The neighbor across the street is hugely pregnant. How did I miss this until now? Come to think of it, I haven't seen her for a while-- her husband and kids-- yes, but not her.
The good thing about the heatwave in The Old City? I only saw 8 pregnant women the whole time there. Yes, I counted. Yesterday I saw 5 here. One of them across the street from me. Sigh.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Family
Once again, we took too few days to visit The Old City. We realized that by the weekend, and so tried to jam all the things we still needed to do, and all the people we still wanted to see, or see again, into the remaining couple of days. This is how come on Monday morning I found myself heading for the city cemetery without my family, but with an old family friend, Alex, who looks after the graves of my maternal maternal great-grandparents. I also had in my purse the "address" of my paternal maternal great-grandparents' grave, but I remembered not finding it last time we were in the city (although I had less precise "address" last time).
The Old City Cemetery is a sprawling affair, with no staff to maintain the grounds beyond the quick and dirty, with sections, but not rows marked, and with so little space between the rows, that if two plots facing each other both have their fences set just a bit outside of the allotted space, you can't fit in the few remaining inches and have to circle one of the plots to continue walking your chosen row. Spring has been late coming to The Old City, and when it came, it came with a vengeance, making most of our days there almost unbearably hot, and bringing up weeds in the cemetery to above my waist in less than three weeks.
Because of the weeds it took us a little bit to find my maternal great-grandparents' grave. I've been there before-- two and a half years earlier, when we came to The Old City last. I knew from then that my great-grandfather's headstone also had the pictures of their two sons who perished in the war. I knew also how much her big brothers meant to my grandmother, how much she wanted a son herself, and how happy she was when she found out I was pregnant with a boy. Some weeds have sprung on the plot itself, making their way from under the tiles, displacing the tiles in the process. Alex went to get me some water for the peonies I bought for the graves, and I was left at the plot by myself.
I was pulling the weeds around my great-grandmother's grave with determination usually reserved for things that seem more consequential-- I knew, even as I was doing it that the weeds will be back, probably before I have left the country-- when I looked up to see the simple inscription on the gravestone. Mother, grandmother, great-grandmother. That's me, I thought. I made her a great-grandmother. And although I don't remember her, I know she knew me. At the time, I knew her too. I looked at my great-grandfather's stone. It's signed by the wife, daughter, and a granddaughter. That's my mom. When my great-grandfather died, my aunt wouldn't be born yet for another two years, and when born, she would be named after him. My great-grandmother outlived her husband by a generation. A whole generation. I stood up then, and asked them whether they knew my son. He is a good boy, I said. That was something I haven't done before-- I acknowledged, by the very act of speaking these words, speaking them instinctually, realizing that I was saying them only as they were coming out of my mouth, what I believe about the other side. I am not even sure what it is I believe exactly, but at the time, I believed they could hear me, and I believed they could know him.
I finished cleaning up, Alex returned with water, and I set up the flowers and took pictures for my grandmother, my mom and my aunt. We stopped by the graves of Alex's parents-- they lived across the hall and were like surrogate grandparents to me. Then it was time to look for my father's grandparents' graves. That took a while-- the rows are not marked, and we miscounted at first. When I found it, I wasn't sure it was actually them-- I have never even seen their pictures, and I didn't know my great-grandmother's given name. But the thing that was most confusing to me was that there was another person listed on her gravestone-- a son, 22 years old, perished in the war. I didn't know he existed. I cleaned up there too, all the while thinking of the story my grandmother told about how distraught my father was when she told him his grandmother had died. He was ten, I think. My father's grandfather only outlived his wife by five years. Neither of them got to see any of the great-grandchildren. I think that's why I haven't thought much of them, or heard stories-- they were long gone by the time I came around. And yet, somehow, this knowledge that they had a son, and that he died, suddenly meant so much to me. I asked them too, consciously this time, whether they knew my son.
It wasn't until I was on the plane back to the States that I found what I think is the reason this great uncle I never knew existed got to me. All of a sudden, my two sets of great-grandparents, people who never met, became real to me through the shared tragedy of their lives. Both had three children, both lost their sons. My mother's grandparents were left with a daughter, my father's-- with two. And it occurred to me that maybe I know a little something about them because my son died too.
