mantis guy

Originally uploaded by jyllianm

A new born baby mantis guy. He let us take pictures as we were eating our dinner outside. He skittered back and forth and was so tiny it was hard to catch him,but there he is.

cattable3

Originally uploaded by jyllianm

What your dining room table isn’t full of cats and princess dresses?
Well that’s sad for you.

We had this tiny little (ok not so tiny or little over 8lbs) baby dear. Squinched up face, cutest toes in the world (still are, and I still want to kiss ‘em much to her chagrin “oh mommy I’m much too old for that,”) tiny long fingers and opinionated from the get go.

My life has been a long, winding journey. I’ve had a lot of pain, sorrow and confusion but there are three things that I know I’ve done right.

Bean is the best one. Marrying J the other and being a catslave is the third. Yeah I’ve done lots of cool things, built them, learned them, all that– but these three are the best.

There is a certain kind of love that comes with being a parent. It is nearly impossible to describe. I’d lay down my life for J and the Bean, but I think I might have to find a way to become a ghost for her–just to make sure she was ok.

Bean at 8 is a kind girl. She even worries about the meankids–’maybe their mommies and daddies don’t love them enough, ” “maybe they are scared,” so we have to teach her to protect herself now, to not let her concern for them override her own happiness. She is a smart girl–reads like we hoped she would, going through Lemony Snickett (really for 9 and above) loves science, has questions about everything. She’s got a voice that will bring tears to your eyes–and this isn’t just me talking, others have told us. She’s so affectionate and loves to make others happy. I still get cuddles and we have the best talks. Finally, she’s a a beauty. Yes I’m her mother and yes I’m partial but it is nice we made a sum who is greater than her parts.

Because of her we wanted to have other children. We can’t, but we know, *I know* how lucky we are to have her–I wouldn’t want her to be any different. She couldn’t be any more wonderful.

Dearest Bean

We love you so very much. We are so proud of you. You are better than

we dreamed. We’ll always be there for you.

Love

Mom and Dad

The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions–was it He that bore?
And yesterday–or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow–
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

~Emily Dickinson

Our daughter is named after Emily Dickinson. We had several other names picked out for other possible children. They didn’t happen. 3 miscarriages did.

Anyone who has read this blog for any amount of time has read my processing of these. I’ve read other blogs about miscarriages. There is one internetfamous blogger (Julia maybe?) who had something like 12 miscarriages before she got her twins. I honestly can’t imagine. Each time I lost a pregnancy at 8, 9 and 10 weeks it was horrific. Aside from the physical pain the emotional loss was cause for a shutdown.

And there were tests and there were no reasons for the losses. They just happened. Because of age.

And there was that one cruel and thoughtless OB at Willow Creek Emily Hinton, who sent me back out into the general waiting room after telling me there was no heartbeat and it happened because I was old.

And then came the doctor visits and the suggestions for hormones, some of the same ones that made me loony, really really loony. And tests and more tests and it couldn’t go on.

And I started to give up and move on and try and find what was next.

Let’s skip the M.A.T. program shall we? I’m glad I tried it, but Wooboy was that the wrong thing.

And now working again and finding out I’m still skilled, actually even more skilled than I’d thought.

And today I let it all go, with J’s help. I went through our three saved boxen. The clothes, the toys and the accoutrement. I took out what I need for the Bean to have when she grows up, very little actually. A dress or two I wore when I was pregnant, because I remember how cool it was that my mother had one of those and I wore it as a teenager as vintage emo kind of clothing (my mom is very skinny, I’m taller). I want Bean to have something I wore while she was gestating.

Oh…I think about how amazing that whole thing was and I feel such sadness that I’ll not have that again. The spine and skull on the ultrasound, seeing the toes or little hand go across my very large stomach. The jig J and I did after we heard the heartbeat and saw her the first time at 10 weeks and all the grownups stared and thought we were quite odd, but we were so very happy. The weird dancing she’d do when I’d drink gatorade. The fact I could actually feel, once in awhile, like I was doing something older than time and well, miraculous. That as much as I didn’t want to get all new agey and hippy dippy–that I was connected to all women and all children there for awhile.

And I have a pain deep in my heart. I love being a mom, probably better than just about anything except being married to J.

But it is done. A good friend and someone who will be a kind, happy mother has taken those things. I have let the universe take hold of this now. I hope I don’t have to hold onto this wish too much longer, I’m trying, oh I’m trying to let go.

~Thoreau (right?) Somehow I always want to attribute this to the Die Blechtrommel.

I march to a very different drum. Part of this has to do with my past. It wasn’t easy and that is a considerable understatement. I hope, in the near future to be able to work with kids about bullying and overcoming other…things.

