more on today
Today’s my mother’s sixtieth birthday. That’s why I busted ass to make the vegan kake.
I also figured out, with my husband, what we could get her sixty of– roses. The Fresh Market sells roses (no doubt farmed by underpaid, terribly taken advantage of migrants or indigenous people) for 6.99 a dozen. I got her five dozen and was frantic that I wouldn’t get them arranged before she arrived. The vase I envisioned using was too small! Dammit!!! I stood them up in a soup pot full of water, tied together to keep them supported. I had the baby decorate the brown paper bag I brought the roses home in, stuck the soup pot right down in the brown paper bag, and stuck it on our hearth. Fabulous!!
My parents did not have one single mean comment to make about the disarray of my house. I was actually making excuses to them in my head! I don’t know whether this says more about them, or about me. My mom did point out that the color in the foyer is all wrong… but heck, I knew that, and she offered to re paint it to make it right.
My child spent the evening picking at her food, eating chocolate, refusing the Kake– probably too damn nutritious, sigh– demanding attention and whining. I just tried to pacify her, within reason, and my mom played with her for hours. I hope we can get her into a more reasonable, less volatile frame of mind tomorrow.
I have passed yet another month without an unintended pregnancy. I may have mentioned in my introduction that I miscarried twins early in the pregnancy about a year and a half ago. I go on and on about this, pretty regularly. I was soooo devastated, and I haven’t gotten over it yet– it’s a grisly thing, but it’s also such a disappointment, to have my longed-for twins and then lose them, sensible comments about nature knowing its business and whatnot, not withstanding. I regularly search the internet for information about increasing chances for twins and such, to this day.
So after the D and C I resolved to go try for another baby right away. But the three months the OB advised morphed into six, and then I went back to work, and then just this weekend my husband and I sat down and added up all the debt we’ve managed to rack up (after getting all our damn debt paid off about the time we moved into this house four months ago dammit) the savings we want, and the furniture and other things we want for our house… and it looks like I’ll be working for a while. This doesn’t bother me in terms of having babies– the longer I wait the better my chance of having twins, and women have babies in their late thirties and early forties all the time. The longer I wait the better position I believe I will be, emotionally, spiritually, and financially, to parent a newborn again. It bothers me only because I don’t like my job much and have much better things to do.
But when I told my husband the good news about no unintended pregnancy and reaffirmed that I need to work for a long time, he said, you know things are never perfect. It would be nice if we could do the savings but lots of families don’t and they have babies. It was a shocking turnaround on his part. Usually when I talk about having another one he gets a frightened look on his face– frightened of telling me how he really feels about another baby since he is now already up to three. In fact, the last time I found myself obsessively talking to him about it, he said, you know a baby isn’t going to heal our marriage– a very gentle, insightful way to remind me of the stress we’re already under and that we don’t need more. Still, this time around it was very sweet to hear him say that.
I still have some spiritual work to do, insofar as two lady professional types have told me that they traced their miscarriages to a sense that deep down they didn’t deserve the wild joy of that pregnancy and the promise it held– not to insinuate that they or any woman having a miscarriage would be to blame, but to say, that miscarriage prompted me to work hard to love myself better and let my personal decisions reflect more of my true values, desires, and essential self. I look forward to doing some of that work… but for now I really gotta get back on the birth control.
I ran my ass off getting supper cooked, getting beds made and clean towels out. I am tired as shit. But the baby and the rest of the fam are asleep… that quiet is golden, and I’m going in to work late tomorrow. Still… I don’t think I can make it even one more step.
