Waiting Impatiently for Perspective

I was a melodramatic child; I cried a lot; I wanted to be an actress.  In my freshman year of college I worked my way out of a dark and terrible depression that had seen me clutching pill bottles in shaky fingers, taking foolish risks with strangers and huddling in bed with my body balled into a tense, tight fetal position sobbing into more pillows than I care to remember.  I vowed, at that point, that I would NEVER again sink into a depression like the one I had just emerged from.  To this end, I follow some simple rules laid out by my father, the master of common sense advice:  Eat well; get enough sleep and exercise; if you start to get lost in your own head, get out of there and into the world--connect with other people and stop thinking about yourself.  This simple advice has served me well; I tend to be a happy person, and I don't sweat the small stuff. 

In fact, if you want to know the truth, I find myself with little patience for people who have a hard time controlling their moods.  My husband is one of them, and while I try to understand what it's like to struggle with moods, I have a hard time really getting it.  Suck.  It.  Up.  is what I find myself wanting to say.  Get over it.  Accept the things you cannot change.  Your own perspective is the only thing you can control.  And you know what?  That usually works for me.  I can usually change the way I feel by changing the way I think about things.  And you know what else?  Lucky.  Fuckin'.  Me.  And la-di-da, isn't that nice for me most of the time?  'Cause you know what else?  It doesn't seem to be working for me right now. 

*****

My sister is two years younger than me.  We were so close growing up; we shared friends, clothes, a bedroom, secrets.  I wanted that for my children.  In fact, I wanted twins for years, although I knew that was a long shot given that there are no twins in my family or my husband's family.  But I wanted my kids close together, so they could be best buddies.  I've always been a big believer in the whole: let's just get all the diaper years over with at once!

I bought a double jogging stroller off of Craigslist when my son was less than 6 months old.  I've been pushing him around in it for a year now, and when people ask where the other one is, I reply: not here yet! cheerfully, as if the next one is just waiting, around the corner, to be picked up when we wheel by.  The jogger was a good deal, and I absolutely knew, without question, that I'd be having another one soon.

I planned my children's summer birthdays in my mind, as if birthdays could be written on calendars before a child's conception.  I started trying in September, expecting a baby in June or July, almost exactly two years younger than my son.  Just like my sister and me.  Best buddies!

I always thought I'd have girls, since I come from a family of all girls, but once I had my son, I could never decide if I wanted a girl or a boy next.  A daughter?  Or...brothers?  Brothers sounds so powerful!  Being one of six sisters is such a huge part of who I am.  How could I not want my son to have a brother?  But then...a daughter!  In the end, I'd be happy either way.  I have a girl name picked out, and I have a boy name picked out.  I have a nursery decorated, chocolate brown and pale pink, in my imagination for my daughter, and I have a pair of bunk beds stacked in my mind for my boys to someday scramble and bounce on.  I have a yoga/drawing studio arranged in the attic of my thoughts if our boys share a room, and we keep our downstairs bedroom, and a new master bedroom for us if our little girl gets our room.  I have a family in my head, and there's only one thing missing: my next baby.

*****

I started trying in September, and then in November?  I think I miscarried.  I say I think because it was early.  Very early.  I hadn't even taken a pregnancy test yet.  I thought, at first, that maybe it was implantation bleeding.  Even my OB-GYN said there was no way to really know, once it had started, whether it was a chemical pregnancy, or whether it was an early period.  But somewhere inside, I know.  It wasn't a period.  It wasn't anything like a period.

I picked myself up, and dusted myself off very quickly.  I told myself that I was lucky.  Lucky it happened so early, and not twelve weeks into a pregnancy.  That would have been devastating.  But this?  Just a small steppingstone.  I sucked it up, got over it, accepted what I couldn't change, and controlled my own perspective.  In December, my OB-GYN suggested I fully wean, since I was still breastfeeding once a day.  I did, and then in January my breasts began to ache a week after ovulation; I was nauseous all the time, and exhausted; I felt weird tugging sensations in my lower belly.  I wrote a story with a happy ending in my heart:  I had to wean; that's all!  I just had to wean and then it all worked out!  Except that it didn't happen like that.

