a new place

Just me and my sacrum

2006-12-08T21:45:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we saw and practiced what the director of my school has dubbed, “Integrated back treatment.”

As he was stripping through the sacrum of the demo (which was mine, ironically) he said,

“The word ‘sacrum’ comes from early anatomy nomenclature. It is Latin and means ‘sacred.’ The bone is larger in the female than in the male body, which tells us that the sacred is embodied more in the female form.”

I almost cried. In all my life, no one has ever held up the female form to be equal to the male. Forget putting her higher than him; it’s unthinkable. And then when you demean the body, it's not such a stretch to the soul and the mind inside. “You throw like a girl; you think like a woman.”

But now, it’s just me and my sacrum. . .and we are holy.

So I've been tagged by Michael S. Douty

2006-11-19T19:11:00.000-08:00

eleven of Life's Simple Pleasures.

1 ~ cuddling with a sleepy baby
2 ~ eating brownie sundaes
3 ~ receiving a satvic polarity treatment
4 ~ giving a satvic polarity treatment
5 ~ skipping stones across a lake
6 ~ not having to cook your own dinner
7 ~ driving a car instead of taking the bus
8 ~ an epidural during childbirth
9 ~ essential oils and incense
10 ~ watching way too much television when you ought to be doing something else
11 ~ playing sudoku

I realize that not all of these can actually qualify as "simple." And I don't think there's anyone left for me to tag. Wait, maybe Michael Ottinger. Yes, yes, I tag the man from Disney World!

2006-11-15T22:27:00.000-08:00

Today I passed my polarity evaluation.

And I learned that I'll probably never ever be a raw foodist.

2006-11-14T20:33:00.000-08:00

What I learned today:

Applying a tourniquet usually means you're going to lose that limb.
And for CPR, it's not 2 breaths and 15 compressions anymore; it's 2-30. Even on infants.
That seems like too many.

Busy, busy bees

2006-11-09T22:33:00.000-08:00

It’s been crazy.
I go to school from 9 to 5, doing one treatment now in the school clinic at lunch monday through thursday and then 2 to 4 treatments on fridays. The babe goes to daycare. The spouse goes to work at the hotel and to his parents on his days off to work for them.

I’m learning a lot of things about myself. Who I really am, all the things I need to work on in myself. How much Fear i have.

Sometimes I really like my clients. Sometimes I am confused, perplexed. Like yesterday, the client said she didn’t have anything specific that was bothering her and then didn’t like the work on her back because it wasn’t addressing her shoulders well enough. Or the graduate who told me at the end of the treatment that she was an airy person who would have liked lighter rocking as opposed to firmer rocking that a fiery or watery person would have resonated with.

Apparently, the mind reading class is next semester.

I like Polarity. I don’t really like homeopathy; it’s too much to wrap my mind around right now.

And the things we talk about in Ethics class, like boundaries and working with trauma survivors keep bringing my own garbage to the foreground.

But I am learning to listen to the body; my own and others’. I am learning a lot of things; I have just lost my words somehow, or the ideas aren’t congealed yet so that they make sense.

How to make sense of it all. I guess I can start out with this:

What I learned today:
That when doing Dural Tube traction, one needs to use less pressure than you might think.

What I learned yesterday:
When babies get vaccines, life sucks for about 24 hours.

What I learned the day before that:
It's going to take a long time to salvage my spirituality. It's time to figure out how to be okay with that.

This might be nice for awhile.

2006-08-28T16:31:00.000-07:00

So my loan was pre-approved today so that I can attend school to become a massage therapist. I keep telling myself that it's a flaky thing to do, especially when I already have a bachelor's degree and previous student loan debt. But I can't figure out what I want to study at graduate school. . .

And so it looks like Michael Ottinger's worst fear for me has been realized:
I am going to rub Mormons after all.

2006-08-09T21:54:00.000-07:00

Right now, I feel really . . . .what’s the word?
Inundated. I feel inundated with all the things I need to get done. But when Toby’s thrashing around hungry or needing to be comforted, it seems like that’s the only thing I need to do. When he goes down for some sleep, I feel driven to do things. Clean the apartment. Do dishes. Wash bottles. Mix more formula. Pay bills. Make phone calls. Write thank you notes. Call the massage therapy school. Work on my application. Find a really good daycare center. Do laundry. Take out the trash. Cook something.

But all I want to do is take a shower and get some sleep myself. Usually that’s what I do and then I feel really guilty when I look around and see the state of things.

How do mothers do this? I mean, it’s a big deal to just get my teeth brushed.

2006-08-01T23:15:00.000-07:00

So this is my almost one month old baby. I think in this photo, he was planning his escape. Either that, or he had spotted a pint of Ben & Jerry's.

I'm hearing from everyone that you're supposed to put babies on schedules. It supposedly makes everyone's life easier, and the little gremlins are happier. But I don't quite get how I'm supposed to put Toby on a schedule. He sleeps when he wants and eats when he wants.

Any advice? I realize many of my friends/readers don't have children. But a few of you do. Speak up.

2006-07-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

So I had a baby three weeks ago. The water broke in the middle of the night on July 5, so we had to go to the hospital. The nurses in triage were really grumpy and sent us walking because I wasn’t in active labor yet. We got into a room by noon the following day and everything got better after that. By then I was in active labor and the nurses in Labor and Delivery were really nice. My doctor even made it, even though she’d taken a vacation day. I didn’t have a natural childbirth, probably due to the fact that by the time we were in a labor room at the hospital, I had been up for 30 hours and I was exhausted. Three attempts at internal monitoring, one catheter, an epidural, and a couple rounds of Pitocin later, and I was set. It was actually a really positive experience, and then we met Toby. His dad’s face was the first one Toby saw, and he startled at the sight of it. In her book Operating Instructions, Anne Lamott wrote that her son Sam looked like moonlight. I understand what she meant now.

He has his dad’s hands, feet and mouth. He has my eyes and maybe my nose. Lots of hair on his head. No birthmarks. He has a belly button now where his umbilical cord used to be.

He’s the coolest kid ever. Last night he slept from 11:30 at night to 6:00 in the morning, which must be a fluke, because the night before that he didn’t sleep at all, which means that I also didn’t sleep at all. Adam didn’t sleep at all either, but that’s because he was at work; the midnight shift at the hotel.

We’re all okay and Toby’s mostly happy, but he’s so new, I don’t think he’s decided whether or not he likes it here. But tomorrow’s his three week birthday, because he was born on July 6, 2006 at 3:37 in the morning. He was 21 inches long and he weighed 8 pounds and 4.3 ounces. Today he weighs just one ounce shy of 10 pounds, which is crazy. His cheeks are filling out.

He still looks like moonlight.

2006-05-20T22:51:00.000-07:00

So before you judge, let me tell you that olfactory cravings in pregnancy have been documented.

But I wonder if it’s normal that I’m sitting here sniffing a can of Comet Cleanser.

Is that bad?

Fear

2006-05-11T00:57:00.000-07:00

I’m reading this book, Birthing From Within, by England & Horowitz. Every time I read further, I feel really distressed, because all this time I have just been settling on birthing at the hospital. It has felt like the only option because we have to go on Medicaid.

