21 March 2007

I Wanted Mine To Be The First Voice You Heard

It's out! It's a boy! He's kicking and screaming and I can only hear him because I've taken off my glasses to push and bats can see better than I can without prosthetics. I hear that he is loud, that he is pissed and probably cold, I can hear agitation in his screaming, agitation like my own and it's strangely comforting. He's aspirated no meconium, he's breathing normally, he's doing everything normally, he scores nines across the APGAR board ("No one ever gets a ten," they tell me) and although we strain to see him -- I've got my glasses back by now -- he's too far over to the side for me, still tethered by a gazillion IVs, to get a look at.

It's now time for me to birth the placenta; I deliver it in one push, it's shown to me in a flash but no one offers it to me and I'm too exhausted to remember to ask for it, so any idea of planting it with a tree or eating it or whatever people do with it (I'm pretty sure, "forget it in the back of the freezer" is number one on the Fate of Placentas list) is gone with the medical wind, as is the midwife. She stays long enough to tell me that I've torn a bit, requiring no stitches, and to explain what will happen over the next 24 hours: I will remain in recovery until I can pass urine with relative ease; Brian will go with the baby to the nursery where pediatricians will give him a thrice-over (honestly, I don't know what they did to him there), she will visit me in the morning and then she will be moving herself and her practice to Connecticut. I will never see her again. Hallelujah. She says hello to the baby, still across the room with the scientists, then leaves out the door to ostensibly pick up fried chicken for her inconsiderate and blameless children: I will learn, quickly, that she made them that way. We make them.

The scientists shout a name request at us and we refuse -- we will tell him his name. He is bundled tightly, hatted and passed to me; I am saddened by my confusion, I had expected to feel a rush of maternal love but instead I am frightened by this tiny stranger and I feel awkward and embarrassed while we lean in to whisper, "Welcome, Fergus Strummer Wylie," into his tiny ear and I quickly pass him to Brian, who seems much more teary and psyched than I feel. In my type-A fashion, I dictate all the information to the scientists and another, kinder nurse -- Ulriche is still robotically tidying and silently waiting for me to urinate so she can go home and do whatever it is that lonely folks do after delivering a baby -- and I realize that I am insanely, dizzyingly hungry. I beg someone to get me some food and to my surprise, it is Ulriche who ventures out and returns shortly with a pathetic chicken salad sandwich and some crackers, apologizing for the lack of diversity -- the cafetorium has already closed. Ulriche stole me some dinner from the nurses' station. I love her.

There are the requisite phone calls to the family, urination happens in a timely fashion, Brian and Fergus venture off with the scientists for the probing and the prodding and sometime after 10pm we are relocated, for a third time, to our recovery room where there is a shower and privacy and beds and television; only the beds get used that night, since Brian passes out and nurses are in and out all night, palpating my uterus and administering ibuprofen and Fergus is cranky, frustrated and confused about his new location and I am an awkward and incapable new "mother," in biology only.

I will learn, over the next four years, that mother is more of a verb than a title. I will be challenged with fever and fear and hunger and vomiting and diarrhea and small injury and self-exhaustion; I will be plagued by my own chronic illness that hampers and skews my ability to mother to my own standards and I will knock myself down and require assistance getting back up. I will hate and love my altered life, alternately and equally, I will wake up every morning with fresh hope that is often defeated while my coffee is still hot. I will rail against mainstream parenting, I will rail against the alternative parenting community, I will forgive myself for being myself and I will accept that my personality, my constitution and the unnatural level of emotional damage that I bear will never outshadow my instinct to protect my child and to desire only the most perfect and unachievable life for him.