The end of the story is still unwritten.  And I'm struggling with that.  Struggling with the tears that seem to be waiting, at the ready, behind my eyelids, as I drive to work in the morning after dropping my son with the sitter, when my office door shuts and I turn to look at my computer screen, when I close the bathroom door behind me, whenever I find myself alone, without an audience for whom I must keep it together.

*****

I have a husband I love dearly (despite the dark mood clouds he carries into our home with almost predictable regularity; I've learned to sweep dark clouds from our sky like a cosmic housekeeper, and counter full-moon madness [a full moon pretty much guarantees grumpiness!] with micro-brew and good humor), a job that suits me to a tee, a house I'll be happy to grow old in, and a son I adore.  The rest of the story remains stubbornly unwritten right now, and it's only my overactive imagination rewriting the mundane into various tragic conclusions.  Suck.  It.  Up.  Get over it.  Accept the things you cannot change.  Your own perspective is the only thing you can control.

Except.  Sometimes.  When it's not.

Let Go and Let ?

A prenatal vitamin becomes a bitter pill to swallow on the morning your period arrives, unwanted.

Slightly less bitter is the knowledge that I am not, in fact, a psychic.  I suppose I can live with this, despite that it places my chances of lottery winnings and their accompanying life of leisure back at the end of the line of likelihood, somewhere behind that lightening bolt just waiting to strike.  Good thing I like my day job.

What I don't like is wondering why the hell my breasts have been so sore and achy that it's painful to hold my son, why I've been nauseous every time I go a few hours without eating, starving soon after finishing a meal, and so tired after a full night's sleep that my desk at work was beckoning like a pillow cased in 1500 thread count Egyptian cotton yesterday afternoon.  It is not at all typical for me to have any of these as premenstrual symptoms; I just get cramps.  Cramps I awoke with this morning, and knew before I even got out of bed and really knew, that my body was not in the state I was hoping it was.

I agreed to teach a Saturday morning restorative yoga class for National Yoga Day today.  I was not in the mood to do it once the day actually arrived, but I had committed, and so I followed through.  And as I lay on the mat, inhaling and exhaling deeply into my lower belly, into my empty womb, I tried to take my own instruction, tried to do what I was telling my students to do: inhale peace, energy, joy, relaxation; exhale stress, tension, worry, negativity.

Inhale hope; exhale despair.
Inhale the present; exhale the past and the future.
Inhale acceptance; exhale resistance.
Inhale what it is; exhale what I want it to be.
Inhale surrender; exhale control.
Inhale Que Sera Sera; exhale My Way or the Highway.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the phrase:  Let Go and Let God.  What does this phrase mean when God is unclear?  How do you Let Go and Let.....an amorphous blend of schoolgirl Catholicism; New Age nonsense that sometimes, somehow resonates; pieces of Pagan nature worship that hit me like falling leaves, or snowflakes; a deep faith in my own fully fallible Intuition; and the way Art reaches into my chest and clutches my heart with its sharp, ragged claws on random, unsought occasions?

Everything is sacred; everything is profane.

And somewhere: dancing in heaven or waiting for my intentions to align with the stars, or my deepest desires to be sung in the perfect pitch or painted on some clean canvas where egg and sperm explode into spirit: there: is my baby, waiting patiently, while I inhale and exhale, which is all there really is to do, right now, today, anyway.