Their lives were harder, no doubt. They lived through much turmoil, through the war, three of them died young. And yet, I am sure of it, their hearts broke in much the same way as ours do. I don't envy them, for sure, but I do think they had some advantages over me-- they got to raise their sons, for one. For another, people must have acknowledged their losses-- their sons died in a war, like so many others, and people around knew that pain, saw it everywhere. But mostly, it's not about who had it better, it's just about the shared pain. I am sure they had happiness too, I am sure they delighted in the same things we do-- living children, friends, nice days, for example. But it took their pain to make them more than an obligation.
You see, we had so many things to get done, so many living people to see, that I was really tempted to skip the cemetery this time. But I knew it was important to my grandmother, and so I went. Now it's important to me too.
The Old City Cemetery is a sprawling affair, with no staff to maintain the grounds beyond the quick and dirty, with sections, but not rows marked, and with so little space between the rows, that if two plots facing each other both have their fences set just a bit outside of the allotted space, you can't fit in the few remaining inches and have to circle one of the plots to continue walking your chosen row. Spring has been late coming to The Old City, and when it came, it came with a vengeance, making most of our days there almost unbearably hot, and bringing up weeds in the cemetery to above my waist in less than three weeks.
Because of the weeds it took us a little bit to find my maternal great-grandparents' grave. I've been there before-- two and a half years earlier, when we came to The Old City last. I knew from then that my great-grandfather's headstone also had the pictures of their two sons who perished in the war. I knew also how much her big brothers meant to my grandmother, how much she wanted a son herself, and how happy she was when she found out I was pregnant with a boy. Some weeds have sprung on the plot itself, making their way from under the tiles, displacing the tiles in the process. Alex went to get me some water for the peonies I bought for the graves, and I was left at the plot by myself.
I was pulling the weeds around my great-grandmother's grave with determination usually reserved for things that seem more consequential-- I knew, even as I was doing it that the weeds will be back, probably before I have left the country-- when I looked up to see the simple inscription on the gravestone. Mother, grandmother, great-grandmother. That's me, I thought. I made her a great-grandmother. And although I don't remember her, I know she knew me. At the time, I knew her too. I looked at my great-grandfather's stone. It's signed by the wife, daughter, and a granddaughter. That's my mom. When my great-grandfather died, my aunt wouldn't be born yet for another two years, and when born, she would be named after him. My great-grandmother outlived her husband by a generation. A whole generation. I stood up then, and asked them whether they knew my son. He is a good boy, I said. That was something I haven't done before-- I acknowledged, by the very act of speaking these words, speaking them instinctually, realizing that I was saying them only as they were coming out of my mouth, what I believe about the other side. I am not even sure what it is I believe exactly, but at the time, I believed they could hear me, and I believed they could know him.
I finished cleaning up, Alex returned with water, and I set up the flowers and took pictures for my grandmother, my mom and my aunt. We stopped by the graves of Alex's parents-- they lived across the hall and were like surrogate grandparents to me. Then it was time to look for my father's grandparents' graves. That took a while-- the rows are not marked, and we miscounted at first. When I found it, I wasn't sure it was actually them-- I have never even seen their pictures, and I didn't know my great-grandmother's given name. But the thing that was most confusing to me was that there was another person listed on her gravestone-- a son, 22 years old, perished in the war. I didn't know he existed. I cleaned up there too, all the while thinking of the story my grandmother told about how distraught my father was when she told him his grandmother had died. He was ten, I think. My father's grandfather only outlived his wife by five years. Neither of them got to see any of the great-grandchildren. I think that's why I haven't thought much of them, or heard stories-- they were long gone by the time I came around. And yet, somehow, this knowledge that they had a son, and that he died, suddenly meant so much to me. I asked them too, consciously this time, whether they knew my son.
It wasn't until I was on the plane back to the States that I found what I think is the reason this great uncle I never knew existed got to me. All of a sudden, my two sets of great-grandparents, people who never met, became real to me through the shared tragedy of their lives. Both had three children, both lost their sons. My mother's grandparents were left with a daughter, my father's-- with two. And it occurred to me that maybe I know a little something about them because my son died too.
