goddess of astronaut pants

More things have transpired since my last update than I had realized.

1. We are now a one cat household, instead of two. Squeak was sixteen, in pain, and ready to rest. She was my best kitty, and I miss her.

2. Fairy Grandmother now recognizes me mainly in context with my mother, and does not know me as an adult. She can still make the leap and speak to me as her granddaughter, but the conversation spans a gulf of years. Gesturing to the Cmonkey, she asks me "Do you have a good family? Are you happy?"

3. I have an amazing family. I am unhappy for entirely different reasons.

4. Rehab has done wonders for the entire length of my back, but I'll be glad to have those three nights a week free once the last of the mess is cleaned up. I really could become Batman now that I don't hurt every damn day.

5. Though I may keep going to that clinic, if they let me volunteer.

7. I'm now simultaneously enrolled in two colleges, though only for half a credit so far (CPR certification).

8. On Friday, that bumps up to 4.5 credits (adding Intermediate Algebra).

9. Tonight I'm attending an info meeting for the physical therapy program I want to apply for, after another 30 credits of math, chem and physics.

10. I've given up a year of sleep for the sake of love and responsibility. I can do the same for my own sanity and the chance to do something that fucking matters.

11. Which is better; struggling every day to give a shit about make-work in a 6'x6' charcoal grey cube making squat (either in contribution to society or in the paycheck), or graduating with a debt load 2x your new yearly salary at a job that makes a difference in the world?

Um. Hello

Hola!

In lieu of an update, here is a list of things that will swallow one's time if given the chance:

1. parenthood
2. midlife crisis
3. injury sequelae in the middle-aged body
4. jobs with ill-defined descriptions

Like any prodigal child, I come bearing a dilemma. Namely, Cmonkey.

Cmonkey is now 2.75 years of age and has grown as many inches in the last two months. Her vocabulary is gobsmacking and she's learning how to read. She is bent on world domination. She has also begun to manifest a devastating perfectionism that I know too damned well, having struggled with it myself and having seen my brother wrestle with it as well.

My brother, for context, drew realistic suspension bridges at age 3. They created a gifted program for him in elementary school, and relaxed the entry standard so he wouldn't be the only one in it. As a hobby, he converted his automatic car to a manual trans. He's now an urban planner. I still don't think he realizes how brilliant he is.

Cmonkey has been out of diapers for about six months now. She's also contending with occasional growth-spurt related digestion issues in which there will be a pause of a few days and then suddenly she will unleash a turd the approximate size and shape of a guinea pig. Yesterday, she ate lightly, and her belly was hurting her. We rubbed it for her when it bothered her, went to the potty unproductively several times, put her in comfy pajamas and went to sleep (prunes being the next line of attack come morning).

I'm awakened last night when she comes to our bed to cuddle, occasionally whimpering. We soothe her, but she's not buying it, and I realize she's wearing jeans.

ME: What happened to your jamma pants, beanie?
CM (quietly): I pooped in them.

Let me give some context here:

1. We have two 16 year old cats, one of whom is dealing with incontinence. More to the point, Mr. F and I are now quite adept at gamely cleaning up mammal excrement around the casa. No big deal. We've also weathered poop in the bath with aplomb.

2. Upon study of the scene, not only did Cmonkey rouse from a sound sleep to poop, she also:
a. made it to the bathroom
b. got mostly onto the potty
c. caught a turd the size and shape of a doublewide railroad spike in her jamma pants
d. removed said pants and set them neatly on the stepstool with the turd inside
e. wiped effectively
f. found clean jeans
g. zipped and *buttoned* them
h. alone
i. in the dark
before coming upstairs for support.

3. For someone aged 2.75 years, who only transitioned to the full-size toilet 2 months ago, this is equivalent to leading a mission to Mars.

Here's the kicker: she sees this as a failure. As she's not ashamed of poop itself, or us helping to clean her up, I'm not even sure what standard it is she's envisioned and not met.

I have no idea how to even begin to address this.

Fairy Grandmother is settling into her new digs, close to her home though she won't live there again. Aside from the sprained ankle and pneumonia (getting better) and the memory issues (getting worse), she's in good health and spirits. The nursing home staff seem good, not simply cheerful but also keen on asking for and remembering details of Grandma as a person. Time will tell. But she's eating well, which is the biggest concern we've had about her in an institutional setting, and once she's more mobile and cleared by the docs we can sign her out and not just visit her there.