Nuff said for now.

I have had an odd week. I am both very happy and not and I’m not yet sure what to do about it. ‘

I love what I’m doing, but not sure yet if it is the right fit or how I can make it the right fit. I can’t dooce myself so I’ll shut up. It’s got so much wonderful in it I’d really like to make it work. ((c) Tim Gunn)

This weekend I am attempting to clear out the saved toys, maternity clothes and baby supplies we had saved in hope for another child.

Because we aren’t going to have one.

And my heart is broken about this. Yes yes I know I am an emotional type. I’ve always been that way and I’m not changing now. I used to hate this about myself, but so I feel things deeply, so what. So you can count on me to REALLY commisserate with you and I can be a bit needy. Except for the fact I tend toward being a hermit.

Whatever.

I just feel the need to say that while you complain about not sleeping or your annoying second child, while you grutch about this second one not being compliant or how difficult your labor was…

well you know what

You are lucky it happened at all. Some of us would sell a bit of our souls for your complaints.

Just sayin. Roll your eyes all you want to at my self indulgent navel gazing, but hey–YOU, you have two kids. I have one kid and three miscarriages.

(I feel guilty about not ending this on an understanding note or being kinder, because I do love my friends with two kids, but…dammit, I’m giving away things I saved for our second child, give me a break and some understanding ok?)

the clouds are low along the ridges,
and sweet’s the air with curly smoke
from all my burning bridges.

Dorothy Parker (1893 – 1967), SANCTUARY

Welly well. I’m sitting down and having a beer before my Spring break. Not the Spring break of my 2nd graduate degree, but the spring break of my gainful employment in the school system as a tech/curriculum specialist.

I have to say I really like my job for the most part. I didn’t realize until, well until I got to the Arkansas Curriculum conference and fixed some things that were broken and talked to some teachers about making technology work for them…I didn’t realize fully how much I like fixing things. How I like to make things work. How I enjoy helping people who are doing something really worthwhile, to deal with the tools they need to use.

Don’t get me wrong. I love reading as much as cats and nearly as much as breathing I just though of how it might hurt to lose my personal secret joy and love of lit by having to force it into “standards”

I’m kinda bugged by what NCLB has done to education But I”m determined to help teachers find a way to deal with that that…whatever it is and still bring joy to learning.

Oh yeah and seriously technology is the great equalizer and I’m determined that every kid in every house, in every trailer in every freaking possible situation will know how to deal with all the basics when they leave MY schools. Yeah. I claim ownership. I will be part of the difference.

I still get to be a teacher. I still get to deal with kids and adults. I just don’t get that extra degree and certificate. I guess I’ll wait a little bit and see if that hurts my ego. I don’t think it will though because…well I have extra degrees already and I respect my father’s ability to build and fix things. Is it wrong to enjoy bringing a puzzle to its completion? Am I less than suddenly because I can use a screwdriver?

I’m happy. I know there is a quote…not all who wander are lost. I’ve wandered a lot. I was supposed to have retired. I had achieved everything I wanted to …but then I couldn’t have another child. Then I couldn’t stay home and be mommy. We have a gorgeous amazing girl but she doesn’t need me home all the time. It would be easier if I were, but without a baby dear, well I just…can’t. I could, but I can’t. I need to contribute something more.

My husband makes enough for me not to work and I didn’t and I”m glad I didn’t. I needed the time with the Bean. BUT before you write me off–it wasn’t easy. It required fear and compromise. I’m glad we did it, even if we are spending the next five months getting straight with debt. I was a latchkey kid and was scared every afternoon. I didn’t like many of my baby sitters. I didn’t like being alone.

Would I do it again. I love that child. If I knew I could have two, yes. If I knew I’d be living through so many miscarriages I’d go back to being careergirl sooner. Why? It hurts less.

I’d be a stay at home mommy until 7. Almost too much. If I could choose I”d always be a stay at home mommy. At least until both kids were 7. I love that time with them.

Well then. I’m too old to have another baby, but I’m glad I can help teach yours about how to grok technology.

I love Oscar Wilde. A bisexual who irritated everyone. Hmmm…

So yeah I pissed off a few people with my last post. It’s not the first post I got email on from random people on the internet but hey…I got some. .

Why did my er…anti Valentine’s post bug people. I think, if you like doing that you should. I just um…don’t. There is something dead in that spot or numb or nonexistent. And for the reasons I said earlier that pissed all ya’ll off.

