girl was willing the camera away from her. I looked at one guy dancing to the "Lion Sleeps Tonight" and was thrilled with his wild abandon. I watched couples kissing each other when the camera came to rest on them. Children raised their arms into the air and the camera followed their gleeful dances. Who were all these happy people, families, couples? Were they really that happy or were they faking it? Maybe some of them were, but I know that the girl that was on the camera during that rugby match was not faking it. She was giddy with joy. She was excited to be alive and cold and ready to go. All that after flying all day to get to the match that night. Happy and jet lagged!

I'm not at a place so dark that I can't see ever being happy again. I'm quite sure I'll be happy again. Honestly, I just have too much spirit to be unhappy forever. But I'm worried about always being several things:

Tired-- The new job is midnights. 7p to 7:30a. I start right when the weather starts to break. So all summer, summer that I live for, I will be working at night and sleeping all day. I don't know how I will do my life with this schedule and not manage to always always always be tired.
Lonely-- If things in my personal life don't work out, I might be happy again, but will I always be lonely?
Poor-- Uhg. Money post next. Enough said.

I think that those three things together might form the triumvirate of depression. I imagine I'll be hanging around The Blues for a bit longer. If you don't get tired of hearing fuck-I-am-depressed all the time, stick around because I think when I get done with all this crap, I'm going to be back, bigger and better than ever. And that my compadres, that is glimpse of the aul' Katie right there.

Gilead

2009-02-10T21:20:00.003-05:00

I would lie down, close my eyes. The smell is like church on Good Friday. I would feel the warmth overcome me. It would be warm, the sun would be on my feet, my face in the shade. Almost humid out, the trees rustling over my head. If I were to take a deep breath in, it would reach the bottom of my lungs. Any tears I had, and I would have them, would not burn my face like now. I would know the answers to questions. I would just know them, not have to do anything about them. My back wouldn't hurt. The jaw I tense would go slack. I would feel beautiful. I would feel good. I would not be self conscious about anything, which also might make me cry more. No one would be angry at me or disappointed. Someone would hold my head, gentle, cradling. When I felt the balm on my skin, I would know a new kind of light. I would renew. I would know.

I would know.

Persephone

2009-02-08T16:56:00.003-05:00

She thinks, as usual, we've got it all wrong. Persephone was not forced to eat the seeds of the pomegranate. She knew what she was doing when she slipped the six seeds into her mouth, the bitter tart explosions, each one full of meaning. We've made her helpless to these men, but I think she went willingly and when they were going to make her leave her one true love, she did what she needed to do in order to stay with him. She used their authorities to her advantage. She knew the power of slipping into the earth, the dark muskiness of dirt cleaved open, dogs and spirits quelling at the sound of her voice.

We are the ones who have forgotten. We are the ones have gotten it wrong.

Garment

2009-02-07T21:55:00.002-05:00

The girl tries on the alone garment: it's tight and pushes up under her armpits. It itches her back, her arms. She's not at all sure she likes it. She pulls at the buttons, tries to stretch out the fabric. She has put on the shirt all by herself. She will have to take it off by herself. She is sad about this. She is sorry.

Hero

2009-02-06T20:59:00.003-05:00

Hero: in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, displays courage. In every story, there is a hero or heroine. Always. Emerson said, "Each man is a hero and oracle to somebody." She has looked for the oracle everywhere. Heard in small moments alone, a slight whisper, easy enough to discount.

_______________________________________________

The girl's heart hurts so much tonight. She thought she was going to sleep in a room looking out at a frozen lake, but instead is in the same place she was last night. On the couch. The computer in her lap. She imagines how the lake would look in the morning, thawing maybe. Slightly. Maybe. She thinks of sitting on the dock, watching the ice flows.

The girl remembers when her father lived briefly in Port Huron one winter. She and her mother and brother went up to see him. She walked on the frozen lake, the water was frozen up into jagged waves. Once she would cross over one icy wave, she'd be in the valley between snowy ice. She imagined the ice cracking beneath her so she quickly moved back over the frozen wave to her father and mother's side. She wonders if that is what the lake would have looked like had she gone today. She thinks of walking along the shoreline. She thinks she should be there now. The ice is cracking beneath her. Maybe she will go there soon.

__________________________________________

There's no hero in the story. Not yet. She is picking up the pen though. Maybe she will write her own hero into the story this time. Maybe she will be the hero for picking up the pen. Maybe she is her own oracle.

February, thanks to Dar Williams

2009-02-06T20:38:00.002-05:00

February: By Dar Williams

I threw your keys in the water, I looked back,
Theyd frozen halfway down in the ice.
They froze up so quickly, the keys and their owners,
Even after the anger, it all turned silent, and
The everyday turned solitary,
So we came to February.

First we forgot where wed planted those bulbs last year,
Then we forgot that wed planted at all,
Then we forgot what plants are altogether,
and I blamed you for my freezing and forgetting and
The nights were long and cold and scary,
Can we live through February?

You know I think Christmas was a long red glare,
Shot up like a warning, we gave presents without cards,
And then the snow,
And then the snow came, we were always out shoveling,
And we'd drop to sleep exhausted,
Then we'd wake up, and its snowing.

And February was so long that it lasted into March
And found us walking a path alone together.
You stopped and pointed and you said, "Thats a crocus,"
And I said, "Whats a crocus?" and you said, "Its a flower,"
I tried to remember, but I said, "Whats a flower?"
You said, "I still love you."

The leaves were turning as we drove to the hardware store,
My new lover made me keys to the house,
And when we got home, well we just started chopping wood,
Because you never know how next year will be,
And well gather all our arms can carry,
I have lost to February.

I've Got Dreams to Remember

2009-01-29T10:43:00.003-05:00

There really aren't any songs written from the girl's perspective. She listens to the stories her friends tell. She places stories in perspective thinking about her own life. Maybe this is makes her selfish? Maybe that is really who she is? But when she hears the stories, she realizes that in all these tales, she would be the "bad guy." Her mates don't call her that; they like her. But do they realize the disconnect? There's a right way and a wrong way to do things. She should choose the right way. The problem is that she's clouded in snow.

At night, dreams like she never had before. Swimming through a river, swimming and making it to the other side, but not finding what she was swimming toward. She goes into a locker room, stands underneath a heavy fall of water. And then she calls out and there's an answer, but she can't get to it. Echos reverberate off tile walls. She's wet and alone. Another one: she stands at a lake shore, imagines reading peacefully. Being happy with the sun beating down on her. They are so real that when she wakes up dry and cold, the girl is surprised. The duvet weighs down on her. She tries to snuggle back to the dream, but from another room an alarm clock. She sits up, looks at the clink of grey light coming through the curtains.

Another day. No more answers.

Picture Window

2009-01-26T10:52:00.001-05:00

The girl’s partner goes outside with their child. She asks for the window cleaner and the girl looks askance. The window cleaner is not going to work in this cold, she says. She is ignored, and she wants to say, like usual, but maybe that is too hard. Maybe it isn’t. But she is ignored. She puts the cleaner on the porch, paper towels. She sits down on the couch and watches the blue fluid splash onto the window, she watches her partner try to clean the window, and she watches it freezes across the pane. Streaks of white with each swipe. Usually this might make the girl smirk: she was right. Instead it makes her unbearably sad and angry. “It looks worse!” she calls out. She points hard at the streaks, but can’t see through them. “It’s worse! It’s worse!” she calls. She leaves the room. She can’t bear to look at the dirty icy streaks cutting across the window.

Sitting in the Road

2009-01-24T14:25:00.003-05:00

I'm sitting down to write. I can't decide if I need to write about myself or the girl. The girl is easier to write about in some ways; if I say it's me, then it's hard to know what direction to go into. If I write about this girl, I can lead her. If I write as "I", it's almost as if I sit down in the middle of the road, stubborn like a child, my legs crossed and my arms folded over my chest.

Once at a rugby tournament on an island with a winery, my friend Gabby sat down in the middle of the road. In fact, she went entirely down in the road, in a puddle, her arms akimbo and face looking up into the night sky. The asphalt gravelly under her blonde hair, she laughed. So did I. Almost the whole island was asleep, including most of the other ruggers. We were the last drunken stragglers out; we visited one more bar, and I can remember laughing the entire way back to our campsite. Laughing out loud. Walking like Laverne and Shirley. Trying to skip like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. I fell into my tent and couldn't figure out how to get my flip-flops off my feet. I woke up the next morning, called out, "Who has my credit card?" since I had handed it off to Christie the night before ("Get another round in!" I said with cavalier, like a rugby millionaire in the bar). Around me people either groaned or laughed. We sat in the morning, grass on the back of legs, inspecting our bruises from playing a hard game and drinking even harder. The sun from the lake glinted in my eyes. I was happy hearing the sounds of women around me.

Now I am so wrapped in something inside me, some indecision, some something, that the woman in that story doesn't even seem like me. But I know that Katie is more of who I am than this one-- the one that feels slightly broken, scared, nervous, anxious. My mom sent me a text message this week that said, "You have the power 2 light a room." Once upon a time, I think I did. I'd like to try and get back there. I know there are those of you out there reading this blog and worrying about me. I am depressed, but the days are eventually going to get longer. I'm eventually going to be able to set down the fear. I'm going to see the lights on the hill.

Until then the girl might be back a little....

Seizure: Retention within one's grasp or power

2009-01-21T23:49:00.004-05:00

Some days she scans all day and then is caught, like a fish on a hook gasping when pulled out of the water when she sees what she was looking for coming towards her. The sun filling up the street.

Some days the things she sends into the world seemingly go into the abyss, to nowhere, and she thinks that is okay. It's making her find a peace within herself. Other things deleted make her nervous and she knows that is okay too. She puts her foot into the snow, one foot, then the other. She feels how sure her own feet can be, if she lets them.

A friend feels her spine, tells her she isn't drinking enough water: "It makes it all seize up, I can feel it" and her back spasms again. She fills a full pint glass when she returns home. Hopes (again, with hope) that if she drinks it all before bedtime, she will stop seizing up.

Snowdrop

2009-01-21T14:38:00.002-05:00

In the morning, the girl realizes there were no stars. It's merely deep snow on her lawn. Snow that seems it may never melt. It gets deeper every day. She can't remember a winter when it snowed so much, the constant white covering. A friend asks her on the phone why she cries so much. Even with the question, tears prick her eyes. Snap out of it. Look around and see how lucky you are. She'd like to see the stars again, think the heavens have come to down her.

Now the snow is so deep and comes so often there is no path back, no trail of footprints (like the ones she deliberately tried to leave yesterday, in the driveway), no breadcrumbs. It's all snowed over. Maybe in spring, maybe in the summer, maybe if the sun shines, maybe she can find a way back. A small piece of green, a snowdrop, just a little white bud, pushing up. The bud open, but hung low. Still, that snowdrop pushed from beneath the cover, came up, even if the white leaves drop back to toward the frozen earth, it pushed once. It pushed through the deep deep stars.

Seeing Light

2009-01-20T08:38:00.003-05:00

The night before her house fills up again, she stands at the picture window, looks at the cover of snow. No moon. The streetlight fills up a space on the street like a small window, extends to her yard, and thousands of snow flakes light up the suburban night, like small stars that have fallen onto her lawn. There's no moon. There's nothing but emptiness.

It's true that she has no idea what she wants right now, but she loves the gentle quiet of her home. A cat slips through the hole in the door, going to the basement. From one street over, she can hear the tread of a car on the snow. Once she travelled over continents, moved to new countries, alone. Her heart would rush with excitement. She would sit down with strangers, kick up conversations. Lifted pints to her lips all on her own. Now her victory is this first weekend alone: seeing stars in the snow.