I really don’t want to go to the hospital to have the cub. It’s a primordial, deep-seated feeling. I won’t be able to relax, I won’t have the privacy I know I’ll need. I really want to birth in a safe place where there’s just Adam and a midwife that I can trust. I trust my doctor, but she’ll probably only be present for moments, not hours. I’ll be at the mercy of the labor nurse randomly assigned to me. There’s the possibility that my wish for a non-medicated, natural birth won’t be respected and upheld. What if they make me lie down or restrict my movement?

The solution is to ask questions. I know. But the only person who will answer them right now is my doctor. And my doctor is just one person. She’s not going to line up the stars for me. She’s not even promising to be there; she has a family of her own. And the hospital is a faceless, pulsating cortex, operating on policy. It feels like Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wind in the Door, where the massive brain sits up on the dais, neither alive nor dead, but definitely unfeeling.

I hate being at the mercy of a system governed by health insurance. Today I watched Democrats and Republicans battle it out in the Senate, over what they are going to do about the health insurance crisis we have; whether federal legislation will pass and whether it will overrule current state law. I never really understood how much is decided for us by others while we have no idea, no clue. We stand by and have no voice. We do nothing.

I feel my hands and feet are tied. Gagged. And they’re coming at me with the monitors, the Doppler, the needles, the scalpels, the IVs, the epidurals, the catheters, the antiseptics, the drapes, the hospital beds & bright lights. The bustle and intrusion.

Tell me, how does one give birth in the midst of all that?

Maybe things are looking up

2006-05-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

So much has happened since I last posted.

Last week was the worst week ever. I hadn’t been that lonely in a while. Chronic back pain. Even worse Insomnia. Adam kept getting held up at work, we were attacked by a dog. Nothing was working out right. We got stuck on the bus and missed our childbirth class. The week culminated with a meal at El Patio (good new Mexican food) on Adam’s day off, where someone sprayed their beer in my face and laughed about it. We decided the week was just a wash.

Then A’s Mom had her award ceremony for being one of NM’s most outstanding women of the year. She was nominated by her sister and her friend. There was weird vegetarian food meant to look like meat.

A’s family (cousins hosted) threw us a baby shower, of which the biggest redeeming quality was probably the gifts. (I’m really not one for any kind of gathering that has the word “shower” in it.) Actually, the food was pretty good as well.

A family from A’s old church gave us some really vital hand-me-downs for the cub.

My dad preached a sermon on the 30th at his church to a pulpit committee from the new prospective church. They loved it, heard that his current congregation decided to cut his monthly salary by $900, went home and talked him up. They put together a pay package and contacted my dad. He currently has a trial sermon at the new church on the 14th and the new congregation will vote on him the following Sunday. My dad hopes to be announcing his resignation to his current church on the 28th of May. And his current church figured it out that he was looking for a new place, wished him luck and did not cut his salary two days ago. So maybe they still have something left in them that’s worthwhile. Perhaps the wheels are moving for my parents and they won’t have to go live in cardboard boxes.

Probably the biggest thing that happened was that we decided to go back to St. John’s Cathedral on Sunday. We’d gone one time before and that was the second Sunday of Advent. We’d missed the entire Christmas season, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Easter. I just can’t see church as a safe place anymore. It’s really just a place where the respectable vultures gather, and my family has always been the dead meat. But we went, and it was good. No one made us sign up for the nursery or V.B.S. on our first sunday there. (Do Episcopalians even have V.B.S.?) We didn’t make fools out of ourselves. No one talked to us either. I’m a little perplexed, since we’re there to meet people and find friends. But I guess it’s okay for awhile. I mean, nobody sprayed communion wine in our faces.

It's come to this

2006-05-01T01:03:00.000-07:00

It happened for real tonight. We were walking down one of the "safe" streets and there was a dog loose. A big dog. It waited until we were past the house and then it ran after us. It was silent until it was right up on us and I heard it’s jaws snap behind me. It barked/growled and then ran away. We stood there cowering, shocked, trying to process what had happened. The owner was outside. Adam asked her, angrily, indignantly, why her dog was not on a leash. She held up her hand, waved us away and walked into the house. So we called the police and filed a report. We’re pissed. We’re angry. We’re scared. We are without options.

Here’s the thing. We weren’t bitten but we easily could have been. Both of us were terrified, especially when we consider how we are going to keep our child safe soon. I am quickly developing a full-blown panic disorder when it comes to dogs in Albuquerque. It’s turning me into a crazy person; someone who would buy a gun or put rat poison into hamburger and dump it into offending yards. This isn’t who I am. I’m not a crazy person and I don’t think I’ve ever resorted to violence. But I’m going insane. I feel like I can’t leave my apartment anymore. Gone are the days of MC when I felt safe enough to consider pacifism as a viable option.

And so, I suppose my question is this: Did we make a decision for pacifism and nonviolence out of a sense that we would always be safe? Or that, if we made the decision to harm no one, then we wouldn’t be put into the position where we wanted to or felt like we had to? Is it possible to live peacefully when dogs are literally snapping at your heels? Are all the “wise” people who promulgated nonviolence at school just naive denizens of safe havens who don’t have to deal with not being terrorized on a daily basis? Are people who live in the suburbs & who drive cars just trying to keep themselves and their kids from harm?

I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a place where there was so much fear and so little black & white. I really thought before that I could comprehend the grey places, but I was wrong. I’ve never seen so much grey before. It’s totally grey here. I’ve never had so many questions and so little truth. I’ve never been a mother before either. Maybe that’s it.

This is my husband.

2006-04-22T17:23:00.000-07:00

I think he's had a rough day.

Dumb Singers from Nashville

2006-04-22T04:01:00.000-07:00

During a bout of insomnia, I happened to come across the blog of quite possibly the most worshipped person of my high-school career. Sixpence None the Richer’s Leigh Nash. The band dissolved two years ago and apparently, Nash is venturing out on her own with a solo album out sometime later this year. There’s a picture of her with too much eye makeup and she has music from her upcoming album streaming from the blog and so I read a couple of entries.

The verdict? My favorite singer is really dumb. Can’t even spell the words “undevided” and “garaunteeing.” She put up a list of her favorite things so fellow bloggers can help name her new album of which nobody even knows the theme. Is it just me, or shouldn’t the artist be able to figure out her own album title? I’m disappointed. I hate this. I hate the proximity one feels from listening to a singer or watching a great movie performance, only to find out that the actual person is a mere shell of the songs they sing or the character they play. I loathe the instances when the actor/actress who gave a stunning performance in XYZ film gets on the Letterman/Leno/Whatever Show and only talks about the fashion line they just spent too much money on. Dissonance kicks in because I realize that the people I ought to be following are the directors and the writers of these films and songs. That’s where the artistry is.

It’s also really disgruntling that these people have lots of money. But more importantly, they have something called Sway. They could do great things with it. They could get on the television and instead of talking about their dumb, spoiled rottweiler, they could take a stand on some issue they feel strongly about. They could channel their money into something other than consumerism.

Well, I guess you’ve gotta love pop colture.
When I’m rich and famus. You’ll sea. I’ll sway the massis for flufy puf marshmellows. Now I jus hope I don’t have a bunch of typoes in this poste or I’m going to look like a reel idiot.

