Maternity: The Final Frontier

... these are the voyages of a mother's life... whose 18 plus-year-mission is to maintain sanity and raise up a semi-normal, functioning child to adulthood...

Soooo weird to blog here again after 2 full years away. But in that time I've had some heartache, some heartbreak and some unfiltered joy. I figured it was time to come back and hack away at the tangled weeds of this blog again.

Heartache:
I'm still a Lorainite. That is NOT what I wanted to be typing 5 years after I moved here. But there it is, plain as day. No denying that it smarts like a paper cut dipped in batter acid being here. Believe it or not, my most recent news kind of sweetens the Lorain pot just a little. At least it makes the whole thing less putrid, hopeless and deseperate.

Heartbreak:
Last year on Memorial Day, I had a miscarriage. It was the most painful thing I had ever endured emotionally as it destroyed the seed of a desired life, a life my husband and I wanted very much and physically it caused intense cramping and bleeding. The old cliche is true: You never realize how strong you can be until being strong is your only option. I was pregnant for a little over 5 weeks, and although that seems like a short time, I had already learned to love the "rice grain" trying to grow inside of me. We were picking names, dreams, adventures for our future baby like fruit from a blooming, backyard tree. Just that swiftly it was gone. Grain was gone. I've come to nickname the lost pregnancy "Grain" because that's about how big it got to be before the end: about the size of a rice grain.

Joy:
A month later, I got the okay from my GYN to dust off and try again. We did. And rather quickly I found myself pregnant again. This one was a sticky pregnancy that kept all through the sumer and winter months and then promptly evacuated itself just in time. My daughter, Dee Dee, was almost induced because she was a little too comfy in there. At 5 months, she is sharp, pretty, happy, curious, everything to me and her daddy... Our Dee Dee is love. Pure and simple.

Welcome back, readers. I've missed you!

...Not Even In My Dreams

I had the weirdest dream yesterday. I am in some kind of a weird school dorm that resembles my old bedroom (when I lived with my mom). Things are strewn about the place and it's uncomfortably warm. Hardly any room to move or breathe in the oppressive midday humidity. In the dream my room is on the first floor. The main door to the house school is wide open and students and people are wandering through, standing in loose circles and talking, smoking cigarettes or reading paperback novels on the rug by the door.

Suddenly, Scott Weiland pulls up in a low, loud and fast car (I'm thinking a Camero or something). He gets out; he's wearing intensely dark shades. His leather pants are shiny, slick with sweat. He's (heroin junkie) thin and his ribs show through the unbuttoned pale blue shirt he's barely wearing. His hair is wild and funky with streaks of red and blond. He flicks away a cigarette, patiently approaching my room in psychedelic slow motion.

"Here ya go," he drawls and passes me a sexy acoustic guitar with weird cutout body.

My fingers are trembling, little earthquakes in my arm veins. Weiland is silent, calm. And he doesn't take the glasses off. So I set the guitar on my lap, thumping the bottom of it against the floor in the process. This slip up creates a soft cacophony of noise from the bowl of the guitar. A few people shift on the rug by the door and glance indifferently in my direction. I begin to play. And I play horribly. The notes are sounding right at all. The chords fall flat, they make absolutely no sense to the human ear. I'm playing gibberish.

Scott lets me get through a tattered version of "The One I Love" by REM before he grips the guitar by the neck, flips a cigarette casually into his mouth and walks away. I sit there, stinging with embarrassment and then grab my own guitar after a few moments. I awkwardly strum out "Amazing Grace" and suddenly half of the community is standing in front of the house school, humming and singing along. I'm playing badly, but it is recognizable as "Amazing Grace". When the song is done some people applaud, others wipe their eyes, some cough and shuffle away with a gentle smile. But for one glorious moment, I had connected with these people. My bad playing held those people at rapt attention for 2 and a half minutes and even though Scott Weiland doesn't want me in his band, I've made a tiny, brief difference in the world.

How zen and weird is that?