Tonight she picks up a different book and reads "What did I know, what did I know/ of love's austere and lonely offices?" She puts the poem down and listens to push of heat from the vents. She decides she will be okay, for now, but knows that she will wake up at 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 (now, now) and will change her mind all night long. In the morning she will change the sheets on her child's bed, try to imagine what holding him again will feel like. She wants him to come to her with wild abandon and dreads the way he will call, like a sheep, for his other mother. It doesn't matter. She will always hold him tight, knowing as she does now, about these lonely and austere offices.

The stars in the snow. The stars in the snow.

A Cocktail For One, Please.

2009-01-16T13:42:00.002-05:00

This is what she reads on page 80, "Instead of after-work cocktails, they would make after-work love, sometimes on the bed and somtimes on the floor; somtimes it was ten o'clock before they even roused themselves and strolled into the gentle evening streets for dinner..."

She puts the book down and rolls over on to her side to cry into her pillow. And moves deeper under her covers. Her feet go back and forth, trying to decide how much she likes the room they have to be alone, and she thinks she likes it. But then cries again, remembering. She never liked to snuggle before, prefering to push away and have her own side of the bed, demarking the space by how many slats of the bedpost belonged to her side, counting with exasperation.

The weekend looms in front of her. The keys are in her hand. On the counter. In her hand. On. The. Counter.

Tomorrow, snow again. Not this clear sunlight piercing cold into her living room. Two bells on the tree in front her house, ringing clear: stay, leave, wait, pause, don't. She prefers driving in the snow for the first time in her life. Not being able to see the road far ahead of her, the snow misting the shapes of bridges, trucks, roads. The edges of everything blurred into each other.

When she pauses, she gasps. Press play. Watch the edges blur. 5:00 is not too early for cocktails, she supposes. Let the snow fall.

Blown

2009-01-13T14:18:00.003-05:00

The snow, the blowing snow. From inside her truck, she feels safe. She drives faster than she ever drove before in snow like this, watches as the whiteness swirls in front of her, two little lines along the road for her tires, disappearing a little every time the wind blows. She can feel it hit her truck. She turns the radio up. In the backseat, an empty car seat. Earlier, before she dropped off the baby, his foot tapped on the back of her leg and he cheered for snowplows. When she opened the door of the truck to take him to school, she heard a plaintive siren coming from the street below. She looked up into the sky for a helicopter, watched the electric lines shaking the wind. The siren got louder. She looked at the footprints in the snow her child's shoes made, felt the warmness of his hand. Was it the only thing left warm in the world? His little hand?

She wonders about the upcoming days. -5 degrees Friday morning. If she walked out of her house that morning, would all the tears for that day freeze? How long until they thawed?

She knows her life is good. This child, perfect, she worked so hard for. A family that seemingly loves her no matter what, although she might be testing that premise soon, a partner ready to move forward, friends... so many friends who are ready to hold her up too. She drives the truck faster. She thinks about veering off and bouncing across the furrowed fields, how it would feel to drive off the road, the bumps jarring her. Maybe the bumps would jar her out of wherever she is. She is not the victim. She would drive across the frozen ground hard and fast. She would get out and try to push her hands into the earth, but it wouldn't move. The earth wouldn't give way. She would keep trying.

Later at lunch, the sun comes out behind her but she never turns to look at it. She looks at a couple, older, sitting in chairs, one reading and one on the computer. They say little to each other. At night, do they come together in bed and hold each other, bring their bodies together in a way they did with furious intensity at one point? An intensity that lifted away the weight. Or do they merely touch feet, content with corns and bunions and the heaviness of life, a stalwart to lean on. Or a kite in the sky. Which one? Which one?

She wants to go home, but she doesn't know where that is. The snow has blown over her tracks.

On the Wall

2009-01-09T23:44:00.001-05:00

Think of that girl on the wall. She’s sitting there. Her hand is in the cold cold water. It’s trying hard to fracture the moon, that moon that has been full, never mind what we see, the full full moon for thousands of years. Millions really. And this girl, on the wall, is trying to fracture the moon in the cold water. That is maybe her problem. You can’t fracture the moon. She tries to remember real things. Like the feeling of her baby’s heft when she lifts him from the crib. The longness of relatively new legs. She thinks if these legs are so heavy and sturdy after two years, how does she think she could fracture the moon who has been here for millions of years.

When lying in bed, she curls herself up and stares at the wall in front of her. Not this wall she was sitting on, with the history of women coming to lean over it and gossip, but the nondescript green wall in her suburban bedroom. She is starting, not seeing anything and willing herself to not see anything. Especially herself. Someone whispers in her ear that she is good, a good person, and she shuts her eyes then, tightly, as if shutting her eyes will allow her not to hear as well. She hears her child call to her, “Mommy, mommy” as if love is a couplet. Is love a couplet? Can love be single? Can love come in ones? She wonders about this question all day long. She looks up at the gray sky. Why is the sky grey in the day so she can’t see the sun, but clear at night for the moon to come down and look at her with his insistent questions?

She looks at the pictures of people she knows on the computer. Are they are all as happy as their smiling faces seem? They are all thin and seemingly rich and content. No one posts as a status update: “I am depressed as fuck.” “John says, “This life is wearing down my further every day until I might just blow away.” Instead there are quips about birthday parties and children’s diapers. The girl looks especially hard at the photos of those who moved far away, who live in new places surrounded by new languages. Do they have something she didn’t?

When she was younger, and not that much younger, her parents friends made comments about her, she was special. Going places. One friend in college told her she knew she’d be famous. Now she can’t find a job and stares at the wall in the half darkness at night. Dreams of putting her hand into cold fountains and fracturing the moon. When is she even going to take out a bow and arrow and shoot at the damn moon? When is she going to stop being lost and get out the map. When is she going to open her eyes?

Watching the Moon

2009-01-08T20:35:00.002-05:00

Watching moon slowly track across night sky, it’s face in the branches of my tree, reaching up to entangle it in, the moon tries to shine it’s light so bright, it won’t be tangled anymore, but instead it makes it sit deeper in the branches. It tracks across the winter night. My foot on the snowy sidewalk sinks deeper. A shovel abandoned at the edge of a driveway, its edge up, glinting in the moonlight that is stuck in the branches of my tree, the moon is half cocked, sitting up so that the night can fill it up with darkness. A light in the bush. The chrome of the car in the street. I want to write whatever comes into my head, but there is so much shit in my head right now getting in the way of good writing. The winter is cold and I hate it. I hate living here right now. Michigan. I want to be in another time or place, and I should pay attention to this, because this is a theme in my journals. When I have been unhappy in the past, I wish myself away someplace new.

Anywhere right now? Where would it be? Even though I hate the cold right now, cold seems appropriate. I could be in Scotland, in a big old castle. A small B&B, a fire in the hearth. A cup of warm tea. A book. Quiet music, the same moon, glowering outside my window, telling me to go to bed. That he will take over watching the night now. I don’t believe him so I stay up and compete and dream under my duvet in the Scottish bed of other places I’d like to be. Outside next to a fire in northern Finland, reindeer somewhere behind snorting, I can see their puffs of white air reflected by the moon, who is still telling me to go bed. That he wants night to himself, that my awakeness is bothering his solitary look at the night, I’m seeing things he doesn’t want to share, like the small white in the rabbit eye as she stands up tall in the snow. My Finnish self wants to be someplace else also, like in a small village in France, outside a small pub after drinking wine all night and now will be walking home. This self rubs her hands together to get warm, sits on a low stone wall in the middle of the square, the stone wall holding fountain together, and the moon is brightest here, refracted into 10,000 pieces and this girl on the stone wall thinks that is right, the moon like her many selves in many places. She can hear the staff in the pub, sweeping the floor, yelling at each in gallic ribbing, the moon whispers to her from the fountain, go home, go to bed, but the girl can’t get off the wall. Dips her hand into the fountain, to keep the moon separate, not together, but she looks up, and there is the half moon telling her, I am like you right now, in half, not ten thousand pieces, just go home. Get whole again. But the girl, she thinks of sleeping in her Michigan bed, flannel sheets safe and duvet and slippers and she can’t get off the wall. She can’t get off the wall. She can’t get off the wall.

A little joy

2008-12-24T10:32:00.002-05:00

1. For a number reasons, it's been a little hard for me to feel the jolly this Christmas season. You may have noticed. This morning though overhearing Cricket play with two cars is a lot of fun:

"I'm a tar!" One hand revs the car he's holding.

"I'm tar too!" The other hand moves the red car excitedly. "Oh, hi!"

"CRASH!" They speed into each other. The red car drives off triumphant. "Pop a loolie!" Cricket calls.

(Translations: Tar = car, loolie = wheelie)

2. The second reason for a little joy this morning is hot tea and Zingermans ginger cake. I had some last night while wrapping Christmas presents and watching the holiday classic, Coalminer's Daughter. No, I know that isn't a holiday classic, but it was on and easy to have in the background. Plus singing all those old sad country songs slightly fit my mood.

3. Christmas pudding from England. I can't wait to set it ablaze tonight. The roast is cooking already, the potatoes are done, the carrots and parsnips peeled and prepped. The only thing I have to do when we come from the sure-to-be-madness children's mass, is pop the yorkshires into the oven, cook the veg, serve up the meat, and open bottles and bottles of wine. If a Christmas meal like this, complete with pudding and hard sauce, doesn't make a person feel a little joy, I'm quite sure it's a lost cause.

Patterns

2008-12-23T13:24:00.002-05:00

It's funny how we keep patterns, even when we think we are beyond them. It's as if our life were a really finely crocheted afghan or superbly knit blanket. The patterns repeat, even if the weight of the yarn changes or the color. We might think we are doing something different with our lives, but in reality, if we step back, we can see the same pattern repeating itself.

I emailed my dissertation advisor a few weeks ago to finally admit I had not only been to nursing school, but passed my boards and was in the process of looking for a job. It was, more or less, admitting that I wasn't going to finish the dissertation. It was a hard thing to tell someone who gave so much of her time to me and held me with a certain degree of respect. She noted that she'd like to meet for lunch and that she admired my courage to reinvent myself. I want to think that this "reinvention" is different for me, but it's not really. I've been reinventing myself my whole life. Partner recently noted that I like the process of becoming and not so much the "being." For once in my life, I might have been silent in return. The truth of what she said can't be denied. I must like the way it feels to change the yarn, to keep the metaphor going, to note how the new color adds richness, but then I get bored, need a new color.

This makes my life a pretty colorful blanket, which appeals to some but not all. This need to change the color manifests sometimes in not so desirable way for those who love me. I can't help it. The colors are often layered with each other. Some days I look longingly at those whose lives are constant, going in one direction with a single aim. Brother N is like this: I believe he might have known since high school he would go to medical school, and now he is there in his third year. At his age, I believe I might have been starting grad school in English, after being a preschool teacher and having a brief stint with education classes, and spending a brief escape living in London. Brother N also met his fiance in his first year of college and has been with her since. It's lovely-- I can't count how many people I have been with since I was 17.

I know that both ways of being have their pros and cons, but sometimes my need to change, my love for new color of yarn, makes my life seem very disjointed. It makes it hard to appreciate consistency where I have it. Part of my struggle right now seems to be accepting who I am. I might change my path in life, but no one can say I don't go after the change with both hands, with passion, with a desire for what I want. I'll do this with nursing. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to be the best nurse I can be.

The only constant I have ever had in my life of shifting direction is writing. I've been ignoring that and it's time to get back to it. I'm willing to be held to my promise to write more here and elsewhere. Until then I guess I have to take solace in the bright colors of change in a my afghan, and appreciate the warmth that it gives me nonetheless.

Frog Asked...

2008-12-17T15:17:00.003-05:00

...if I am ever going to blog again. Here I am. I don't exactly know where to start, but there are 500 things I would blog about if I knew how to start blogging about them or wasn't worried about the fact that the blog is less than anonymous now and once that happens, it seems harder to blog honestly about things happening in one's life.