~*~

Cmonkey went to her first movie, which was a smashing success even though she didn't like wearing the 3-D glasses.

Ticket Booth Person: Which movie?
Mr. F (jostles Cmonkey on his hip): Guess!
TBP: Bob the Builder!
Mr. F (puzzled and mildly offended): Um, no. Coraline.

~*~

I'm considering registering a domain or two, and putting up an online portfolio for at least myself, and my brother as well if I can get him onboard (password protected, with log-ins on our resumes).

The second domain would hold a website based on my renaissance-person delusions of grandeur (and likely yet another Bruce Wayne identity).

Because if you can't build a shrine to your interests on the net, where else would it possibly go? If only to help me keep track, and keep me focused on the *journey* of these passions instead of all the time obsessing over goals.

In other words, it's spring and I'm craving a puzzle-challenge. I've done fannish approximations of these things before, and I miss it, the drive to understand a tech in order to create with it. Between replacing the battery and firmware in my soviet ipod, and putting together a 'workspace on a stick' on this USB, I'm getting cocky in my ability to learn by doing--or at least, following instructions and figuring it out along the way. Less 'learn by doing' and more 'learn by playing and breaking and fixing'.

Anyhoo, I have these Big Ideas of learning XHTML and CSS, not to mention working with a hosting provider and figuring out FTP and all that jazz. It's daunting. But very intriguing, because I want to do more than I can fit into the format of just a wordpress account.

I'm currently looking at Name Cheap for domain registry and A Small Orange for hosting--anyone have an experience or review they'd like to share? Or a recommendation for books for newbies looking to learn how to bake a website from scratch?

The winter solstice is coming, the traditional nadir for my brain, and yet I am still wide awake and functional. On the contrary, handling quite a bit of stress these days and not shutting down, freaking out or falling apart.

My latest sun replacement strategy: begin each week day with a hit from the light box and a rather large dose of vitamin D. Also, Mr. F believes that having a kid re-wired parts of my brain, which is an interesting idea. So many things have changed it's been like a second puberty: a few things softer, a few more sensitive, everything else souped up in strange ways. So the whole "maid, mother, crone" thing seems to have a basis in phenotype, and I'm finally getting the hang of how my mortal coil works in this second phase.

The upshot is that while my current dilemmas may appear intractable, I've been able to focus on them instead of curling up to sleep and feel like utter crap. I've been able to chip away at them, cut paths around them, identify the keystones holding them in place, draft plans and begin making war machines from local materials to lay siege and obliterate them from my kingdom.

In recent months I've stopped debating if I'm worth the risk of pursuing my dreams, stopped putting obstacles in between to prove my desires again and again. I've begun simply moving toward what I want, from tiny to huge. If it turns out I don't want it when I get it, I've learned something, and can pick a better target next time.

I don't have to stick with what doesn't work for me. I must only change myself for the better, and keep looking for where I fit most comfortably.

I can handle a year-round commitment now, and I've finally taken that to heart. I can tackle whatever needs doing, be it daunting or draining--so now I turn my sight to what calls to be done, what will feed me instead of devour me by inches.

I'm not working from a finite source of Energy, I can draw and channel far more than I'd ever thought possible. I am indeed working from a finite source of Time. It's one thing to know it as a concept, quite another to put it into practice.

I was contemplating doing that "101 goals in 1001 days" thing, but I could only come up with 33 goals.

Goal #34: daydream

http://www.babeland.com/sexinfo/features/get-out-vote-sex-toys/

"Bring a voter registration card, ballot stub or your word of honor that you cast a ballot on November 4th and we’ll give you either a free Maverick sleeve or a Silver Bullet. This offer is good at any Babeland location in New York and Seattle November 4-11. While supplies last.

Store Locations

In New York City

Babeland Brooklyn, 462 Bergen Street

Babeland LES, 94 Rivington Street

Babeland SoHo, 43 Mercer Street

In Seattle

Babeland Seattle, 707 E. Pike St.

Don't live near a Babeland store? Sorry you can't take advantage of this offer, but you can get 20% OFF your online purchase if you voted, 11/4-11/11, with this coupon code entered at checkout: vote08. Thanks for voting, and thanks for shopping at Babeland!"

