My dog has taken to doing this super-cute thing where, sometimes the cat will just get too much under his skin and he'll lose control and lunge toward it, maybe a foot or two in that general direction, growling madly -

but then, before he gets anywyere, he thinks to himself, "Bad dog!" and banishes himself to my bedroom for half an hour or so. This is without anyone else saying anything at all. After due time he will come out again, penitent and ready to be a peaceful member of the household.

Louie will be glad that, in just a day or two, the cat's owners will come to collect it.

In other news, my employer didn't pay me again this pay period. @#$@%.

w00t!

Last week, I turned in the last of my outstanding assignments for school.

Today, I retook the SOAP Charting portion of my Advanced Massage Practical Exam, and...I passed!

So now, I just wait until they've finished grading the work I handed in, and then I will graduate! They will send me a diploma! How crazy is that?

There are still certification exams to take (and pass) before I can practice in WA, of course, but look! I'm almost there!

I am becoming two separate people.

One is confident, excited, espousing to friends and family my joy and enthusiasm. Animated, purposeful. Planning, saving, building. A strong face, and a public face.

The other is fearful. Worried. This is a private face, only shows when I am alone. When I am this person, I feel as if I am an inferior man-made structure facing an unyielding storm. My levies are leaking, creaking with the weight of the water. In these private moments I cry, I rock myself back and forth, I feel the ground slipping beneath me.

What does it mean, that these facets of myself are becoming more distinct? Could this separation be an expression of underlying weakness? I do believe that it is good for parents to show their children strength, unification, sureness and conviction. To be able to take their doubts and hesitations and keep them private so the child can feel assured and safe. And here I am, on the road to parenthood. But at what point does it become unhealthy, too much, an unnatural and dangerous separation?

...admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

- Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin'

I spent last weekend down in Portland at a tango festival. It was nice, being active, out and dancing.

At one of the dances, I stopped and said hello to an acquaintance from California. She smiled at me. "I've been great! How are y-" She stopped short, her eyes wide, staring at my belly. "When did that happen?"

I looked down at my belly, then back at her, then back again to my belly (not really all that much bigger than it always has been). "You can see?"

She nodded.

Turns out she has a friend who is about as far along as I am, but still. This is the first time anyone has noticed just by sight.

San Francisco may soon become the first major city to offer free wireless access to all its residents. How awesome is that?

Family Planning

I'll have made it throught the period of greatest risk for birth defects (5-10 weeks) in 1 week and 5 days. By then of the kid's major organs will have formed.

Second trimester begins March 15, 2006. Almost there! Just 4 weeks to go and the risk for miscarriage will drop dramatically. Happily, my morning sickness and fatigue should start getting better.

Third trimester begins June 28, 2006.

!!! !!! !!! Estimated due date: !!! !!! !!!
       Tuesday, September 26, 2006.

That would make my baby a Libra.

Susie says that September is a good month for babies, as all of the following (and she herself) were born in September: Roald Dahl, "Jelly Roll" Morton, H. G. Wells, John Coltrane, William Faulkner, George Gershwin, T.S. Eliot, Ivan Pavlov, Elizabeth I (Queen of England), D.H.Lawrence, and O. Henry.

Our state recently passed a law that prohibits smoking indoors at bars, restaurants, and other public venues.

I hate it.

Why do I hate it? Because I am an avid smoker? No. I haven't smoked for years. Because I feel it infringes on my personal freedom or that of my friends? Not that either. I hate it because it, ultimately, brings the smoke out to me.

Bar patrons who cannot smoke inside congregate outside on the sidewalks to smoke. Our streets are becoming smokey and nasty, and I'm doubly sensitive to it right now as I am pregnant.

In the past, if I didn't want to be around the smoke, I could choose not to enter establishments that allowed smoking. Now I have no choice. It's there on the street en masse.

Update from the trenches

I've started getting the dreaded morning sickness. As if that weren't enough, last week I picked up a flu. The moment the flu abated, I came down with a nasty cold, which I'm still trying to kick.