Happy Birthday, Fergus. I love you more than I ever thought I could love another person. You are the number one love of my life and since there's a possibility that you will not have siblings, you stand a good chance of retaining that title. You have radicalized me, you have strengthened me, you have weakened me, you have made me whole and you have broken me in two. You are my reason for waking up in the morning, you are my reason for working a back-breaking job and my reason for desiring and pursuing a career change. You are the voice behind my ranting, you are the perspective behind my politics, you are the ache in my heart for world peace and all other things hokey and fantastic. I promise to love, honor and protect you until death parts us. I believe, because of you, that parenthood is a marriage that should be held above adult unions and that apathy and disrespect by the parental "spouse" of said union should be punished but that struggle should be honored and aided.

Parenting is nothing like one thinks. It is the King of Universal Enigmas.

17 March 2007

Somebody Almost Got Kicked In The Face

The mood in the new room is lighter, funnier; my nurse, who has been with me since the early morning has stayed several extra hours to be with us, we've charmed her, but her children are hungry and she has to go home. This saddens Brian and me; we've grown fond of her and I want her to see the baby when it arrives, I don't want her to go but my maternal instinct isn't born yet and I am selfish so I pout when she leaves, promising to visit in the morning. A European, thin, stern nurse is installed in Nicole's absence and her demeanor is clinical and she doesn't laugh at our jokes. She is clearly very stupid as we are, by our own declaration, hilarious. We do the only logical thing we can in such a dire situation: We patently ignore her presence, which seems to suit her just fine. I mean, who doesn't laugh at a joking accusation of being a fake hospital worker present only for the theft of the pending baby? Maybe it's like an airline, the hospital, where humor referencing nursery theft are frowned upon like terrorism comedy: Raucous, harmless, forbidden. Ulriche -- my mental name for this humorless nurse machine -- stares blankly at a spot on the wall and details for me what is to happen from this point forward:

More monkey troops wheel in what appears to be medical equipment and Ulriche tells me that because the fetus has been in distress, I will not be allowed to hold it immediately after delivery but that it will be handed to a team of doctors who will insure its health, performing APGAR -- Activity, Pulse, Grimace, Appearance, Respiration -- tests, clearing its nose and mouth of the meconium and checking for meconium aspiration which could lead to serious illness or death. Again, I am selfish and my maternal instincts are unhoned and I am angry that someone gets to see my new thing -- the baby -- before I do. We are asked a battery of questions, the most important of which is circumcision preference and we are as clear and succinct as we can possibly be in the negative, which is to say that should the fetus come out male they -- the scientists -- are to leave his forskin intact.

The scientists arrive, introduce themselves, marvel at my tattoos and my bloated appearance and quickly set the mood for what is coming, basically repeating what Ulriche has already told me and forcing us to reiterate the circumcision decision. The midwife comes in, harried, talking on her cell phone to one of her teenaged children and assuring them that she will be home by a certain time. It doesn't occur to me to wonder how she can predict this...she hangs up the phone and gives orders to Brian and the doula on how to hold my legs while I am to work on "getting this baby out," which I've obviously never done before, so it's a good thing that instructions exist. The table is reconfigured, I am feeling my contractions again and as I predict one coming I am instructed to crunch my giant abdomen and bear down as if urinating (something you'll remember I haven't done in a good 24 hours at this point) while Brian and the doula hold my feet and knees.

This proves to be the easy part and although there is no pain there is palpable progress as I feel the baby slide forward towards the midwife who is, amazingly, talking on her phone almost the whole time. I have steadfastly asserted, with no change in opinion, that I would surely have kicked that phone from her hand had my legs not been in someone else's charge. It is a confusing emotion to feel anger and resentment toward someone while trying hard to concentrate on one's nature-given duty to safely put forth a body into this world but there I am, wanting to kick her square in the face. Sure, she asserts, I can pick up fried chicken on the way home; no, you may not have so-and-so over; please don't let other-so-and-so smoke in the house. The phone rings, she answers it, cradling it between her cheek and shoulder while stretching my perineum and guiding the baby's head out of my body, ordering me to stop pushing once its head was out so that she might clear its nostrils and mouth of fluid and meconium before pushing once more to deliver shoulders, then torso and legs in one big, loud, profane motion. The profanity is secretly for her.