Yes, yes, I really have this much time on my hands. It really is four in the morning and yes, I really can't sleep.

It's a done deal

2006-04-14T16:30:00.000-07:00

I found out during this Holy Week of one more atrocity committed by a church in New Mexico. I’ve had it.

I’ve had it with communities of faith who take children and molest them. I’m at the end of my rope with Christians, Muslims and Jews who argue over who is more right. I hate people who say feel-good crap like God cries with us in our agonies, or that surrendering things to God will make bad things go away. All I can see are the scars people bear given to them by the places where they should have been safest. It really is enough to make you want to slit your wrists in the bathtub.

I think my heart only has room for social activism. The spiritual capacity is shot, put out to pasture like a spent horse. I didn’t commit suicide two years ago, but I think I killed that part of myself.

It’s time to stop pretending that I can go back and act like everything is smoothed over and okay again.

Albuquerque Dogs Against Peace. . .It's the ADP, not the APD

2006-04-06T22:42:00.000-07:00

which, is the Albuquerque Police Department. These guys have had a personal vendetta against one man, who allegedly shot one of their own two weeks ago. Since then, they've been wasting our tax dollars, making gratuitous trips to Mexico, and ignoring other crimes and atrocities happening in A-town. I love the APD.
Anyways, back to the demon dogs... . .
The Center for Action and Contemplation is not to be. I got on the bus, rode a ways, got off, got on another bus. .. When I got off, I was in the middle of rural New Mexico. I walked on dusty, curvy road with no sidewalk, not even a shoulder, was almost hit by people with more money driving their SUVs. . . .I saw at least a dozen dogs. Half of these dogs were behind fences. Some were not. Most of them were really interested in what i was doing and wanted to make darn sure I wasn’t setting foot on their property. I really hate dogs.

When I finally got to the Center, there was this gigantic black poodle freaking out at my existence. I ripped my eyeballs out, the bus blew past me in billows of dust. It was like Mongolia, just without all the horses and men in funny hats. Ironically, the stucco walls surrounding the Center had tile pieces on each side that said a single word, Peace. I did not feel any peace upon walking in that neighborhood. I truly loathe dogs. Sheesh, if we want more peace on the earth, we’d get rid of all the dogs. I’m starting to think it’s time I bought a handgun. I’m not afraid of the rapists, the drunks. . . I’m afraid of the freaking dogs. I swear they want to hurt me.

One panic attack later, I realize that the Center for Action and Contemplation is a no go. I’m disappointed beyond belief. Why does this place have to be in the middle of Nowhere???? For heaven’s sake, this is the largest city in New Mexico! Couldn’t they have found somewhere else to put it?

How ironic that in order to pursue social justice and find some fellow human beings to meditate with, you have to own a freaking car. That’s a model for social justice if I ever saw one.

Let the Judging Begin

2006-04-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

My mother-in-law called yesterday. (Yeah, you know it's not going to be a good post when it begins with anything concerning one's in-laws.) I didn’t pick up. She called me again this morning at the butt-crack of dawn even though she knew Adam’s been working at the hotel until 1a lately. She also called Adam and left a text message with only her phone number on it. Adam called her back. Apparently, they’ve finally realized that we’re working for them so that we can buy our own health insurance and get off medicaid. Apparently, they’ve finally realized that’s why we’ve been asking for more cost estimate jobs and told them that we couldn’t work for them at all if they didn’t give us at least twenty hours per week. Apparently, they finally realized that qualifying for medicaid is based on one’s income level, and that if you make too much money to qualify for the program but you don’t make enough to buy your own insurance or even purchase it from your other employer within the time period it is offered once a year, you are screwed. If you are pregnant, then you are doubly screwed. Apparently, they finally realized this and began calling madly, even though we’ve explained this again and again.

And my mother-in-law even had the balls to say that if only we would begin going to church regularly every sunday then we would be acceptable Christians and she would allow us to come onto her wonderful “Christian” health insurance plan. A splendid plan where rich Christians don’t really take care of poor people who can’t afford insurance; no, the rich Christians just focus on helping themselves.

Part of me is elated when people who count themselves righteous say really shitty things like this, because I can write them off as the self-serving, sanctimonious fraud they really are. Another part of me, a larger part, just feels really sad about the state of spirituality, humility and understanding in this culture. And at my basest level, I am raging inside because I feel truly judged without any facts. Or even any good fiction, for that matter.

And really, when did going to church just every single Sunday ever make anyone into anything at all, except someone who attends a once-weekly function? I wonder if she’ll still think we’re heathens when we start volunteering/attending Morning prayer at the Center for Action and Contemplation here in A-town, just not on sundays, but on tuesdays, fridays or heaven forbid, every single fucking day?

of bugs and men. . . .or Albuquerquean bugmen

2006-04-04T00:11:00.000-07:00

Tonight I was walking back to the apartment in the dark after errands and a trip to the grocery store. There had been some drunk men waiting for the same bus as I and I didn’t feel safe. One guy even vomited as he was getting on. My pregnant nose could smell the stomach acid before I knew anybody was sick. Then, as I was walking back on a very dimly lit Garfield, I was thinking about the dog that was loose, running wild the other night. Made me turn around and go another way. Tonight I was thinking about all these things, and I was afraid. Afraid because this city feels really agressive and unfriendly at night. I realized that three years ago, I would have asked God to keep me safe. I would have felt better, talking to someone on the way.

Now I think that it is naive to ask God to keep one safe. I do not trust God to keep me unscathed. I don’t know if it’s that God doesn’t care; it’s just that the world is an unsafe place and many people have not been spared, even though they’ve asked fervently. It’s also that I do not speak to God anymore. God only says harsh things, but mostly, God doesn’t speak at all.

I like the idea that God is an equal opportunist; that God is rooting for the bacteria on earth just as much as the mammals. That in the end, the AIDS virus is as valid an entity as humanity. I like the idea less when I think about the cub, but that’s just my compulsion towards survival talking. Or is it more than that? I have a central nervous system; a virus does not. I can be altruistic (perhaps); an amoeba cannot.

Maybe we’ve got it all wrong and God does not speak to us, our brains getting in the way. Maybe God only speaks to the single-celled organisms in the world. Maybe they are the ones who can hear.

Relatives are like dead poultry on your plate

2006-04-02T23:49:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wish I could live in a place where there is no meat. I was at Flying Star the other day and decided to break the rules and order the chicken salad. When they brought the poor mangled bird out drenched in mayonnaise, all I could think of was that I was chewing up dead flesh.

On another note, every single day I wish I lived in a place where there are no relatives. When you’re having a baby, everyone acts like it’s their own personal progeny. An aunt is on the phone deciding what his name ought to be.. .. apparently, Richard & George are top of her list. I guess the cub is going to be born as a seventy-year-old. A shower is being planned at which no one I really know will be present. They’ll probably all bring gifts that are stereotypically male. There probably won’t be anything vegetarian to eat, except maybe guacamole. A crib is being excavated from the eighties (it was Adam’s); it was made before safety standards were instituted, so the cub’s head will probably get lodged in the bars and he’ll die a slow, agonizing death, gagging on those god awful bumper pads. My dad thinks male babies are designed by God to be macho and tear down baby gates. Girls are designed to be totally impotent; they only sit behind the barriers and cry for someone to come rescue them. My dad believes all this just because he saw it on 20/20. I think my dad is an idiot. I hear motherhood being disparaged at one point in a conversation and exalted just a moment later. I’m confused.