At 7am when the polls opened, Mr. F waited 15 minutes to cast ballot #6.

At 8am when I got there, I waited 40 minutes to cast ballot #100.

Typically we vote in the evening, and they're lucky to have gone through that many in a full day.

Highlights:
I got to vote *twice* against my state rep whom I loathe and whom I've kicked off my porch, as he was up as an incumbent and there was also a recall initiative aimed at him.

I got to vote on stem cell research. I got to vote on therapeutic weed. I got to re-elect Kym Worthy, the prosecutor who just put Detroit's former mayor in jail. I actually hooted with happiness when I saw she was on my ballot.

For the first time ever, I got to vote for a different ticket than a wrinkled testicular pair of old white protestant men.

I got to vote, which I've done as a matter of course since I came of age, but today it gave me quite the jollies.

FeldDad and I share a peculiar pinky toe, which leans over its buddy and never actually touches the ground. In concert with a family tendency to very sturdy skeletons, short of a car crash I never expected to break a bone. Much less my Congenitally Vestigial Toe.

Apparently if you miscalculate a doorway and kick a wall hard enough, and that wall is fifty-year-old wet plaster and ceramic tile, the wall will handily win over the Vestigial Toe.

Points when I should have known I'd fucked up:

T minues zero: when a distinct part of the sensation was a wet crack like breaking into a crab claw.

T plus one minute: after hopping into the Cmonkey's room, gripping her bed and trying not to swear--and having to breathe before overcoming the urge and unleashing a resounding "FUCK!" gasp, "Oh, fucking fuck!"

To her credit, Cmonkey simply asked from her seat on the little potty, "You hurt your leg? Let me kiss it."

T plus five minutes: crouching to pull up Cmonkey's pants, the toe burned. I've never had an impact injury burn before, much less in a second-degree way.

Then we continued to swim class, which is normally a family proposition, but Mr. F had to work so we went solo. This is the depth of my zombiesque stoicism: driving a toddler to swim class, wrangling us into suits, swimming, wrangling us into dry clothes and driving back with only a pause to take some ibuprofen because man, that toe still really hurt.

T plus three hours: Mr. F transplanted Cmonkey from her carseat, tucked her in for a nap, and I'd only made it ten feet up the driveway. I'm summarily sent to the couch with an icepack and buddy-taped toes.

T plus five hours: Vestigial Toe now looks like it's been crossed with a rainbow and a balloon animal. I'm given the choice whether to go to the ER. After ten minutes of deliberation, Mr. F withdraws the question and starts packing for the wait involved in "this is so not an emergency, but it also can't wait two days for office hours".

T plus seven hours: radiologist informs me that congenitally crooked toe's buddy is also crooked in a complementary way. I must tell FeldDad.

T plus nine hours: Random dude in black scrubs comes by and says, "So it looks like it's broken."

Mistaking his offhand diagnosis for introductory small talk, I reply, "Yeah, it does, doesn't it?"

"No, on the x-ray. It's subtle, but it's fractured right there." Black Scubs Dude--apparently a newbie doctor who's watched too much House to feel my injury merits my knowing his name--deigns (dares!) to trace a finger across the base of Vestigial Toe. I only know his name now because the name on my scrip for Happy Meds isn't the other doctor who talked to me (his BOSS, who INTRODUCED HIMSELF AND SHOOK MY HAND BEFORE FEELING UP MY OUCHIE THANKS EVER SO FUCKING MUCH BLACK SCRUBS JACKHOLE).

At least he asked me what my favorite flavor of painkiller was, because if they'd tried passing off any lameass Vicodin I'd've humped back into the building and skullfucked him with a crutch.

Oh, hey, guess what's worn off?

ETA:
So they gave me my x-rays on a cd, and the dude in black scrubs was right, subtle is a nice word for "seriously, that's it?". I have to say, if this much ouch can come out of a crack that tiny, my appalled sympathies go out to anyone who's ever truly broken anything. Like in actual pieces. Or through the skin. Or a bone bigger than a frickin' piece of gum to begin with:

(I bumped up the contrast and added notes, cropping out my Bruce Wayne id. So not Batman!)