16 March 2007

the Wait and the Hunger

The hooked-upness that is my body to machines quickly goes from amusing to irritating as the gallons of saline flowing into me begin to cause bloating and my thirst is insatiable. I cannot get up from the bed to urinate which I realize is irrelevant as I am literally paralyzed from the waist down and cannot feel any urge to do so but logic would dictate that my bladder must be full; the reality of this is also frightening, unnatural, it is necessary for Brian or another helper to shift me from time to time as I cannot move my own legs.

The hypothesis quickly becomes theory (which, for the record, is not always ambiguous: the scientific definition of theory usually equals proof -- not something I want to argue but my pants are smarty, you dig?) as an internal exam proves me dilated 5cm in only two hours and effaced nearly 90%. I am optimistic and exhausted, too exhausted to be excited, but also incredibly hungry and unable to consume any real food, another requirement on my list of broken birth dreams...apparently, though, complaining a whole lot to a bunch of folks who've grown to like you or who have to by virtue of their genetic proximity to your fetus will get you a cup of broth, which will cause vomiting if consumed too eagerly. Just ask me.

No matter; I've got my ice chips and my Tom Waits and the smell of a submarine sandwich from my doula at the foot of my bed to keep me company. The sun begins to set, the midwife arrives for an internal exam and pronounces dilation at 10cm and effacement at "99 with a lip," which signals go -- to another room.

Suddenly, the bed rails are clanked into their upright position and the buzzing becomes hopeful, anticipatory, the foot of the bed piled high with magazines and our boom box and our overnight bags, a troop of hospital monkeys surround me, manning my IV poles and wheel me down the hall to a "birthing room," which seems superfluous but whatever, it's a change of scenery. The room is considerably larger than our first one, with reclining chairs and television and table lamps instead of overhead flourescent, the high-frequency emissions of which make me mental and will, in the future, prove to do the same for the fetus.

Once we settle in, I am told that my epidural anaesthesia will be turned down, gradually, and the prophylactic IV outlet installed in the back of my hand will be used to administer a slow drip of Pitocin, the drug usually given to women for induction of labor and delivery; the point of this is to eliminate the "lip", which is a small hard spot on the edge of my cervix that won't, for whatever reason, align itself completely with the other 99% of the effacement. My body is a frustrating vehicle.

15 March 2007

Cookie Puss

It is important to note that my own midwife, the one who has been dubiously caring for me for 30+ weeks of pregnancy, is not at the hospital for the supposit nor for the beginning of my labor; instead, she gives the job, with my consent, to the midwife-on-duty at the hospital we chose and I wish that this was the woman I'd stayed with, the woman to whom I'd entrusted my body and fetus. Such is not the case, though, and I try and make the best of the final hours with Julie who will eventually leave me and put me back in the "care" of Jen, who is dangerously close to being one of the worst healthcare practioners I have ever dealt with. Fortunately, I am in so much pain that I have little time, at least between noon and birth, to think about how much I can't stand her.

As with many new experiences, it is recommended that parents (if there are two; if not, then birthing mother) invest in a two-day seminar on childbirth; all facets of labor, all potential complications, breathing exercises, partner support tips, benefits/deficits of eating and drinking during labor, benefits/deficits of wearing one's own clothing, b/d of epidural pain relief during labor...everything you ever wanted to know and will forget entirely shortly thereafter about labor and delivery is covered in this class and as useless and cheesy as Brian and I may have found it, it was at least something to do during those final weeks of pregnancy when we were weary of housecleaning and arguing our case against circumcision and for extended breastfeeding. The most fun we had was deciding on our secret word that I would utter that meant I was serious in my change of heart with regard to anaesthesia; the word we chose was Cookie Puss, which I realize now is two words. Shut up.