I suppose the biggest update is the fact that I am an RN now, which ostensibly gives me job security. Maybe that works anywhere else other than Michigan. Because I live in a 100 mile radius of Detroit, everything seems contingent on the auto industry. Hospitals with nursing shortages are in hiring freezes-- which is bad enough, but some have even fired nurses! This makes finding a job that much harder. I have cast my net wide and I feel that soon something will come in, but until that point, I teeter on the brink. I interviewed for one job that I really really really wanted, but didn't get. This is a relatively new phenomena for me-- Not getting the job. I usually have gotten any job I set my heart on, but this one passed me by. And I was counting on it, literally, counting the money, counting the benefits, counting the hours. Now I am back to square one and feeling incredibly depressed about it all. It's not good for me to sit in this house.

Ah, and this house. We are in the tiny house I wanted so badly. But we're renting it. I am supposed to buy the house in four months from now. I can't tell you how apprehensive I am about it. The house is quite small, and definitely has some foibles we wouldn't have known about if we hadn't been living it, but I am still charmed and love living in a small house. My ability to get a home loan might be seriously damaged though with the economy tanking as it is, and even more so here in Michigan.

Like the economy, I also feel a certain amount of depression right now. I am struggling with making some decisions and feel a little vulnerable, but like always I'm quite sure that I will come out of this at some point a stronger person. I took a load of laundry to the basement and just started crying. I felt so angry at that point about the tears. When I was seriously depressed at one point in my life, I promised myself I wouldn't get near that point again, but I feel myself coming close to it. Making a decision, getting a job,-- things like that might help. And maybe even blogging. I can't promise, but perhaps I'll try to start writing again in order to try and stave off these killer winter blues.

Next year.

2008-10-04T13:00:00.002-04:00

It's a cool Michigan Saturday. There's a home game in town, and we're staying away from the hustle and bustle. For this year. Next year, I imagine we'll walk into town, go to the farmer's market, eat some lunch in the middle of the crowds.

Next year, on a day like this, we can go the open fire house. Or get up and visit the great warehouse sale from at the cool kids clothes shop.

Or we'll head up to the pumpkin patch. By next year, Cricket will have stopped called pumpkins apples.

Next year, I'll have a friend over in the morning, and we'll sit on the back deck wrapped in sweaters over mugs of coffee. Maybe we'll have taken a brisk walk before that.

Next year, next year, next year. It's like a mantra for me these days.

Because we are we doing this year that makes us need to wait for next year? We're packing up our house. We're moving into the house I was terrified and excited to have. And now we have it. And I'm still terrified and excited. Next week is the move. So next year...

There's a House

2008-08-31T18:14:00.003-04:00

In the shade, at the end of a cul de sac. A family room, small kitchen with cherry cabinets. Three bedrooms. A sparkly white bathroom. It wraps itself around you as soon as you walk in the door. A back porch with a table beckons visions of friends with wine glasses, children playing under the carport in the rain.

I'm terrified of owning it.

I'm terrified of not owning it.

Basil Morning

2008-08-27T11:05:00.004-04:00

I got up out of bed this morning before the sun was up, the alarm buzzing the BBC at me. In the darkness, with the morning chill, I could almost convince myself I was someplace else. Which sounded nice at the time. Lavender soap, minty toothpaste. A kiss to my sleeping boy and I was out the door. To write. To see a new friend. We got to the coffee shop, 6:15, she after working all night, me with sleep in my eyes still. Nothing opened until 7:00, so we sat on a bench and I confessed my preppy dark secrets (I was once in a sorority...). When the coffee shop opened, the early morning latte, the city waking up, I sighed. The farmer's market started to come alive.

I met Partner at a house I would love to own, and hope that somehow, by the grace of God, we're able to pull it off. Again, a smaller house than my master bedroom, but feels perfect. I see myself on the back porch, steaming mugs of coffee and fresh scones. Friends dropping by. Barbecues on the porch. Cricket playing b-ball with the neighbors basketball hoop, placed communally at the end of the cul-de-sac. I would walk to L's house, drink margaritas we make with the Snoopy Snow Cone Maker, and stumble home the four blocks. I'll go for long walks in the snow and come home, strip off my clothes and sidle into the sauna in the basement.

Back to the market, New Friend there again, and the scent of late summer produce. The basil like a tonic, a sharp tonic. Heirloom tomatoes. The promise of tomatillo salsa in the evening at wine night with more new friends. The sun just filling up the entire blue sky and babies, their round faces bright in the morning sun. No one is crabby yet. We are all fresh and new in the late August Michigan summer, refreshed by our cold sleep, the air subtly changing, seeping into our rooms, making us snuggle under the duvet, reach with our feet to loved ones. So even if we do wake up, wishing for a moment we were someplace else, the day promises to deliver us home with no regrets, making us want to never leave, to gather everyone around in a feast of sunshine and green leaves, basil scents filling the air.

My Favorite Snob

2008-08-22T14:40:00.003-04:00

When partner and I first started dating, we went up to my favorite bar where I was more than a regular. We cozied up to the bar, ordered some drinks, and proceeded to watch the action on the television. Every television in the place was on covering the event: the 2000 Gore/Bush election. After were felt assured that Gore was our next president (Whew, that was close) we started talking to Barbara, my favorite Irish bartender. I happened to mention that was "easygoing" and both Barbara and my new paramour, Partner, started laughing. Simultaneously and heartily. Partner looked at me and said, "Seriously? You think you are easygoing?" And Barbara said, "You are almost everything but easygoing." For a minute I thought I felt angry, which is, of course, not the reaction of an easygoing person. They reigned in their laughter and Barbara said, "You're easy to get along with, but not easygoing." In perhaps the most easygoing moment of my life, I had to see that they were both right.

It isn't easy when you are confronted with home truths about yourself that you would rather not acknowledge. I've been doing a little of that the past few days with several things in my life-- some very personal and some others I'm more willing to blog about, one of which is my not so hidden snobbery. I don't want to think I'm a snob, and mostly think I'm pretty down to earth. I grew up in an incredibly snobby part of the world and like to think I've rejected that part of my past, but alas, I don't think I have. I think, honestly, that part of my reluctance to admit I was going to attend nursing school was rooted in that. I don't remember anyone wanting to become a nurse. Doctors, yes. It was as if a nurse was somehow not good enough or couldn't hack being a doctor. (I could have hacked being a doctor and even thought about going during nursing school, but ultimately I'd like a life.) And see me even defend it here? As if being a nurse still isn't good enough? And finally I even like the idea of being a nurse.

We're moving. Probably sometime in September. I've long said to Partner I could live in a box, but in reality that just isn't true. Number one, it would be damn cold in the Michigan winter. Since I nixed the box, we're (in all likelihood) moving to family housing. This morning when I was talking to my friend Jeremy on the phone about this change of address, I noted that our new place will be smaller than my master suite. "God," he said chuckling, "You are such a snob." And I thought, oh shit, another 'easygoing' moment? Am I snob?

I recalled lamenting that I would have to pack up my Waterford and china and not use it for a year. Yeah. Because I use it so much now? I also recently told a new friend I wouldn't be able to live anywhere that didn't have a grocery store that sold chevre. This is true and I don't deny it, but surely this marks me as a snob? Or at least a cheese snob?

I'm a newcomer at a delightful tradition called "winenight" and I thought "I better have these ladies over soon before we move." Because they won't like me if I live in a small apartment rather than a show house?

I think I've talked about how my family in Ireland was fairly derisive of anyone they called "house proud." I've never wanted to be that person: the anal house proud mother. I thought I'd grow up and have a ramshackle old house that was delightfully cluttered by children's things and wet towels and several dogs. Toast crumbs on the floor (I have that now too). Balls and nets and sporting equipment scattered on the grass. Kids running in and out. Cooking for whomever wanted/needed it and offering glasses of wine to parents as they came to retrieve children, who of course, were reluctant to leave my easy going, carefree home.

I'm not sure I am this fully this person anymore. I do like clean and organized, but I am hoping that this year (and upcoming years) of living away from luxury home life will ground me back into the person I more see myself as. While I'll always believe in a good chevre and like my floors to be vacuumed, I'll have to just let other things go. It would help if you stopped by for a glass of wine. Just step over the mess.

Strong Enough

2008-08-13T07:52:00.001-04:00

Mornings like this one remind me of being a young girl, getting out of bed and shivering into a swimsuit (and then another, and another), slipping on shorts and sweatshirt and padding downstairs. I don't remember anyone being awake, but in reality my dad was probably long gone to work. It's possible my mom and brothers were still asleep. I'd get my swim bag and sling it over my back and head out the door, flip flops flopping. My bike would be dewy and the air cold on my face. I'd wonder how on earth I was going to get in the pool. The morning stillness, the Michigan mid-July coolness before the heat, only broken by the tk-tk-tk-tk of my bike when I'd glide down a hill. At the swim club, I'd huddle underneath a blanket on the concrete because all the deck chairs would be wet with dew. Swim coaches wearing dark glasses would hustle us into the pool. "Warm-up!" "Get in the water" and then some big tall boys in speedos would be the first ones in, arching their bodies out over the water, throwing up their heads before going in. Eventually we'd all be there, in the cool pool that was still warmer than the air and steamed peacefully before we all churned it up, and the sun would come up higher into the air and glint into our eyes when we turned our heads to breathe. The smell of chlorine like coffee to me for many years of my life. Mornings spent waking up sprinting butterfly or ending with no breathers. How not breathing for one length, pushing it to one and a half, trying for two-- terrified and exhilarated. Practice ended and we'd linger in the diving well, playing Pom Pom, a game that I am surprised we all didn't drown playing. Even now I can remember running barefoot and flying out over the water before diving deep down into the 12 feet, swimming hard, pushing off the sloped bottom of the pool at angles in order to not be caught. The feeling of someone grabbing me and trying to pull me up to the surface. Slipping away like fish, kicking out of their grasp. At end it was always me or Danny Birney left at the end-- no one could catch us. And the knowledge I didn't know, but still knew, that I was strong enough, strong enough to do anything at all in the world.

Mornings like this I can sometimes grasp that feeling. And on mornings like this I want more than a grasp of it: I want it full again around me, like the feeling of water rushing over my head as I dive deep into water, knowing I can slide past anything, strong legs kicking.

Home Is Where You Hang Your Hat?

2008-08-11T09:04:00.003-04:00

My last class of nursing school was cancelled today, so I am sitting on the couch, in my pajamas drinking hot tea, eating cold blueberry pancakes, and watching men's synchronized diving on CBC (with the bitchiest commentator ever!). Life could only be better if it were a little bit warmer and my feet weren't cold. Otherwise, I'm blissfully trying to forget that I have yet to write a paper, study for a final, and pack up a 3300 sq foot house. Everything seems achievable other than the packing part.

We've been looking at houses, endlessly-- on the multi-listing, Craigslist, the newspaper-- you name it, we've looked. We have found houses we have loved and missed. "Sorry. Already rented" We have contemplated buying a few and missed those as well. We just need to make a decision already. Any of the moves are going to be challenging. The house I wanted the most (and missed) was smaller than my current master suite. I'm a little daunted about how to minimize my life to such a degree, but excited about it too. Where ever it is that we move to, I'm going to be able to clean it so much faster and have far less shit to clean.

We're down to three choices at the current time. Each has pros and cons.

1. Family housing: Main pro of this? Cheap! Cheap! Obviously very family orientated and tons of kids for Cricket to play with. They even have a gas stove, and since I don't understand how anyone cooks on electric, the gas is definite plus. It's so close to a grocery store that we could walk there. It's also quite close to one of the hospitals I might apply too. I could ride my bike until the snow comes. It's also near parks. The cons? Well, it's family housing. We're going to be 36 and 40 respectively this fall, so in some ways it feels like a lot of backtracking. And you know, it's not exactly luxury housing.

