Once again I’ll thank you for the pokes and proddings to catch up, to write more. We’ve had an eventful last several weeks, both good and bad. The bad is that my stepfather has returned to the hospital then been moved back to the skilled nursing facility. He won’t be leaving there anytime soon. My mother almost never leaves. When she does he gets upset which saddens her. She needs to take more time for herself and I’ve said so and she will if she feels like she can.

I’ve had a health scare myself. I don’t want to go further into it than that. It was a frightening miscommunication between the doctor and myself. When everything was sorted out the news is still not wonderful but much less bad. It was a terrifying 48 hours though. Really horrible. Life flashing before my eyes and all that. The news that is isn’t great but there are things we can do.

We’ve been very busy with the Bean. She’s been in soccer camp, Drama camp and this week swim and fitness camp. They meet a different parks for three hours a day and the folks work for the parks, the schools and are interested in becoming teachers. They are wonderful. Very patient and encouraging. It’s kept Bean from being bored out of her mind during a wet and upsetting summer.

I’ve joined a gym. I have very little idea what I’m doing. I lift weights for 30 or 40 minutes in no set order every other day. Arms,legs and abdomen. I run like a rat on the wheel for 30-50 minutes every day of the week. I wonder how long it will take to see a difference? I’m guessing about 5 weeks. That’s what it took before all those miscarriages. I’d lost 20 some odd pounds and had a nice bit o definition in my abs. And so I’m back to the drawing board and trying not to be too hard on myself. Having the Ipod and two new Abney Park CDs helps a lot. I’m just hoping if I sweat a lot that means I’m getting somewhere.

I organized an outting to the incredible Ravenwood Festival on the 12th. We had to leave a little earlier than I’d hoped (the Bean was staying with my sister ALL NIGHT~!!)and missed the after party, but it was still wonderful. Abney Park is my new passion. I liked them before but seeing them live and actually talking to them–well they are both talented and nice. And gorgeous, all of them. It was the big fun to get dressed up again. J and I spend so much time being parents and doing our life things that we don’t have much time for our preferred pasttimes (involving dressing up, random spookiness and music usually)so it was bliss to get to do this. George’s was transformed and the Bands were AMAZING. I’ve got several CDs to pick up soon. I think I’ve already worn out my Abney Park’s Lost Horizon’s

I suggested J’s outfit and helped dress the girls. J loaned G2 some old Docs with buckles he had. And I got to wear a flouncy skirt AND my paratrouper boots. Yes, that was good.

That’s me with forceps from the turn of the century by way of Lisa. I had a monocle from then as well.

That is the very handsome Captain Robert

And again.

Ms. Lisa

Gary and Laura

J and I

Every time I see another infertility blog announce a birth…I wait to see the picture of the baby, almost as if I don’t believe it. I think about that lovely babyhead smell, that incredible miracle looking back at you with sweetly unfocused eyes in which you can see the vast potential for life, those tiny toes and fingers that somehow are more delectable than the finest truffle…

I think about all that and I delete the blog off my list.

I still get angy in the maternity section of clothing stores. I don’t get angry when I see pregnant women or small babies. I mark each month off in my calendar resignedly, wistfully and sometimes fearfully. More often fearfully.

I wonder when this will stop?  Menopause perhaps, or not, if that comes early. So when? When will the sorrow and reflections of sorrow leave. When will the anger be not even a memory?

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,
Which shows like grief itself, but is not so;
For sorrow’s eye, glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects;
Like perspectives, which rightly gazed upon
Show nothing but confusion,….

Richard II

OK then, my friend A isn’t here yet and the Bean is playing Jumpstart 1st grade (smarTYpants) on her computer. So I’m going to blither a bit.

Yes, her computer. It used to be mine, but I started working on videos with effects and music and such so I needed more power. I built it from er, scratch? Because in my other life I was a sysadmin and bigtime computer dork. That life I may still return to. But that’s a derail we’ll get to in a moment.