Time feels still and surreal as day breaks and it seems impossible that I have been laboring for six hours, four of them hyperstimulated and excruciating. Thankfully I have not vomited but I am oddly hungry and no one will let me have any food because I cannot stop contracting, the monitor with which they have outfitted me shows great peaks and few valleys: The biggest break I get between contractions is 30 seconds, barely enough time to catch my breath. I get in the shower, hoping that the warm water will offer some relief but the pain is so great that I am almost feverish and I cannot bear being wet; I am also overwhelmed with the feeling of a bowel movement but I cannot pass a thing, not even urine, yet I cannot relieve myself of the feeling. In retrospect, I suspect that I was pushing, prematurely, but an internal exam revealed no signs of dilation or effacement, meaning that a decision was in order: Either call the anaesthesiologist to deliver an epidural, which will ostensibly relax me, allowing my cervix to do the right thing or deliver the baby via caesarean to which I am adamantly opposed. I am terrified of surgery, I am terrified of recovering from surgery, I am selfish. I quietly mutter, "cookie puss," under my breath to Brian and the doula; we laugh and the doctors are called.

They seem to take forever and this time it's not just I that am impatient: Brian is showing signs of stress, watching me suffer (I have learned that my labor was highly irregular and that most women do not naturally experience such intense and ongoing pain -- it really is like the movies, with a few minutes in between contractions to catch one's breath) and the doula, my friend, cannot help me any longer. Finally, a nice Indian doctor arrives and explains the procedure to me, then orders me onto my left side where I am to hold absolutely still -- a practical impossibility at this point, since I am constantly contracting and moaning and, it turns out, distracting the hell out of this guy who pokes me more than 20 times before successfully lacing that hair-like syringe between vertebrae and delivering the sweetest paralysis I can imagine to my lower half: I am utterly numb from the waist down, and I immediately pass out.

I am asleep, solidly for ten minutes; when I wake up, the lights are dim, the blinds are shut, I am wearing an oxygen mask and a host of tubes are coming out of a host of locations: a hydrating saline drip, a prophylactic closed IV in the event of surgery, a uterine catheter floating the fetus in saline as my water broke during the epidural process -- probably another huge distraction for this kind, nervous Hindu, who has to listen to my white American potty mouth uttering, "motherfucker! my water broke!" while he's trying so hard to do his job on my writhing Orka of a body. In the tiny room are my nurse, Nicole, Brian, my doula, my midwife (who's finally arrived, mid-epidural) and the two substitute midwives who helped us through the night, plus me and the baby. Before the anaesthesiologist left we were 9, plus a window washer that came around for morning duties, seemingly oblivious to the chaos on the other side of the glass. I am told that there was meconium in my amniotic fluid and that the fetus is in mild distress; they are monitoring it closely and I am to lay continually on one side so's not to compress the femural artery that delivers life to the heart and keeps the fetus breathing, so to speak. This is a difficult task to perform hooked up to so many contraptions and I say so; Nicole laughs as she reads my handwritten birth plan on the night stand, saying, "girl, these lists always disappoint."

14 March 2007

When life hands you lemons, make guacamole

To what I've agreed is a vaginal suppository called Cervidil; much like a tampon, it's inserted against the cervix but has a string attached for removal once it's begun to do its job, which is to soften the cervix and allow it to thin out (effacement, it's called) and dilate naturally. It is impregnated with prostaglandins, hormones that I should be producing naturally but am not; I request this because I want to be allowed movement free of IV's and wheely poles and hospital gowns; I also insist on wearing my own clothes and being allowed to play my own music. I will most likely not experience use of the birthing tub that I am so keen on so I am adamant about things I can control, like covering my butt and eating what I want, when I want, and listening to as much Tom Waits and Woody Guthrie tributes as I am allowed. I am assurred that I will be allowed all these things, permitting.