2. Co-housing: Many of the same pros as family housing but without being family housing. Many kids, many eyes watching them. I love the idea of co-housing, but wonder if I'd be able to abide by all the rules. I love the idea of community meals, especially as we are embarking on another busy year. (Partner will be doing the same program I did.) Cons: The rules? And it's a still further out of "town" than we wanted to be. Our goal was to live on the bus line and be within walking distance of different amenities. I wanted to live in a larger neighborhood, and the co-housing we are looking at is located in the back of business park. There's walking, but not really what I envisioned.

3. Private house: They are out there. We found one yesterday that we both liked. The bedrooms were larger than postage stamps, which was refreshing. It was clean and well maintained. The current tenants complained about the landlord, which was worrying. Pros: Private house-- no shared walls! Felt roomy and cool. Had a full basement, which is definitely nice for storage. The other pro? It probably shared a backyard with a very good friend of mine. Cons: The dodgy landlord, for one. The tenants also said it was cold there in the winter, which sucks. It was also on a larger road, and I could hear the expressway. Electric stove.

I vacillate minute to minute-- wherever we live will ultimately be fine. We'll be together and that's what matters. I guess for now I should get off the couch and start packing.

Graduation on Friday! More blogging to come!

33 days and then some

2008-07-12T18:54:00.002-04:00

That's what the counter on my iGoogle says. 33 days and then some hours and minutes and seconds attached. It's counting down until I am done with this crazy busy nursing program that thinks we can do 60 credits in nursing in one year. One year. I have 8 credits right now. 8 final credits to do in five weeks. And then I wait six weeks after August 15th, and I take the boards. And then I'm an RN?

If it doesn't get scarier than that, I will also be doing my transition to professional nursing rotation in the ER, by choice. Toward the end of this clinical, which is I remind you, in four weeks, I will be working somewhat independently. Who's scared? Definitely me. I can remember vividly in October trying to draw blood from a fellow student. I could feel the room spin and the dizzy feeling set in. Not from the site of blood, but the fact that I was sticking a needle into the vein of someone I liked. Now I'm going someplace where they are going to expect me to be able to do this.

Breathing deeply.

The best thing I think though is that in four weeks I may actually have time to blog again.

Things I Don't Blog About

2008-05-18T17:22:00.004-04:00

I like to think I am remarkably honest on this blog. After all my reproductive and sexual histories are largely public information. I have had no problem detailing or showing hints of intimate details that went into the making of our Cricket. I have cried and laughed in a very real way regarding all the aspects of this singular part of my life. And I've added some other honest portraits in the life of Katie as well, but there are secrets. I suspect that if I wrote about them honestly, I might stop grinding my teeth at night. I'm not ready to start writing about the secrets at this moment since I have test tomorrow. (I am definitively procrastinating by blogging right now, and I still need to review anti psychotic medications, so blogging meaningfully about secrets is just not going to happen. Yet.) However, I do have a wee bit of time to list five of the secrets I am reluctant to blog about:

1. Money & Finances, or lack thereof.
2. The current ownership of our house which is on its third summer on the dreadful Michigan market.
3. Excitment and terror about thinking of moving into at least 2,000 square feet less than we have right now, or "how will I live in a house that is as big as my master bedroom is right now?"
4. My apathy about my impending nursing degree
5. My changed post-Cricket relationship with Partner
6. Reverting to 20 year old status by signing up for Facebook

What I want to know: what do you not blog about? Why? What should I be blogging about, and why?

Should Write More But Have Ungodly Amounts of Reading to Do.

2008-05-10T14:48:00.004-04:00

So I will post pictures of Cricket instead.

Here we are readying him for his life of education. I had my "fake" graduation a few weekends ago. Fake because I still have 20 credits to go. Every credit more takes a little bit more of soul, so I guess it was good to pseudo-celebrate while I still own part of my soul before the nursing school takes it all. The Cricket was very good at a full day's worth of festivities, therefore he got to wear the hat. Cricket: Pre-leg break, shopping for bread with me on a cool Saturday morning. I almost can't even remember these Halcyon days of walking. By himself.

Cricket's cast is off. Which I'd say should be a resounding "THANK GOD" but he's still not walking on it. He is holding his leg up, but crawling everywhere. He will pull himself up to standing, but will not stand on the leg. After three set of x-rays from his very own grandfather and nary a fracture to be seen, I'm flummoxed. There was one spot where there was maybe a fracture. The grandfather doctor says to not push it. Maybe there's a break that we can't see (?!?!?) and he's protecting it. I just want walking/running Cricket back. Here is the kid moments before his leg broke:
I post this pic for Chris especially. Another reason I'd like my kid to start walking again is that he was so into the Swiffer. I need the help around the house. It's time for him to start earning his bread (or cheese as the case may be) again.

Finally, Cricket says goodnight. He and I both hope that I will find time to blog again in earnest soon. I have so many things to say, my head hurts with the sheer multitude of things I'd like to be blogging about it. Keep fingers crossed that the Cricket returns to walking soon.

Attempting to Drown Out the "Snap"

2008-04-22T11:07:00.003-04:00

A meme, cribbed from Frog.

TECHNOLOGY
Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer?
On the home computer, Cricket. On the laptop, aka "Big Bertha," Ireland.

Q. How many televisions you have in your house?
Two

BIOLOGY
Q. Are you right-handed or left-handed?
Right

Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
Cricket and some patella bone fragments and floating cartilage. (Hey, Cricket is not the only one who can break bones around here!)

Q. What is the last heavy item you lifted?
Cricket and his heavy ass cast.

Q. Have you ever been knocked out?
For my knee surgery, and two endoscopies, my wisdom teeth-- but these are medical. I have not been knocked out physically.

BULLSHITOLOGY

Q. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
Good Lord. So I could worry about until it happened? Absolutely not.

Q. If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
My name is pretty much me.

Q. What color do you think looks best on you?
Black?

Q. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item?
Well, that is stupid. Who hasn't?

DAREOLOGY
Q. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100?
Let me think about it.... Sure!

Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000?
Nope, and that's saying something because we could really use the money.

Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000?
Maybe. But I like to blog even though I don't do it much. Does this mean not commenting on blogs too?

Q. Would you pose naked in a magazine for $250,000?
Not on your nelly

Q. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000?
Uhhg. The heartburn.

Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000?
No!

DUMBOLOGY
Q: What is in your left pocket?
My hospital/school ID, credit card, and picture of Cricket.

Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie?
I haven't seen it. But a friend just loaned it to me.

Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house?
Hardwood downstairs, carpet upstairs.

Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower?
Stand.

Q: How many pairs of flip flops do you own?
My favorites just broke. So none.

LASTOLOGY
Q: Last person who texted you?
Lynne.

Q: Last person who called you?
My mom

Q: Person you hugged?
Cricket

FAVORITOLOGY
Q: Number?
I don't know that I have a favorite number.

Q: Season?
Hot Hot Hot Summer Summer Summer!

Q: Color?
Green.

CURRENTOLOGY
Q: Missing someone?
My boobah. And Partner.

Q: Mood?
Lazy.

Q: Listening to?
Olu Dara, birds singing outside, and a dog barking someplace.

Q: Watching?
The sunshine.

Q: Worrying about?
Cricket's leg. Cricket's asthma. Money, bills. My grades. Next semester's classes. Who's going to cut the grass? My heart. I'll stop now because my litany of worries could be really boring.

Q: Wearing?
Bare feet, jeans, and a Detroit Rugby Football Club tee shirt.

RANDOMOLOGY
Q: First place you went this morning?
Cricket's school.

Q: What can you not wait to do?
Go to the zoo with Cricket.

Q: Do you smile often?
Show off the pearly whites! Or not so pearly with the amount of tea I drink...

Q: Are you a friendly person?
Mostly.

Bright Blue: Why Mommy Can't Sleep

2008-04-21T15:11:00.004-04:00

The story, in third person.

Mommy's classes ended on Thursday and since that time she had really been enjoying time with her son, Cricket. They went to the park Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Cricket was pretty impressive with his mobility. Running everywhere, up and down hills, mastering the slide, impressing total strangers with his climbing ability. So Sunday when he was at his grandparents, Mommy hurried everyone along. "I think it's going to rain soon! Let's get moving!"

At the park, Cricket did all the park things and totally ignored the astro turf hill, the one kids slide down on cardboard boxes, or just their pants. Mommy knew she and Cricket had gone down the hill before, so when he headed toward the hill, she let him climb to the peak of the hill. Previously they only went down half the hill. Mommy remembers the sun glinting off the hair of a little girl, trying to go up the hill one more time, but instead this girl was nabbed by grandmother. The little girl said, "Sweet niblets!" and everyone laughed, the nabbing grandmother, the little girl, the Mommy, her parents and even the Cricket because everyone else was laughing. Mommy will always remember this little girl saying sweet niblets.

Once Mommy and Cricket reached the top of the hill, she watched the little girl and grandmother walk away, she scanned the bottom of the hill to make sure it was safe, she swooped her child up into her arms and kissed his bonny face. "Do you want to go down the hill?" she asked him. She smiled at her own parents at the bottom of the hill and put Cricket between her legs. They pushed off.

She still doesn't know what she heard first: the snap of her child's bone or her father yelling "Stop!" but she stopped. Instantly. Picked up her child and ran down the hill, hugging him to her chest and he cried, cried. "Did you hear a snap?" Mommy's own mother asked her. Mommy said I don't know, even though she knew she heard a snap. The child continued to wail. Mommy's father, the one who yelled stop, was an orthopedic surgeon. "Is it broken? Is it broken?" she asked over and over again.

"I don't know. I don't have x-ray eyes. It feels okay," he said.

Mommy sat on a park bench and prayed "OmyGod" over and over again, kissing her child's head. He stopped crying, and she believed his bone couldn't be broken if he stopped crying. They tried to see if he would stand. But he wouldn't. He started crying again. His leg was shaking. So everyone decided it would be best to get x-rays. And they did. But x-rays weren't conclusive, and Mommy laughed and laughed. But still Cricket would not stand, and Mommy's dad, the bone doctor, said it was best to treat the child, not the x-ray. And sometimes fractures don't always show up immediately, and maybe he did see something on the fibula. And so that's how Cricket ended up in a bright blue cast, from his toes to his hip.

And that's how it ended up that Mommy can't sleep at night for hearing the snap of her child's bone as he sat between her legs.

How You Know

2008-03-23T23:13:00.003-04:00

There are not subtle cues that one needs a longer vacation outside of the home and Michigan when several things happen:

When you are gone from the house for a little over 24 hours and it feels like a lifetime: This means you have been the house for entirely too long and need a longer vacation asap. Preferably some place where your toes will finally be warm. Without wool socks on.
You talk about how balmy your walk in the woods is. The problem with this is that it is Michigan, in March, with about 8 inches of snow on the ground, and it's probably only 37 degrees.
The highlight of your Saturday is running sap, metals pails, and spiles.
You are inordinately excited about the hotel bed. You have never slept in anything so wonderful. You ponder how to strap it to the roof of your car to take home.
You cry when you return to your beautiful custom built (by you and your partner) home and realize you'd rather be back in the 565 sq ft hotel room.
Your tears intensify when you further realize you could live in said hotel room every day of the month for less than your current home costs you per month.
And finally you know you better stop crying because a new class starts tomorrow and it's going to be an intense five weeks taking a six credit class dealing with acutely ill people, so you better try and get a small blog post in quick to let people know you are still alive (for now), your kid is still charming you, and your albatross of a house is still for sale.

Empty. Empty. Empty.

