Unpleasant Anniversaries

I have had a hard time this week staying on track mentally. I have been consumed with what I call forest questions - those large, life, universe and the meaning of it all questions. Questions that are so big they push the details of the day-to-day aside, so big that I can't see the trees for the forest. As the week moved along, these ponderings sharpened and threw into relief the real trigger behind these questions: I have been facing an unpleasant anniversary. And so I thought I'd share it with you in hopes of exorcising these larger questions. Well maybe not to get rid of them completely, but to tamp them down to size so that there is room in my head for both these questions and my responsibilities.

This time last year I was heading into surgery, but really heading into the darkest time in my easy, easy life. I was having to say goodbye to my hopes for a June baby, having to shelve all those fantasies that are so quickly cultivated in a newly pregnant woman's mind and heart - even if she fights against them. They come, unbidden and sometimes unwanted and surely they hold more steadfast than you realize until you are forced to pry them out and when that doesn't work, to shelve them until such times as they become appropriate again.

I was so very naive about pregnancy - didn't really understand the tenuous hold we have on nature and the almost laughable level of control over our own bodies. Such a shock to find out that your body couldn't keep the baby alive, or more positively, that your body, mercifully some say, ended something that could never reach final fruition due to a malfunction or misalignment or something else - each reason as equally unsatisfactory as the next because you can't see or hear or touch them.

And so they took it away. And today I am sad and missing that baby - however irrational that sounds.

Tomorrow I will be better, will remember that I am so very blessed to have a healthy baby on the way and even more blessed by the way my husband and family supported me during that time and continue to do so. But today I'll indulge myself and dust off those June baby hopes and dreams one more time, before putting them away for good.

Soooo.. What do you do?

My husband and I shook off the bounds of our hermitage tonight and headed out to a pumpkin carving party. I have to say Joe and I ... it's not that we aren't good at socializing. It's just - well we have to work at it. At least I do. And sometimes when we check in with each other after a mutually experienced event it seems that he does too. Why is conversation at parties so difficult for us? I mean heck - these days I walk around with a giant conversation started underneath my shirt and I still find myself feeling awkward, measuring words carefully, wondering which weirdo aspects of my personality I should keep in check in this situation.

I'll admit it. Tonight I asked someone the question that many Americans stuck at a party with people they don't know ask - So... what do you do?
The minute it was out of my mouth I regretted it. I think of this question as the sort of injured duck - I'm-gonna-lob-this-at-the-side-lines-and-hope-it's-not-intercepted-because-I-am-about-to-get-sacked kind of question. Because what happens if the respondent has a really boring job? Or one you can't begin to comprehend? Or was just laid off? Or doesn't fit neatly into a 30-second reply?
It's a lazy conversationalist who asks this question.

In reality - I had about a hundred details about this person swimming in my head. She was not completely unknown to me - the sister of the pumpkin carving party hostess. I just couldn't pull up an appropriate detail in time to fill that awkward gap that inevitably comes when you are gamely making small talk. I mean I couldn't very well bring up the fact that she had joined Curves and was working out for the first time in her 34 for years and that she was suddenly a size two in a family full of tall and fit females. Or that I knew she was a disaster in the dating department and was hurtling towards spinsterhood. All of these details came from my friend - the woman's sister - shared in moments of rare familial frustration and them almost immediately gilded with kind words about her character or beauty.

So I asked her about her job. And thank goodness it was interesting and fodder for a good 20 minutes or more of conversation that I actually enjoyed. But still I felt guilty. Here I was forcing this woman to think about work on a Sunday night during an activity designed to squeeze the last vestige of fun from the weekend. We were outside, carving by lamplight. The air was crisp and smelled of pumpkin innards. How uninspired.

Later, after Joe and I made our exit, he told me that he had fallen victim to the same question. He said that he is never ready for that question - that it always catches him off guard and that he feels like he rambles when he answers. I was surprised because the question is so bloody common at functions like these and so asked him why. He said because "I don't like to be defined as a lawyer. I know guys who live and breathe this as an identity and I'm not that guy."

And when I stopped to think about it I understood his difficulty with this question. Here's a guy who throws himself into home repair projects even though he spends almost the entire time worrying aloud that he sucks at home repair. Here's a guy who when he finally sets aside his to-do list, spends time with canvas and paint or pen and paper giving life and character to his imagination. Here's a guy who makes his wife's lunch everyday because she is to damned inconsistent to do it herself. He's so much more than what he does during the daylight hours of the week. We all are.