The side effects of this procedure are ambiguous: I might go into hyperstimulated labor, I might start pushing too soon, necessitating a caesarean birth, I might experience pain so intense that the un-anaesthetized experience I am so intent on may not be possible; despite these warnings, I am optimistic, I am relieved to get this show on the road. We eat a last supper as a couple of soba noodles with beef broth and chicken; there is also a salad replete with as much vinegar as I can consume without gagging. And lemonade, lots of lemonade. Our bags are packed with music and clothes -- not just our own clothing, but impossibly tiny receiving blankets and diapers and hats the size of yarmulkes and socks the size of thumbs and fluffy, velour jumpsuits that I anticipate the baby reveling in, trying to recreate the cozy environment of my womb to which it's become accustomed. There are snacks and bottles of water and a book of true-life accounts by Paul Auster called I Thought My Father Was God collected by the producers of NPR's All Things Considered for the National Story Project...it is a Wednesday evening and Brian is grumpy, skeptical and unhappy to be spending the night in a chair. I dim the lights and watch Law & Order after the midwife inserts the suppository and I wait, not able to truly pay attention to the program, too distracted by anticipation. An hour passes; I pick up the book and read, laugh out loud at some stories, tear up at others and regale my cranky boyfriend and the hourly-visiting midwife with anecdotes that amuse me...the midwife tells me that when I am unable to talk about my book any longer, I will know that the process has begun.

Around 1230, I put the book away and proceed. The contractions are slow and mild at first, like intense menstrual cramps; foolishly, I believe those hippy-dippy accounts of labor pains resembling intense menstrual cramps and think, "this is nothing, this will be a breeze...," and I'm excited, I want to take a walk. The nurses and midwife encourage walking so off we go, me with my tattoos and unlaced Pumas, stopping every five minutes or so to ride a small wave, still smiling; we walk for a good hour, all over the hospital, and arrive back at Labor & Delivery in time to see a report on "Freedom Fries & Toast," which angers me greatly and I state it, out loud, to the chagrin of the patriots in the waiting room who don't yet know that in three days, we will be launching a war that we cannot win or finish or justify one bit, they don't know that fried potatoes and egg-coated breakfast bread will become irrelevant and embarrasing lingo that will die with thousands of soldiers and civilians in the coming years. Neither do I, really, but the pain is getting intense and I am cranky.

We return to our room and call our doula, who must make an hour's drive south from Pennsylvania to be with us for the labor and delivery; we wake her in the early hours but implore her to sleep until daybreak, when the midwife anticipates that the action will really start. In my world, though, the action is in swing and those mild pains I previously experience have become longer waves of blinding, nauseating pain with little or no break in between; drinks of water turn into ice chips and I realize that I am experiencing the hyperstimulation about which I've been warned, my objection to anaesthesia suddenly changing and my craving for relief launches into jones territory.

13 March 2007

Mixed thoughts on Western medicine and compulsory vaccines

The pregnancy goes as well as I can expect: I am not one of those folks to weather the wait with any kind of grace, regardless of the anticipated event, and forty weeks of increasing discomfort and weight gain is excruciating for me. I do not, for the most part, enjoy pregnancy. I am also lazy, so most of the advice given to me to keep the body healthy and to instigate an early labor goes unheeded; I try pre-natal yoga, with a video in my living room, but the lack of community and the carpet allergens that keep my nose running 24/7 discourage me in days and I quickly return to naval gazing, reading as much as I can about natural childbirth and the consumption of enough lemonade to put me on the cusp of diabetic. I am also quite fond of goat cheese and kosher pickles on baguette, carpaccio drenched in balsamic vinegar, more avocados than seem possible for one human to eat alone, ginger snaps and marinated mushrooms. I am having a decidedly Asian pregnancy: My yin energy, which started the whole thing, is on fire and although my cravings cause excruciating heartburn at times I am powerless to stop them and I gain 50 pounds. My small frame screams from the burden, more and more as the weeks wear on. My maternity clothes, the ones appropriate for social contact (read: not sweatpants) barely fit me and tying my shoes becomes a thing of the past. I can't reach down that far, anyway.