2008-02-13T15:33:00.003-05:00

So, the wine bottle is officially empty.

My weekend of bliss roaringly ended Tuesday morning when Cricket woke up at 5:00. Partner was already going with her day since she has to report to work at 6:30. That left me to "snuggle" with a baby who has discovered the gleeful joy of rolling all over the bed while pretending to be alseep. I'd look down at him in the hazy light of a snow covered morning and he'd be smiling, with his eyes closed. Cute, yes. Annoying also, when one considers I didn't go to sleep until 1:00 am the night before. Studying for a test. I stayed up a little later consoling myself with the thought that I'd sleep in until about 6:15. Which is wrong on so many many levels. Sleep in until 6:15? This is what my life has come to.

Alas, I was up with the babe. Eventually he had enough and fell back asleep, but in our bed, and not fully enough that I could pick him back up and place him into his own bed, the one with high sides that ensures he will not fall out. So I had no shower. I don't know about you, but a shower really does wake me up in the morning more than coffee or tea or any other caffienated elixer.

We got to school where I did my best Tenzing Norgay imitation by carrying in Cricket, my backpack complete with nursing tomes, his lunch, and the Britax carseat. Through the snow too. Went to class and got back a test in my research class with the worst grade I have gotten on a test since 1993. The day was going really well.

Then I met with my people I have to a group project with and explained why I hate lunch time meetings when yet another one was proposed. (And why do I hate these meetings? Because it's the only time I have all freaking day to sit down and not think-- until about 9:00 at night that is. And quite silly of me, I thought if I explained this slowly and surely, the others would empathize, as I expected we are wont to do as nurses. As you may have already expected from your own personal run ins with nurses, empathy is not a prerequiste. The response I got from a fellow childless student who is young young young: "We all have responsibilities." Hm.) Lunch time meeting scheduled despite my best efforts to compromise. (I have so much to say about this, but whatever, this is about the wine bottle being emptied.)

I then lost it in the stairwell of the School of Nursing, conveniently located above my child's school, so that all the teachers coming in from outside could hear me babbling away about school, stress, and kids. (Try doing 60 credits in one year-- it's not as easy as it sounds!) I don't know about you, but I like my breakdowns to be in private, like a bathroom stall, a parked car in an empty lot-- I'm just like that.

I got to peek at Cricket for two minutes. I don't let him see me on Tuesdays since he goes home with the babysitter and not a mom. This did more to further break my heart open into four seperate chambers.

Studied more for test I was woefully underprepared for. (But report 100% success on, thank God.)

Went home and emptied end of the wine bottle started on my blissful pseudo-single weekend.

All the entreaties I had to enjoy the weekend are so not lost on me now. Is it too soon to open another bottle?

Pseudo-Single Splendor

2008-02-09T20:44:00.000-05:00

Yesterday afternoon I dashed out of class and down the slippery front steps of the School of Nursing. We had about an hour, enough time, but with traffic one never knows. And Partner admitted she was rather peckish and would like to get something to eat. "Because, you know," she said, "I don't want to pay ten dollars for a bag of chips at the airport."

But we made it with time enough to spare. I dragged the cases out of the trunk and Partner hustled them to the curbside check in. I turned off the car, slid the stroller out, and then lifted the Cricket into my arms. He was looking especially dapper in navy blue fleece pants, a t-neck and a red fleece vest. If a one year old can look sporty or apres ski, our kid did. I kissed him ten thousand times and strapped him into the stroller. Partner came back from checking in, and we embraced the way same sex couples do at the airport-- slightly self-conscious-- and then she took off with the boy, pulling him behind her so I could wave until she reached the door. Then I called out a final farewell, tears streaming, and got back into the car. It was a grey day. I turned off the NPR and let the sounds of planes taking off above my head fill the car. The rising rumble seemed to match my mood. Alone. Alone. With a deep crescendo, the final note almost a moan.

Cricket and Partner are gone for the weekend, leaving me behind. I had/have big plans to study my brains out. So far, I haven't done that badly. But I have a small horrible admission: despite my tears at the airport, since that time I have been having a really good time. I'm liking being on my own. And feeling slightly guilty about my guilty pleasure.

For example, I'm blogging. I know I don't blog nearly enough now, and I miss it. I'm a writer, and when I don't get to write, even here at the blog, I feel it. And here I sit on the couch, a big (and I mean big) glass of red wine next to me. A carry out box from the new posh market around the corner. The house is spotless related to a late afternoon showing. (Buy my damn house already.) I am playing music quite loudly.

Last night I met a friend and her family at the pub: four kids and her husband. One would think this would engender some pretty intense longing my for own family, but instead I just loved having a pint and some fish & chips without worrying about Cricket. (Too smoky? Eating enough? Behaving well? Having fun?) I came home, got into bed and read with the light on. And the TV. Something that hasn't happened, in oh, say the 13 months that Cricket has been sleeping in our room.

I went to a movie alone. It was blissful.

Tomorrow I am going to sleep in. And then study more.

I don't think I'm a bad mother for enjoying this so much, but there's part of me that wonders if I shouldn't be missing them both more right now. I have a feeling I'll be slightly desperate by Monday when the return, but as of now, I'm still in pseudo-single Shangri-La. I'm contemplating a bath. The world, I feel, is ripe with possibility. There's a larger commentary here, I think, about mothering and how as much as you adore your kids, the prospect or in this case, reality of a vacation from them can be soul serving. Lest I forget that it is work (which is highly doubtful), this small respite has reminded me of that. As much as I loathed the thought of this weekend, I might insist on biannual weekends like this from now on.

Still, when I return the airport Monday afternoon, I know that when I see the faces of my Partner and the Cricket, even the grey Michigan day will seem brighter, and probably more so for my weekend alone. The planes taking off into the clouds won't seem so obliterating an image, and this time their roaring take-off note will sound fullness in my heart at my family reuinted.

But really, until that time, pass the wine...

Oysters and the World Of: Open to Suggestions

2008-02-03T22:37:00.000-05:00

In my previous career, the illustrious world of English doctoral studies, the living was, well, not easy, but certainly different from the new career I am seemingly embarking upon. There are a number of pros associated with a life spent engaging in research in the Humanities, and many of those things I miss dreadfully right about now. Especially as one of my classes has to do with research in Nursing, and guess what? It sucks. I'd rather do my old research over this crap any day.

However one of the best things about this new career in nursing is the job market. Unlike having a PhD in English, a mere BSN in nursing, and especially from a top tier school, offers one the option of having a job just about anywhere. Whereas a hard fought struggled to find a tenure track or even just full time job with benefits is de rigueur in my previous field, it's not even an issue for me now. I regularly get recruiting emails from all over the country and this has started us thinking. About moving. I can almost guarantee it won't happen, but still. We're thinking.

We live where we live for a number of reasons. One, and the primary one that will most likely keep us here, is that we live near both our families. Even though we're about an hour away, it's close enough for family to rally if, say, one of us were to go into preterm labor five weeks early. And I think being close to family is a good lesson for Cricket. Now, I lived less than a mile from my Gramma growing up, which was super because anytime I fought with my mom in high school, which was alarmingly often, I'd trek over to her house. It had to be nice for my mom, in a way, to know right where I went. She might not have appreciated the fact that my Gramma often took my side, but to know where I was, well, talk about one less thing to worry about. But we live too far for that to happen with Cricket and subsequent kids, unless we move over and up one county, a move I'm actually pretty loathe to make. Our little town we live in now has its share of pretensions, but I'm ready to live with those pretensions over the obsession with money that exists in the town where I grew up. I'd rather my children grew up pretentious about being liberal Democrat greeny recyclers than obsessed with what car, jeans, coat, etc they are wearing. So, that's another reason we live where we live: the political atmosphere here is good for a two-mom family. And good for a kid of a two mom family.

So when fantasizing about new places to live, here's some of the criteria I've made about that fantasy location:

Liberal enough that Cricket et al won't ever feel funny about having two moms and that fact of having two moms won't be looked at askance by a majority of the population in said town
Must be a big enough town to still have a city like feel. I must be able to buy gourmet grocery goods like good cheese, fancy mustards, and British tea, namely, Typhoo.
I will be able to get CBC on some sort of cable so I can keep watching Coronation Street. I'm not kidding. I love that stupid show.
Will have a top notch medical system where I can expand and challenge myself in my new career.
Ideally would not have super bad winters, but I'm willing to compromise on this for other trade offs.
Is not too far away from Michigan. Unless it's Europe. But a language barrier persists. I don't speak French quite that well. (Plus, I'm really too fat to live in Europe.)
Is not plagued by massive wildfires, avalanches, earthquakes, or mudslides. (California off the list.)
Is not grey for 350/364 days of the year, like Michigan.
Does not carry the worst economic status in all of the United States, like Michigan. It's hard when you are depressed to shake out of it when the whole damn state is depresssed and f-ed up. (See Detroit scandel number 1,045.)
And some other crap I can't remember right now.

So, here's our fantasy very short list with small explanations on why we pour over google to look at images, job postings, and real estate in these areas:

Toronto: Added benefit-- Be Canadian! Okay, I get Toronto is cold, colder than here for sure, and would never really ramp up to the heat factor I so depend upon, but there are good hospitals. Granted, nurses don't quite get paid what they do here, but we would be recognized as a family unit. That in and of itself is pretty spectacular. And we'd get to be Canadian! I'd get my Typhoo and wouldn't have to leave Coronation Street behind. We'd be easily acsessible to family via train. We could have one car and rely on city transportation. And we'd be Canadian! Enough said.
Some liberal like place in North Carolina which I previously thought was Ashville until someone told me it was pretty small town: I can't live in a smaller town than the one I am in. But I believe in some small liberal part of North Carolina around Duke or Chapel Hill we can be lesbians and our son won't be teased to death. Added benefit: great weather! Shorter drive to the ocean! Con: No Corrie.
Okay, this odd, but Cleveland. I don't honestly think we'd leave Ann Arbor for Cleveland, but there is the Cleveland Clinic, which has all it's own prestige. But I'd really just be leaving behind UM, which is just as good, right? Con: No Corrie. I don't think. Do people in Cleveland get CBC still?
And finally, Boston. Another place where we'd be recognized as a family, for now at least, and a number of really super hospitals where I could be challenged. And definitely I'd get my British tea. And considering that every 4th person in Boston is probably my cousin, I might feel at home soon enough. (Calling all micks, calling all micks!) Con: No Coronation Street.

I know there's other options to add to the mix. Any suggestions? It really is far too much fun to know we could, if we wanted, go anywhere we wanted. Rally for your location now! Where is your personal oyster? It doesn't have to be where you live!

Now, back to studying meta-analysis of evidence based practice nursing research. Ho-hum.

True Blue

2008-02-03T19:47:00.000-05:00

Here are some reasons why I'll always be maize and blue.

Even though I often assert my hatred of winter, one has to admit there is a certain beauty to it. I suppose I might it like more if someone bought this behemoth house we live in and I didn't imagine dollar bills spewing out of the heat register every time I hear it silently whoosh on. I can't wait until someone finally buys this house and I can move someplace small and cozy and turn the heat up to 82 if I want.

For now, I'll keep look at pictures like ones linked above and remind myself there really is beauty in Michigan in the winter.

It's Late, but I Didn't Want to Admit It Happened.

2008-01-14T22:44:00.000-05:00

Cricket turned one, people. Yes, it was a few weeks ago.

*Lump in throat*

He's not a baby anymore. He walks everywhere, and mostly does. not. want. to. hold. my. hand. He's started whinging. But he also gives the most glorious hugs and kisses. And snuggles in the morning. And sticks his nose out for a kiss when I ask where his nose is. And he loves books. And he shares. Oh, the love fest. For my baby who is no longer a baby.

Happy Birthday, Cricket.