So the logical conclusion might be to stop asking people you meet at parties what they do and instead ask them who they are. But I am pretty sure this would make me an even weirder party guest, so I won't. But I'll be wondering. And I'll keep working on ways to figure out ways to get at core of folk. In the meantime I guess I'll talk about the weather.

Anna - 27 Weeks

Hi Friends - I have been horribly neglectful of my blogging duties. I just came off of a whole month of travel and I will get back in the swing of things. In the meantime, here's a pic of Anna at 27 weeks. Her arm is under her chin and kinda looks like she is smiling - at least I'd like to think so.



I already love her so much that it hurts.

Skeletor is a BABY

Today we went for an ultrasound to check out Anna's heart. I am happy to report that everything is in working order and her EKG was normal. The doc wants me to check my heart, because I have been having more trouble than usual, lately, but Anna is fine. In fact - she is perfect... from her head...



...to her feet.




The once again captured some 3-D shots, but this time - she looks like a baby! An honest-to-goodness baby!

Wow I am going to have a baby. A real one. One that grows up and eventually learns to drive. Let's look at more pictures while I quietly freak out.

This is a pretty good one.



So's this one.



In this one it looks as if she's saying "Gaw, Mom, stop with the pictures already!"



I showed these pics to her cousin this morning...



and she immediately put them in her mouth. I think that means she likes her. I know I sure do.

Nursery - AKA land of a thousand suns

I have received a few requests for a pic of the nursery in progress. Here's a fairly lousy photo, but it gives you an idea of the bright yellow I painted it. We have miles to go before we sleep...including giving away that useless, behemoth of a TV, moving the bed out, etc... But you can get an idea of where we are headed.

Welcome Myotis leibii, etc...

Joe is not the easiest person in the world for whom to buy presents. This makes for high anxiety on my part the month before his birthday. Complicate that with the fact that for the past two years I have had a business trip on his birthday... well let's just say I am not gunning for Wife of the Year anytime soon.

But this year I got it right. Let me say that the man's wishes are not complicated. Just sometimes obscure, ill-expressed or altogether unvoiced. Not this year. I took notes this year.

So what was his big wish? That's right - a bat house. A house for bats. A domicile for those winged, night-loving creatures who eat pounds of mosquitoes each feeding. Behold:



Not so imposing is it? No no. Not until you read up on how to properly lure bats to live in this skinny cedar box. For that you need to mount it. In the air. 12-15 feet or higher. That is, higher than my house stands."Not a problem!" I thought "We have a huge tree in our backyard." How naive.

Apparently that's the sure-fire way never to have a single bat set its tiny claw in your bat house.

"What now?" I thought to myself.

Luckily - Joe had the answer: A pole.



A 16 foot-long pole.

This was turning into a much larger project that I had previously thought.

A common occurrence in our house these days.

How does one mount a pole of that height? Well - one digs a hole.



Er - well - Joe digs it.

Three feet in depth.



Then you mix concrete. That's right - concrete.



Then you mount the bat house on the top of the pole.



As a result of this project we are now the proud owners of a cordless drill...oh the world of home repair is opening right up to us - yessiree.

Then you stick the pole in concrete and brace it with stakes - while your pregnant wife holds the pole and contemplates in turn, 1) How hot her husband looks in cowboy boots 2) How thought number 1 puts her irrevocably into the "Born and raised in Oklahoma" camp.



Then you wonder why your pregnant wife is sobbing quietly.

To appease her you write something in the hardening concrete.



It works - she's smiling, now.

Et Voila -



A mounted bat house.



Well - that wasn't so hard. Just a little more work than we thought.

Here's a pic to give you an idea of height.



He's wearing my favorite shirt in this picture.

But it would look better with cowboy boots.

Crap - now I am crying again.

A common occurrence in our house these days.

Here's a pic of our backyard from the bat house perspective.



I mean - what fun-loving bat wouldn't want a view like that?

So now we wait for bats. I'll let you know how it goes.

Ellen is growing bigger

Alright alright - here is a picture of my growing..well..everything. Of my growing everything. Because it's all getting bigger. All of it. Remind why I am doing this to myself again? Oh right - to have a child. Thanks for the reminder.