In my twenties, I had an irregular pap smear and was diagnosed with HPV which we now understand (believe) to be more than common -- in time, we are being led to believe, more than 90% of the female population will carry this virus and the kindly folks at some big name pharmacy have come up with a vaccine, just for us double-Xers, under the guise of a Cancer Vaccine. Innocuous-sounding enough, even downright ethical, humane, feminist, radical...there's no vaccine for prostate cancer, right?

Yeah, there's no vaccine for cervical cancer, either. Open your eyes, people: You'll need them to put the condom on correctly or to read the expression of that guy you're about to bed down with so that you might clearly understand, over the loud bass and through the fog of Miller Lite that sleeping with a virtual stranger might not be the best choice that night, that you might just get that virus that really is so common that might cause cervical cancer but will definitely cause a cellular change down there, requiring a simple surgery that can scar the cervix and crush your not-yet-realized dreams of natural, simple, non-medical childbirth.

The LEEP, or Loop Electrosurgical Excision Procedure, is the common treatment for these squamous (or asquamous, depending on one's stage of "pre-cancer") cells that can cause cervical cancer; a hot cone is inserted into the dilated cervix, ostensibly burning off the bad cells and preventing their metastasis into other organs and tissues. Naturally, the burning of any kind of flesh, internal or otherwise, will leave scar tissue which tends to be hard and unweilding; sometimes, but sometimes not, the scar tissue will dissipate and new flesh will grow.

In my case, the scar tissue does not dissipate and at 40 weeks, my cervix is neither dilated nor effaced; at 40 weeks, most women are one or the other, if not both, and are counting down the days -- sometimes minutes -- until the baby is born. In my case, my cervix is a hard donut that refuses to budge to any touch or tug; the baby has already dropped into position and is pushing, hard, on my cervix but it's like a knotted balloon, it's not letting go. I am becoming more anxious and I break down at my 40 week appointment when she tells me that I've made no progress -- as if it were some kind of homework assignment, I tell her, to heal myself -- and that she recommends induction, the first medical step I might take in this otherwise natural state of being that's occurred since the dawn of time and has only been medicalized by white doctors in the past century. I am so frustrated at this point and patently refuse, barring life-threatening necessity, to succumb to a surgical birthing that I agree to the induction. It is scheduled to take place that evening, 830, only four hours away.

12 March 2007

Eventually, you are wanted, you are loved...
Current mood: nostalgic

...we are frightened. We've only been dating for 8 months, cohabitating for 6, but I can smell a change in my body and I know, instantly, that I am pregnant.

In the bathroom at work, I am overwhelmed with fear and fatigue; I've had a gua sha the night before to alleviate migraine-inducing shoulder pain but the stuff is so powerful that it not only makes the pain go away but it completes the fertilization process, sending blood and energy and questionable optimism directly to my womb, making us a future trio. One wonders if China is so populous due to their amazing medicine, to their ancient health care system...they have a law, you know.

I purchase the tests on the way home; I have suspected pregnancy before, wished for it even, but this time I know, I can smell it, and I greet him at the door with the announcement even before I've taken the test. He knows, he believes my expression and he pauses in the stuffy living room, turns on a fan and takes off his dirty work pants and sits on the couch in anticipatory silence. He waits while I pee into an ancient lead crystal goblet -- it's impossible, for me, to saturate that cotton-tipped stick by holding it in the stream, I've done this before -- and hold the test stick in the urine for 30 seconds, which proves to be plenty of time to confirm the already-known.

Future trio and all that.

I clean up, put on some lighter clothes and sit across the room from him, I tell him and we sit silently for what is a true hour before speaking to each other; I make an announcement that I am going to at least finish the pack of cigarettes that I bought that morning before committing to quit for the duration of the pregnancy that in terms of smoking is a 9-month eternity. We discuss our options, our tenuous choices as radical leftists in a world that is rapidly narrowing to the right, we cry and experience fear not fueled by adrenaline or grief or danger but by anticipation of the alteration of the rest of our lives.