I'm tired of being sick all the time.

Just once, I'd like to wake up without fighting the urge to run to the bathroom and puke my guts out. And I'd like to sleep later. I am waking up at 5:00 am, 6:00 am, all so that I can spend more time in the morning feeling miserable. Try as I might I can't sleep it off.

Another problem with waking up so early is that I'm crashing earlier at night. 8:00 pm, 9:00 pm roll around and I'm fighting off sleep but it's a losing battle. I don't remember the last time I made it out dancing for anything other than the dance I run - I can't swing it because it's past my bedtime.

I have the strange inkling that I am becoming less fun. What's this about pregnant women having a glow? How do they manage it when they're sick half the time and tired and cranky so early at night?

Sorry for freaking you out, by the way, if you're one of the people who freaked out at the original post.

I mean, really, can't someone deliver news framed with unique, unexpected context without everyone assuming that the news must be bad? I mean, I guess not, considering the responses I've gotten. But it is good news! Really. Seriously.

It's a good thing, by the way. "Congratulations" is an appropriate response - I am so, so excited! My last post didn't really convey it, but you cannot even begin to imagine the level of my excitement. I'm going to be a mother! We're going to provide well for the child and set up a very positive situation for it. Everything is coming together, the future is bright and wonderful, la de la la la. Really.

I have been mopping up blood
from my arm
from the swipe
from the cat we are now catsitting
who is PISSED OFF to be here
and just finished cleaning up piss
a puddle signifying rebellion and revolt
on the living room floor
from the dog
who is PISSED OFF that the cat is here.

oh, and I'm pregnant.

Word from the DJ booth.

Tomorrow I DJ in Portland. I'm a little excited, a little nervous, and a little underwhelmed, all at the same time. I know those sound like maybe they can't all fit together, but somehow they do.

I'm tired. Wondering how I'm going to get enough sleep, wake up as early as I need to, get my work done, get down to Portland, and be rested enough to do well.

Do you get everything done you mean to?

I never do.

My list is, like, 500 things long. Maybe 600. I polish off 5 or 6 each day, or maybe 12 or 15 if it's a really good day, but then there are 12 more I hoped to get to that day but didn't and now I have to put them off for tomorrow. On top of that, another 10 came up out of the blue to add to the queue.

There are chores I've been meaning to do for nearly a decade. Would you believe that there are boxes I packed up 6 years ago that I've moved around with me from apartment to apartment, but haven't gone through in all that time? Well, if you know me well, yes, you would believe that. But still. How sad is that? I always think, "tomorrow", or "next weekend", but then somehow next weekend comes and goes and I never had any of the free time I was expecting and counting on.

It's been drought season for spare time for years now. When will it flood? What will I do when the rains come? Will the rains ever come? What I wouldn't do for a good rainstorm.

Yawn. A week and a half of work and already I feel so tired and stretched thin. I'm 200% more snappy, on a much shorter fuse than I'm used to.

I've been having bad dreams, too. Doesn't help me to feel more rested.

Or to write with any sort of flow.

Yawn.

Sometimes I have a hard time really being present in the moment I am living. Instead, I find myself caught up in something that happened two weeks ago, or something that could have been (if only this or that had gone differently), working it over and over again in my mind, chewing on it incessantly.

Why is it so hard to be here, right now, content with what I have and what is?

Susie's friend Betsi said rather succinctly in her blog the other day, "It's like playing that stupid mind game where you try really hard not to think about penguins, except in this case not only did I not think about penguins, I forgot what they were, set fire to my shirt, and mailed myself to Hong Kong."

I mean, she was talking about something totally different. But it still works for this. Doesn't it still work? Doesn't it? Except that I'm not on my way to Hong Kong, I'm still wearing my smelly old shirt, and I've got penguins on the brain. Stupid penguins.

I miss China.

7:30 AM and I am awake, without an alarm, even. What is the world coming to?

To be fair, I did sit down on the couch last night around 10:30 PM, and I crashed. Chris was watching TV and Nuvo was hoping I still planned to go dancing and we would leave soon, but I lost consciousness and didn't really regain it again until now. I mean, I moved to the bedroom at some point, but I have no memory of the journey.