Blognicity

It feels weird to be back here, blogging again. I've been missing for 9 months or the length of a pregnancy. Incidentally, I am NOT pregnant. But I'm still in Lorain. It's been a long year, punctuated with sadness, loss and crazy little epiphanies along the way.

I've lost 48 pounds since August of last year. I am officially down to a size 10! To be perfectly honest, I can't remember the last time I wore a size 10. Probably at about the same time I was listening to Walkmans, coveting metallic quilted jackets and dreaming of LA Gear Light up sneakers. I feel pretty good, would probably feel great if I worked out more often. My weight-loss has been mostly the result of a change in my eating habits. I tracked my calorie intake in food diaries and notebooks. This allowed me to objectively review what I was putting into my body on a regular basis. It's eye opening when you think about those handful of chips you snacked on before lunch, that cranium-sized cookie your BWF (best work friend) bought you from the vending machine and the two bottles of Sprite that got you through the afternoon slump in terms of raw numeric caloric value.

Sonny's father passed away a few months ago. The whole thing was surreal. Sonny was never tight with his old man. They shared pleasantries and a thinly-lined mutual respect for one another. But they weren't friends. They didn't know much about each other, either. And I feel the worst about that, than about anything else. There's a missed opportunity that can't ever be retrieved and he'll have to live with that for the rest of his life.

I finally made it back to New York to see family this summer. It was a long overdue trip and I'm glad that Sonny and I were able to take it together. I wish I could say I did all the things I wanted to, but I didn't. I walked a lot, saw family and friends and ate lunch in Chelsea at F&B's (they have the most amazing sweet potato french fries on the planet!). All in all, I can't complain about the experience.

In the springtime, right around my birthday, I was laid off from my job. It wasn't devastating. I mean, I maybe intensely myopic with a sprinkle of astigmatism in my right eye... but I could see the proverbial writing on the wall. As soon as the "new" president of the company takes an intense interest in wandering around your office building with a quartet of cronies in tow, something is wrong. The guy was taking inventory, looking for shit to sell for cripesakes. And...AND he didn't say a word to any of the employees. I knew it was only a matter of time before we were out thumbing for jobs or sliding up skirt hems on the corner for grocery money (kidding, lol). Me, I bounced around from unstable idea to unstable idea. I saw it as a way for me to take my writing to a more serious level. What actually happened was this...

I joined a sparsely populated writing group in a nearby town. The leader was a nice enough dude with (acute halitosis) but eventually the repercussions of being the youngest person in the room got the better of me. These people had grandchildren my age or damn close to it. So, when I mentioned sex, drugs or rock and roll in my writing, I got the red-faced, head-nodding, closed-mouth responses from all but the leader. I wasn't progressing in that group and I was burning for too much gas for too little pay off. Now I'm working part time, kinda writing part time and wondering whether or not I should return to school.

Canon-fornia Dreaming

How could I let myself get sucked up in the madness of megapixels and brand-name gadgets? First I bought a Zen Sleek back in 2006. Last year I bought a bite-sized mp3 player, the Zen Stone. Now I'm seriously eyeing a Canon Powershot a560.

Sonny brought one home from work (it belongs to the company) and naturally, I got to playing with it. That thing is too cool for words. I just really want one now. So, I'm trying to figure out how to save up to buy it....

Icky time of year

I'm feeling really strange today. I'm on the raggedy edge of some weird sickness that seems to have found every vulnerable immune system in the office. My arms feel like lead and my whole body is slightly trembling. It feels like a weird mix between an extreme hangover and an intense nervous condition. I'm trying to stay conscious at my desk and failing miserably at that. Of course I'm freaking myself out and thinking of this story...

Eh, I might leave early if I can. Hopefully I can keep the car on the road. If not Sonny will have to drive me home.

Hasn't it been awhile?