We determine by counting and brain-wracking backtracking that I am no more than 5 weeks gone, that there is time to exercise the endangered Choice: I for the third time and he for the second. I'm not getting any younger, I argue; at 32 I am rapidly gaining on high-risk and with only invasive Western surgical termination available to me (and having been utilized before), my soft tissue and tender parts might not sustain another procedure, might create hostile an environment to Choose differently in the future. He argues, because he is wont to do so, that his job is unstable, that he worries about financial stability, he questions his own ability to parent and love and support; he is eternally, maddeningly pessimistic but I know that it's his nature, not his desire to be so. I know that the choice is mine and I know that should I choose the Choice that it will break his heart and frankly, I question how mine might survive a third round of breaking picket lines, a third round of undetermined waiting period, a third round of this-will-pinch-a-bit, a third round of bitter relief and self-flagellation.

So I choose to stay the course. I count days until I can no longer Choose. I sneak drags from friends' cigarettes, I turn up my nose at alcohol and stay out of bars. I grow fat and heavy and big-footed and hot; I develop a complex system of pillows and bolsters for a belly that seems impossibly huge on my tiny body. I doubt and doubt and make up my mind and change it and give emphatic orders and proselytize my intentions, all of which blow away when I find out that Western surgery has damaged the tender parts and the birthday party will feature a host of doctors and some flourescent lights and not the beeswax candles and Pachelbel's Canon that I plan.

1 March 2007

Limber up, girl.

Yeah, my writing is at a standstill. I think a weekly recap is in order for exercise.

~I've had some kind of chronic fatigue (though not a "syndrome," as I believe that's an actual disease) that is paralyzing my ability to complete the simplest of tasks. I'd like to believe that it's winteritis; yesterday's sunny, warmish weather allowed us outside for a period and it seemed cathartic. Sunshine is exhausting when the body's not accustomed to it -- it seemed to saturate us both and after an hour or so of putzing around the yard, we were inside to crash hard for a solid hour before waking up refreshed. Vitamin D overdose, perhaps.

~This fatigue is making me cranky. I've got a touch of the rage -- albeit nothing like it was a few months ago -- and I've been yelling a lot. Yelling is number one on the list of bad habits; I am utterly capable of making my point in a regular tone of voice. Undo, undo, undo.

~What I did in the yard: I gathered twigs. In a squatting position, for over an hour, I moved methodically through the grass, gathering thousands of twigs and branches that had fallen from the trees that BGE recently felled due to their interference with our power lines. Talk about zen; while I picked up sticks Fergus made friends with a neighborhood stray cat that likes to hang out in our yard and is, coincidentally, Kamaji's doppelganger and they are, surprisingly, good friends that roam the streets together and look like a weird matching same-sex cat couple. Fergus named him Outer Space and it wouldn't surprise me if Outer Space gained a little inner space in the near future if I can raise the money for a round of vaccines and neutering. Outer Space has big testicles.

~When we left the supermarket yesterday morning around 1030, there was a young man parked in the car next to us, white, teenish, Bill Cosby sweater, shorn hair, drinking a 40oz malt beverage; his appearance and action registered and escaped me in seconds and I didn't think he saw me see him, but when I opened the door to put Fergus in his seat, he laid on his horn and started screaming at me through his closed window, "close your fucking door...move your fucking car...close your fucking door...move your fucking car..." all in monotone, all without making any eye contact with me...it was bizarre. I gave him the finger while he continued to lay on his horn and chant strangely; I felt the rage rise but decided, out of respect for our safety, that I'd let him drive away without any further interaction.

~Which leads me to apathy, because my normal self would call the police in such a situation. And because I don't care to actually interact with the police, I would naturally leave the scene and not give them my info -- besides, do they really expect me to believe that they don't have caller ID? When you call the police and they ask, "would you like to leave your name?" I usually say, "don't you have it already?" Puhleeze, poleece.

~I'm hopelessly in love with yoga. I don't normally latch onto things to which I don't commit (anymore! I quit doing that about 6 years ago), so I know this is TLA.