Their lives were harder, no doubt. They lived through much turmoil, through the war, three of them died young. And yet, I am sure of it, their hearts broke in much the same way as ours do. I don't envy them, for sure, but I do think they had some advantages over me-- they got to raise their sons, for one. For another, people must have acknowledged their losses-- their sons died in a war, like so many others, and people around knew that pain, saw it everywhere. But mostly, it's not about who had it better, it's just about the shared pain. I am sure they had happiness too, I am sure they delighted in the same things we do-- living children, friends, nice days, for example. But it took their pain to make them more than an obligation.
You see, we had so many things to get done, so many living people to see, that I was really tempted to skip the cemetery this time. But I knew it was important to my grandmother, and so I went. Now it's important to me too.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
The Old City
The Old City is green, which, frankly, is the adjective I was hoping to be able to use as I was thinking about it on the plane. And the City, it did not disappoint. I think my heart leaped just a little when the view first opened on the way from the airport. Which then helped make up for my very swollen feet. I mean I didn't have ankles. Let me tell you, people, those are very nice to have. Sleeping with my feet elevated helped, and today things are much better in that department.
Monkey did very well on the plane. Would've done even better if our plane wasn't delayed leaving, so that by the time they served dinner it was past 9, which, then, meant that she couldn't fall asleep till after 10. When she did, JD got her head, I got her legs, and her seat got the middle part of her. And all was good until she started turning a lot and I got hit a few times too many. That was just before they started serving breakfast, which factors combined caused me not to feel sorry at all about waking her up.
Today we got to show Monkey a few of the places that are important to us. She had a blast, as did we. More to come over the next week. I fear, however, that Monkey will ask for asylum based on the fact that they sell ice cream here on nearly every corner, there too many types to count, and each one of them is good. Same can be said about beer, which means that I can't be sure of JD's loyalty either.
Monkey did very well on the plane. Would've done even better if our plane wasn't delayed leaving, so that by the time they served dinner it was past 9, which, then, meant that she couldn't fall asleep till after 10. When she did, JD got her head, I got her legs, and her seat got the middle part of her. And all was good until she started turning a lot and I got hit a few times too many. That was just before they started serving breakfast, which factors combined caused me not to feel sorry at all about waking her up.
Today we got to show Monkey a few of the places that are important to us. She had a blast, as did we. More to come over the next week. I fear, however, that Monkey will ask for asylum based on the fact that they sell ice cream here on nearly every corner, there too many types to count, and each one of them is good. Same can be said about beer, which means that I can't be sure of JD's loyalty either.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Fuel
Chocolate has been my drug of choice for as long as I can remember needing one of those. I have standards, of course-- it has to be dark, it has to be smooth, and these days, it mostly has to be sugar-free. I have a less stable, on again, off again relationship with coffee. Nowadays, it's on again, mostly in the form of hazelnut lattes (sugar-free, again-- I am good PCOSer). Which is by way of saying that as of late, I have had in my possession a rather large number of Starbucks cups.
It seems that some time ago a marketing genius at Starbucks must've decided that there was entirely too much white space on the cups, that people's natural instinct when drinking coffee is to read something, and that people would indeed be so famished for that something! anything! to read that they would gladly read their own coffee cups. Thus, The Way I See It, a series of musings by people famous, semi-famous, and made only a tiny bit semi-famous by the appearance of their very saying in print, so to speak, was born. Interestingly, nobody thought that putting a bookshelf with some books for customers to read while at the shop was a good idea.
Anyway, I must admit that the marketing genius definitely earned his money's worth yesterday-- I went on the Starbucks website and read through every single way someone or other sees it. Oddly, these are numbered 198 to 253. There are also several two-digit numbers reserved for so-called featured authors, who, in addition to having their way of seeing it (summarized succinctly enough to fit on a coffee cup, of course), along with their photographs displayed on the website, also get a screen's worth of an interview. So I was basically that marketing genius's wet dream-- a customer who is hooked by the cup to peruse the website for a rather prolonged period of time.