And all I can think of is that my definition of parenthood is nothing like theirs.

I’m thinking that part of being a parent is to be the one to open the door for your child to experience all the great people who teach us new things. Kind of the opposite of how my parents were. My dad thought any idea that he didn’t put into my head was evil. My dad hates Milligan College. I think I want to teach the cub to think for himself.

Then you have the neurotic grandparents who live in a different part of the country and didn’t give two cents about you when you were a kid. Now they act like you’ve abandoned them in their old age, even though they’ve never called to say that they love you, they’d rather turn up in unexpected places at holidays and say things like, “Gee, the next time I see you, it’s going to be at my funeral.” Well, shit, Grandpa, you didn’t seem to care that I was a real person when I was ten and actually wanted to hang out with you.

The cub has such a great pool of emotional depth, intellectual ability and communication skills to draw upon. It’s almost more than I can stomach.

The cub is already gender-bending

2006-03-31T18:46:00.000-08:00

We found out on tuesday that the cub is a boy. And I’m amazed at how my perceptions of him have already changed. I have been relating to this kid like he was a girl. I really had this feeling that the cub was female. Instantaneously, the cub has informed us that he’s had a sex change. All of a sudden, the kicks and punches aren’t girly anymore. They’re more macho ....spunky. . . .I don’t know. I’ve just been reeling the last couple of days, because I feel like the cub really did have some sort of gender metamorphosis. All the girl names are out the window. And it’s like the cub is a whole lot more real. And I am surprised at myself, because I wanted to treat this kid the same no matter what his/her gender. I wanted to treat him/her as if he/she was more than anatomy and stereotype. I thought I was doing that, but when the cub gender-bent himself, I realized that my whole perception of him has changed.

What else am I not aware of? What else am I doing that I don’t even perceive? It’s as if I’d been filtering everything the cub did through these gender colored glasses, and he’s not even born yet. What am I going to do when he’s sixteen and he not only likes boys, but he thinks he needs to become a woman to truly be himself? Or herself?

Oh man.

I guess this is good to realize now, because I can still change the way I see the cub. But how to do that, I’m really not sure.

night

2006-03-26T18:28:00.000-08:00

It’s sunday evening. Quiet here. I am so far inside the evening, I could stay forever. A car drives by. And I am still.
I think; and the night moves further down the line.

Anne Lamott wrote during her pregnancy about how the only thing she could do sometimes was be still and breathe through the raw loneliness, let it just sit there and be. Tonight the loneliness isn’t what I’m feeling. I feel like I am my own best friend, that I can comfort myself. Sort of like Loneliness transcended into Solitude. It’s so rare that I can find myself here. I’d like to stay.

Cosmic Bite

2006-03-24T23:03:00.000-08:00

Kona bit me today. He bit fast and hard. He bit with the force of a bored guinea pig shut up in a cage. He bit yesterday, too. I thought it was only a little nip, the kind that searches for a bit of food. But today there was no mistake. He sat in my arms for awhile, mustering up every ounce of his piggie meanness, and then he bit.

I shoved him back into his cage, a little roughly, for as dumb as this sounds, I am hurt beyond words. I feel like a jilted lover, a cuckold. I thought we were companions, friends. I thought we shared some kinesthetic level where I knew how to take care of him, and he knew how much I loved him.

But he bit me and I shoved him and I am about to call the Peruvians. It’s on, pig.

It’s amazing and terrifying, how fickle I really am. I thought I would dive into a burning building to save this guinea pig and today I had to hold myself back from throwing him into his cage because of a small bite that didn’t even break the skin. If I can change this quickly, turn on a pet I love dearly, then how would I react if Adam cheated on me? If a friend betrayed me? How shallow am I? The meterstick was plunged into the depths today, and the verdict is that there are no depths, just a little pool where the sun can hit the bottom. What if I did “turn my back on God” two years ago? My brain a single neuron that malfunctioned into a depressive circuit and got stuck? My feelers just a bunch of disoriented antennae that couldn’t sense a presence anymore and got that confused with a loss of faith? What if the presence never left, but I lost the capacity to feel? What if that’s all that happened, and I misconstrued it into cosmic abandonment? What the fuck am I talking about?

It’s as if I failed the ultimate test. I didn’t make it through the Dark Night. Does the morning ever come after that? I can’t remember a story in which the night outlasts the perseverance. The morning always comes before the death, absolution before the sentence is carried out.

This must be a different kind of story.
I must not be very well read.

I am a piece of parmesan cheese

2006-03-20T11:27:00.000-08:00

Okay, I don’t know how to say this, but this is day three of extreme ambivalence. Ambivalence towards being pregnant, becoming a parent, the whole damn thing. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t been a total mess on the pill.

I like that word ambivalence. The idea that you are torn in two, that there are two paths. The word’s gotten so watered down, like depression....Christian....spirituality. They get so clinical, so overly prescribed, like drugs, that they lose that little vial of essential-ness that gave them their original significance and nuance. Not distilled anymore, like pure water or strong alcohol, there are impurities mixed in. Kind of how one feels when one is ambivalent. Like a really bad cocktail. The wanting mixed in with the recoil. Too much bitters. Or a piece of parmesan cheese frozen in an ice cube in Adam’s glass. Gross. That actually happened, you know.

I am just an ambivalent piece of cheese. Has anyone ever read the book by Robert Cormier, I Am The Cheese? It's very middle school (sort of, I read it in high school) but it still makes one think. And it has nothing to do with pregnancy or Albuquerque or blogs, or even guinea pigs, for that matter. Although, maybe, in a hypothetical, lab rat sense. . . . .

Oh, go read the damn book already.

2006-03-13T14:26:00.000-08:00

I am 25 and i still feel like i’m waiting for my life to begin in earnest.

Let's join a club and make friends!

2006-03-11T15:09:00.000-08:00

I have no friends in Albuquerque. I realized this with an overwhelming feeling of loneliness today and Adam got on the computer to look at Craigslist.com. He clicked on “Groups.” Here is a smattering of the somewhat lacking options we have here in A-town:

~Depression Support...Peer to Peer
(Because we’re not depressed enough as it is.)

~Raise Funds for Your Group by Selling Old Cellphones Online!
(forget selling candy bars, that’s so Old School!)

~Meet Christian singles - Women and Men
(Man, this sounds so promising! Damn, I wish I was single~I could hook up with a woman or a man!)

~new fun stuff
(you know, spending your hard-earned money on crap you don’t need! Or replacing the ten dollar vacuum cleaner that your sister-in-law stole to clean her new cooler-than-yours-apartment with.)

~Abandoned at Birth?
(Sometimes, I wish I had been.)

~PERSONAL LIFE COACHING (sorry Amy’s mom; I neither think I am in need of, nor can I afford this service.)

~How to get a REPLACEMENT cell phone with NO NEW CONTRACT! (Could this possibly be a corollary to “Raise funds...by selling old cellphones...”?)