Local Library Shenanigans

As a self-professed bibliophile, as well as a teacher and coordinator of family literacy, it is with some embarassment that I admit that today is the first time I have ever taken my 18 month old son to the library.  I have excuses (don't I always?): the hours at my favorite branch (the largest branch downtown) don't mesh with the toddler's nap and my evening yoga work schedules; somehow in our move over a year ago I ended up seriously missing some due dates and somehow owing the library system $60, which then took me months to repay; in the meantime I was removed from the online system where I usually browse and couldn't be reinstated until I appeared in person, which kept me from reserving any books, which would have compelled me to go in and pick them up; my mother and in-laws give books as gifts and they've kept me well enough supplied that I didn't absolutely need to go; I indulge in store bought books for my son in a way I don't for myself because I can eventually donate them to my classroom and what better to use as lesson plan material than stories I perfected at home with a real, live audience, and.....well, you get the picture.

But today we had an afternoon pediatrician's appointment, the library is smack dab between the doctor's office and our home, and my husband needed to stop there after work anyway, which coincided exactly with the time we would be passing my favorite downtown branch with the glass walls and ceilings that allow the late afternoon sun to permeate and wash the entrance in a warm, welcoming light.  And so it was with much excitement (admittedly, mostly on my part) that we wrangled a paid parking spot, walked through the double glass doors, and took the escalator upstairs to the second floor.  I couldn't wait to show my son all the exciting new books!  He LOVES books!  He's not a stereotypical boy, who would prefer to run and bang and crash.  We have shelves full of toys and yet he chooses book after book, carefully bringing them to me, or his dad, asking: boo? boo? as he holds them aloft, arms outstretched.  My uncle, after observing his slow, measured behavior, remarked:  Well, this one isn't gonna need Adderall, is he?  We laughed, but it is true, and I am both grateful and proud of his careful and deliberate manner.  So, of course you see where this is going, right?

We arrived at the library and took the elevator up to the fourth floor where the children's section is located.  We could scarcely enter the room before he was wiggling out of my arms and running away from me, toward.....the many shelves of children's books?  No.  The small bin of baby board books?  No.  The puppet show materials available for creative children to act out stories to their heart's content?  No.  He found the one small choo choo train in the entire place, carried it over to the kiddie table and began to bang.  As hard as he could.  Repeatedly.  While shouting, at the top of his lungs:  Bang!  Bang!  Bang!  Bang!  I brought books over to him, opened them, and began to read.  He had this to say:  Bye-bye!  All done!  Bang!  Bang!  Bang!  Bang!  Complete with the pounding for punctuation.  He paused a few times, only to grab the books from my hands, close them and throw them resolutely on the floor.  The librarians sniffed, and then avoided eye contact.  I cringed, cajoled, and then finally conceded defeat and found a comfortable chair to settle into.  And my boy had himself quite the time, between the banging, the climbing up to stand on the seat of the chair while loudly announcing:  Up!  Up!  Up!, and then the high speed running from his parents, accompanied by the attempt to free the entire library CD collection from its prison upon the shelves, at which point we decided it was probably time to go.  Is it simply a sign of insanity that I found myself wondering why the library doesn't have an indoor climbing apparatus?

And of course, as soon as we arrived home, he headed right for the bookshelf, gently grabbed his favorite alphabet picture book and carried it over to me, asking in a calm and quiet voice:  Mommy? H-I-J-K?  Boo, Mommy, boo?

Random Crap I am Thinking in the Middle of the Night

I have been sick for the past week and a half.  Very, very, miserably sick.  It sucked.  I worked through it, which I never do (being a big believer in the nip-it-in-the-bud style of illness prevention which involves a day in bed as soon as I feel sickness beginning to give me sidelong glances).  Guess this is the price of that promotion.  Nobody else can do what I do now.  Not sure if that makes me feel proud or annoyed.  A bit of both I guess.  I should really start dressing better now that I'm a bigwig.  That definitely just makes me feel annoyed.  If anything, I would prefer to start dressing worse.  Head to toe soft cuddly fleece would be my ideal attire.  Stuffy professional attire experts don't recognize the excellence that is soft cuddly fleece.