Julie, she of Great Snark, has already contemplated the road these quips take might take from that fateful click of the mouse to your very own cup, so I shall leave that part alone. And perhaps, as she already so masterfully worked it over, I should leave the whole subject alone. But, as is so often the case with me, I can't.
Havingwasted spent some time on the website, I concluded that while The Way I See It is not a newspaper, it is a fine example of what passes for journalism in these here United States. First, it apparently likes to show "both sides of the issue," and thus contains quotes from Dr. Laura (#205)and Randi Rhodes (#239), from Jonah Goldberg (#22) (we will be back to this one, I promise) and President Carter (#205), from Dr. Jonathan Wells (#224) and David Quammen (#220). Second, it apparently doesn't want to appear elitist, and thus contains quotes from both famous people and Starbucks customers, the latter presumably being their best approximation to the average Joe. And although I have resolved not to take the particular detour that leads into the discussion of why this approach to journalism is a bad idea, I will just say that there are topics that do not have a legitimate opposing opinion, such as, oh say, theory of evolution, and that not every Joe is possessed of profound yet folksy wisdom.
To wit, there's this gem, #236, from Joseph Palm, a Starbucks customer from Oshkosh, Wisconsin:
Scientists tell us we only use 5% of our brains. But if they only used 5% of their brains to reach that conclusion, then why should we believe them?
Do I even need to go into the explanation of the scientific process and the way we know what we know, or should I just stick with the way-too-easy quip about how some of us apparently use our 5% somewhat more efficiently than others? Yeah, I know you saw that one coming.
Of course, the ones that really raise my heart rate (don't tell my doctors, ok?) are the plain stupid ones. Let me show you a couple of examples, ok? First, I promised you we will get back to Jonah Goldberg, didn't I? So here goes, #22:
Everywhere, unthinking mobs of “independent thinkers” wield tired clichés like cudgels, pummeling those who dare question “enlightened” dogma. If “violence never solved anything,” cops wouldn’t have guns and slaves may never have been freed. If it’s better that 10 guilty men go free to spare one innocent, why not free 100 or 1,000,000? Clichés begin arguments, they don’t settle them.
I will leave the analysis of why it seems to be fashionable to celebrate the anti-intellectualism to those better qualified. I will personally stick with ranting--it's just more fun. See, Mr. Goldberg, he made a bet (scroll to the bottom two paragraphs) once, a bet about whose judgment is superior. As the measure of that judgment, he offered his prediction for the future of Iraq two years on from the date of the offer. The future of Iraq as a result of the war he didn't fight in, because, you know, he had a Very Lame Reason, but had no compunctions whatsoever about sending other people's children to die in-- that war. However, when history, sadly but predictably, proved that whereof he speaks, Mr. Goldberg knows not even a little, he didn't have the intestinal fortitude to own up. So I ask you, what do I care how the man with the truly pathetic judgement and no spine sees it? And shouldn't lack of either one of those attributes, not to mention both simultaneously, permanently bar him from that apparently coveted place on my coffee cup? Or, at the very least, from being a featured author, the title that allowed him to hurt my brain some more?
Look, I get that the company doesn't want to alienate consumers based on their political affiliation, but couldn't they at least pick someone not quite so full of his own bad self?
I have a couple more. Ready? Well, here they come anyway:
#204: Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure. Never forget your Personal Legend. Never forget your dreams. Your silent heart will guide you. Be silent now. It is the possibility of a dream that makes life interesting. You can choose between being a victim of destiny or an adventurer who is fighting for something important. -- Paulo Coelho, Novelist.
So is it the fear of failure that makes some women have undetected ectopics and loose their tubes? Just asking...
#212: Patience is a virtue, life is a waiting game. Peace must be nurtured, and all the money in the world can buy you nothing. Let me tell you that. -- Corinne Bailey Rae, Musician.
Don't you just know that Miss Rae never needed money for an IVF? But hey, don't you know, if you are patient and relaxed, it will just happen? Of course it will.
#229: What is to be will be, sure to come true. -- Peter Frampton, Guitarist.
Do you know how much money Mr. Frampton just saved me? I don't have to take those stupid prenatal vitamins, or the PCOS meds, or even see a doctor-- it will happen if it's supposed to happen. Simple, see?