Early to bed, early to rise . . . am I just getting old?

Started my new job yesterday. Thus far, I am impressed with everyone I have met. It is such a strange feeling!

I had more to say when I started the post, but I've lost it. Something about intelligent decisions, though, and meetings that address just what they need to and nothing more, and letting anyone who is at all invested in issues be involved in determining the outcome of those issues if they choose, and not wasting other peoples' time, etc, etc, etc.

Really, I'm not sure I understand. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. How can a work environment be almost entirely functional? I thought that only happened in make-believe.

Hello, blog.

. . .

I'm feeling a little shy. Shy? Maybe estranged. It's been a long time.

It's Christmas time. Not Christmas anymore, but still that time of year. Christmas, New Years, holidays, all the humdrum of daily living suspended in time for a period of weeks. January looming. Historically, societally, this is a time of "new beginnings". Joy to the world; a savior is born, time to make amends and examine past mistakes and make resolutions for better living. For me, though, this is more a time of endings.

All the major relationships I have been involved in have drawn to a close around this time. Maybe they ended a little before, maybe they dragged on for a while after, but this is when it really hit home, when I actually understood that it was over.

So it is Christmas time again, and once again a significant chapter of my life is drawing to a close. This has been a pretty momentuous chapter. Many ups, many downs. Two years of love and hate and angst and joy and elation and despair . . . a rainbow of intense emotion ranging all about the spectrum. I haven't really written a lot about this relationship, at least not in public forums. I haven't even spoken about it much except to close friends. It has been the most private relationship I've been involved in. And now it is changing.

Maybe it's all the same, really. Endings, beginnings. You can't have one without the other. One thing passes on that there may be something new. The snow melts so that fresh seedlings might push through the ravaged earth.

I've been crying a lot. I'm sad, but I'm somehow happy in my sadness. Sad in my happiness.

A Bulgarian friend shared a New Years tradition wherein she baked a Bulgarian dish with several tin-foil wrapped fortunes embedded in each slice. Six of us ate together, digging through the layers of noodly dough to find our predictions. I got "Money", "Win from the lottery", and "Finding the lost happiness". She said that if we kept the fortunes, they would come true for us in this new year.

The person I am now wants to childishly believe in fortunes and fate and magic. I whimsically taped these three strips of paper into my wallet so that they would be close to me, so that they could come true.

Money and the lottery have yet to come. Perhaps I will make money when I become a professional gambler, or as I move into a career in massage, or when I complete some things I have been writing. Or maybe I'll become a porn star, famous the world over, rolling in dough. Or maybe it will simply result from winning the lottery. I certainly won't win the lottery, however, until I begin playing the lottery.

But maybe I am on my way right now to finding The Lost Happiness?

When I first read this particular fortune, I thought that maybe it meant that I would find happiness this year [. . . with him].

Now, though, I wonder if I might mean that I will find again some sort of happiness that has been lost in all the drama of these last two years. Perhaps, this year, I may become happy again in a different way.

I mean, I will always be moody and self-involved and angsty, balancing on a rickety teeter-totter moving up and down from one mood to another. I thrive on that up and down and all over the place roller-coaster ride. It feeds a well of inspiration and creativity deep within my core and makes me ultimately feel more alive and engaged.

But in the past, despite this penchance for ups and downs and ins and outs, I have also been happy on some more stable, continuous level, in a way that I haven't been in recent times.

I've had great happiness in recent years. But it has been a slightly different shade, you know? It's like there were a few crayons that fell out of the box and got lost under the bed, and the pictures I've made with the remaining crayons have still been amazing, but I could make other pictures that are differently amazing were I to find those lost crayons again. Not better. Not worse. But different, in a way that has been in the past, but has not been in recent times, for me.

What a mess of words! And I still don't think I've really done justice to what I feel, what I am trying to communicate. Stupid, stupid words. I never have the right ones. They're all lost under the bed or something. This is why I draw pictures, generally, instead of writing.