I took a nap today.  Is that why I can't sleep?  Is that a good sign?  Does it mean I'm finally better?  Will I be better when I wake up tomorrow?  It's 2:11am, and I have no excuse for being awake whatsoever, so it had better mean something good.  Maybe I won the lottery and even though I don't know it yet, I somehow subconsciously sense it, and it's keeping me awake.  Maybe someone else bought me my winning ticket, since I don't play the lotto.  They better not try to keep it, now that I've won.  That would be so selfish.  They bought it for me.  I mean, I'll totally split it with them for buying me the ticket.  They don't have to renege the offer like that.  It had better be for a lot now that I have to split it.  And do they tax lotto winnings?  NY has notoriously high taxes.  My winnings are already disappearing right before my eyes here.  I haven't even gotten to buy myself a new fleecy outfit yet.  This is just plain wrong.

My son just called out "APPLE!" in his sleep, then rolled over and resumed sleeping.  A few minutes later I heard what sounded like his extra large noggin bumping against the wooden crib rail.  Then he cried "DOH!" and went silent again.  I am glad he is here to amuse me in my insomnia.

I would love being a stay-at-home-mom if my husband could simultaneously be a stay-at-home-dad.  We are in the midst of a three day weekend, and I just want it to stretch into eternity.  I think it would be a long time before we got bored.  Especially because we have so many home repairs to do.  I am madly in love with my house right now.  I think it's because I'm picking paint colors in my mind.  The entire inside of our home is a color my cousin dubbed "institutional white" the first time she came to visit.  The description is so apt I have repeated it many times since.  I very much enjoy imagining all the colors we might choose to paint the rooms.  Chocolate brown, pale silver with white trim, meditteranean coral, brick red, sandy brown, slate grey with blue tile, sage green and ocean blue. 

Perhaps if I go lie in bed and repeat paint colors it will lull me to sleep.  But first I will tell a story of a recent premonition, so I have a record of the event to look back on.

When I was pregnant with my son I was referred for a shoulder x-ray because I had an injury.  I didn't know I was pregnant yet and they asked me if there was any chance I might be pregnant.  At first I said no, and then changed it to yes, realizing that there was a possibility, although it seemed unlikely, since we had barely started trying.  They put me in a big leaded apron to protect my uterus and completed the x-rays.  Later I found out I was pregnant at that time.  Then, early in my pregnancy I awoke in the middle of the night and said aloud:  Well, it's a boy.  By the next morning I was no longer sure of the truth of this premonition, but I felt very certain at the time, and I turned out to be right.  I think I only remember premonitions which later turn out to be right, and quickly forget all about the ones that turn out to be wrong.  That's one reason I'm telling this story.  If I turn out to be right, later I will have proof of my psychic powers (ha!).  If I turn out to be wrong, I will be reminded of my own fallibility.  Either way, no real harm done.

So earlier this week I was referred to a shoulder specialist because the injury from a few years ago has reoccurred.  He wanted me to get an x-ray, so I told the tech there is a chance I could be pregnant, as I am trying to conceive, and she put the big leaded apron on me.  Getting x-rayed again, for the same shoulder injury, with the same leaded apron, and the same uncertainty about the state of my procreative health gave me a feeling of deja vu.  As I sat under the x-ray camera, holding my arm at the precise angle she had placed it, I had a premonition: there's a girl in there.  And like last time, I feel entirely uncertain as to whether I should place any trust in this feeling.  I suppose only time will tell.  But if it does turn out to be true, perhaps I'll finally start to buy lottery tickets.

Excuses, Excuses.....

So I woke up this morning and it was 5 degrees, with a windchill of negative 2.  And my husband had decided to jump into a frozen river for charity and he wanted me to come and bring Lil' Sunny Sun to cheer him on.  I had a sinus infection and jump time conflicted with the child's nap, but nonetheless, I felt this was some craziness I simply must witness with my own eyes.  We had breakfast, got dressed for the frigid weather, packed up and headed to the river.

He jumped into this:

Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's crazy.  I should probably look into having him committed, but I have this sinus infection and I really need to rest. 

So then we came home and I was a zombie with sickness and he was a zombie with almost-frozen-body-&-brain and our little Ray of Sunshine was a non-nappin' fool, so we all zoned out together in front of our fireplace.