I’d like to think of it as bad writing why you all got angry. Honestly, it has to be bad writing because all I’ve been doing is academic or memo writing which is heinous. My creative writing skills have atrophied and I”m trying to rectify that. I should have made my intent clearer. I was supposed to make you think about WHY you celebrate Valentine’s and offer an alternative view (and there were so many Valentine’s –they were stoned or shot with multiple arrows or stabbed …sheesh)

Maybe I spent TOO much time in the stacks at school. And really I was fascinated by the Saints. One day I’ll tell you about Christina the Astonishing (one of my faves).

About Valentines, let me make this clear. It is great if you do, especially if you get sex or chocolate out of it. Like lots of chocolate. Like willy fucking wonka chocolate. Or um Tequila.

Perhaps I’m crippled.

I am only weirdly romantic. I can’t explain it. My husband and I got married on Halloween so we’d always dress up and give candy to kids and ghosts would visit us on our anniversary. I also don’t like diamonds and have issues about how you deal with my birthday; YOU do the math.

T Here is a really damn good reason we’re married. We irritate each other less than other people would irritate us. And he likes cats. Oh and he’s a great Dad. Also he’s really freaking nice to me in a way I understand. As I am to him.

He also gives me space. Space to screw up. Space to be alone. Space to read. Like I do him. We come together we move apart. He’s a hermit and I’m less so. He’s a friendly misanthrope and I’m an unfriendly humanist. A match made in…well somewhere.

Ok..so did I make that clear for all those who are pissed at me, love me, used to love me, would like to love, might love me in the future, or who think I am a total douche?

Have valentine’s and really really get squishy with it if it makes you happy. I mean that!

I had something more to say tonight, but it got caught up in the above.

And you know…I get tired of explaining myself.

I either charm people or annoy them. I do this in person or with my writing. You either like me or think I’m a deer tick. I suck or I don’t. I am sliced bread or catpoo in your toaster oven.

Just dropping in to say that any second now I’m going to find my rhythm and start writing here regularly again. It’s been quite a transition to go from the insanity of school to working full time. It’s an improvement on so many levels, but now we need to find the way this will work for all of us, the family flow of the many things we need to get done and would like to do.

And now my .02 on Valentine’s Day.

Foo.

I don’t care for it, I think I quit caring for it before I actually gave up on it because I thought I was supposed to care about it. Somewhere in 1993 maybe? Eh I’ve had folks that made an effort and it was nice but very rarely was did it ever make sense. It just felt forced. And the best Valentine’s is this..and the last 10. Why?

Because we just don’t do it. The Bean does and that’s fun. Kids doing Valentine’s with friends is just great, but the rest of it is contrived. Isn’t it just a greeting card holiday? It may have begun based in an ancient fertility festival, but fertility has never been a big part of my life–well I avoided it longer than I wanted it. Then wanted it fiercely …and now I’ve given up on it. Maybe if I think about February as being the month the “birds began to pair” as it was in the middle ages it isn’t so bad.

This sounds a lot more depressing than it is. I just don’t get it. I love his birthday and getting him surprises for no reason. I love our anniversary–but this seems somehow impersonal. Perhaps because we’d be sharing it with everyone else and we’re just not joiners. Hee.

Anyway. Happy Valentine’s to those who celebrate it and I hope you enjoyed your Sunday to everyone else.

The following outpouring brought on by watching Emily dance unreservedly to Clementine by Pink Martini. If I ever get my video rendering capabilities up to snuff I’ll post a link here. Just trust me-it is 7 year old interpretive dance at its best. You know-remember how YOU felt being seven and dancing, just dancing. No judgment, just dancing. Ahhh. It was gorgeous.

I’ve always been overly affected by music. I won’t tell you what my first listening of the eponymous Psychedelic Furs did to the next several years of my life way back when or why the Dead Kennedys caused me to shave my head when everyone knew that girls were supposed to be pretty not angry. But it didn’t stop way back when. I just can’t help being beaten or seduced by music. Have you ever had a song hit you unexpectedly? A song in a style you maybe you don’t normally listen to? Or from an unexpected source? One that grabs your guts, give you shivers and just stuns you? This has happened to me several times lately.

One was, of all things a song by Everlast from a TV show–the theme to saving grace. Yes I like the show and character (a lot actually, I fancy myself having a bit of her type of personality in me) but those of you who know me know this ain’t my usual kind of music–I’m more of a Dead Can Dance, Abney Park, gothy techno girl).

I also have a complicated relationship with the themes of that song…my spirituality is in flux and my understanding of the divine is now interspersed with moments of earth shattering congruence (When all of a person`s internal beliefs, strategies, and behaviours are fully in agreement and oriented toward securing a desired outcome–basically when everything is exactly as it should be ) which are leading me to places of thought and belief I’ve not been before).

