8000 miles into the many folds of my imagination

I made this deal with myself that our baby could get born once I hit 8,000 miles on my bicycle. Well yesterday that happened, so k's vaginal gate is now allowed to loosen up and let it fly.

In all actuality, we have no idea when this will happen, but the aforementioned deal with myself is an example indicative of my strange thinking habits. I tend to have a grandiose imagination and the absurd ability to develop worst case scenarios in my mind.

For instance, part of our conversation with our midwife on Wednesday morning, Me: "So...S what is your back up plan in case you are experiencing violent vomiting and diarrhea when k hits active/active labor?"

Of course she has a solid back up plan so I have no worries, but I will envision all the crazy ass things that could go wrong (or right) about 1000 times before our bundle of joy comes rolling out of kk's nether region. It is just how I am.

some new age folks might think that this is negative thinking that will impact the way things turn out for us, and I sometimes end up thinking that the negative thinking will indeed make things roll out negatively, but then I think that that is simply part of my neurotic imaginative tendencies, and I get over myself and the self-implied power present in all of the power of thinking BS that circulates the new age airwaves like an overactive muscle spasm.

This is not to say that I think that what we think does not impact our overall demeanor and state of comfort or lack there of. I know how to work myself up over the things I imagine in my head and then I know how to talk myself out of the panic i drive myself to.

But I do not believe that if I imagine horrific things (which I do all of the time) then I will bring those things upon myself or my loved ones. If I did believe all that super-human nonsense, then I would have to be placed in a very cushy room to stop the tragedies that cross my mind from befalling the universe. I am not a supernatural superhero or antihero; I am simply a getting closer to middle age over-imaginator.

And please understand that the shit that flutters through my mind is not all death and destruction or vile images of fluids exploding out of both human ends; I also think lovely thoughts. There are even times when I think nothing at all and simply ride in a state of marvel through the changing colors with a dark liquid snake of a river rushing next to me. While eight species of birds dart and swoop and flutter all around the fecund, layered decay beneath sumac and dried mullein and evening primrose and touch-me-not that has fallen to brown remnants for winter. And I laugh at the lone blue jay standing amidst the Canada geese calling out screeches of derision to the ever-growing colder autumn morning and my mind settles softly to the place where there is no thing but the calls of earth catching me breathless in anticipation for the most amazing coming experience of our lives...

a bath and her lovely belly with a bounty that is beyond, beyond

Trying times are met with brilliant moments.

We have been through death and sorrow (my gram went on, my too young uncle, also) in the last month. Work is full and good. Preparation for our dear one is in full swing as K is 35 weeks into this mystery. We are gathering supplies, writing down notes for our desires, and moving toward giving birth at home.

These walls have held the years of others' living like dark stories caught in sunlight. These walls are thick with horse hair plaster and layers of paint and old wall paper glue. These walls are witness to the stretched vocal chord sound of song, fury, love, heartache, winter frost, summer dew, the scent of sex, the idleness of waiting, the quiet of stillness, the hectic murmur of insomnia, the bewildered moments before knowing, the aches, the pitter patter of small animals and children (animals too), the last breaths of loved ones. So much has happened in these rooms in the last 107 years; so much we do not know; so much we do know.

And soon we will be adding to the memories of these walls and the ceilings and the floors. Soon, K will be wailing the cries of child birth; notes that have long vowels and crazy consonants carrying out the ends of her mouth. Soon, she will walk over worn wood in rhythms we are yet to understand. Soon, this thing we know so little about and have tried to learn too much about, will devour us with its mystery and we will make invisible etchings of experience all around us.

On Saturday, we took ourselves out for a fancy date (the last one till our world is turned upside down by the introduction of this new being into our lives). Beforehand, K bathed in our old, deep clawfoot tub. Dusk was on the fringe; gray cascaded through the windows in autumn clad slices, and I took pictures of this graceful beauty unfolding within and throughout this woman i love with every ounce of all of me. Below are a few:

belly ball in bath

angel

amazing

shimmer in the tub

gorgeous beyond, beyond

kid at heart

I rode home in humidity that seems to be breaking toward fall--My chin dripping, my arms coated in a nice sheen of wet, my pants splotted with sweat. I walked in the door to find my lovely lady in her panties and bra on the floor doing pregnancy pilates.

She is 7 months and 1 week pregnant and her belly is bulging--beautiful, round, and bountiful.


I can't believe she is growing us a baby, but that is what she is up to.

So, I walked in the screen door (totally unlocked) rolled my bicycle by my nearly naked lover and stood over her to drip some summer sweat onto her big belly.