Here’s the box, but mine is a much less frightening blue and silver

http://www.atxcases.com/Cases/kitty.htm

I stuffed it full of great things –best dvd, best cdr, best video card and buttloads of ram (scavenged some for a friend and the Bean still has over a meg) and made it all play together nicely. I think I did that while pregnant with the Bean too. Pregnancy brain messed with other things, not that so much. ANYway…she’s up there “playing a game,” which is accidentally teaching her reading and math. Heh. Wonder how long that will work?

I’m really over J being gone. This has been a long freaking week. For many reasons. I think I’ll email C and a couple of other folks to help me process this thing that is eating me up. I can’t and don’t rely completely on J to do this with me. Besides, he has enough on his plate.

From this point forward this: ~ will note that I’m posting a random thought. I will try and have a somewhat cohesive post, with transitions and everything but really I want to get these thoughts out. I feel very strongly about what nablopomo has brought out in me.

~I love Edith Piaf and am enjoying listening to her muchly right now

~I like my titles for blog entries, stories, poems…I give good title.

~did anyone else think the new bpal eggnog smelled a bit like playdo, and that that was OK?

~I’m getting very tired of being angry and hurt. The meditation helps. The uh, blurting, on livejournal does too. I’m so shocked by this turn of events and trying to both find my spine AND be forgiving. That’s not easy.

~ I must note for posterity and just for general extreme happiness: The Bean chose to read a book to me. To really read the entire freaking story to me. The first library book the Bean has read herself is called “The Ballet Sisters,” at least the first story so far. She’s been reading Bob Books and Hello kitty books for awhile, like ER, 2 years now (puffing up with pride) but this was a case of “Mommy, I’m going to read this book to you and you can’t tell me the words, I’ll sound them out.” Oh god, what an adventure she’s in for. Reading is well, the best thing ever. I love a few things fervently in this world….J and The Bean, Cats (both mine and all of them) and reading. When I’m scared I can read. When I’m sad I can read. When I need help I can read. When I want to escape I can read. And I can read anything on any subject. And I read obscenely fast –I have to slow myself down on books with excellent plots and characters or it’s like eating an entire giant valentine’s box of chocolates at once.

She asked me for a flashlight so she can read under the covers. Well yes, we will be getting her one of course! Of course! I feel like dancing at this. So many adventures. Funny this after on NPR today they were talking about the decline in reading. Not in this house. We decorate in books. Our child will be both computer literate (hell she’s going to blow us out of the water and that’s saying something) and a reader. And into music. It’s unavoidable in this house and with our (very smart and musical) friends.

~She’s been a good girl this week, not so argumentative or whiny. Karate really freaking helps. I’ve been getting her more exercise too. And she’s getting ready to grow about three inches.

~I think what I’d like to do from this point forward is start taking pictures to post here. Not every day, because well, content suffers when you post every day I think. But to post a picture as often as possible. Of us (cats and people) friends and Fayetteville too . We live in such a pretty place …

This would mean of course, that I will need to figure out why my new digital camera is so hard to take pictures with. My last one (a Kodak ls753) was great, but succumbed to the stuck lens problem finally after 4 years. This new one was inexpensive as digitals go, but had the controls I wanted. I’m afraid it isn’t great though, and I’ll need to stick with it for a year or two before I can trade up. This new one blurs easily but has some excellent settings. Just like I’d like to take a serious culinary class.

There are some big things on the horizon. (redacted after nablopomo)….

This is more than a bit disjointed, but there you go. There’s much to think about. And I thank those of you who have made this journey with me. I’ll keep reading you, I hope you’ll keep reading me. Ya’ll made these intertubes less impersonal and brought me out from my small friend group of readers into the blogosphere once again (er yeah, I was once mentioned in a few reviews and books for documenting\ my life).

Thank you for helping me find my voice again. Same time next year?