But for some reason this song just tears me up. It makes me shiver, it nearly makes me cry, it certainly makes me feel fierce. Yes really. All that. What don’t you have those sorts of reactions to music?

Another bit of music that hit me hard came when I was student teaching in Sharla’s class. She played Explosions in the Sky to help the kids during writing time. I’d never heard them before. It think they are on a tv show someone said, but I’d never heard of them. (Confession: I go through spates of watching a lot of TV. I have it on authority (notice I didn’t say good) that I’m supposed to feel badly about that; however I read an obscene amount so I don’t. And I spent about 8 years without a TV so I’ve got the cred already). Anyway, I now have three of their CDs and I’m looking into the instrumental post rock genre now. Do what?

I’ll forever associate this music with this …do I say attempt? Do I say deviation? I don’t feel as if I failed when I left the M.A.T. program, though this is hard won. I feel …well all who wander are not lost, you know? I wanted that, it was a dream I’d had since I was a kid, but I found the dream and reality didn’t mesh. I found I really wanted something different and I’m lucky enough that I’ve got that now. But back to the music. Explosions in the Sky will always mean meeting a new and amazing friend, someone I feel touched my soul almost immediately, someone who replaced a darker, earlier incidence of a similar meeting. EitS also soars and crashes as I did during that 5 months. I learned so much, in some ways more than I wanted to. I wish I could have kept the idealism but …I can’t. I’ve seen too much in my life. Explosions in the sky is all of that.

I made a video (actually several) during my time in the teaching program. It is almost painful for me to watch now. I was angry by that point. ONE girl,worked with me on it,the other did almost nothing. I did all the video work and if you know about how much goes into something like this you KNOW…well I just can’t do less than my best. The time I let that happen in classroom management class…EW…that’s another story and another part of the reason I left the program. You know it actually IS important to do your best;. Yes I like doing stuff like this but it only works easily if you do WHAT I ASK YOU TO DO –Yo, respect your compatriots right?

I wish I hadn’t quit, but only because I hate to quit, hate to give up– not because it was the wrong decision, it’s just that I hate quitting. But– I guess when you spend a week in the fetal position, crying and sick, that’s telling you something. I will applaud in awe of those who finish and go on…it ain’t for me–you know how much I’ve always chafed against “the system.” And I can support people working creatively within the system I just can’t be the one…”kicking against the pricks.” (Nick Cave) Something I’ve learned often and again now–I do better liminally. Jyllian exists just to the side of most things. I am happiest that way. Anyway–this music will always be this highs and lows, the sorrows and triumphs of reaching for that dream, holding it and putting it(not so) gently away. At least I know that when I am on my deathbed, I will not have that as regret. I would have before.

Finally The Penguin Cafe Orchestra. J and I watched a movie that I despise–Napoleon Dynamite (I find it mean spirited, not funny) but there was a song in it that I had to find. It was Song for a Found Harmonium by PCO. To say it changed me is an understatement. I began finishing my mid life crisis because of this music. Some of ya’ll might know I started off as a kid with a classical music fixation–even years later when I worked for KUAF I did CLASSICS BY REQUEST, not because I got paid (that helped) but I love(d) classical music. Honestly I like most music…I think I’ve even found some country and some western. I like expressions of feeling with instruments—words or not. So when I started looking for the next thing… I ran across this song after hating this movie (late to seeing it). Because with a kid–we don’t’ see movies most times (until recently) until they’ve been out of the theatres for about a year or more.

ANYway…I spent my first year in Fayetteville going through (the trauma) of moving home. Moving back after 20 years is good, but not without challenges. There’s more of that in another entry. But after that first year I had 2 deaths, and three miscarriages in er..my first 3 years back in the land I grew up in. Oh yeah and major surgery (and I’ll never ever get over certain good folk who brought us food, mowed our lawn..god no adequate words for those kindnesses). And I got back one of my two best friends (the other died when she was 24 and me 26) and then she left a couple of years later. Wow I just saw that written down and um yeah…so no wonder I’ve been a bit looney. Ok…This music IS me coming to terms with past, present and future. There’s classical and punk in Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Just like me. Comic books AND Candide. Sex pistols and Stravinsky. Emily Dickinson and eXene Cervenka. yep.

So this turned into something much bigger than I intended. I just wanted to know what music grabbed you by the guttiwuts recently. So do please respond. I’m always taking in new music.

Saving Grace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxu21fYnKMw

Explosions in the sky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosions_in_the_Sky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jotDBl1vilg

Penguin Café Orchestra
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJg1NNyke2E
another song that makes me feel like I”m a kid running down a hill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvbCV6E0Wro

http://www.penguincafe.com/