We love you, too.

Green Snot, Great Trepidation

2008-01-09T15:59:00.000-05:00

After an extended break at the holidays, we're back to day-care, which I, unbelievably, have no issues with whatsoever. However, today on my wee wee break, I went to see my Cricket and sat down on the floor with him. While down at baby level, it was clear to me how many crusties were in the noses of every baby there. Some babies have running snot, and these children get attended to promptly. Green snot is visible from above. Crusties in the noses are not.

I've made my peace with daycare related illness. It's just going to happen and I choose to look at it as good attempt to mature my kid's immune system early. I also let him eat Cheerios off our floor, so a total germophobe I am not. Plus there are some theories out there that maintain that auto-immune disorders are the result of a "bored" immune system. So, hey, let's not be boring! Let's get sick!

Not that I'm seeking out sickness, you know? And colds are nasty, etc. However, they've suddenly turned more insidious. Little viral triggers to asthma.

Asthma.

Say it again, a chronic illness, not the end of the world, but still overwhelming me at times: Asthma. Yes, Cricket has been officially diagnosed with asthma and not unsurprisingly, colds and viruses trigger attacks. *Sigh* Thus, every crusted booger filled nose today made me shiver thinking of how we'd probably be awake for the night, listening to our wee boy cough. And cough. And cough. I'd like to post more about my feelings here, and hopefully I'll be able to do that, because last night as I stood at the freezer in the garage, I was completely overwhelmed. So far, his asthma has only required a few albuterol treatments for wheeziness and daily nebulized steroids, but suddenly I started worrying about emergent attacks, the problems of vaccinations when on steroids, the possibility of ever feeling safe leaving him with a babysitter for any extended time, the scariness of the ER in the middle of the night. Nothing of course we've had to deal with, but I'm always so good at seeing the scary looming shapes in the deep dark future.

And I've gone totally opposite of my usual m.o. Unlike when we were dealing with (in)fertility, and I got my degree from Dr. Google U in reproductive endocrinology, I've so far not consulted Dr. Google at all. I've tried so hard, in fact, to be almost willfully ignorant. But now I'm in a pediatric nursing class and clinical, and asthma is undoubtedly going to rear its massively ugly head to me. I'm going to have to learn about it. And be tested. And help treat kids other than my own who are having emergent attacks. I know there's worse out there, but shit. My sweet Cricket, wheezing and coughing, smiling the whole time? It's heart breaking.

We'll get through it; we always do. But for now, the previously nonthreatening green snot has become enemy number one. I've got to come to some reckoning, otherwise we'll be hermits in Michigan, because, hey, where are you not going to find some super colored mucus around here in the deep winter? Oh well.

Things I Regret Saying in December

2008-01-06T14:26:00.000-05:00

Let's get the tree December 1st!

I love these 10,000 light strands.
I think I can just loop the lights lasso style around the top of the tree.
Let's just stop watering the tree so it's dry when we when take it down.
I think that 57 strands of lights on the tree would look better
There's not that many ornaments on the tree.
Let's get a really big fat tree. After all, it's Cricket's first Christmas.
I'll just put some more lights outside. On the front porch. And the back deck. And our balcony.
I don't think it will be that hard to keep Cricket away from the tree...

And finally....

Don't worry: I'll take down the tree.

Stupidly Smug

2007-11-21T17:04:00.000-05:00

To the Lady in the Silver Saab:
I saw you today driving around Ann Arbor, which at one point was probably its own little enclave, but is now probably a suburb of Detroit, there's that many people commuting nowadays. You had a bumper sticker that proudly proclaimed that you only shop at stores that are locally owned. And yet you were driving a foreign car. In the Detroit area. Huh. I wonder if you thought about that?
Cheers,
Katie

(P.S. to the blog readers: I am not opposed to foreign cars. You need to buy what you feel is right for you and and your family. I'm just noting that the bumper sticker didn't quite jive, n'est-ce pas?)

Something about a Pumpkin Being Great

2007-11-01T13:26:00.001-04:00

The thing is when we go for Cricket's check-ups, they do all the requisite measuring and his head, well, it's big. 98th percentile big. And I happen to love big headed babies, so I find him delectably cute. But this big head screamed out one and only choice for a Hallowe'en costume. Without further ado:

Cutest One in the Patch

2007-10-30T22:33:00.001-04:00

(I really do want to write more, but it's "finals" so to speak. I'd like to write about the chronic cough that gets worse at night and keeps me wide awake while I listen to Cricket cough all night long. But I'll write more about that later. For now, Cricket shall be featured.)

Detroit Strike

2007-10-16T10:14:00.000-04:00

If you've been following the news lately, you've heard about the UAW strikes at GM and Chrysler. Ford talks are looming on the horizon. If you happen to live in the Detroit environs, you get "Breaking News" flashes at all sorts of times to tell you that the talks have recessed because someone needed to sleep, eat, or shit.

We've had our own striking action chez Cricket. And the management (I think that's me) has not gotten very far with the babe. In fact, I think the strike may have ended and we're at permanent shut down status.

Nursing. I fear it may be over.

Today a friend from my La Leche group sent out the best picture ever of herself nursing her toddler, and I cried. How I wanted to be that mommy. I just knew that I was going to nurse Cricket until he was at least a year, and then I smugly added, "I'll just let him determine when we'll stop nursing." In my head, I was thinking that I might have to seriously address the issue sometime in the spring, when I imagine heading back to the RE for baby two attempts.

We were going strong with the nursing too. Cricket is an exuberant feeder, opening his little baby bird mouth really wide and almost making a chomp noise as he came in for the milk. And even though I'm fairly crazed with school (can you tell, no posts from me?) we were still nursing right on schedule. I'm very lucky that his daycare program is located in the same building as my classes. In fact, his room is directly underneath one of my classrooms. So at lunch I'd go downstairs and nurse the baby. Nothing was changed other than location, and that was only once a day.

We got through the initial biting stuff too. When cutting his first teeth (Shit! Teeth! Growing up!), we nipped it in the bud and it seemed like it wouldn't be a problem. Then the fifth tooth started niggling toward the gum border, and man, he chomped down on me. I promptly removed him, told him no bite, and then he refused to nurse on that side again. I changed him to the other side, he nursed, fell asleep, and that was that.

Until I picked him up from school, whereupon he pushed my breasts away-- there was no uncertainty-- he just didn't want them near him at all. He screamed. And this happened no matter what. Over the past few weeks we've tried the bath, playing with the shirt off so he could come back to the breast on his own terms, we've tried early morning sleepy, late evening sleepy, middle of the night sleepy, and sleep itself. We've tried to not push the breast and push the breast. And you know what? He's just not buying it. No, I haven't changed soaps, detergents, deodorants, or anything else.

He reaches for the bottle. God.

(Not that the bottle is inherently bad, I just never saw it coming. It doesn't even bother me as much to see him reach for his teachers at school as it bothers me the bottle reaching. Who knew that this strike would feel so much like a rejection of me? I can't explain why it's made me feel so personally like a bad mother. Like I must have done something to make him stop. Sigh. Here I am again with the vast conspiracy of motherhood guilt.)

Consequently, as with all strikes, auto and otherwise, production is slowed. It's slowed so much that my previously unprecedented production was supplemented for the first time this morning. With the F-word. More distressing news from the picket lines? He didn't even blink when the bottles switched from breast milk to formula. Oh, child. How I am betrayed.

I'm still pumping, but getting only around 6 oz a day. I'm trying to tell myself it's worth it to keep pumping until he's a year, but it's getting rough. He doesn't seem to care whether he's getting breast milk or formula; he's a gordito, so I'm not worried about weight gain; he really enjoys non-breast milk food; we both seem to still be very bonded despite the strike.

So what do I do? Consider this an extended strike and keep trying to get him back on the breast? Figure this stint has run it's plan and shut the factory down? Or keep trying to produce even the limited production we have now?

Consider this the management looking for new negotiators and let me know what you think. Of course that's hoping that there is anyone still reading this poor neglected (but loved!) blog.

Cat Plot

2007-09-17T15:13:00.000-04:00

At first I thought the cat was channelling Lassie, banging on the door because something was wrong with the Cricket. I looked over at the sleeping babe, peacefully breathing away, and realized that no, the cat was just being a shithead.

Yes, that's right, the cats have officially been banned from the bedroom. In the beginning, I was terrified of how the cats would respond to Cricket. My mother echoed my concerns, although her concerns were a little more, let's say, histrionic: "You have to make sure the cat won't steal the baby's breath." Yes, because that happens. Can't you see it? The cats huddled underneath the dining room table, plans laid out, and discussing who's going in to steal little Cricket's breath? ("But, you guys," Maya, our bushy black cat, says all breathlessly, "What will we do with the breath once we steal it?") So when Cricket first came home from the hospital, the cats were duly locked out of the room.

They came back soon enough. First of all, if you remember, we slept with Cricket on us for the first few months, and then he progressed to sleeping in the car seat, and finally to the co-sleeper. And really only one cat, Eli, sleeps in the bed with us. Noah is intermittently present, but a strong sneeze scares him into oblivion, so you can guess what baby gurgles do to him, and Maya-- dang, we can't even reliably pet her. Ultimately it seemed like the cats didn't really care about Cricket, and Cricket, honestly, he didn't seem to notice the cats either.

That is, until he did. Now the cats are an endless source of joy to him. A few weeks ago he watched Noah chasing a stuffed mouse and laughed and laughed. Belly laughs. Eli is his new best buddy. He reaches out and grabs huge chunks of fur to the soundtrack of his mommies yelling out "Gentle! Gentle!" He pumps Eli's tail up and down. He tries to chew on his ear. A normal cat might flee from such abuse, but not our Eli. Instead, Eli plops himself down right in front of Cricket seemingly inviting torture. Loving it, you might say.

One a few weeks ago, I got up to use the bathroom. Eli often takes this as a cue for midnight snuggling. "Oh, you're awake? Great. Pet me." He continually came at me and I continually pushed him down. I wasn't in the mood. I drifted off to sleep, thinking I had rebuffed the cat. And then I heard Cricket making what I thought were awake noises, opened my eyes, and there was the damn cat, in the co-sleeper, sitting next to Cricket's head. The action was swift-- pull the cat out of the co-sleeper, check baby for breathing, and a quick smack on the cat's nose. I hissed for Partner to wake up. We shooed all cats out of the room and laid in bed, both of us eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. We were freaked out. I don't think we ever returned to sleep that night. If Eli had chosen to lie down on Cricket, there's no way he could have gotten the cat off him. Eli is, well let's say, persistent. There's no easy swatting him off. And he likes to get up on our chests, face in our face. It's annoying to us, but dangerous for 8 month old babies.

The cats have been locked out since. Eli routinely bangs on the door every night, several times a night. When we go to hiss shut up at him, he flees down the hallway. I feel slightly bad for this cat that was our little lover kitty. He's regulated to the cold dark house outside our room. But I don't feel that bad, thinking about him sitting there, next to Cricket's head in the moon filled bedroom.

So maybe my mom was right. Maybe they are plotting after all...

So Much To Do

2007-09-13T06:13:00.000-04:00

I'm awake really early today, finding that I can't sleep thinking of all the things I have to do still. There are a lot of things I have to do, and unfortunately updating here has been low on the list. And my body misses it. I've grown used to writing here and when I don't get to do it, I feel the words that are inside me get itchy, which makes me anxious. I need to write here more. But in order to do that, I'll probably need to get up at 2:59 am. I keep getting up earlier and earlier every day, but somehow the rush to get out of the house never gets better.