Your results:
You are Batman

Batman 70% Hulk 60% Green Lantern 60% Robin 60% Iron Man 55% Superman 55% Wonder Woman 50% Spider-Man 50% The Flash 50% Supergirl 50% Catwoman 45%

You are dark, love gadgets and have vowed to help the innocent not suffer the pain you have endured.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

1. Last week's "Bones". Although I missed what Booth says at the very end, after "As much as any good dog could hope for" which I think might have made me cry, considering what they were also talking about.
( Spoilers for  )

2. The second cover here (spoilers for Farscape comic). Crichton rocking the mei tai! Mr. F noticed it first, the peeky baby over the shoulder. I SO CALLED THAT ONE!!! Plus, now that I've actually had to accomplish things with a kid in tow, nothing beats being able to just strap the baby on and let 'em gawk at the world from your level while both your hands are free.

3. Cmonkey starts swim school today!

The next person who looks at Cmonkey and tells us "It's time to have
another!" is going to get:

A. a punch in the face
B. "So you're pregnant, then?"
C. a punch in the face
D. "But we haven't eaten this one yet."
E. a punch in the fucking face

Aside from the fact that family planning is a very personal decision between
me, my babymaker, and my partner--and that's an infuriating boundary to
cross, but a different post--right now a second kid is in limbo. There will
be another (body willing) but not anytime soon (now that the contraception's
sorted out).

My grandmother had seven kids, spaced out over twenty years. And when my
grandfather retired and the last kid moved out, they nearly killed each
other because they had no idea how to live together outside of parenthood.
They figured it out, at the cost of a separation and a suicide attempt, but
they made it work again with just the two of them.

Mr. F and I have years of friendship to work with, to boost the signal as we
shout over the din of this extra work and responsibility. But I'm still not
ready to even think about the proposed second kid. I do want another, but
there's no room in the life right now to do a sibmonkey justice. And I know
for most folks it's not a big deal, it's more the merrier, but raising
Cmonkey is so intense, so fleeting and amazing, I want to have enough mental
resources to pay proper attention to the second kid as they race through
their own childhood.

Perhaps I'm simply weary and weirded out by the last few weeks of playing
doll. She has a ten inch plastic babydoll that looks like Tor Johnson as a
chubby infant, and we've easily spent forty hours so far pretending the baby
has to go potty, needs a nap, needs to cuddle, has an ouchie, has snarls to
be combed out, needs to nurse, needs to take a bath. Big Stuff is happening
in her brain right now, processing who she is in relation to others, getting
a handle on what babyhood is as she's moving out of it.

baby's gotta drop some kids off at the pool

Imagine Tor in caucasian colored plastic, and a little knit tunic and
woolie pants. Now imagine Tor fallen face first off the pot Elvis-style and
mooning you as you walk in the room.

I play along, guide her in how to care for it, play catch with
dollclothes, and much of the time she's sitting on her own potty along with
the doll perched on a little toy dutch oven. I draw the line at nursing
Tor. She's tentative about pretending to feed it herself, and it feels like
we're circling around what's driving the sudden intense interest: the two
steps forward, one big step back that's been our flirtation with weaning.
Momma's getting serious, and so Cmonkey wants to redefine what the dyad will
look like without milk before committing to the cause.

Speaking of inhabiting roles, Cmonkey now refers to herself in three
different ways (similar derivations from her own name, not Cmonkey):

Me - emphasizes matters of personal import, "Daddy gave it to *me*."
Nundee - neutral reference to self, slowly being replaced by I,
"Nundee wipe it, the table."
MonkMonk - imperious, cheeky, chiding, sometimes referring to her
body as something she owns, "Unbuckle MonkMonk!" "No wash it, my MonkMonk!"

We've determined MonkMonk is her evil alter-ego.

A good idea who's time has come (screaming)?

A shoutout to the godless dildo loving fans of cephalopods everywhere?

An image to make you despair that visual memory has no delete key?

My vote is that if you pack it in your jacket pocket, your Londo Mollari costume will totally kick ass.



honestly, if that intro didn't highlight the link as likely not safe for work, I just haven't been posting enough lately to keep you on your toes--sorry about that.

ελευθεριa

I've always been open to the idea of a tattoo. Just didn't know what or where. I can't even title a story without wanting it to have multiple meanings, to resonate in a chord instead of a note. I've considered and lived with the idea of several, and discarded them as I grew out of them, realized that they were lessons learned or memorials in my heart that I didn't have to inscribe on myself.