I ended up napping away the late afternoon/early evening, and then I woke up and now Hubby is snoring in slumber on the couch.  All of which is to say, this is why our living room still looks like this:

Next weekend is three days long, to celebrate Martin Luther King Day.  Certainly we'll manage to get our Christmas decor down before Martin Luther King Day, right?  Most people manage that.  But then again, I'm not married to most people.  I'm married to this crazy dude, running toward the giant hole in the ice:

So who the hell knows what we might end up doing between now and next weekend!  The possibilities are pretty much endless!  Perhaps we'll burn the Christmas tree in the fireplace and cook hotdogs over the flames.*

*These are both actual suggestions my husband made to me last night, in his excitement over finally getting our chimney swept and making our first fire in the fireplace.  He sort of acted like he was kidding, but I think if I had agreed he would have gotten serious real quick. Is it bad that I'm kind of likin' the hot dog idea?

So Where Shall I Look for God?

I've written about this moment before:  I went hiking in the woods behind my grandmother's house.  I think I was about seven, and I was with my aunts, and maybe one or two of my sisters.  We were walking through tall trees, and suddenly stepped out into a meadow.  I was hit with the presence of something sacred as the sun washed over my face and a clearing opened before me.  It was so elemental and holy that I never thought to question it.  I was in the presence of divinity.

In my early twenties I traveled down the East Coast, across the South and Midwest to California, and then up Highway One to Eureka (great name for a town, isn't it?).  I was there a few weeks, and at a beer tasting festival in the middle of one sunny day I heard Eric Bibb sing gospel, live.  If anyone on this green earth was going to bring me home to Jesus, it would have been Eric Bibb, that day.  He made me long for something like a church choir sings, like the blessed speak in tongues, like a dance haunted by the Holy Spirit.  He made me want to go to church.  I never forgot his name even though I didn't write it down which, if you know me, is a miracle in and of itself.  I found his CD, years later, at a downtown public library in a city I was visiting.  That city is now my home.  And art, in so many guises, still holds secrets, sacred and profane.

When I met my husband I was young, and a little skittish about the idea of either of us losing our true selves, being devoured by the relationship; this I felt would ultimately doom the union.  So we sat down once to talk about what we had outside of each other that gave us great pleasure and made us who we truly were.  He talked to me about painting: about standing in an open space, paper taped to wall, brush in hand, music in the background, and how he moved large through that space, reached paint to paper like weaving a story or beating a drum.  I told him about my job at a local child care center where, during naptime we played lullabies for the toddlers and preschoolers and rubbed their backs while they fell asleep.  Some of them didn't sleep and so we held them and whisper-sang and kept them quiet while the others slowly drifted off on their cots.  Taking care of those children was magical to me, the trust they put in us to shepherd them to sleep with soft lullabies and tender backrubs, the silly faces and quiet whispers shared with those non-sleepers who relished their extra time as the center of attention.  Nurturing young children makes me a better person, brings something good in me to the surface.  The Creator is there, certainly.

I've been doing yoga for many years now.  It's been a regular discipline, especially in that it's my job, which requires a planned approach to both preparing for and performing asanas regularly.  I am drawn to the idea of a regular, disciplined practice.  There is an old ballet teacher somewhere inside me and she has perfect, ramrod straight posture and a tight bun atop her head and she brooks no foolishness.  And while I don't think the ballet teacher is Goddess (Goddess is much more free spirited than that), I do think that a regular disciplined practice helps create the conditions, for me, where Goddess has room to enter.  And, as that ballet teacher would no doubt remind me: I should not just be "going through the motions" during this practice.  (And as my inner slacker would append: at least not "too often").

Being present in the moment is challenging for me.  It's something I want to do better, for myself and for my family: for my husband and son.  They like it when I am present with them!  And I want: to create joy, or maybe invite joy, into that present.  There's a subtle dance between creating and inviting.  I think my task will be in ascertaining whose turn it is to lead.

