more christmas craftiness... hat, more hat, and rearview. bag and bag back. my fabulous windchime. another view. and another.

week 14 this is what a crazy lady looks like:

psycho pregnant lady. qu’est que c’est? this is not how this was supposed to be going. there was a picture in my head of the ideal - the contented, glowing me, patiently guiding my two-year old through activities, but instead i do nothing and want nothing to do and am impatient and tired and aching. and today, as he limps around the house and we contemplate a trip to the emergency room, i am frantically packing for the weekend away and trying to distract him as he unpacks the suitcase and demands the tube of toothpaste and whatever else might catch his eye. as he crawls on hands and knees, one foot stuck out to avoid applying excess pressure, i try to be calm, gentle, the zen-mother, but instead say "no" five hundred times and become exasperated, nauseous and want only to lay down, to sleep. the pacifier has broken at the same time as possibly his foot and we are dealing with the absence of it, the unexpected weaning from it. i am relying on jon to be the parent that i cannot. i am not sure that it is working. is he really looking to me to instruct, to complete the task? must i always be on top of everything? it is just this moment of hurrying to get ready, i think. it is just right now. it will pass. but did i mention yet that i am tired? that i am ready and waiting to do absolutely nothing? will that day ever come?

how to break a foot:

week 13

christmas craftiness. monkey, bunny, frog, and kitty.

week 12

week 11

week 9

week 6

i will blame you, the people of this country, if bush is elected. i will blame you for the undoing of every positive democratic measure of the last 70 years, the bankrupting of social security, the shipping of jobs overseas, the mass consumption of oil, rampant consumerism, mass homophobia, racism, the degradation of our forests, the collapse of all positive environmental policies into an oil regime, the destruction of everything that i believe to be good about america. and i will not go quietly into my hole and shut up about it. i will be loud and i will be obnoxious. i will blame you and i will stick my finger in your face for your misplaced values and your malshapen morals. i am pregnant with my second child and i want only for that child to have a world to grow up in with clean air and water and a social fabric that values life and appreciates diversity. i want so badly to remain hopeful, but at three in the morning i find myself in tears, filled with an outrage that i had not known possible. when all the world was full of possibility, this country bankrupted of a sense of justice folded under the weight of their own ego. what a disappointment you have become.

pregnancy-induced insanity is taking hold of me. i am at every moment not feeling quite well, but this is only the beginning. the brain is expounding upon every possible bad scenario there is. i have too much information available to me thanks in no small part to the internet so that i have heard and read so many stories of all that can go wrong so many times that i am checking my underwear at every trip to the bathroom for blood and wondering if the cans of soup i had for lunch this week will leach enough aluminum into my bloodstream to cause some irrevocable damage to my unborn child. the dreams have begun as well. the dreams that last time told me that i was pregnant in the first place are now suggesting that i could be having another boy. it is ridiculous to want for gender at all, but i cannot help the fact that i have been so longing for a girl that i decided probably before conception that this child was indeed a girl. provided of course that it's not twins, which is certainly a possibility considering the insanity that i spewed forth but days after conception and the theories that i articulated regarding the dropping of not one but two eggs and then of course the meeting of not one but two women with twins shortly thereafter (the day in fact before the first positive pregnancy test). and i decided long ago that if it is indeed twins (which of course i am hoping that it is not) that it will be one of each gender. having three boys would be disastrous, or perhaps i would just grow to love it. twins i do not want because of what it is that i do want - specifically everything that i am not currently imagining at every turn or every dropping of my pants to pee - the single, perfect child to heal all my past wounds. the birth of my dreams and the nursing relationship to confirm for me that i love to nurture and that doing so with my body is one of the greatest gifts there is. along with all this nonsense spinning in my head, i have also a host of symptoms that did not appear in my pregnancy with aleksander, or at least not to the degree to which they are now. and this heightened degree of things such as nausea which has, as i said, become my occupying force, are perhaps indicative of one of two things - 1) the old wives' tale that it is a girl or 2) that i am indeed having twins and all this heightened misery and the incredibly early positive pregnancy test confirms that my hormones are more insane than a usual pregnancy due to the additional fetus telling my body to make more hormones. this is of course all mindless rambling and i should really stop.

i'm so excited about this year's holiday card.

nausea has nearly incapacitated me. i do nothing most days. i don't think creative thoughts, i don't write, i don't clean, i don't get dressed. i sit and belch and chew on toast and hope that this will pass. i am tired and i am hibernating. forgive me.