Big things have been happening around me. And a tiny bit of it has been happening to me. Sonny's brother-in-law (the husband of his sister) passed away last month. It was expected, and foretold years ago. That didn't make it any less difficult for his loving children or his devoted wife. I never really understood loss and grief until I spent an afternoon with the loved ones of a person who couldn't be missed more. The strange thing was, I started to grieve for my grandmother then... as if suddenly by example, I had learned to let the tears and sadness go. My grandmother, for those who don't know, passed away in January. I didn't know her that well and her other grandchildren didn't readily share stories about the kind of person grandma was. Sonny's BIL's memorial/wake was more about his memory and the kind of person he was. Grandma's memorial was more about flashing and flossing and churning up that old bad blood. Bad mouthing and talking smack. It was like experiencing night and then day.

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I did something extremely stupid with my hair. I turned on a Conair drier, heated up a flat iron and set these hot tools of torture to my precious naps. What the hell was I thinking, you ask? I was thinking: "Gee. I wonder how long my hair has gotten now. Maybe I'll straighten it temporarily and see."

What I didn't realize, and what I hope most nappies do realize is that your hair may or may not recover. It's not necessarily temporary at all. I hoped it would be, but my hair got all soft and gooey and straight in front. I couldn't get the naps to spring back to existence. But, I've got a new attitude about my hair since I went natural. Shit, it's just hair. And I knew what I had to do. So, I did it. That's right. I gave Sonny the scissors and he hacked off 4 damaged inches. It's probably going to take a year to get back to my pre-stupidity length again. I've got to remain diligent and snip inches off every 6 weeks to keep up with the progress. I'm just not used to my hair being this short. I don't really know what to do with it.

**********

I dipped into our travelling fund to buy a laptop. I did a ton and a half of research, came close to buying some dinosaur on eBay, and then I got lucky. I visited the website of the computer store where we got our desktop. One laptop, fancy stuff I couldn't even describe to you, and NOT REFURBISHED, was on sale for 400. I snagged it. Now I owe quite a bit to the kitty and I've destroyed our chances of going to NY for a long weekend. But Sonny and I keep going back and forth on that one. I'm so tired of always being the planner. I have to find the motel and the good airfare. And then once I find the good airfare I have to sit down and discuss it with Sonny. By the time I get him to commit, the airfare has shot up 40%. It's ridiculous and I'm just tired of doing things that way.

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I've been trying to get domestic. No, I'm not finally doing the dishes. But I've been trying new dishes in the kitchen. Just last night I made beef and broccoli. From scratch, sorta. Actually Sun Bird makes these packet seasonings that are to die for. So in the past 6 months I have made: Mongolian Beef (which I love), Sesame chicken, General Tso's chicken, Pad Thai, Egg Foo Yung and Beef and Broccoli. I've also made muffins and quick bread this past month. The muffins were supposed to be a part of my high fiber kick. But they turned out to be really small and not all that high in fiber. The quick bread is moist and delicious but also not that great for me.

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I've lost 20 pounds since August. I don't know where the will to get here came from. Or maybe I do. I was looking at a picture of myself, a full body shot. And I just didn't like what I saw. My neck was thick, my body was bulging and I didn't recognize the person I saw in that picture. I needed to get back to being myself. Easier said than done, I know. But 20 pounds is pretty damn good. Especially, when you consider the fact that I haven't given up any of my favorite foods. I still eat pizzas and burgers. I still eat Doritos and chocolate. Scandalous, isn't it? :)

The magic of the naps

Last night, I got the brilliant idea of twisting up my hair before bed. I have a lot of hair and it's all very thick. Often it takes 5-8 hours to get it all twisted up. After all that work, I can only keep it in for a week (a week and a half tops). By week 2 it gets fuzzy and unattractive and a bit tangled. :( not fun. I've had my hair in an afro for 3 months straight and as much as I love my natural, I also crave variety. Twists are a nice and easy change of pace. Literally, I sit and twist my hair. And it stays :D Not like when I was a permie.

Anyway, I started at about 9pm. And come 1am, I was still twisting. And the center of my head wasn't done. And I was exhausted. I ran to the bathroom and checked out my half-do. It didn't look half as silly as I was worried that it would. I ended up coming in to work that way. But I've got to finish that tonight.

Red Hand mirror: $1
JC Styling foam: $4
Wide tooth comb: $2
Passing off unfinished hair as artistic napptural expressionism: Priceless! ^__^