#238: Have you noticed that dogs are the new kids? You take a walk with your kid and your dog, but nobody says, “What a cute kid!” Instead they say, “What a cute dog! What’s his name? Is he a rescue?” Maybe if I put a collar and leash on my kid someone will notice her. -- Judy Gruen, Humorist and author of The Women’s Daily Irony Supplement.
If only, Judy, if only.
#251: A mature person is one who can say: My parents may have made some mistakes raising me, but they did the best they could: now it’s up to me. --Shannon Fry
Starbucks customer from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Some parents do much worse than the best they could. Glad you never met anyone like that, Shannon.
And here comes my favorite, the one that made me go to the website in the first place. This gem comes to us from Bill Scheel, Starbucks customer from London, Ontario. He describes himself as a "modern day nobody."
#247: Why in moments of crisis do we ask God for strength and help? As cognitive beings, why would we ask something that may well be a figment of our imaginations for guidance? Why not search inside ourselves for the power to overcome? After all, we are strong enough to cause most of the catastrophes we need to endure.
For the sake of all that is holy, have people not hear of cancer? I get that most have not heard of child loss and think that infertility happens when evil career women put off childbirth too long, but cancer? Or can we cause that too?
All these quotes, what they have in common seems to be the inability to notice the exceptions, to acknowledge that generalizations can hurt people to whom they do not apply. This is what we are, the exceptions. Easy to miss, easy to hurt. Noticing us, acknowledging us, is not easy. And if you do, your quote may not fit on a coffee cup anymore. Maybe I should stop reading the coffee cups then. Maybe. But once is a while they can surprise you, kinda like so:
#246: Sometimes good art is simply creating an honest mess. -- Stacy D. Flood, Writer and Starbucks customer from Redmond, Washington.
It seems that some time ago a marketing genius at Starbucks must've decided that there was entirely too much white space on the cups, that people's natural instinct when drinking coffee is to read something, and that people would indeed be so famished for that something! anything! to read that they would gladly read their own coffee cups. Thus, The Way I See It, a series of musings by people famous, semi-famous, and made only a tiny bit semi-famous by the appearance of their very saying in print, so to speak, was born. Interestingly, nobody thought that putting a bookshelf with some books for customers to read while at the shop was a good idea.
Anyway, I must admit that the marketing genius definitely earned his money's worth yesterday-- I went on the Starbucks website and read through every single way someone or other sees it. Oddly, these are numbered 198 to 253. There are also several two-digit numbers reserved for so-called featured authors, who, in addition to having their way of seeing it (summarized succinctly enough to fit on a coffee cup, of course), along with their photographs displayed on the website, also get a screen's worth of an interview. So I was basically that marketing genius's wet dream-- a customer who is hooked by the cup to peruse the website for a rather prolonged period of time.
Julie, she of Great Snark, has already contemplated the road these quips take might take from that fateful click of the mouse to your very own cup, so I shall leave that part alone. And perhaps, as she already so masterfully worked it over, I should leave the whole subject alone. But, as is so often the case with me, I can't.
Having
To wit, there's this gem, #236, from Joseph Palm, a Starbucks customer from Oshkosh, Wisconsin:
Scientists tell us we only use 5% of our brains. But if they only used 5% of their brains to reach that conclusion, then why should we believe them?
Do I even need to go into the explanation of the scientific process and the way we know what we know, or should I just stick with the way-too-easy quip about how some of us apparently use our 5% somewhat more efficiently than others? Yeah, I know you saw that one coming.
Of course, the ones that really raise my heart rate (don't tell my doctors, ok?) are the plain stupid ones. Let me show you a couple of examples, ok? First, I promised you we will get back to Jonah Goldberg, didn't I? So here goes, #22:
Everywhere, unthinking mobs of “independent thinkers” wield tired clichés like cudgels, pummeling those who dare question “enlightened” dogma. If “violence never solved anything,” cops wouldn’t have guns and slaves may never have been freed. If it’s better that 10 guilty men go free to spare one innocent, why not free 100 or 1,000,000? Clichés begin arguments, they don’t settle them.