~Trauma Suvivors - you don't have to go it alone any more
(the typo was original to the link. ... .so I wonder if I can come here and bitch about all the loose dogs giving me panic attacks as they ravage Albuquerque.)

~Women in Sales
(Gee, too bad I just gave two weeks notice at the candy store.)

~Society of Sophisticated & Successful Females
(But we’re not Feminists! We could never be that extreme! We’re too busy shopping!)

And the two I think I would be most loathe to mess around with:

~Bored moms needed for friendly group
(Bring your own choice of poison; we’ll all self-administer together.)

~The Albuquerque Parents Group
(no, please.)

The most promising link, posted on Sat Jul 30:
~INTELLECTUAL, ART, MUSIC, POETRY, CREATIVE NEW MEDIA brought up the following error message:

“The posting you were looking for has been removed from the server.”

In conclusion, I think we’re just destined to have no friends here. Or perhaps I’m being too picky.

Today is a Vegan Day

2006-03-05T11:18:00.000-08:00

Adam and I are sort of posers. We love this magazine called
The Herbivore: Putting the ‘FU’ in Tofu since Oh Three.
But I always have to make sure I’m not wearing my t-shirt advertising “The Hidden Chicken” when the quarterly hits the stands. Maybe we should just subscribe. The problem is that when it finally comes out, I read the whole thing in practically one sitting, like today, and hence, get all angrififed, invigorized. .. . . .I begin to envision a kitchen where all the remnants of dead animals are gone. No more fish sauce in the cupboard. . . .damn. I don't eat much meat at home, but there aren’t many choices when we eat out. I can't call myself even a vegetarian, let alone vegan, currently. I’m still trying to figure out what Grete eats when she goes to Taco Bell. I get the bean burrito, but I bet there’s lard in the beans.

And the thing is, I envision this world where I am basically dead to my parents. They aren’t going to understand. What happens when we visit and not only us, but also the cub, isn’t eating meat? I’m thinking maybe we just won’t go anymore. "Gee, dad, the deer meat you shot five years ago and finally extricated from the freezer looks great, but I think I’ll just have to pass." And what about Christmas? Thanksgiving? Everytime my in-laws come over? I just don’t know if I can be that confrontational. I need some ATTITUDE!

It also doesn’t help that our first meager attempt at going vegan coincided with finding out that I was pregnant. Along came the nausea and that Thai salad with tofu at Flying Star from months ago still gives me the heebee geebees. Or as Strong Bad likes to call them, The Jibblies.

And then you enter all the Albuquerque dogs in the neighborhood that seem to prey on my panic attacks everytime I walk past a particular house and fear a mauling. There was one dog the other day that literally waited until we were directly in front of its gate and lashed out irrationally. I screamed and ran off crying and breathing like Michael Ottinger on that god awful choir tour. I read up on the subject and discovered that I played directly into the damn dog’s paws, depositing little coins into it’s doggy behavior coin bank. Next time, maybe it’ll try jumping the fence at some poor pedestrian in order to get a bigger rise.

The end conclusion? These dogs aren’t helping my sense of responsibility for the animal rights movement. And I want to be there. I read the entire magazine in one sit and then the next one doesn’t come out for another three months, and I have to make all that conviction last through the Death Valley dry spell of, "gee, we’re so poor, we have to go buy crap at Smith’s" (the western sibling of Kroger).

It’s not working all that well. And veganism/health consciousness/animal activism just doesn’t mesh with my depressive self on bad days. On a melancholic day, I’m just trying to stay alive. Who cares if I eat an entire pint of ice cream filled with cow pus and hormones and antibiotics? Who cares if rotting carrion is stinking up my colon? We’re all dying anyway, right?

However. The the recurring-ness of this ideal is worth something. I keep buying Herbivore. The truth is, I don’t really buy meat anymore. But Kona is such a skittish guinea pig, I swear he’s heard about the poor Peruvians. Apparently, the only meat they can get their hands on are guinea pigs they raise themselves. Scientists are even trying to genetically engineer a bigger pig with more flesh. Poor Kona. I tell him it’s okay, he doesn’t live in Peru and we love him, but he doesn’t seem all that comforted.

There's this great blog on blogspot called Vegan Lunch Box that's really helped because we can go look at it everyday, as opposed to scrounging around with a quarterly for moral support. This woman posts photos and descriptions of the organic, vegan lunches she packs for her "Little Shmoo." I don't think I'm aloud to post her link on my blog without permission, but she's pretty easy to find. I did post her blog name above, but it's positive publicity, so she probably won't come after me.
Go find her if you want.

(Gee whiz, I've edited this post at least three times, and it keeps getting longer.)

Fluid, not the nice adjective. The noun.

2006-03-03T22:35:00.000-08:00

Well.

This kid’s getting bigger. Knocking around and stuff. i hold my guinea pig and think, man, you have no idea what’s coming, what’s going to be screaming it’s head off and stealing all your attention.

I looked down the other day and there was a small amount of a certain body fluid that only pregnant people make leaking out of a certain orifice. I was shocked, scandalized, horrified. I don’t think this pregnancy thing is working out after all. I’ve changed my mind! The last time this happened, it was just the weird side effect of Risperdal. I stopped taking the medication immediately and didn't tell anyone. I don’t think I can stop being pregnant as immediately, however. So crazy, because the situation makes me pause. Pause because this is not the first time I have found direct correlations ‘twixt being pregnant and being mentally ill.

Mentally ill. Most of us are, you know. Nothing can be done about it. But with pregnancy, we can all take contraceptive measures. Unless, of course, the contraceptives themselves cause our mental illness. Then you have a situation that breeds not just babies, but all sorts of illnesses, such as excessive tiredness, moodiness and worry. And let’s not forget our old friend, utter despair. What’s a person to do?

But in the end, I must acknowledge that this kid is not a form of mental disease, although it maybe does exhibit somewhat parasitic tendencies. No, I would rather be pregnant any day, than be clinically depressed.

Hell has frozen over.

2006-02-16T17:45:00.000-08:00

My dad is a minister. He has been since before I was born. Ministry is probably the reason I felt so invisible to my father when I was growing up in his house. I always came second to the all important church people who needed to talk to my dad about whatever, church relations or problems, etc. Ministry is my dad’s identity. It has always come before us, his family.

I received a phone call from my mom today. She told me that my dad is leaving the ministry; is looking for a secular job. He’s had it. The meeting with the elders last thursday did not go well. Sunday service went even worse. My dad is bowing out, with all of the platitudes that I can’t stomach. He apparently feels like God has told him he’s done his part. It’s okay to quit. Twenty-five years of torturing himself and his family is enough. God is finished with my dad. Forget that I told him it was killing him a couple of years ago. Forget that his blood sugar, blood pressure, and rage issues really haven’t ever been under control. Now that some feeling my dad has had of God’s Will finally kicked in, we can all rest in peace because my dad is going to go work for fucking Cabellas, the outdoors-enthusiast vendor with the thousand page glossy advertisement.

I can’t believe this. Either every man has his breaking point, or my dad can’t stomach any idea that is not his own. Has to have his own inclinations sanctioned by God.