...And What Comes Next?

I have a week off of work to sit in my home, breathe, and examine my own everyday surrounding details as we cross the threshold of a decade, at the end of which I feel like I am finally just arriving in my own life.  I'm hit like lightening with a flash of love and gratitude and I want to do better, to be better, with every fiber of my being--not that I'm that bad, many people do like me, I swear--just that I feel called, I feel a flash of lightning hit me and everything around me is illuminated and I want my heart to explode so big over this earth that it swallows us all, and it's hard to explain what I want, to put it into words, even to myself, but I feel love-fear-gratitude and yearning, the yearning to be good enough, to be truly good enough for everything I've been given.

And then there is Sunday and that epiphany begins to wear around the edges--but just slightly--as the unfolded laundry mounts and the dining room floor needs to be scraped of discarded food stuffs once again.  I hum and stretch my way through household chores and remind myself not to sigh.  And still, on Sunday, sometimes I giggle, or smirk, and am light on my feet.

And then there is Monday and items on a list long ago written and ignored are quickly and efficiently tended to and checked off.  There is satisfaction here, the satisfaction of that first day of productivity after a rest, but the affect is a little flat compared to epiphanies.  And then that evening we team up and cut the boy's hair.  We look up directions on the Internet and then wing it:  I'm weilding scissors; my husband has clippers.  Little Lightning Bolt went to the barber shop once, with his father, and when they returned my husband said:  "Remember the lead test at a year?  When it took me and two technicians to hold him down?  This was way worse.  Way, way worse."  The boy had multiple bald spots and the front of his hair had been left untouched in the abandoned effort and ended in a point midway down his nose.  So we're learning to cut hair.  We're no Regis Salon, but we're not too bad either.  And while it was no epiphany, it was a step up from paying the bills online.

And then there is Tuesday and a calendar for January I need to look at--pore over, really, for quite a while--and a new, expanded list of things to do, and more phone calls to make, and I spend way too much time reading, until I'm hunched over and slouchy and my shoulders ache and my head feels like a buzzing beehive of thoughts, yet kinda dumb at the same time.  But then pizza is ordered, and bath time is undeniably cheery, and Tuesday is salvaged in those little evening moments of joy.

I want to be present in two places at one time.  I want to be present in my daydreams, my moments of epiphany, but I want to be present in the details of my everyday life too.  The first are my magic, and, strangely, they seem to be where I easily reside.  It's in my real life that I uneasily reside.  My real life is dusty and I have asthma, and while I do enjoy making a good to-do list, carrying out all the items is frequently tedious work.  As is much of motherhood, employment, art, marriage, friendship, family and most else in life.  But there is much joy there too, if you can drag the daydreams down into the dust to liven up the atmosphere while you grab that broom and get to work.  I want to march in, focused and determined, grab the broom in one hand, stuff the daydreams in a pocket with the other and immediately begin to move in some perfect formation of floor-swept perfection, but I know it doesn't work that way.  I'm at home, in my own skin, not in uniform or in costume.  And I'm trying to learn to dance, not perform a six-gun salute.  I'm not sure, yet, how to do this gracefully.  But I just need to begin.

End of a Decade: Part II

2006:  I turned 30 in March of this year, and managed to keep my cool remarkably well, considering that instead of the baby I had envisioned on my birthday three years ago, I had instead amassed a part-time, hourly job making bupkis, which was my hobby rather than area of professional expertise, a husband subbing because he couldn't find permanent employment, and no health insurance because we were just above the level affording federal assistance, but too damn poor to buy what the hell we wanted for ourselves (which would have been, frankly, any-fucking-thing, if it were available and even remotely affordable).  The husband had high hopes, and felt certain he would find employment as an art teacher this fall.  Alas, he did not.  I looked into subbing, and then finally found a part-time teaching job right at the end of December.  In retrospect, a year of trying and of reaching.