Anyhow -

I feel right now that my fortune may come true, but in a different way than I had thought.

I've written before that I'm not the sort to deal well with closure. I don't read the last few chapters of books. I fall asleep during movies. I pretend in my head that everything always has been and always will be just as it is right now in this moment. I am terrified of change.

In spite of this fear, I am trying to gracefully let go.

So things are coming to a close.

It is time. It is right - I feel this deep within.

I have felt it for a while, but I didn't know what it was. Now I do. I know. I understand. I will accept.

I will face my fear and embrace change.

Goodbye, 2005.

Goodbye, love of these last two years. I wish you great happiness, and I will always cherish what we have shared. You have been a pivotal force in my life. I look forward to knowing you going forward on different terms - having you as a friend, being a friend, learning to draw lines together in order that we might grow something fresh and beautiful within them.

. . .

Endings leave space for new beginnings. What new things will come?

bugs

i cleaned all the bugs out of our kitchen light fixture today. now it is shiny and light shines freely through the glass. i wish everything defiled, disarrayed,
 debased,
  decayed

could be so easily made functional and new again. unblemished, unsullied, uncontaminated, unpolluted, unimpaired. unbroken.

Tonight, for the first time in years, I went to a grocery store and spent several hours planning upcoming meals and comparison shopping to get the best deals. I tracked everything I picked up and put it in my cart so that I had a reasonable expectation of what the final tally would be when I hit the register.

I've gotten so into the habit over the years of spending without thinking. Once upon a time I was good at being aware of my finances and of being . . . not necessarily miserly, but economical and thrifty. These days, my money slips away like wet sand scooped up from under an ocean tide slips through the cracks in my fingers. The more I make, the easier it is to spend it all without thinking. But when I make less, I still keep spending at the same rate.

Did I mention that I'm between jobs again?

On the bright side, I have plenty of time to tackle tasks I've been sitting on for years (going through my belongings, trimming down on possessions, mending, selling old text books).

On the other bright side, I have this opportunity, right here and now, to practice budgeting. And I have time to do things like cooking for myself, which make budgeting a little easier. I love to eat out. I love to eat exotic foods. Unfortunately, this is an expensive habit, which accounts for an overly large percentage of the money that I regularly spend.

The dim side of this other bright is that I do not have a lot of leeway, and it's not so much an opportunity as a necessity. All the sides form a triangular creature with a very shadowy bottom.

If I recreate good spending and eating and cooking habits now, maybe I can continue them as I find a new job and start making more money again. This will in turn lead to savings (once debts have been paid off). Savings! Something I had, once upon a time, but have not had for some time. Savings would be so nice.

I'm back from Montreal, from Cyprus, from Portland, from San Francisco, from Argentina, from New York. Home again.

It is damn cold here. Especially in my apartment.

One roommate bailed while I was away. He is gone off to someplace better. Someplace worse? Who knows. Someplace else.

The other simply . . . neglected to turn our rent payments in.

In the meanwhile, all the heaters in our apartment have stopped working. But we don't really have grounds to complain, seeing as we haven't paid rent.

I'm cold. Still a little sick. And did I mention cold? It is so, so cold and wet in Seattle right now, and so very cold in our basement apartment. I mean, maybe Antarctica is colder than this, but I can't imagine it is by much.

Out of desperation, I have resorted to desperate but ingenuous means of heating my immediate space.

On the desk next to me sits my toaster. I push the button. It heats up for a bit. The timer goes off, UP! it pops, and I press the button again.

On the floor behind me sits the tea kettle, still full of scalding hot water. It set off my smoke detector a few minutes ago; Apparently smoke detectors do not like steam.

Smoke detectors without batteries, however, raise no alarms.

My smoke detector now is calm and quiet. Let us hope my apartment does not catch on fire tonight.

On the desk, also, is a cup of tea. I will imbibe it in an attempt to warm myself from the inside out.

Thinking warm thoughts. Coldbegone! Warm, warm, warm.