I’m so angry about this, because I needed a father when I was growing up. Someone to show me that I was loved and wanted. All I got was some overbearing man who preached in a pulpit on sundays and thundered around the house every day of the week, making us all feel like trash because we couldn’t disappear or alleviate his unbelievable stress levels.

“You don’t know where my shoes are? How dare you move my shoes! I don’t move any of your junk!”

“You don’t like peas or tomatoes? Well, that’s what we’re having for dinner! That’s what your mother made! If you don’t eat it, then you obviously don’t love Jesus!”

“How dare you light a candle in your room! This is open, teenage rebellion!”

“You’re too sensitive!”

He would go to great pains to counsel a couple whose marriage was on the rocks, he would comfort the dying church member. He would even help homeless people who knocked on the church doors for help. But his own kid, he acted like he could not have cared less about. I just dared not break anything, or step out of place.

And now, he is giving up his great love, the one for which we were all forsaken. What does this mean? What am I to think?

Blue streak of Bleach

2006-02-05T11:19:00.000-08:00

I’m not sick anymore. The head cold is going away. The stomach virus is gone. Spewing forth from both ends has ceased. I’m healed! And hopefully the cub is still alive.

The loneliness is at bay. The sun is out brighter than usual. The expected high is 59 degrees. The wind is only a breeze. It’s a sunday and no one has damned me to hell yet, and I don’t plan on giving anyone a chance.

I think it’s time to clean the apartment. Wash the dishes, clean the bathroom, excavate everything decrepit from the refrigerator, remove the patina of trash from all the surfaces. Sweep, mop, laundry. I feel like I can do it all.

I think I could even pull off an idyllic throwing open of the windows to let in the fresh air.

Adam’s going to think I’ve been replaced by a monster. Maybe I have been. But it feels a lot better than a blue funk. Maybe this is the nesting instinct at work. Well, I’m off.

Blue Streak; Bad Thoughts

2006-02-03T23:34:00.000-08:00

It’s Late.

Adam’s asleep.

I don’t think I can have this kid. I’d make a horrible mother. I’d want to do everything exactly the opposite from what my parents did. I’d want to tell him or her that if he/she had sex someday and got into trouble, I’d still love him or her. I’m afraid the kid would hear, “It’s okay to have sex; sex is great!” And they’d end up with some incurable disease and hate me because I didn’t try hard enough to protect them.

Or, I’d be so lax, that he/she would think I didn’t really care.

I was talking to my mom tonight, my fundamentalist mother, and she was going on and on about how excited she is about having a grandchild. She said, “I know we live far away, but that kid is going to know who I am!”

I cringe at that. I think I’m cringing because I know who my mother is, and I’m afraid she’ll force her beliefs on the person I will come to care about most; to threaten them with Hell. This world has enough threats already. I remember when I was, oh, maybe seven, and my mom read a story about the unforgivable sin and by the end of the story, I was convinced I’d committed it unknowingly. I was terrified. I don’t want that to happen to the cub.

I guess, in the end, I have to forget about all the things ahead. Sex won’t come up for quite awhile, right? Four year olds aren’t having sex voluntarily. I guess for right now, I can just focus on the fact that the cub has all the right numbers of knees, arms and only one head. And my Rubella titer checked out, which means I can’t catch German measles and give the cub a massive birth defect. See? Things are looking up.

On a completely different note, there’s a part of me that thinks it’s really silly to write things and post them on the internet. Who wants to read about my shitty life? And there’s part of me that can’t be honest in the off chance that someone will actually read it. I can’t help but think that if I was scribbling into a personal journal, an actual book, I’d be writing something wholly other. Entirely different. I never read back over my blog, but when I journaled in the past, I pored almost obsessively over previous entries. There’s something exhibitionist, something of the Poser to post things online. These words I write; they’re only half of what I really think. They’re basically just the nasty side, a place I can fume and then air my vomit stains. Because elsewhere, there’s no other place you can put this stuff.

If I was to be honest about how things are, I would simply say over and over again each day, that I am horribly, chronically and forever lonely. A blue haze follows me on my way to every place. The real reason I don’t think I can have this kid is that I fear I will poison him or her with my depression. I am afraid of the sunset, afraid of the madness the night will bring. Every night when Adam has to go to sleep before I can, I feel like the world is somehow ending. My last life preserver drowning in the sea. And every time I reach out to someone to tell them how I feel, hoping for some kind of word or solace, they tell me I should go fucking exercise. Or that I’m being stupid, lazy. . . . I can’t take that anymore.

It’s enough to make you say, “Enough, I surrender. I’ll take the damn pills. I’ll go underground; hide my leprous self from daylight and decent people.” And I think about the statistics, how eighteen million people will suffer in a given year, and I don’t get how nobody seems to understand what I’m talking about. The self-hatred is insurmountable.

There was a woman on some tele-evangelist program tonight who was ranting about how people who don’t know Jesus are the ones who are so miserable they have to take all “those pills.” Even a seemingly wise, old monk at St. Meinrads once said in a seminar that things like depression were just part and parcel to the spiritual sin of Acedia.

To these people I just want to say, “Go fuck yourself.”

A trip down Selfishness

2006-01-31T16:26:00.000-08:00

They’re everywhere here. Bums, homeless people, people with ill-fitting coats and crazy, mangled hair and beards. Whatever you want to call them, everytime I am solicited, it begets this massive internal dialogue. They’re asking me for change but I know they need a whole lot more than my pocket change. Sometimes I don’t even have pocket change. Sometimes I’m hungry and frustrated, too. Those are the times I get pissed off with them. It’s like, I don’t even have enough money to buy good food for myself to eat, why am I going to give my money to you? Then I feel roaringly guilty, because, after all, they don’t need a couple of dollars, they need something on the order of Interfaith Hospitality Network to help them get cleaned up, suited and interviewed for a new life. And the catch-22 is that it probably takes more effort on their part than it would on mine if I was actually volunteering in a great program like they had in Johnson City, TN. It takes so much work to get yourself up and your face washed everyday. I get it. And that’s another reason why I get so pissed off; because I don’t really want to play the respectability game either. We’ve got to perform in this society. Not only do we have to have a decent job, we have to be charismatic while we do it. We have to make people like us so we can get ahead. That requires amazing people skills, good personal hygiene, an acceptable credit score, a clean house, reliable transportation, a bank account, no disastrous bad habits, an already-healthy emotional disposition, a phone, local trips to the hairdresser, trendy clothes, paying one’s bills in a timely manner and various other amenities here in this barbarous country.

It’s a tough act to keep up. And part of me understands why the people on the street decided to check out. I get tired from all of the demands. I get it. About two years ago, I probably wasn’t that far away from homelessness if it wasn’t for Traci.

So here’s the part that just makes me want to spit nails. Everyday, I drag my body out of bed and play the game. I wash myself, go to work when scheduled. I try to pay the bills. I feed my guinea pig. I struggle to keep our apartment liveable. I put in the sweat and withdraw the paycheck. I am liked at my job. My in-laws haven’t hired anyone to take me out yet. And then the little money that I have, I’m supposed to just hand it away. Hand it away to someone who isn’t participating in the crazy dance we’re all supposed to be doing.