I'm leery of the impulse. But that's me, that's one of the things about me. Big decisions I'll make in a flash and know they're right. Little ones I'll gnaw over forever. I think that's it--so far it's felt like a little decision based on chiding myself, or something aesthetic, or wanting to mark a passage. So far the only profoundity I'd want to mark left its own scar, this child cut out of my body, who'd nurse and dig her toes into the edges of the wound. This is my Cmonkey tattoo, a silver line with little circles weighing each end.

I don't want to mark my body to show where I've been, or where I think I should go. I don't want redundancies or harrassment. I want a graphic manifestation on the surface of what lives in this skin.

ελευθεριa means freedom. Terrifying, world-changing, inexpressible freedom. It also fits the multiple meaning clause, in that personally it has some literal resonance as well. Understanding that I am free is the basis of everything else that has been or will be in this life.

So here I am, thinking about this. What I want it to look like, and where it wants to live on me. Then I need to save up and find an artist I like.

Kerne, I think this is the one you mean:


But in the same cache I also found these moldy oldies, which I'm putting here to upload back into the rotation later:

Why didn't anyone tell me these things?

~*~ Thumbdrives. With portable software. Are massively cool. Currently
I'm trying both Notepad++ and Rough Draft for writing, some random task
manager to see if it's more useful than annoying, and I've even got a little
photo editor for the occasional crop and adjust away from home. I save to
my laptop at home and to Gmail when away.

~*~ Writing a list of "have-dones" is more focusing than knocking off a list
of "to-dos". A BA in psych and I still have to learn cheap psychological
tricks like this the hard way.

~*~ Don't hate me for this one, but I used to find it rather easy to
accomodate menstruation. In retrospect, it was a mere sluggish creek
compared to the raging torrent visiting me these days. I've heard stories,
and while I believed them, I also cherished my body's desultory dotting of
Is and crossing of Ts when it got around to having a period.

Alas, no more. The "cold water for blood" technique isn't the arcane
laundry hoodoo I thought it was, as I'm not only applying it to the
occasional pair of delicates but also to sheets, towels and the floor. I'm
not concerned: it's shifted from one slope to the other on the bell curve,
but still within normal, just the new normal, which is apparently
less like paperwork and more like ritual slaughter.

Gentles, please share with me your favorite iron and protein rich foods.
What has fortified you after formidible blood loss, be it cyclical,
charitable, or accidental?

And now, a rant.
Here's some YouTube videos I want to see someone make: commercials featuring
real laundry and real messes cleaned up by real
people. No coy grass stains next to maroon dollops the size of a quarter,
as if skinned knees are the main source of blood in clothes. I want to see
the kitchen towel I had to salvage yesterday, which looked like it had
cradled a traumatic head wound.

I don't want to see another pack of tweenie-boy soccer hooligans flinging
mud and orange pop onto the pristine tile of a cavernous suburban kitchen
while Chinos Mom gasps in horror as she flashes back to beer-bonging with
the dirty white hat crowd at college.

I want someone corraling curious kids and cats while their partner attempts
to remove raspberry jam and imbedded glass shards from twenty-year old
linoleum that was dark reddish brown and disturbingly sticky to begin with.

I want stain-stick pens with wide chisel tips and barrels made to look like
fountain pens, marketed in an upscale manner to professional women who also
happen to have impressive racks (which we all know are more of a lunch
magnet than a nice tie).

I want to see a dad helping his son sort his socks and underpants by
"vaguely pink" and "vaguely blue" and trying not to laugh as he explains to
the sullen boy that yes, he does still have to do his own laundry and hey,
this is where that color sorting step I told you about but you thought was
stupid comes in handy, and well, if it really bothers you there's this great
stuff we call "bleach", but honestly, dad was a punk in high school and if
the old man could rock a skirt back in the day then junior can get the fuck
over some pink socks. And they have a bonding moment. And I smile through
my glistening tears.

The sky is very pretty in my world.

hossgal asked me, almost a year ago, "Pick a thing, any thing, that you're doing now - the writing, the job, the monkey, anything - and tell me, honest, if you thought it was going to be like this, ten years ago."



