mine and the baby's time in the same vessel is drawing to a close. it has been a miraculous, ordinary, extraordinary time, one in which i am quite honestly at this point excited to end. why?

1. people say things (in a cooing tone) like 'what a cute belly you have' look, bitch, last night i slept about 2 hours, felt like all the cold water in the ocean wouldn't quench my heartburn, and had gas to rival bush's private stores. even that newborn panda does not appear 'cute' to me.

2. "is it a boy or girl?" has been on repeat for about the last six months. i should have made a puff paint t-shirt with 'i don't know' written across the belly. in a neutral color, of course.

3. goddamnit, i don't care if it's trashy, i would really LOVE a freezing. cold. beer.

4. sex again would be grand (though i guess that's what got me here in the FIRST place). sigh........someday........you know, when the STITCHES heal.

5. my walk may again come to resemble my own, not a penguin's. i can put on an article of clothing that might actually make me feel like a human female (as opposed to a saint bernard). boots with heels. any shoe with heels.

6. i am going to be the best damn mama this world has seen, or at least western new york.

7. #3



phew, that felt pretty good, to complain! now perhaps i can do less of it to my family tomorrow. have a wonderful holiday, to anyone who is reading this, and a frosty cold one for me (i count as two, actually. maybe 3).

i have always had a problem with 'making something' of myself. being firstborn to a very young mother, she always tried to encourage that and those were her exact words, go to college, get a job, 'make something of yourself.' as a result, as is typical with fbs and especially given the way my family structure played out (classic middle child=scapegoat, youngest=comedian, mom=enabler, (step)dad=problematic) i was driven to overachieve and i guess to a degree, still am (to the point where i just fixed the misspelling of 'overacheive' i just did-i mean, who really cares...) (to the point where the glasses in the cabinet that match should be all lined up in neat columns of three) (to the point where house, car, purse, backpack, whatever should all be properly outfitted with lots of writing utensils (since in the house i grew up in they were always impossible to find, would get lost after 1 use)) (to the point where i have driven myself so crazy over 'what i'm going to be' that i haven't chosen to be much of anything).

now, i never really classified myself as 'anal' or 'type a'. some of the overachieving tendencies right now stem from having too much time on my hands and also from 'growing up' (yikes), at least to the point where if i'm going to drink wine, i at least possess a proper glass, for both myself and a guest, if we so choose not to slug it out of the bottle. and i had, for all intents and purposes, a 'normal childhood,' whatever that means, if on the 'serious child' side who liked school and books a little too much and always had the lamest comebacks and would go home and cry a bit too easily. so it's not as though my mom or my family or my assumed role or my love for school fucked me up, or even if they did i really hate whining about that kind of shit and am not trying to whine.

it's just that i burned out so young. with paul, i just figured that out last night. the same things that haunted my childmind and made me resort to tricks like endlessly flipping the pillow and laying the other way on the bed to get to sleep (he did the same things, did you, firstborns out there?) are pretty much the same things that haunt me now: i'm no sculptor, or quilter, carpenter, architect, or even junkyard proprietess: i find it extremely difficult to take this chunk of me and shape it, or pieces (not peices) of me sewn or joined together to make some whole, or to arrange varied castoffs identified for their uses and functions when and if needed. i.e. 'making something of myself' (shudder). i do know a good amount about myself, but honestly, after a while, what good does that do you? somewhere along the way, i ran out of being able to try so hard, became overwhelmed, got distracted and daydreamy because it was fun, finally, fun. now because of some essential nature bullshit, it's not so fun. now it's just kind of full circle: what am i going to do with my life? what? what? what? what? what?

is it as tyler durden says, that we all grew up thinking we'd be rock stars and astronauts and movie stars (.....but we won't....), is that herowish mentality (after all, by overachieving didn't we all think we could 'save the family,' or at least keep our names or hides out of the next big fight?) the mother of all hangups, the bitch that wants only the best, the most, the shiniest, the strongest for itself, and could just get it if only.....if only........

thank you for indulging in this little self-counseling session, brought to you by "t's hangups, inc., llc."

they used to.

Dickens wrote an entire world in the line "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." He could have written that anytime and it would be true. I try to keep this in mind when i am feeling especially glum about the state of the world. what do i know, i haven't lived long enough to make an accurate judgement about what exactly is happening to us as a society, perhaps i never will be able to make one and perhaps i ought not to, don't really want to. what would that solve, after all, one person's lifelong observation of the world. write a memoir, for chrissakes. or just write.

(and there are no barking sparrows....)

mmm. i love those candies that taste like lavender. not the gum, tho, which tastes musty to me.

the person sitting next to me right now smells like i didn't know i sometimes used to smell, which is of morning damp tobacco smoke and hour old coffee...it is not particularly pleasant but is nostalgic. as completely botarded as it is, i miss the mechanics of smoking. i miss the little realizations and conversations and romanticisms (even if somewhat cliched-like those coffee/cigarette ruminations)that sometimes come about only because of it. that's about it though-i never realized what a little slave it makes you.

i saw this excellent movie called me and you and everyone else we know, parts of which keep popping in my head and turning round in there. all in all it was extremely well done, lots of parts to make you squirm but i like that sometimes.

hm. har. i feel like writing, but topics aren't really coming well, so i will give up and perhaps go make some soup.

the baby has been doing trapeze artist tricks in there, and it creates the god-weirdest ache in my cervix. 'ow, my cervix' is a curious thing to be saying a few times a day. i cannot quite tell which body part is causing the sharp one-two jabs. all of them, i think.

here is a tiny rhyme about it:

my baby floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee
it's my cervix vs. muhammed ali
punch and jab and kick and spar
out of myself is beaten the tar.



also, i'm so sentimental these days. over the weekend i almost started crying because of takeo spikes's achilles tendon thing. i don't even know what the man looks like, that's how much i follow football. but man, that's a tough row to hoe.