I get mad. Then I get guilty. Then I forget. Then I am solicited again and it starts all over. Adam says that the responsibility probably should be on all the people richer than us, like parents who have established themselves. But they’re so jaded. They act like the only thing the person will do with pocket change is to go buy beer. Bunch of little shits. In the words of Carrie Arblaster, “If I was homeless, I’d probably want to go buy a beer, too.” Anyway, someday when we’re making more than under 20,000 annually we can do something. And it doesn’t cost anything to volunteer at a shelter. Have I done that? No. I’m too busy sitting around wondering if anyone’s going to volunteer to help me.

You know, it's going to take a lot of balls to publish this, because everybody else's blogs that I'm reading are stuck on some higher spiritual plane. They sound like freaking Jesus, and I'm sitting here thinking, "Is everybody for real?" Isn't anybody mad about anything?

laundry, germs and god

2006-01-28T11:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday it was 78 degrees in the apartment with the heat off. Albuquerque is such a strange place. It was nice though, to walk the laundry down the street to the laundromat on Central with no coat. All kinds of people in the laundromat, most of them laundry cart hogs. It’s kind of interesting to live in a big place with no car. When things fall apart. There are two washing machines here at the tiny apartment complex where we live and somebody broke into the coin acceptor and stole quarters out of one. The other machine was working just fine and then all of a sudden was jammed, like in Amelie when she drops a washer and a paper clip down the chute.

The result? Carry your laundry on your back, or no clean underwear.

And so you find yourself carrying two backpacks of dirty clothes down the four blocks and all of a sudden, life seems a lot simpler and calmer. If I was driving a car, I would be trying to cram fifty-two odd jobs into one afternoon, where now, all I can do is one load of clothes.

Food is more difficult to get as well. When you are at the store, you figure out what you must have for tonight and nothing more, because you’ll be carrying it home in your hands or on your bike. Stepping outside the apartment has more meaning for me now, it usually means putting my feet in front of each other in search of food. My stomach growls. It’s not quite as easy now. The pantry is not overflowing. You’ve got to walk to the store and carry it on your back. Imagine if we were outside tending crops everyday and that was our only vehicle for food.

It’s amazing how I have already removed myself from a lot of convenient technology and I still am embedded in it. I have a computer, and internet connection. I use piped natural gas to heat the apartment and to cook my food, heat my water. I use machines to get to work and wash my clothes. There’s running water and a sewer system. Big trucks haul away my garbage. I use products made all over the world and shipped to Albuquerque. There’s no end to it, humans trying to prolong and improve their lives, in the end to be cut down by death anyway. I wish sometimes that I could live closer to the cycles of it all, so that my worries would be fewer. Kingsolver says, “God is a virus. Believe that when you have a cold.” In other words, God is really rooting for all of us, not just us humans, not just the animals, but all the flora and fauna there are on the earth. Does God revel in it when an epidemic wipes out a nation of people? It’s an interesting question, because he/she made the germs and bacteria, same as us. From the perspective of the jungle, it would appear that God is cheering for all of creation. From the perspective of the jungle, humankind is no more than just another species that lives and dies on the whim of seasons, disasters, famine and drought.

It’s so weird to me that just because I live somewhere besides the jungle, my perspective of everything, including God, is so. . . ... .other.

A Poisonwood Baby

2006-01-26T12:10:00.000-08:00

You know, I just skimmed through that last post there, and . . .sheesh. . . .can we say “depressing”? It’s like that other thing Anne Lamott says, that her mind is just like a bad neighborhood at four a.m. that she tries not to go into alone. I don’t need to quote that because she already ripped it off of somebody else. And I’ve been rereading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Every time in the past when I read this book it was saddening, but now, this time, it feels strangely liberating, as if the message this time is: There are lots of nasty people out there, some of them are Christian, but the truth is, my family does not have an exclusive monopoly on the Nasty.

I love this book; it validates so much of what I felt growing up. True, I didn’t get shipped off to the Congo as a small child by a fanatic missionary father plagued by fear of his own cowardice. I wasn't bitten by angry ants in a fiery ant storm, starved to death, or killed by a green mamba snake, but in a sense, all the indignities and aspersions and outrages were mine.

If the cub is a girl, I want to name her Adah after one of the daughters.

Speaking of the cub, I went for an ultrasound today, and let me tell you, it was downright freaky. The baby looks like Skeletor. It’s femur looks like you could snap it like a twig. The face is otherworldly, the eye sockets look empty, etc. It is a demon baby with a spinal cord of pearls.
. .. . .If it looks like that when it comes out, I’m afraid we won’t be able to keep it. What would the neighbors say? Adah, you need to grow some organs. ... and skin.

This post makes it necessary to be Anonymous

2006-01-24T12:18:00.000-08:00

It’s funny. I just read something overtly Christian. It was by a Christian writer commenting on some state of the world today. And I’m split in half because I agree with what they wrote, as it wasn't a mainstream but a kind of counter-culture point of view being expressed. I just have this squeaky grinding sensation in my teeth, like in the eighth grade, when someone’s clarinet is emitting all manner of shrieks and other unearthly sounds a couple seats down. All you can picture doing is grabbing the suffering instrument and clubbing the schlep in the skull with it.

This feeling happens a lot and it’s troubling to me. I can point the finger at myself, which I usually do. But, (and this is soo human to dodge responsibility) I really think that it has something to do with the language my dad used to poison me.

My dad is very quick to judge people and to presume to put them in their particular level of Hell where he deems appropriate. A conversation on the way to church one Sunday: “Homosexuality should be shamed back into the closet where it belongs.” A statement made to my sister six months ago on the subject of her somewhat Gothic attire and appearance: “I think you are possessed by Demons and therefore obsessed with death and the macabre.”

What the fuck does that mean?

And yet, every Sunday morning he can get up in front of people and talk about concepts like the Love of God, Responsibility, showing Respect to people. . . . basically normal, Christian concepts. I don’t think I’ve heard more than one or two rants from him in his pulpit. They were all reserved for us, his worthless family. So in my experience, the poison mingles equally with the love. Throw in a penchant to twist other people's words, an abundant amount of rage at his job and chronic high blood sugar, and you have one irate father on a mission to make you feel like crap in the name of a Christian God. One day after a casual, caustic comment, I said to him, just as casually, “You know, that’s not really doing much for my self-esteem.” His response? “Show me self-esteem in the Bible.” He smiled and just walked away.

What a man of God. What a great guy.

The end result? Whenever someone begins to use language that a Christian would use, or to even talk about seemingly innocent tenets of Christianity, I begin to feel like a five-year-old who’s going to get thrashed momentarily for lying or getting into the chocolates. I can actually hear his stomping footsteps sometimes, coming closer and filling me with dread.
Whenever I meet a minister, any minister (it doesn't matter if they seem particularly kind or compassionate, often that makes them even more suspect) I immediately wonder what kind of hell he’s putting his loved ones through. The very person, one ought to be able to trust, your minister/ preacher/ priest/ reverend/ whatever. . . .that’s the very person one can’t trust.

And i feel like i should be able to get past this, to just confine him, just one man, to a very small room in my mind and move on, but the language goes too deep. All the words are poisoned.

I guess i'm poisoned, too.

2006-01-22T15:16:00.000-08:00

Listening to Antony and the Johnsons: “I am a Bird Now.”