Honestly, the hardest part of this question has been delineating what my expectations have been in the past. For a very long time, the particular broken twist of my mental landscape has been to ruthlessly exise such expectations and, I guess, figure out how to live without them and then let the universe decide if I get them. I remember staying up late as a small child, just old enough to write, and composing a note to my parents along the lines of knowing that they didn't really love me. Something I feared, and so convinced myself was true. At my fingertips is the acute sorrow of committing it to paper, crying as silently as I could manage, dithering about letting them see it, and finally putting it someplace it could be found while I was asleep. I remember the reassuring aftermath much less clearly--and I now suspect the guilt and horror they likely felt about the whole thing--the salient point for me at the time was the personal acknowledgement of how very deeply their rejection could hurt me.

There is much confusion in my mind between wanting, needing, hoping, losing and grieving. As a result I waffle between driven determination and apathetic nihilism. The sensitivity of my circadian rhythms to sunlight and season are the frame these tensions are strung on. I actively expect the worst. At my best I defy it, at my worst I greet it with my belly in the air. I'm getting better at sustaining moderate effort with punctuated rest, instead of pushing to exhaustion while the sun shines and not giving two shits when it doesn't--with the new Daylight Savings rules I used my light seven months out of the last twelve, but the smarter I am about using it, the less my desperation for either winter nihilism or summer accomplishment.

The benefit of being in one's thirties is that one begins to benefit from all the individual mind- life- and body-hacks one had to learn the hard way.

Expectations for my thirties: in my teens I figured I would have a child or two, hopefully with a partner, after I had established a career. It was exactly that vague. On the ground, I found my love at 21 and we set about building enough daily maturity and financial security to bring helpless young into the picture. It took awhile, mainly for the latter to come up to our admittedly materialistic middle-class standards. I grew up working poor, and I wanted my kids to never worry about groceries or foreclosure, or deal with the utilities being shut off. Shit happens, it happened to my folks despite their best efforts and we all survived, but it starts you off at a deficit that can accumulate over generations. And as I remarked earlier this week, I'm the fourth generation in this country and we've each done our share of boot-strapping. Mine was a college degree and a white-collar resume (and maybe a profession, if I can swing it).

With a safety net in place we finally tackled expanding our family--at a certain point you realize it isn't precaution stopping you, it's fear. Mr. F made that call, and he was right. He's the emotionally sentient one, after all. So the Cmonkey makes three, and being this family is what we do in life. Work is that annoying thing that keeps us warm and fed. I'll eventually get to be what I want to be when I grow up, vocation wise. It's a banked fire that crackles uneasily sometimes, but will wait. I'm learning patience in the same chronic manner that I'm learning optimism and learning how to fit myself back into the cracks of the daily grind.

Thing is, there is tremendous work and emotion and sacrifice and bone-weary diligence that goes into tending a seedling into a little unfolding person. But there's also, subtle and terrifying and beautiful, an awesome grace in the privilege. This family of mine is closer to me than my own bones, they are my home and my life, my love made manifest as something the very opposite of grief.

I'm not accustomed to knowing the contents of my heart, so it's raw and astonishing to see them before me, out in the world for me to touch, and care for, and be seen by, and loved.

scrubschick asked, What do you think -- if anything -- about the upcoming XF movie? Will you go see it? Is it a complete waste of celluloid and theater space? Do you have hopes for it?

It takes a lot to get Mr. F and I out to the movies--we'd much rather wait for a DVD and watch a movie in our jammies.

So yeah, I think we'll spend a few bucks to rent it when it comes out, if the flist reviews don't warn us away. I wouldn't say I have hopes for it, having long ago decided that I don't trust Chris Carter to plot his way out of a paper bag. He's more likely to plot his way into making the paper bag into an origami version of the Collyer brothers' townhouse.

fbf asked, Poetry. I know some of it, I've asked before, sort of, but I want to hear it again.

Poetry and I don't get along, but it's not poetry's fault.

To quote Mr. F, English is my second language. Technically it's my only language, but I don't think in language, so everything I do with words requires translation. You can guess that I'm not an easy speaker, but the weird thing is that it also affects my reading. Concepts are a tactile experience for me, and their corresponding words are imbued with some of those properties. I mentally route what I read through my throat, a very slight subvocalization so that I'm kind of touching the key words of a sentence as my eye skips over them.

This works very well with the rhythm of prose because the ratio of concepts to beats is what I'm used to, it's close to that of speech. Poetry is too concentrated. I read it too fast, I can't easily break through the skin to get at the blood and meat. There's too much in too little space, I have to keep backtracking and making myself pause, and that's frustrating and boring and I can't lose myself in it.

