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Monday, April 30, 2012

Incubation


We have 32 chicken eggs in the incubator.  HubsJ and I are literally checking it in all of our free minutes, clucking like mother hens becoming a really overly-apt metaphor.  This is the time when it is easy.  The egg in my belly is just as easy.  Keep the temperature steady, make sure there is water, humidity and healthy nutrients in the air. 
This beginning stage is the time of the flitting thoughts, oh, if i could just do this forever... it would be good. . . keep the baby safe and warm, and easy.... I know how it changes, the worry builds, the predators come... (foxes, foxes)... I also know that divine design has me so uncomfortable by the very end, that I entirely switch desires- to that of removal... extraction, anything to have a hatching.
But now, I am doing the best job I can, and it is easy, this carrying, this nesting,   so easy.

And there are so many things in incubation. You can name it 'rut', on your better days... you can name it perspective on others. boredom? evolution? transformation? waiting? on pause? motherfails, mothertriumphs... all the moments in our day, the frustrations, the gripes, the sparkles, all part of the incubation, the developing life that we keep on having, regardless of whether or not we are conscious of it... it just keeps happening... any perceived lull is an illusion, right? people are dying and being born, struggling with more than we think is fair, not struggling at all, but suffering our judgement for the sins of having it 'easy'?,  (i speak of my own judgemental nature here...maybe you are not that way) Hopefully we make it out of our incubations with the things we love still around us, still there for the loving... but if not, guess what? still alive... still moving, growing, nurtured, changing...

humh.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Weirdnesses..like, the cat came back.

Its been a tricky few days here, full of marital craploads of mispeaking, misunderstanding and not missing with those verbal missiles... get all that miss?

*Its fully spring, the lilacs came out while we were gone to DC and the whole yard is awash in color and smell.  wonderful.  there are buttercups growing in the lawn... the lawnmower didn't start this morning, after its winter hibernation.  I think it might need oil, but I also think I may have been halfhearted about my pulling attempts, as I tried to start labor on my first kid by mowing a different lawn, and I am not ready to jumpstart that again... (it did not work, by the way, nor did sex, orange juice or castor oil!) ...
because we got to this house last July, the whole yard is a mystery to us, and we are wild to walk around each day and see what has sprung, what has new colors, new leaves...
*The morning before we left for DC, HubsJ went out to close up the windmill. yes, we have one. holy god, its a whole nother story. it has no propellors, but is a 3 story structure outside of the house.... so, anywhew. . . he went in to close up all the windows and make it tight, and noticed a black creature darting.  upon checking this out, he discovers our cat Bella, who has been loose and presumed dead for nearly 6 weeks.  If we had left early, or he had not remembered to close up the windmill, we may have missed her entirely, but no.  She stayed in the house the week we were gone, reunited with her sister in a tentative fashion, and gained about a pound on her emaciated frame in one week.  We are happy.  We now have three cats and that is far too many for me, not a cat person.  I'm going to have to go buy a new vacuum cleaner, and I'm not even kidding.  i can't tell you how far down the list of things-to -spend-money-on a vaccuum is. very very far.  I mean, picnic table or vaccuum? COME ON...
*saw a midwife yesterday, i seem healthy and she believes that my gigantic belly is the result of this being my 3rd baby, and not multiple babies, so that is GOOD.... like, hollah, good.  the grump of it is that I have been surprised to be so uncomfortable so early on.  The tiredness and the easy to be exhausted is really a bitch to deal with, and I am forced to on a very regular basis.  Too much exertion and I get panty and dizzy.  and i'm talking about sweeping the kitchen, or trying to start the lawnmower. meh. it'll work out.  i ordered a maternity bathing suit.  try and stop me ...
* having some issues with disconnection, I leave in three weeks for my retreat with the Benedictine sisters and I'm not excited at all, and haven't been thinking about it and when I do, I just think about how the boys will do.  Chakra Carol tells me that all I have to do is show up.  thats good.  I think I might just use that as my mantra when I wake in the morning.  Do you think its a positive?  depends on who you ask... I'm not journaling much, not reading much, not meditating at all... meh, again.
*and another thing, do you feel weird about announcing important things on something like Facebook? I'm finding myself all resistant to sharing this news there, and I'm not sure what thats all about.  I think it maybe 'connected' to my feeling of disconnection, a feeling that I'm not at all sure what my relationships are with that sort of friend... maybe?

so, thats where I am at. 

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

HOME and walking it off...

We had a great time, so much better than I could have hoped... the boys did well, the drive down and the time in Virginia and DC were awesome and overwhelming.  It is easy to forget when away, that Washington, DC is so grand and so monstrous.  How many memorials to the dead can one see with a light heart? turns out, none.  By the time I was walking towards the Vietnam Memorial (which HubsJ particularly needed to see)  I was sobbing in that ridiculously ugly hysterical way that is nothing but embarassing.  You would think I were a soldier's wife.  you would.  I blame it on the hormones, man.  I am currently sailing into the 2nd trimester, folks.  yep.  So imagine, if you will, a 'fat' bundled woman with blotchy, swollen face, trying to corral two young boys into some semblance of public demeanor while panting slightly and choking back fears of death and such sorrow for all the loss and lament in the air of a place like this... I could hardly handle it and just kept walking... just keep walking....
Let it be said, we did a lot of walking.
and also, let it be said, I'm raising my boys as Quakers, and they will never ever be on a wall like that.  If they chose to go that way, I will hogtie them and take them to a remote cabin somewhere in Canada and perhaps I will gouge their eyes out to keep them from that sort of harm .  And of course, I know this is for me, and not for them... and if I have to deal with this at a later time, I will probably be more sensible.  but not less devastated.
Let it be said, I will do more walking.

and I am glad to be home, the boys have gotten fresh haircuts, thanks to the handy clippers in the bathroom, and today I get to seek out Chakra Carol and her reiki administrations.  So there will be motion, and it will ride on the back of all this walking.  I am hopeful, and I am glad to be out of DC but I am carrying a different load today ... 
and a new re-found love of Lincoln.  Good lord, could we get more of his type involved in leading our country please?! holy smokes.  go read something he said, for heaven's sakes, go. 