I will leave the analysis of why it seems to be fashionable to celebrate the anti-intellectualism to those better qualified. I will personally stick with ranting--it's just more fun. See, Mr. Goldberg, he made a bet (scroll to the bottom two paragraphs) once, a bet about whose judgment is superior. As the measure of that judgment, he offered his prediction for the future of Iraq two years on from the date of the offer. The future of Iraq as a result of the war he didn't fight in, because, you know, he had a Very Lame Reason, but had no compunctions whatsoever about sending other people's children to die in-- that war. However, when history, sadly but predictably, proved that whereof he speaks, Mr. Goldberg knows not even a little, he didn't have the intestinal fortitude to own up. So I ask you, what do I care how the man with the truly pathetic judgement and no spine sees it? And shouldn't lack of either one of those attributes, not to mention both simultaneously, permanently bar him from that apparently coveted place on my coffee cup? Or, at the very least, from being a featured author, the title that allowed him to hurt my brain some more?
Look, I get that the company doesn't want to alienate consumers based on their political affiliation, but couldn't they at least pick someone not quite so full of his own bad self?
I have a couple more. Ready? Well, here they come anyway:
#204: Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure. Never forget your Personal Legend. Never forget your dreams. Your silent heart will guide you. Be silent now. It is the possibility of a dream that makes life interesting. You can choose between being a victim of destiny or an adventurer who is fighting for something important. -- Paulo Coelho, Novelist.
So is it the fear of failure that makes some women have undetected ectopics and loose their tubes? Just asking...
#212: Patience is a virtue, life is a waiting game. Peace must be nurtured, and all the money in the world can buy you nothing. Let me tell you that. -- Corinne Bailey Rae, Musician.
Don't you just know that Miss Rae never needed money for an IVF? But hey, don't you know, if you are patient and relaxed, it will just happen? Of course it will.
#229: What is to be will be, sure to come true. -- Peter Frampton, Guitarist.
Do you know how much money Mr. Frampton just saved me? I don't have to take those stupid prenatal vitamins, or the PCOS meds, or even see a doctor-- it will happen if it's supposed to happen. Simple, see?
#238: Have you noticed that dogs are the new kids? You take a walk with your kid and your dog, but nobody says, “What a cute kid!” Instead they say, “What a cute dog! What’s his name? Is he a rescue?” Maybe if I put a collar and leash on my kid someone will notice her. -- Judy Gruen, Humorist and author of The Women’s Daily Irony Supplement.
If only, Judy, if only.
#251: A mature person is one who can say: My parents may have made some mistakes raising me, but they did the best they could: now it’s up to me. --Shannon Fry
Starbucks customer from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Some parents do much worse than the best they could. Glad you never met anyone like that, Shannon.
And here comes my favorite, the one that made me go to the website in the first place. This gem comes to us from Bill Scheel, Starbucks customer from London, Ontario. He describes himself as a "modern day nobody."
#247: Why in moments of crisis do we ask God for strength and help? As cognitive beings, why would we ask something that may well be a figment of our imaginations for guidance? Why not search inside ourselves for the power to overcome? After all, we are strong enough to cause most of the catastrophes we need to endure.
For the sake of all that is holy, have people not hear of cancer? I get that most have not heard of child loss and think that infertility happens when evil career women put off childbirth too long, but cancer? Or can we cause that too?
All these quotes, what they have in common seems to be the inability to notice the exceptions, to acknowledge that generalizations can hurt people to whom they do not apply. This is what we are, the exceptions. Easy to miss, easy to hurt. Noticing us, acknowledging us, is not easy. And if you do, your quote may not fit on a coffee cup anymore. Maybe I should stop reading the coffee cups then. Maybe. But once is a while they can surprise you, kinda like so:
#246: Sometimes good art is simply creating an honest mess. -- Stacy D. Flood, Writer and Starbucks customer from Redmond, Washington.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Can one be pre-tired?
I was whining to the shrink today that when I went to see my GP for a thyroid test (seeing as a patient with thyroditis should do that once in a while), she decided that she was so unimpressed with my heart rate that I should (1) get a mild heart medication, and (2) see a cardiologist. I am way too young for either of these things, but yes, I filled the prescription and made the appointment.