face off tonight between the boy wonder and "the emporer from star wars". hope john rips dick a new one.

freeway bloggin'.

my stomach turns and my womb quakes, stretching, becoming again a warm ocean bed. inside me is the beginning of the world, the moment where the wheels and cogs of existence started their organic whirring. the splitting in two of cells and the meeting of proteins, the spreading of plasma and tissue and the construction of an organism. and what to say of the change that happens in my heart? the falling in love so quickly with the unknown, the unseen, the only imagined. it is a feeling i could never have imagined nor can ever hope to describe accurately. i am a life force at the moment, even if i am a little weakened by it, my mood faltering, my belly queasy, my head sore. i am still the great mama, growing in a perfect symphony my perfect child, untouched by the outer world. it is such a miracle and i am ever grateful for whoever it is that has chosen me as its mother.

and the results...

anna on the job...

and today...

april, may, june, july, and august.

a sudden stillness. i am strangely and suddenly at ease with my life. despite our financial scares, despite aleksander's addiction to his "nanoway" and the television, despite jon's abrupt expulsion away from home and into a stack of books, and despite the current political climate, i am feeling a bit of peace . is it the calm before the storm? or merely a rest in my usual journey? if there are any thoughts, they are of a reflection of myself and the question ringing slightly in my mind of why it is that i judge myself against everything that i see and enter the realm of self-loathing so easily. is there some social conditioning that i cannot at this moment pinpoint that tells me that i am never good enough, that i must always look around, outside myself for the truth of life, the correct way of being? was i somehow raised to second-guess everything about myself from my hair and my clothing, to the art on my walls and the things that i create? i suppose honestly it is there. i can find it and point to it in a variety of locations. what else are we to do in life but to judge immediately upon arrival whether something is good or bad, like or different? and then there are all those media sources telling me constantly about what is beautiful and what is delightful and fabulous. and i buy into it. like everyone, i buy the hook and everything else. i swallow this bullshit whole and then apply it back to myself and realize that my home is not beautiful enough, my skin imperfect, my car not silver enough, my money too little. and it is the authentic me perhaps that is constantly battling all this, trying at every turn to convince me of my worth. and what am i worth? will i ever know? will i ever get the opportunity to write off the world and pat myself on the back and tell myself that i am doing just fine as i am? will i ever stop these exercises in self-annihilation? the picking up of people magazine, or the assessment of someone else's home, or the reading of the websites that tell me how horrible my diet is, how wrong i am to do so many of the things i do... i cannot even read a book without trying to determine if my writing is on par with the author's. i hate so much the competitive urge in me. i want to learn for myself how to be zen, how to appreciate the journey more than the outcome.

aleksander throws his body about the bed, trying to get comfortable among his sweat. the night is humid and hot. he is falling asleep and i have finished the last of many library books, which sit beside me scattered in the twin bed nestled between the full bed and the wall - the bed that is intended for him, but that sleeps jon most nights. he moves again, this time from head down, feet up, to head up, feet down, parallel to me. still not comfortable, he crawls, eyes closed, flopping his body lazily onto my torso. he climbs half over me and i'm wondering if he's waking up to get to the books, but he stops, rests his head on my shoulder, and i open his legs more fully to allow him to sleep comfortably upon me. his arms hang, do not hug. and i wonder, what is this? is this mothering? is this what it is all about? being a human bean bag? and of course the answer is yes. i am being used in the truest sense. and what occurs to me as i wait for him to be fully asleep, is that how i think of this is how i think of myself as mother. am i being taken advantage of? certainly. i am being used as a bed. but what does it mean? it means that i am comfort embodied - a good place to sleep. i am being put to use. i have a purpose as that which lulls one into a peaceful state, as that which is secure and unspoilt. i am a sanctuary unto my child. and this is not merely some selfless act that i commit for the well-being, or the well-sleeping of my son. this is a mutually beneficial relationship and he is possibly bringing more to me than i to him. by putting me to use, my body, my breasts, my womb - my son is giving me meaning. he is honoring with physical practice the intent of my biology - not only to harbor, but to nurture. what a gift it is to wholly sustain another, for i am not floundering, wondering which wall to lean on, but am standing upright and bearing the weight of the future. i am gifted myself from the load that i carry. i am proven to myself of my worth and my strength. and i ask, is there anything more right in this world?