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Saturday Morning Sunlight

The boys are up, plugged in to their various flickering light sources... as am I , here at my computer... I've eaten my raisin bran (I've discovered, at age 38, that I prefer Kellogg's... such a joy to have the mystery solved... ), I have plans to get the oil changed as we gear up for our first family road trip down to DC.... oh, the bag I have packed to keep the boys out of trouble.  oh.  It'll be the best 8 hours (twice)  of their lives, and they will be begging for road trips for the rest of their lives... makes me wonder how I ever survived with just a book and a pillow, all those years, all those years...
I know I've gone overboard, but I have a certain amount of dread about the whole thing, I think because I'm not that big a fan of carriding myself... I AM looking forward to seeing the Lincoln Monument again, and staying at a hotel with a pool, and walking the Mall and going to the Smithsonian.  Its really going to be awesome, really, maybe in my awe and wonder I'll get back some hope for the country.  We've certainly not done ourselves proud in these past years, and I'm mostly speaking of our internal conflicts and legislative decisions. Maybe in my presence there, walking around, not a corporation walking, but just a girl with a family, maybe i'll have some reminding influence on the workers in the very big buildings, that citizens, after all, are actual beings with legs, or with places where legs once were or could be. (hollah, PCorrectness!)
we leave on monday...

God Bless America!
in all her mess and multifaceted glory... may she be ever striving to improve herself...

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Sob story, well, not at all, really.

My little brother has grown up into a man! and there is a part of me that is having a hard time with the change.  He spent the weekend up here for Easter, with his 1st ever brought-home girlfriend, her six-year old son, and their growing bellybaby who will be birthed some time in July.  He lives in New York City, and has for the past decade plus.  It is his home, and where he lives, in particular, is dangerous and filled up with people who are crazy/caught/wild.  and it makes me worry, for that family, and I don't really handle worry very well these days, or any days for that matter. I have a tendency to peseverate (sp?) and get overly fixated, lose sleep, etc.  I try to eradicate worry from my days, at which I am really fairly successful... all that 'disbelief in lack' and all that.... and if I could go back and erase the conversations that have made me worry about him, I probably wouldn't, because it has given me a much truer picture of where he is.  We need to visit more, the timing is hard and weird and I don't know how to get that done.
I am so glad for the new people he has brought into our lives, up here and I look forward to a new swingchange of family dynamic...
and I miss that little boy sometimes, the kid who made lego cities, that took over the basement and the pingpong table... who sang the National Anthem before every single playgame,  not the one who had a passionate ear-bursting love for NWA as well as cigarettes and pot.  whoosh. we had some doozy fights, i tell you.  and that was SOOO long ago, it is almost laughable.
Oh.sigh. . . .  Love you, brother.

Friday, April 6, 2012

Light

Its that Five Minute Friday again. You write, five minutes, and you post.  and you share, and link...


--
Light.
Today, oddly enough, I suppose, is all about the dying of the Light.  Its the day Christians shuffle off our sanctimonious, flick away the false humilities. I have to deal with the fact of the death.  And, the choice of death, to die intentionally, to walk into the flames without all the faith you need, but really just the amount of faith you need.  I want to spend my time with flowerblossoms and bunnies, but the only way they exist is in the composted soils and generations upon generations, made up of what has died. Today is the day of darkness, when the Light has gone and we look around, lost.   we have our own deaths to deal with, the dying of our own lies that we've been relying on... we've all got them, christian, faithful, or none of that.  we all have the deceptions we have made true.    

The Quakers spend a lot of time looking for the Light, and I am very much looking forward to Meeting this Easter Sunday, when I can put aside my own darknesses and get astonished by the Light once again.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Lucky

lucky strikes. lucky number 7. lucky to be able to read, as most of the people on the highway with me this morning, clearly cannot.  'the lanes to the left are closed.' why so so many moving to the left? hm? the longest trip to the bank ever. lucky to have something to do with a bank that doesn't involve chagrin or despair.  lucky to be home, lucky to have a dishwasher which will in eventual passage of time do its work to clean the messes of the dinners I have been lucky to eat or make in these past days. Lucky to have a television raising my son, because I find myself awash in emotional whackadoodleness and I do actually believe that The Wiggles might do a better job today. Lucky to be able to sometimes access my sense of humor and watch how it saves the day.  Lucky to have two boy children, alive and well today.  Lucky to be such a good lip reader.  Lucky to have Doritos in the bowl next to me right now, although my innards might tell you its not the good type of luck. Lucky to have a good Husband.  Lucky to be getting better at being a solo Jane, in this new town and in this stage of my life.  Lucky I'm not Demi Moore in G.I. Jane because that would have sucked. Lucky it is Spring.  Lucky I woke up breathing, although I guess that really is the only way.  Lucky to have a freeflow of desires, that come and go and do not make me unhappy but enable me to ride the waves of possibilities.  Lucky that Summer and Fall will come again too, because I love them all but long and pine for the Fall when it is not here.  Lucky I live where I do because the Fall is like a tangible wearable Coat of Many Colors.  Lucky to have a beach I can go to with ease.  Lucky there is still always a sky to look to.  Lucky I found a pen when I wanted one this morning. There is so much. and my luck is my thanks and my gratitudes.  So Lucky.