2007:  Truly the year from hell, most of the way through, but then with a lil' twist at the end there: 
January - Hubby has a mild nervous breakdown about us having no real jobs, health insurance, money, kids or any plan other than to keep on keepin' on.  I keep it together though.
March - I turn 31, and then have a mild nervous breakdown about having no kids, health insurance, real jobs, money, or any plan other than to keep on keepin' on.  He keeps it together though.  At least we take turns in this family.
June - Our dog's cancer returns and nothing can be done.  We begin to nurse her toward her death, watching carefully because we will have to decide when her suffering outweighs her ability to enjoy life.  This is a terrible thing to have to decide.
July - Our best friends' marriage spontaneously combusts.  We love them both.  It isn't pretty.
August - My grandmother is diagnosed with cancer.  But then my husband gets a teaching job!  But then we have to have our dog put down, given her final, fatal shot on our kitchen floor, where we cry and hold her in our arms.  Then we inherit a bunch of money from a distant relative of SuperSpouse and we both get new cars, our first solid, dependable cars of the decade.  My husband chooses a station wagon, and when I tell my grandmother she says: Well, that's gotta mean something!
September - We finally get health insurance.  (Hey 2003--just be glad you never knew it would take this long!)
October - My grandmother dies, at home, surrounded by her family.  And then I conceive a baby.  (Thanks Gran!)  (Sorry, just had to throw that in there.)  (I do have my suspicions.)
November - I discover I'm pregnant.  Then my grandfather, Gran's husband, dies seven weeks later, also at home surrounded by family.  (Hey Gramp!  I'm ready for another one now!  Can you get on that?)  (Ask Gran!  She knows how to meddle with things up there!)  We find our house, and put an offer in, which the seller accepts. 
December 31, 2007 - All year long, I had been planning to get wildly, gloriously drunk on New Year's Eve, and pull some Chuck Norris moves out of nowhere to get revenge on 2007, the most hated year of my life so far.  Instead, I wore my first pair of maternity pants out to dinner at a warm, bright Mexican joint with walls covered in wooden Latin American masks and colorfully painted Catholic crosses, and the best spicy fried calamari in the city, and sat glowing and grateful for the son-to-be swimming in my belly.

2008:  This year, we waited, at first.  Then we raced.  We waited to buy our house, through almost a year of paperwork snafus.  We waited for our due date, and then nine days past it for our son to be born.  Then BAM: Baby born. Six weeks later: SuperSpouse back to work.  Two weeks later: Closed on our house.  Two weeks after that: Moved.  A month later: Back to work for me.  Six weeks later: Drove twenty-two hours straight through to Louisiana with a five month old.  The following week: Drove back in two twelve hour days to complete the year by emotionally mind-melding with a delusional drunken elderly fellow.  Looking at it this way, can you blame me?  I guess the whole year was kind of crazy, although I don't remember it that way.  I think I was high on mother-hormones and just sort of sailed through the year.  I felt like I finally had everything I wanted and the fact that it was all a big ball of crazy with a side order of OMFG-we-have-a-lot-of-work-to-do-here was not going to prevent me from enjoying it.

2009:  I got a promotion; the SuperSpouse got a summer stint as a SAHD while I worked fullish-time (thirty hours a week IS like full time to me, you guys.  I went ahead and called myself lazy so you wouldn't have to.  I'm thoughtful like that.); we finished some major home repairs; I started a blog; got fat instead of pregnant; discovered that I now hate traveling (I will be publicly mourning this breakup with my dear old boyfriend, Road Tripp, in a post to come); and finally: enjoyed a week of staycation (I am now a major fan of the staycation) while pondering my New Year's Intentions (oh yeah, I changed them from resolutions to intentions courtesy of Michelle over at When I Grow Up ~ I'll tell you about it later) as the year came to an end.  I'm happy to be where I am as 2010 rolls in.  I also have a lot to do.  I'm ready for you 2010.  And I can't wait to see what the next decade brings!

Wordless...New Year's Day

Bring it 2010.  We're Ready for you.