Technorati : nablopomo

I find myself getting the urge to just post “Hello, I’m still here and this is a post.” But I won’t. Exactly.

I’m trying to reschedule the little happy hour thing we were going to do but canceled because of J’s mom’s injury. Only 6 more sleeps, as the Bean says, and he’ll be home.

I got a new CD/mp3 player for the kitchen, since the wee one I’ve had for 6 years finally died a horrid death. Cooking is much easier and more fun (and ends up being more ornate) when accompanied by music.

I know I had several thoughts today about “hmm that would be good to blog about,” but I’ve forgotten now. I’m still dealing with some hurt feelings and now some anger. I am working to let it go. I may no longer go out of my way for this person, but I don’t have to be actively angry. Well then, how do YOU let go of angry feelings? I’m meditating and I’m writing in my other journal (I have a locked livejournal I’ve been writing in since 2002) and cleaning. Still, the feelings are hanging around.

I wish I could get a trip to SF, but after this week J won’t be able to take any more time off work for awhile. Sigh.

On an entirely unrelated note: Since I opened up commenting–making it so that you didn’t have to register but did have to leave an email/web address and moderation is still turned on–I’ve gotten some of *the*most*hideous* and *disgusting* spam ever. Frightful. Will they just go away after a while if they never make it through to post? Yuck. I’m not a terrible prude (oh the stories I could tell you) but this really is nasty.

And..I’ve been leaving comments on other’s blogs. Not getting many in return, though I know from my new cool feedjit who is visiting. Like that, learned it on someone’s blog from the not very random randomizer.

I’m going to put this up now and hopefully an actually topic to write on will appear to me later. All I can think about right now though is this hurt feeling and the knowledge that J is in Bakersfield while I’m ovulating. Each one missed feels like it will be the last good one. Or the one we should have or or…

Technorati : miscarriage, nablopomo

What happens after? I recall wondering if, when you were dying, if you knew you were dying, or if some kind of benevolent mental paralysis set in and held you in a golden place as you took your last breath.

In the moment of death,were you still there or already gone–was it like a blink or a sigh? The difference not unimportant in that last moment. In high school I researched (for a debate topic, still it was one I welcomed)funeral practices and discovered some touching and some frightening aspects of how we lay our dead to rest.

Rest, funny that euphemism. I suppose it is rest in that you are no longer in motion. But can you be said to rest if you no longer have the ability for motion?

I have greater knowledge of how the body disintegrates and how the mind follows quickly in staggering step. I don’t just wonder now,  I have met with  with, death. Because I’ve been learning, since losing pregnancies , just how close death always is. Death isn’t the other side of the life coin, it’s the exhale that is the match of the inhale, the river rushing to waterfall. All parts of the same moment. That which is likely birth is as likely death. And it’s good that you don’t really know this, in your own white skeleton, until much later. It’s better to have the joy of flying from the swing to snatch the clouds from the sky or that audacious adolescent surety of purpose and victory. Being bulletproof.

I can’t have oh time, the life just moments past, back so I have to give it to her. There are times  I wish I could have it back just in moments, just a taste like cotton candy in the summer, a third that very first kiss. My cliche, her future.

As I watch our daughter grow and learn I feel pages turning like a hackneyed expression of time passing. But I also feel a giving,-each moment new she has of experience- I wrap the equivalent of mine and hand it to the wind, a bequest, a movement away from me and to her. But my fingers can’t help but hang touch– just the ribbons as they fly away.

I’m not just missing moments now. I’m missing friends. I like to think somehow they are still around painting fantastic pictures with giant handfuls of sun, riding on balloon powered bicycles, becoming mermaids and staying in the fur that suits them best –oh and one day I’ll hold them all again young and strong and even more gorgeous than I could tell you in hours upon hours. Skin and fur each day I miss you.