Speak a poem to me and I can hear more of it, smiling and frowning at the right moments. Sing it to me and I hear it all, laughing and wellling up tears. It's a matter of ease of input. For me, poetry goes way past a pure distillation of an idea, it's an idea refined into an odorless crystalline powder I have to fuck around with to even identify.

Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything [within reason] : latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc. Repost in your own journal if you are so inclined.

I might even include pictures.

I've made fingerpuppets, hats, scarves, half a skirt, babywear, a Cthulu
(still needs to be pieced together), a few dozen woolies both short and long
(for cloth diapering), and lately doll clothes that don't suck. This will
be my first full-size sweater:



This pattern made
with

this
yarn, a superwash Merino fingering weight in the colorway "Lincoln
Park", autumnal oranges and dark toast browns that's knitting up to look
like burled walnut. All seven rows of it so far. And I've already changed
the pattern, starting with a few rows of seed stitch instead of straight
garter stitch to discourage the bottom edge from rolling.



I'm finding the prospect of 3 whiffleball sized balls of yarn somewhat
daunting, considering I'm still only halfway through the fucktonne of yarn I
bought for the skirt, started over two years ago. On the other hand, the
skirt project required learning intarsia and following a chart for sixty
rows. Not a project to tackle alongside morning sickness and parenthood, I
found. On the third hand, I now have a hope in hell of fitting into it
again. I've got twenty rows left and the skirt turns into straight garter
with decreases and sewing a lining, which I already bought the fabric for
(is inordinately proud of self, as I had no intention of sewing a damn thing
for it two years ago--let's not mention the deciding factor of having
to line the skirt to cover the backside mess of learning intarsia).



The sweater is big in terms of size, not complexity, and so doesn't require
TOTAL SILENCE and NO TOUCHING for me to work on it. In other words, I can
actually work on it with my current toddleriffic lifestyle. I figure this
might be the lucky year for the skirt as well, but I won't push my luck.

I'm terribly behind in a lot of correspondence--for those of you waiting, I haven't forgotten you, I truly adore the notes and gifts you've sent. I'm just a loser during the winter months and I'm still firguring work-arounds for that failing. Some of it involves not letting guilt be an obstacle or an excuse. Which is both very hard to do and very effective.

Like exercise, like writing, like personal growth of any flavor.

So as a promissory note towards the emails, real-mails and packages that are also in the works (and unlike previous winters neither hanging like swords nor shamefully abandoned, just on-hold without self-judgement), here's an update of sorts.

Fannishly: Do repeated watchings of "Sense & Sensibility" and "Serenity" count for fannishness? I have no real thoughts except the first is a new aquisition and the second so chewy and pretty despite the flaw of Mr. Universe. Like the "Your traitorous father is dead--oh, hey! We're landing in Rio!" moment in "Notorious", it's forgivable if only to provide contrast with the excellence of the rest of the ride.

I saw the first episode of "Dexter", which Mr. F rented on thassalia's rec. Intriguing, except for one thing. ( speculations--please do not spoil past episode 1 of Dexter )

My adventures in health and fitness continue sporadically. Mr. F does not have TB, but likely bronchitis or asthma. Cmonkey has a cold. Toodles for now!

"You don't have mittelschmerz, you've got Messerschmitts." --Mr. F

Woke up just after midnight on the holiday of love to the pain of ovulation. I remember the quaint little "ping!' I'd feel pre-pill, pre-kid, with nostalgia. This was no faint snap, but a stabbing throb that pulled me out of sleep frantically diagramming the appendix in my mind's eye. Then counting backwards on the calendar as I poked at the hollow between achey hip and pillowed belly.

The thing They Don't Tell You about having a kid is that it changes your body in the same way that puberty did. There's this cultural ideal of 'getting your old body back', but I doubt it's possible in the way it's usually meant and I'm starting to get skeeved by the oblivious denial inherent in the goal. Let me tell you right now--you don't get your old body back, even if it sooner or later fits into the same amount and dimensions of space. Completely aside from the sleep deprivation and emotional bootcamp of becoming a parent, there are always differences after something as physically demanding and altering as pregnancy and labor--good, bad and weird--and they can be profound even when they are subtle.