I already feel behind in school, but I think so does everyone else. I think it's a calculated effort to immerse into the world of nursing, where somehow, I get the feeling, one never feels there is enough time to do anything. Yup. I got that now. Can we go back to life when I felt I had a handle on it? Last night I got into bed and just started to cry. I kept thinking of all the reading I had yet to do, and health histories, and case studies, and Jesus Christ-- I can't even take a reliable blood pressure reading and tomorrow I'll be in the hospital with patients...

Crap. I'm having another anxiety attack and aren't I supposed to be writing about this relieve my anxiety?

My child doesn't seem to care that much about the time period in which I'm missing. I lucked out and got care for him in the same building where I take my classes, which means that on breaks or at lunch, I can run down and nurse him. The staff are so supportive of this, but I'm not sure all of my fellow students quite undertand. After all, the Cricket is eight months, and to some people that seems like extended breastfeeding. It's not at all in my mind. First of all, my kid won't take a bottle. He chews on the nipple like a puppy. Second, it's really his primary nutrition. I don't worry so much about the fact that he doesn't like vegetables because I know that he's nursing still. Yet one fellow student was telling me she was talking about my situation with her partner, and they were talking about whether they'd wean if they were in my situation. There will be no weaning.

That being said, I'm terrified that when I do my L&D rotations, which start the second week of November, that things are going to go south. I do two twelve hour clinical shifts two days in a row. I feel like I'm never go to see Cricket. I will see him, but it will be at bedtime only. I can feel myself starting to cry again about this.

I have to go now and start the craziness of my morning. I miss blogging. I miss checking on everyone everyday, but I'm still here. I still jump around and your blogs, I just don't comment as much. And hopefully I'll be able to update with more soon. (Like the fact that Cricket has three teeth! Teeth!)

Long Day

2007-09-05T21:56:00.000-04:00

I fell asleep, albeit momentarily, on my first day of nursing school. I was sitting in the second row. I could myself slipping away, almost like being sucked down a tunnel.

On a related note: why does croup get worse at night?

It's going to be a loooonng year.

Not Fallen Off the Face of the Flat Earth

2007-08-22T11:56:00.000-04:00

Just on vacation, then haggling over financial aid (not enough to cover tuition!), buying uniforms and books for the fall, trying to sell two houses, finding daycare and jobs, and finally, spending every single minute possible with Cricket before starting school full time in less than two weeks.

More soon, but an overseas houseguest (hurrah!) arrives tomorrow and there's much cleaning and work to be done still...

Life IS Good

2007-08-03T11:22:00.001-04:00

Amyesq got the news-- and pictures-- of her new TWINS.

I'm so excited I had to post it here too.

Congrats, Amy!! We love you!

Just a Little Creepy

2007-07-30T12:19:00.001-04:00

As we were having a post church Sunday morning breakfast with my parents, brother N, and his girlfriend, and we were talking about our near death experience Friday night (on a two lane road and a car coming in the opposite direction from some reason just came into our lane going about 70 miles an hour forcing me up onto the shoulder) this personcame into the restaurant. Not exactly who you want to see when discussing near death experiences. He sat next in the booth next to us. And regardless of how I feel or don't feel about euthanasia, I wasn't sure I wanted him near the Cricket. Odd that, eh?

I Saw the Sign

2007-07-27T16:11:00.000-04:00

...that we don't quite belong here (anymore).

Case in point: Earlier this summer, we cancelled our lawn fertilizer service. Not because it couldn't use it or even because we decided we were going to do it ourselves. I'd like to pretend that we cancelled it because we were concerned about the pesticides, and we are of course concerned about that, but quite honestly that is why we cancelled. We cancelled because our cash reserves were getting quite low and having an impeccably green lawn was low on the totem pole of needs.

Around the time we cancelled the service, I noticed that across the road from us the people that live there had a fairly large crew of landscapers. "Hm," I thought, "Spring clean-up." I thought about how nice it would be just to hire a crew of gardeners to come spruce up the place. I enjoyed the ethnic chatter from my own backyard. These guys worked hard.

A few weeks ago, I noticed them again, planting, weeding, mowing.

And today, there they, yet again.

People, I just realized this isn't a spring clean-up, mid-summer touch-up, high summer weed-out, these guys are their regular gardeners.

That's right: my neighbors don't just have a gardener, they have a crew, that appears to come at least once a week to mow, and twice a month to maintain the, shall we just say, grounds.

We so need to move.

Upgrading?

2007-07-16T15:55:00.001-04:00

If, for example, we were thinking of getting a new car seat, and knowing that Cricket probably weighs at this point around 22 pounds (we'll know for sure on Wednesday), what kind of car seat would you recommend and why?

Four Summer Things Cricket Loves

2007-07-12T23:00:00.000-04:00

1. The pool: Cricket is enjoying summer so far. He loves the pool. The first time we went in, I stupidly forgot the sun screen, so I was little obsessed about staying the shade and we only went in for a few minutes. On the Fourth, he did pool redux, this time with sunscreen. Unfortunately the pool was a little bit cooler, so we still didn't stay in that long. He went under twice, and after he got down looking shocked, he flashed a big smile. I can't wait to see what he's going to do in the ocean.

2. Mastering parseltongue and wrestling snakes: Best money I have ever spent at IKEA. He loves this snake almost as much as he loves the pool. I love to see him pull this snake all over the place.

3. Reading: He's figured out how to hold books up and look at the pictures, which I think is super, but just as often, he grabs the book to put into his mouth too. But he's looking on his own. I could swear that this morning he turned the page on his own, which I'm sure is a fluke, but it was great fun. 4. Hanging out in the hammock: He loves to be under the trees or looking up at the sky. He sings songs to the birds, which is really charming. He could be there for hours just looking up. He's looked up like this since he was just born. I wonder what it all means.

I'm Your Fire

2007-07-09T09:56:00.000-04:00

If I had to ask myself what famous person or icon I remind myself of lately, I know who it is. Any glance at myself in the mirror while naked tells me that I am the Venus of Willendorf.

And there is one pro and one con to that statement.

1.) (Pro) I can still see the goddess in myself,

and 2.) (con) that goddess is the Venus of Willendorf.

The Rosary Turtle

2007-07-06T11:39:00.000-04:00

I looked in at the Cricket a few minutes ago and noticed that he had with him in the swing a particular turtle that my parents brought back with them from South Carolina when I was still in labor. That turtle stayed with him in the NICU and sat next to the monitor, looking down at him as things beeped and whirred away. The turtle itself was a reminder to me think about the beach in SC where my parents have a home. I thought about this beach during the requisite "be still" time after the transfer of Cricket. I told the little embryos inside me if they stayed (preferably one, please) I would take them down the ocean and let them swim away. Play on the beach. This place is my own personal happy place. Looking at this little turtle while we were in the NICU helped me try to remember that place. It didn't always work, but it was enough.

After about a week in the NICU I was down in the chapel of the hospital, trying to get it together. A woman came in who was probably some sort of Eucharistic minister to those in the hospital and asked me if I wanted to take the sacrament. I did. I could barely keep it together as she prayed with me, and when she said the "Angel of God" prayer*, a prayer we said every night of my childhood and at the start of any car trip longer than 20 minutes, I out and out cried. She then slipped a small cheap pink plastic rosary into my hand. I went back upstairs to the NICU and wrapped the rosary around the middle of the turtle, tucking it under the sweatshirt the turtle was wearing.

Soon after, Cricket went on the mend.

I haven't taken the rosary off the turtle, so when I saw the turtle in Cricket's pudgy little hand, I thought about whether I should go remove the turtle or let it be. I let it be. I mentioned to Partner that next time he got the turtle, we should take off the rosary.

"I already did," she said. "I give him that turtle every day during his nap and never knew it was there until one day I saw this little cross sticking out. I ripped it off then."

"Okay. Good. That rosary is what made him get better."

She stopped and looked at me very seriously. "Do you really believe that? I mean, Katie, do you really believe it was that rosary? Maybe it was the turtle?"

"No, he had the turtle from the time he was born."

"Maybe it was the little hat he wore?" She was incredulous.

"No, it wasn't his hat. He also had the hat right away too." I was serious. She was almost laughing.

"I can't believe you think it was that rosary that made him better."

I pouted a little, but had to think about it. Did I really think it was a pink, plastic rosary that made Cricket get better and get out of the NICU?

My grandmother was firm believer in holy water. Sprinkle the holy water and things would heal. She told a story about her mother on the farm in Canada. There was tornado headed straight for their house and her mother went out into the yard and sprinkled holy water in all for corners of the yard and the tornado veered right off. Never hit their house. Now, we all know that tornadoes have erratic patterns, but to my grandmother it was the holy water that spared them. She would have been insulted if you had suggested otherwise. I always chuckled a little (inside) when she told this story, but how is that so different from me telling Partner that the rosary was responsible for making Cricket better?

Partner ended up comparing this to picking up a penny. "Does the penny really bring you luck?" Hm. I pointed out that prayer was different from this. "Sure, prayer. But waving a rosary above someone's head is not prayer." She's right. That's not prayer. Which is not to say that I wasn't living one big long extended prayer the whole time he was in the NICU. Life was a prayer then: please make me strong enough to deal with this, please let him eat, please let him breathe, please get him of CPAP, please let that monitor stop going off, please don't let him pull out the NG tube again, please let him be okay, please, please, please.

So what about that penny? It won't give me good luck, but I'm not about to pass it up. I'll pick up that penny as a hedged bet. But that's got to be different from faith. Faith as superstition? I don't think of myself as this type of person, but hey, I've buried St. Joseph not only in my yard, but several places on the blog as well. When I lived in Ireland, I crossed myself as we passed a church, just like all the oul wans. I know the patron saints for many different situations. Does this make me superstitious or just culturally very Catholic? But realistically faith has to be different than "step on crack, break your mother's back." It's not a cause and direct effect relationship. And to think about faith that way or imbue objects with magical powers, well, that could end up being downright dangerous.

I don't know. I guess I don't think it was the rosary that made Cricket better. It was time, good nurses and doctors, himself, our real prayers. All of that.

But I also think it didn't hurt.

(*Angel of God prayer the way we said it: Angel of God, our guardian dear, to whom God's love commits us here, ever this day and ever this night, be at my side to light, to guard, and to keep us near.)

Still Selling

2007-07-02T22:29:00.000-04:00

Today I got very surly as we loaded the Cricket into the car, yet again, for another showing. Why do they always want to see the house when it's his nap time? And just as a matter of reference, this is how desperate we are: the showing today was not for a sale, but for a renter. And we mistakenly put the price for rent about $900 dollars cheaper than we should have. Who wouldn't want to rent our house for the price we listed?

Apparently it doesn't make a difference to the guy who saw the house today since his company would be paying the rent. He's coming back tomorrow to take pictures to send to his wife, who lives in a different hemisphere. I don't want to say more than that. (But I cooked lamb in the house tonight and am considering leaving my Wallabies tee shirt out in the closet, maybe a rugby call on the back deck...) But if they want to rent this house for at least a year, with the option of staying on for a year or two after that, maybe the Michigan market could rebound in that time and instead of selling our house for under appraised value, we might actually sell it for what it's worth.

You know the market in Michigan is bad when even the builder can't make money on her own home.

I get a little frustrated when I read blogs of other Michigan home sellers who are frustrated that their houses aren't selling and they've only been on the market for a few weeks. (Just FYI, I'm not talking about people I actually know.) I want to whine, "Look at me! Our house has been for sale for a year! A year! And now we own TWO houses for sale!" But realistically, I have to look at the house I'm living in. I can't complain. Really. I live in the type of house I thought I'd never live in. We're leaving behind this lifestyle for some time to come, perhaps forever, so maybe I should just enjoy the life of Reilly while I can. Mix up some martinis and sit on the back deck, look out over the backyard. Grill up with friends while we have room to mingle and then some...