I still find the easiest moments in the library or a cemetery.  They share a similar feeling, but it isn’t sorrowful, rather one of possibility. In the library it’s the possibility of knowledge, so many words falling around you–just reach out with open hands and spin them to you. In the cemetery? The possibility of what we thought lay beyond the moment of loss. The possibility of greater comprehension, the possibility of a hope more immense than any we could have understood. Or finally and simply nothing more than rest. No more striving, no more suffering, no more regret, no more fear. A nothingness as soothing as a loving mother’s touch to a fevered child’s head.

This is really quite unsettling.

James has a migraine, as he did last year. The Bean is sick, as she was last year. I am threatening a cold. Just as last year. I host Fangsgiving, just as last year.

A year ago, right around this time I got pregnant.

Then lost it right after Christmas. I didn’t find out until January though.

Wow. This scares me.

Technorati : miscarriage, nablopomo, pregnancy

That’s what James calls mittelschmerz. Of which I have a bad case today. And it’s a mixed blessing, this pain in my right side. At least I know something is going on. That is a good sign. But it also scares me and forces our hand.

We do want another child, but we’re so scared to go through what we’ve been through 2.5 times before (or I’ve been through 4.5 times total). The .5 is for that one where I knew I was pregnant and the second line went lightly pink then I got my period a day later. I’m also one of the lucky ones that knows about a week after the sperm meets the egg. Yep, I get symptoms that quick. And I’ve been right every time, even when my doctors didn’t believe me.

Which brings me to the other part of this. I think the Nasty Bitch OB is leaving in December. I think. I’m not sure. I’ve looked on their website and she isn’t listed any longer and my mother read several docs were leaving that practice. Not the Nice and Nicer docs so far (thank goodness). I really should get in there and talk to them about the fact that my period has not been normal since the miscarriage at the end of January 07.

I should but I’m scared. The Nasty OB (I wonder if I should put her name here, or if that will get me into trouble? I’ve already left scathing reviews on my insurance website and another doctor review website) will still be there until December maybe afterwards. Maybe her leaving is a rumour. I should go in now.

(removed)

For those who don’t know or who don’t remember, she’s the heartless(insert scathing epithet here) who sent us BACK into the general waiting room full of pregnant women and babies after she’d told us ours had well, ‘stopped.’ And then told me it was because I was old. Oh yeah and she said I needed to see a psychiatrist because I told her I reacted badly to prometrium and provided her with documentation about how it exacerbates depressive tendencies in some women. Her words, and I quote when she told us that I was going to miscarry any time now were “sorry guys.” I’m still angry about that nearly a year later. I wonder if I always will be.

Even seeing her in passing makes me want to vomit. Really. I get angry and flushed and somethings shoot up while others fall and suddenly I want to cry and throw up and shoot fire out of my eyes at her.

But now the surgeries (on my mouth/gums/bones in my mouth) are over and complete. That is no longer a problem or risk. Halloween (our big deal every year–huge party, big buildup and anniversary) is now passed. I am at a decent, if not terribly slender, weight. I’m exercising and I’ve been taking my vitamins (now in the form of fertilaid to try and get my period back on track, which it seemed to help this time, maybe) and I’m in a better head-space than say, 4 months ago. Better I said, not superb. So why, when I know the egg is or is about to travel the ovarian superhighway am I hesitating?

Fear. Of it not working. Fear of something going wrong because, as the Nasty OB liked to tell me, I’m old. Fear of it looking good (as it did the last time) then disintegrating (as it did last time). The elation and the crash and burn. Fear of being terrified for 20 weeks until the amnio. Fear of stillbirth. Fear of being too old to handle another strong willed child. Fear of twins (hey, I’m old and it runs in my husband’s family). Fear , black, stinking, gut wrenching fear.

Not very romantic is it? Hard to get in the mood with a prehistoric monster using your guts as a trampoline and your brain as a xylophone.

It’s funny how easy this is all supposed to be and how easy it really isn’t.