There’s too much entropy going on in the apartment right now. Come to think of it, it’s not really just in the apartment, it’s out there in Albuquerque, too. Cigarette butts and old McDonald's scraps. People asking for money and bus fare, help and directions. Car accidents and gun shots. I smell marijuana everywhere, even in the parking lot at the mall where I sell overpriced candy. And they're Not using it medicinally, I tell you, they're kids crouching behind electrical boxes looking at us suspiciously. That's not obvious at all.

And I’m tired, so exhausted because of the chaos. There’s too much randomness in the system. I need the math to add up and divide equally; need the words to stop changing their definitions. I need Pekoe to be alive and not infected with entropy. I need to go on a vacation. I need someone to mail me lots of money so I can escape. US dollars, preferably.

Actually, the coolest thing ever would be if I could transform the world to be in exactly the same state of peace or discord as my small-ish apartment. So by washing all the dishes, I would be removing all the debris from the lots in Albuquerque where those rascally types have been illegally dumping. By doing our laundry, everybody out there would miraculously smell like Tide. I balance my checkbook and suddenly, everybody has enough money to live on. I put the books back on the shelves and people start walking around with their minds in order. I could leave little dishes of essential oils out to perfume the air in here, and we’d all be gliding along within our little aromatherapy bubbles. Like Harry Potter’s bubble-head charm that lets you breathe underwater.

What a place that would be. But it would be too much control for me. A sort of housecleaner-person’s twisted attempt at worldwide voodoo. And if the current state of my apartment is any indication of what the world would be like, then maybe I’d better leave the housecleaning to somebody else.

Speaking of the crabby old apartment, today Adam actually admitted that we might be better people if we got a dishwasher. You know, those big boxes that wash your plates and cups for you? Yeah, we need one. I think he’d been thinking that we would wake up one day and suddenly be anal and super clean, like washing dishes would be a higher priority than talking, or reading, or coffee-drinking or snuggling. Right. Dream on, dreamer.

make it all stop

2006-01-21T19:31:00.000-08:00

Things are slowing down in Albuquerque. Wells Fargo, our bank, has decided to stop fucking with us and I'm getting used to the empty cage where Pekoe lives. The prospects are good for Adam to be hired as a cost estimater for his parent's group company, Mosaic Architecture. And that's actually a good thing. And the pay is so good we'll actually be able to pay on our student loans and eat all in the same month.

I have an appointment with the financial advisor lady at the UNM clinic on monday, presumably the day in which we'll find out whether we're eligible for medicaid assistance. The day we'll find out how much in the hole we'll be in to have this kid born. Oh yeah, I'm pregnant. Still sort of getting used to that idea as well. There's an ultrasound scheduled as well for this week, and I still have to decide whether I'm going to have the triple screen blood test to check for abnormalities. Would we choose to have it anyway, even if it had Downs or something else? Probably. Judging from the meltdowns I'm having every night after Pekoe was euthanized, I don't think I could handle killing the cub (that's what we call it; sorry Adam, I just can't stand calling it a "baby;" that's a term for some nasty little bundle strangers would be having).

But then I start to worry like some old grandma, like maybe I should just spring for all the tests, even the amnio. Which totally goes against everything I thought I thought. . ..I was of the opinion that the less technology the better. But this little worrisome radio begins to play in my head nonstop and I feel like I need to take all the tests because I'm worrying already. . . .It's like what Anne Lamott wrote:

"During the first week of waiting [for the test results], you actually believe your baby is okay, because you saw it scoot around during the ultrasound and because most babies are okay. By the middle of the second week, things are getting a bit dicey in your head, but most of the time you still think the baby is okay. But on the cusp of the second and third weeks, you come to know--not to believe but to know--that you are carrying a baby inside you in only the broadest sense of the word baby, because what is growing in there has a head the size of a mung bean, with almost no brain at all because all available tissue has gone into the building of a breathtaking collection of arms and knees--maybe not too many arms but knees absolutely everywhere."

So I guess having the tests doesn't exactly eliminate worry either.

Maybe when all this is over, the stress levels will go back down.

Oh, and Grete, kudos on breaking down and getting the maternity insurance. You never know when you're going to need it.

2006-01-20T06:50:00.000-08:00

I came home without Pekoe last night. He was too sick, too tired. He's gone because I had him put to sleep. The vet said there were so many problems. It was going to take agressive antibiotics, supplemental feedings on Critical Care, and if he was still alive after a week, they would try to deal with his teeth. His entire jaw was misaligned, he had massive dental infections, a middle ear infection, and if he ever got over his pneumonia, the vet said he would always be a respiratory cripple. The vet said he was almost dead already.

I feel like such an abusive pet owner. . .. ..but Kona is fine. Kona is our other guinea pig. He's in his cage wondering why everybody's crying.

My wretched guinea pig finds medical care

2006-01-19T09:25:00.000-08:00

Today is the day for Pekoe. The day he overcomes crappy veterinary care at Banfield and goes to the greatest guinea pig vet to be found in Albuquerque, New Mexico. No more wheezing, no more coughing, choking, gagging on medicines that don’t work. . . . .no more sneezing or running at the nose. No more maloccluded teeth, no more involuntary syringe feedings, no more glaucoma eye or runny discharge. . . . .No more standing outside death’s door.

I have had it with this damn guinea pig. Pets are meant to be calming, relaxing, a de-stressor in the lives of their caretakers. However, if you live in Johnson City, Tennessee and go to Petsmart one day and happen to pick out the sickest guinea pig who also happens to have the best personality in the lot and he happens to come undoubtedly from a guinea pig mill and is possibly genetically compromised, .. . ... then you may run into the aforementioned problems.

This guinea pig makes me sort of believe in euthanasia. I mean, how miserable does one need to be before it’s just not meaningful life anymore? And is it a universal line to be drawn? A line that is the same for pigs and for humans? I don’t know, but it’s undeniable that there are a lot of procedures and medications and surgeries humans can have that guinea pigs are just too small for.

And then there are my parents. My parents who think animals should be shot for sport and eaten at leisure, though more often than not they are left to rot away in the freezer. To spend more than five bucks on a pet’s veterinary care is anathema. The judging never ceases. “Animals aren’t worth that much!” (Unless they’re dead on your plate, then it’s fine to spend money on them.)

Then why, whenever I think that I might wake up tomorrow and find Pekoe gone inside his cage, do I cry?
Stupid cavy.

a new place

2005-12-31T20:49:00.000-08:00

a new place
I guess this is the beginning. The beginning of what, though?

Where to start?

I am a person who has lost her spirituality. That's the end, the present state of things. So the only way to tell the story is to go backwards. Sometimes the light gets too bright, too piercing, and you are forced to go inside yourself. Only, "inside yourself" isn't exactly a safe place. That happened once. Or maybe it wasn't the light; it was only that I was dropped off at my destination and left there with no plans of where to go. They call it depression, but it really ought to be known as Hell. The kind of place you have to talk about with capital letters. The details are too far away and I've already written about them. So I suppose the only thing to do is try and deal with the possibilty that I will never find my spirituality. It's as if I've lost my mind but I can still function. It's a secret that you can't tell anyone.

Don't tell anyone.