The shrink wanted to know what about that bothered me the most. There are a few things, starting with the obvious (FREAKING HEART MEDICATION!!!), but it wasn't the obvious that got to me.
And here's where that question comes in: can one be pre-tired? Tired ahead of time? Because I think that is how I feel. The thing about this new development is not so much that it is here right now, but the knowledge, the surety, that it will be here again. And again. See, I want to raise three children. I want to have two more living children. Kinda soon. Which means at least two more rounds of this. And I haven't even gotten to the hypo part yet.
I feel like I am standing in front of a very tall mountain, with a very heavy backpack. I am waiting to start climbing this mountain, the mountain the top of which is obscured by clouds, with the terrain I can't see beyond the first little bit. And my backpack just got heavier.
The shrink wanted to know what about that bothered me the most. There are a few things, starting with the obvious (FREAKING HEART MEDICATION!!!), but it wasn't the obvious that got to me.
And here's where that question comes in: can one be pre-tired? Tired ahead of time? Because I think that is how I feel. The thing about this new development is not so much that it is here right now, but the knowledge, the surety, that it will be here again. And again. See, I want to raise three children. I want to have two more living children. Kinda soon. Which means at least two more rounds of this. And I haven't even gotten to the hypo part yet.
I feel like I am standing in front of a very tall mountain, with a very heavy backpack. I am waiting to start climbing this mountain, the mountain the top of which is obscured by clouds, with the terrain I can't see beyond the first little bit. And my backpack just got heavier.
Monday, May 14, 2007
The meme, it's all about me
I am a procrastinator, which fact is evident in the time lapsed since Niobe tagged me.
I am behind on a work project I need to finish before we head to the Old Country this Sunday.
I am excited about going and about taking Monkey for the very first time.
I am not as excited as I thought I would be.
I am anxious, just a little. Actually, a little more than a little.
I am looking at a candle we lit this morning because Monkey wanted to have one going again.
I am more glad than sad that she wanted to light it.
I am missing my son.
I am still laughing.
I am getting my brain back, slowly.
I am still missing my drive.
I am kinda used to the way I am now.
I am looking forward to when we will be allowed to try again.
I am also uneasy about that.
I am sleepy.
I am formerly a pretty good chess player.
I am no good at speed chess.
I am addicted to the stat counter I installed the other day.
I am not sure when we might get to travel again as a family. Hopefully not soon.
I am about to take a ten hour flight with a five year old. Holy shit.
I am a stranger in a strange land.
I am home.
I am OK.
I am tagging
Lori,
Bon,
Kate,
Aurelia, and
Wannabe Mom.
Ladies, you get to write those "I am" statements now. If you want to, of course. No pressure.
Bonus track:
I am a little sad that I can't use the very first thing that popped into my head when I saw this meme-- it's in the language of the Old Country and would carry no meaning in translation.
I am sad, in fact, that I had to do this meme in one language-- too many bad multilingual puns got away.
I am behind on a work project I need to finish before we head to the Old Country this Sunday.
I am excited about going and about taking Monkey for the very first time.
I am not as excited as I thought I would be.
I am anxious, just a little. Actually, a little more than a little.
I am looking at a candle we lit this morning because Monkey wanted to have one going again.
I am more glad than sad that she wanted to light it.
I am missing my son.
I am still laughing.
I am getting my brain back, slowly.
I am still missing my drive.
I am kinda used to the way I am now.
I am looking forward to when we will be allowed to try again.
I am also uneasy about that.
I am sleepy.
I am formerly a pretty good chess player.
I am no good at speed chess.
I am addicted to the stat counter I installed the other day.
I am not sure when we might get to travel again as a family. Hopefully not soon.
I am about to take a ten hour flight with a five year old. Holy shit.
I am a stranger in a strange land.
I am home.
I am OK.
I am tagging
Lori,
Bon,
Kate,
Aurelia, and
Wannabe Mom.
Ladies, you get to write those "I am" statements now. If you want to, of course. No pressure.
Bonus track:
I am a little sad that I can't use the very first thing that popped into my head when I saw this meme-- it's in the language of the Old Country and would carry no meaning in translation.
I am sad, in fact, that I had to do this meme in one language-- too many bad multilingual puns got away.
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