You may carry on same as before, or you may have to rebuild your strength, ability, endurance, posture, flexibility, sexuality and grace from the bottom up. You may fit into the same pants, or your very skeleton may be altered in function and shape. You may loathe the scars and slack, or the damage to your sense of bodily integrity, or you may find that you are a lot fucking stronger inside and out than you ever suspected and that you finally own your frame and the space around it. You may grow a harder spine and a taste for risk, or you may learn to multitask crying with getting the job done. All of these things can be true at the same time.

Your body will be different, if only because you know what it's like not to be alone in it.

Despite living in a greater metro area lousy with drugstores, I've
just ordered toothpaste online. Why? Because we've been gifted with
an 18 month old who clamors to brush her teeth and I refuse to corrupt
that impulse with sparkly candy crapola. She doesn't need to be
tricked--she's quite happy to brush along with us, even if her
technique needs a great deal of work. She certainly doesn't need to
associate bubblegum flavor with cleanliness. She needs something
basic sans fluoride and sans fucking sparkles--sparkles are for the
bath, not eating. Something, in short, that doesn't piss me
off.

Bad enough that it took me a month to find a wee toothbrush
without marketing (and every time she stops to ponder the happy
generic duckies on the handle I feel vindicated on that score)--we're
fast running out of the tiny tube of discontinued Burt's Bees
children's toothpaste she uses.

I've tried to find Tom's of Maine stuff locally, but the selection is
either fluoridated or fennel-flavored. She's an adventurous eater,
but I can't stand the smell of licorice or fennel. So I found the
good stuff online: non-fluoride "silly strawberry" for her and an
intriguing tube of fluoridated "cinnamon clove" for me.

I made peace with the idea of fruit and spice flavors, after all, mint
is an herb. Bubblegum is still way beyond the pale, however. Is this
generational, or cultural? Am I the only one who finds candy-flavored
dentifrice for children disturbingly counterproductive? It strikes me
as akin to Funyun-scented soap for teens. If I'm odd I'll cop to it*,
I just want to take the cultural temp here.

*After all, Mr. F and I spent fifteen minutes in Yankee Candle
this weekend picking out a handful of votives for the bathroom that,
in theory, would still smell okay with the addition of poop (by
experience we know that all 'baked goods' scents are straight
out).

So I'm lying there numbed to the eyeball and flying on nitrous, and I'm in that gas headspace where the music playing is closer to me than the tooth being pried out of my skull, and what comes on the radio as I brace and the roots creak like a rusted door? What song scores the dentist, the assistant, and myself in this three-way tug of war?

The one that was playing for my first kiss, which was so tentative slow and heart-stopping that it took the whole song to make contact. Before we ended up necking in a paused elevator for an hour, that is.

I laugh and the tooth pulls free with immediate relief, is fumbled, and I shoot out from under the mask to cough it bloody into my palm.

That fucker's huge. No wonder it's hurt like a sumbitch since Sunday.

Rodney W., wherever you are, you're a gift from the universe that keeps on giving.

Things that are restorative:

a nap
three naps in a row
a brief but complete rest from 1.5 years of constant vigilance and burning concerns


Things that are surprisingly restorative after the fact:

stomach flu with mild dehydration
caffeine withdrawal edging into migraine, but skirting back at the last moment
menstruation
furious destruction


Things that are surprising:

team-playing and concern from one's co-workers
that adolescent resentment of one's mother can still be sparked when the tinder is dry enough
the curative properties of playing in the bath

The hostage saga of my retirement monies has resolved, to wit:

1. I never have to talk to Former Employer ever again.
2. The Cmonkey is now officially Paid Off.
3. We are now in a place of Infrastructure Rebuilding, as opposed Scrabbling for Daylight.
4. Our 401k rollover hit on the Very Best Day Possible, when the stock market had effectively gone on sale.

Of course, the squee is somewhat harshed by the fact that contraception continues to be an infuriating issue. But I can't go into details right now or else I'll lose my calm. And I had to go chop down a sapling in the abandoned yard next door with a rusty axe to gain that calm*. I'm out of saplings and my arms are shot.

Instead, I shall continue fondling my shiny laptop, the coolest feature of which right now is the fact that I can type!

*urban paradise visitors will recall the tree growing up through what had been the playscape area, before the rednecks stole the playscape with our tacit approval.