The truth is that we're mostly moving because of money at this point. Michigan has the highest unemployment in the nation, and guess what? When people are unemployed, the real estate market tanks, and then guess what? People aren't really building homes either. Since our fates were hitched on the building star, which has now fallen in a blazing glory to earth, we're crushed under its weight.

But the fact of the matter is that we've wanted to change our lifestyle for some time now. We don't feel like we're living very responsibly. Before this point there have been two of us living in 3400 sq ft house. When we started planning the new house, we were going to go smaller, and somehow it ended up 400 sq ft bigger. (Although we were more "green" in our approach there; the geothermal heating and cooling rocks!) But there's no reason we need this much space or need to use as many natural resources as it takes to live in a house like this. And even with Cricket, we still don't need this much space. In fact, I'm positive I'd like less space with him. Less time cleaning/weeding = more time with child.

I also want to teach him different values about work. Right now we have someone mow our lawn, shovel our driveway, mulch our beds, etc. What does that teach him about ownership? I want to do those things as a family. Even though I complained as kid about things like raking, it was actually fun to be out in the yard on a crisp autumn afternoon with dad and a rake, and the delight of finishing a hard job. There was something almost magical going out to shovel the driveway late at night in the middle of a snowstorm. The snow swirling in flakes around your face lit up by the porch light and the muffled silence and scrape of the shovel on the drive and the promise of hot drink that would make your cold hands tingle when you got back inside. Warming up under the blanket was that much sweeter for the work you did.

I also want him to have friends to play with and places to ride his bike. That doesn't exist here. Brother K thinks I'm crazy-- our backyard is sizable and he thinks this is a kid's dream, but it wouldn't have been for me. I suppose I've always been social, but I think having a small yard with a kid next door or down the street is preferable to playing alone in your acre backyard. Yawn. Boooorrrrinnnggg. When I think about what I loved as a kid it was playing with other kids in the neighborhood. And I went everywhere on my bike: the library, the swim club, friends houses, my grandmother's, church, school-- everywhere. It was exciting when a parent would propose an after dinner bike ride to get ice cream. Now we'd be taking our lives into our hands to go bike out on the road next to our house.

And I hate that if I want to go for a walk with Cricket, I have to load him in the car seat from hell, drive to a neighborhood or downtown, unload him, and then stroll. I tried walking him on our cul de sac; it was like watching paint dry. It would be so much fun to just go out the door with him and, voila! Sidewalks and neighbors-- what fun, oh my! When we walk through the neighborhoods I covet, I love to look at the kids toys out in front of houses, sidewalk chalk drawings, strollers parked in driveways, and imagine our lives in such a place. Once when we were taking an evening walk I overheard another child leaving a friend's house. "Goodnight, Henry-who-has-to-sleep-soon!" he called out. Other children were busy spraying each other with a hose. I want those memories for Cricket, not playing alone in his big backyard.

The logistics of our downsizing are something to consider though. In all likelihood we'll rent while I'm in school. Even we don't rent, we're planning on moving from a 3400 sq ft house, not including the basement in that footage, and a three car garage to something probably around 800 to 1200 sq ft. (IKEA here we come!) We won't have a formal dining room and kitchen nook, so what do we do with two tables? No more four bedrooms, so two there's two extra beds to contend with. It highlights the excess we've been living with, and it's a hideous addiction. Even in the quest to downsize, do you see how I call for even more consumption? (The IKEA reference.) I don't need to buy more stuff to downsize, but it's so how we get used to living. It's time to break the cycle.

So rent my house. Buy my house. It's horrible and sad and scary and exciting and liberating and new all the same time. I think I'm ready.

What We Learned Today

2007-07-02T19:04:00.000-04:00

Cricket's lesson from the President today:

Go ahead and commit any crime you want, just make sure you do while working for President George W. Bush.

I can't even big to express how incredibly pissed off I am right now.

Because Everyone's Doing It

2007-06-26T15:56:00.000-04:00

I had to too:

Apparently because of the frequent references to "breast" and "lesbian" and "gay".

Who knew that feeding one's kid made one R rated?

As for the lesbians...

On and On, On and On, On and On.

2007-06-21T16:28:00.000-04:00

I'm so sick of cleaning this house. Another showing tomorrow. I hope these people like it. Half our furniture is at the Showcase house so our own home looks alternately really empty and really big. After we moved out the TV armoire, the two club chairs, and the side table from the family room, I looked at Partner and said, "Wow, this is a really big room." People have commented that the room is too small. It looks big again. At least with the reduced furniture, it's easier to clean. Not as much dusting. And vacuuming can happen without having to move pesky chairs and such.

There's no dining room table here anymore either. It's also doing double duty across the street. Along with all Cricket's furniture, and the guest room.

The house looks like one of those big houses that people move into and then can't furnish. I want to post a note:

NB: We do own furniture. Go across street to Showcase house to
see it. Or don't go across. Just stay here, imagine your own furnishings, and buy this house.

In the interest of selling, my monthly burying of Saint Joseph on the blog:

If We Can Just...

2007-06-19T14:48:00.000-04:00

Our house has been for sale for nearly or over a year now. I can't really think about it too much. People keep coming through it, which is great since it means it still generates interest, and there have been several "second" showings, but no bites. One person has even looked at it three times. Three times, lady? You like it already! Buy it! We're selling it for under appraised value, significantly under value, mind you.

I've found myself thinking, "If we can just sell our house, I'll be happy."

How often do we set ourselves up by thinking like that? I'll just be happy if: we sell the house, we find the house, I lose X pounds, I get the job, I get into that school, I obtain that degree, I have a baby...

Let's take that last one for example-- the baby. I know that I thought I'd have everything I wanted if I just had the baby. That I'd be happy. And then after Cricket was born and in the NICU and I spent so much time crying, and even after that when he came home and it was freezing cold and I felt like a prisoner in my home, I didn't have that "happy" I had envisioned. I had to realign my expectations, but the fact of the matter is that we do this to ourselves. Set ourselves up in some fairy land where one thing is the answer to everything. And really, has it ever worked that way? The odds are pretty low.

There's no magic pebble, Sylvester.

I won't be any more or less happy on the whole if we sell this house or not. If we do get an offer (soon), I'll be really happy for a few hours, and then the realization that we'll have to pack up our house will set in. And then as much as I think we'll be happier living in a smaller house in a city neighborhood, I'm pretty damn sure there will be pitfalls associated with that too. In reality, I'm a pretty happy person, but as much as that's true, I still find I need to remind myself of that fact every once in awhile. Like when our house has been on the market for over a year.

I don't mean to suggest that there aren't situations where getting out of them or into them might really change one's general happiness level. After I graduated from college, I went to live in the UK for a boyfriend and it was disastrous. I really was much happier after I left him. But it was so much more immediate then. I didn't find myself saying, "I'll be happier if I can just break up and leave M," instead I just knew I had to get out. When I did, I realized how much improved my life was.

I just think it's dangerous to assume that there will this one thing that will change and make you a happy person. I think the happiness we feel is inside and comes from our general outlook on the world, and so often we all fall inside the "I'll just be happy when..." trap. I'm trying to avoid going there again, but at the same time, I still think I'll just be damn overjoyed when this house finally sells.

All Nighters of a New Kind

2007-06-15T22:17:00.000-04:00

We have some good friends and family. I'm all welly with tears right now. I'm at home, but at the house we have in the Showcase tour of homes this year is one of my brothers, Partner, a good friend's husband, two more good friends, and their child and they are all pitching in to get this damn house ready for thousands of people to troop through it starting tomorrow. I honestly thought at point it was never going to get done, but it is. And it's all done to the really really great friends we have.

Now if they could just find someone to buy it too!

Silent Fireworks

2007-06-13T23:17:00.000-04:00

The backyard in dusk, and my chair in the window. The fan blowing across the room. Clair de Lune, just as I imagined it always would be. His legs curled around my body, eyes just closed, breastfeeding to sleep. And fireflies, everywhere, lighting up the backyard with brilliant moments of peace.

How to NOT watch the Soprano Finale

2007-06-11T11:02:00.001-04:00

On Sunday night, your kid who normally goes to sleep without a hitch will suddenly freak out. You will feed him normally on your right breast and when it's time to switch, he will not take the left breast for the world. He will clamp his lips shut, arch away from the breast as if it were the worst thing he ever smelled and promptly begin screaming/crying. You will woefully look at the clock. Ten to nine. You will squeeze said breast to see if any milk comes out. It does. You smell it. It's fine. You worry it was that glass of wine you had with dinner. Did it effect one breast and not the other? Screaming/crying continues, so you stand up and begin walking him around. Standing on the balcony outside your bedroom calms him down, but he's waking up even more, looking intently at the dusky backyard.

At some point, you woefully realize that even though all day you have been excited to watch the Sopranos, as it happens and not delayed, it's going to be a TiVo experience. That's okay. Maybe you'll just be a little behind.

But oh-no! Your child will fuss and cry for so long that you are sure he's got intussusception because there were a few poops with blood in them over the last week and he has only had one big and one small poop on that day, less than usual. You will begin to freak yourself out about it. Your partner will try and calm you down. It barely works, but eventually you get the Cricket to sleep by standing in the totally dark closet singing old church hymns like "On this Day, Oh Beautiful Mother" and "Salve Regina" while all the while you are feverishly praying to Our Lady to help make you a calm mother who doesn't freak out at everything and please, please, please help your overtired baby go to sleep. It works. Baby falls asleep and goes down in cosleeper, finally. It's 10:30 pm.

You join your partner downstairs, where you find that she put out some profiteroles, what she thought was going to be a Sopranos treat. You ignore the profiteroles (for a minute) and gulp the rest of the (one) glass of wine you tried to eat with dinner. You then promptly eat the profiteroles, but not as a Soprano snack. Instead you watch two episodes of the British soap you have been helplessly addicted to for the past thirteen (yes, I said thirteen) years. You are so upset by one of the current story lines that you don't feel you can go sleep, even at 11:30, a time you haven't willingly stayed awake to for a goodly while.

As you and your partner go to upstairs, you comment that neither of you will be able to watch anything or listen to anything until you have watched the Sopranos. And then you fall asleep, actually, relatively easy.

In the morning as you breastfeed your baby, you watch Good Morning America and promptly fast forward the portion where they talk about The Sopranos. You aren't proud that the nipple fell out of the baby's mouth as you lunged for the remote, but you do feel pleased that you've avoided any spoilers.

When the baby goes for his morning nap, you prep your lab for the next day. And then after that, before you start studying for test two, you decide you'll check Google news, forgetting that there is a big "Entertainment" news section. And then you will see a headline about the show. And you will not be able to get what you read out of your head. And you might think, "Why bother even watching now?" But you will still watch, but probably not until tomorrow after you are done with your Organic Biochem test. And you will have to put yourself into a little bubble until then so you don't find out anything more than you already did.

*Sigh*

Don't tell me anything about the show. Don't even hint. I'm going to study now, but the only thing that will stick in my pathetic brain is not going to be anything about fatty acids, sphingosphines, or carbohydrate hydrolysis, it's going to be all (vaffancullo!) Tony and Paulie.

Cricket Food

2007-06-08T16:27:00.001-04:00

I'm not saying it's going to start soon. In fact I'd rather it didn't start for awhile, but I believe the time is near.

Cricket may want to eat food soon. He got a very very cool spoon from his Grandma P and transferred it from hand to hand quite adeptly, if I do say so myself, and then put it into his mouth. Repeatedly.

I am not going to feed him anything other that the breast for a bit to come. I think he should be a confident sitter before feeding him. (I can come up with a thousand reasons to not give him anything other than the breast, and really, I'm not planning on feeding him "food" next week or anything...)

But it is going to happen, and when it does, I want to be prepared. I plan on making the food myself. And as a cookbook aficionado, I want to know good baby food making sources.

Now comment! Please!