I'm pretty geeked to be a parent and also nervous. I think we will be fun and ultra attentive. I mean I like being a goof and I do not even have a kid yet. See below for goofiness:


Yes, I dressed in a bee outfit and rode my bicycle in a parade. I love riding my bicycle in parades. It's even better in a bee costume; you should see how excited the kids watching on the sidelines get when a giant adult human bee comes peddling by.

And I love to hang out and watch animals.
See below:

a gold finch eating in the sunshine


my bees coasting home and coasting out to forage


lazing,sunning chicken lady

So, all in all, I got some pro-kid interests going on:) Some more things that make me a kid-at-heart:
drawing and making art
talking about bodily functions
watching interesting movies
listening to interesting music
riding my bike--a lot
riding my bike in parades
dripping sweat onto other people
swimming in lakes
digging holes in my backyard
swinging on swing sets (even though it makes me feel like i might puke)
laughing
chewing inappropriately (only in front of the right people)
walking in the woods
sticking my hands in my compost on a daily basis to test the heat levels
watching all of the various life-forms in the compost heap for hours and hours
splitting wood
chasing chickens
playing fetch with my dog
reading young adult novels and kid books (little house-series, anne of green gables--series, and bunnicula, just to name a few)
and much more...
see a kid just fits naturally into this little world of ours.

a smoking hot 25 weeks and 2 days (okay I think she took the pic at 24 weeks, but still)

100 days left till our little bundle of joy parades her beautiful bloody head between k's legs:)

Do you really want a belly shot? Okay, you can have one, cause I do not mind sharing my ultra hot soon-to-be-mama with some of the world.

Yes, ultra-hot. I'll tell you what: I cannot seem to keep my hands of kk while pregnant. I mean my hands love her lots while not pregnant, but she is smoking right now. Her body, her face all of her just gleams with this scrumptious air of sweetness.

Sweetness that I want to gobble up.

She loves being pregnant. Even her posture, seeps with this love.



and here she is all yellow and blurry:


the pictures do not do her total justice, but please believe me she is beyond lovely to look at and her heart, well, it sings with happiness.

speaking of hearts, we heard her little 145 beats per minute heart roaring along the other day and she kicks like a soccer player. she is an active little bugger and her little body flinging around makes me smile.

brief and scattered

damn. time is flying. k is something near 22 weeks along. we saw it in an ultra sound. we did find out the sex last week because I want to name the little thing a very gendered name while it is still up inside her mama and so she has been named.

in other news, k is moving toward planning a home birth. we have a midwife and everything!

and approximately three weeks or so ago k, a, and i had to kill another chicken due to what i have home-diagnosed as vent gleet. this nasty ailment is basically a chicken yeast infection. it causes the chicken's ass to become a pasty mess and the chicken suffers from nasty shits.

one of our other-still-living-older chickens now seems to have it also. She has been isolated from the rest of the flock, and we are treating her with minimal amounts of apple cider vinegar and yogurt. but i fear another killing is in the near future.

we also have acquired two young, five month old hens. they are speedy demons.
The gardens are bumping along. Below are some pics to brighten your day.


New hive and experimental squash garden


comfrey and new gardens


bee hives, squash gardens under black walnut, straw layering new clover seed


buffy; she is not a sick chicken; waddles is sick and is now named raggedy ass number III

ultra update, art fair, butt balm

we saw bones and a bouncing baby. However, the little creature was sitting in a kind of floating lotus position so the tech and doc could not see the bottom of the spine or the genitalia.

we go back in two weeks cause i guess it is important to see the skin on the bottom of the spine. hopefully, our stubborn and active soon-to-be-child will be moving into a different comfortable position by then.

speaking of comfy positions, k's over at the shadow art fair right now sitting over the bike ypsi booth. we made a bunch of stuff to sell for donations for our sweet little bicycle group. HOLE stencils (for DIY marking of shabby, dangerous roads), butt balm, stickers, a kids, jankily thrown together coloring book and then a.c. put together more of his super fine pamphlets: ride in the winter, how to shop by bike, and riding legally in ypsi along with some great reflective decals. Plus we have t-shirts and some informational stuff.

Below please see my new drawing that adorns my homemade butt balm; the drawing for the balm says butt balm not what this one says, but i thought you'd all prefer this to "butt balm":

she's hot

yep, literally and figuratively.



and she's mine.

she's wearing the fun outfit in these pictures right now, next to me, on the couch. she's got it on to keep her cool, cause damn it has been hot. and since she came down stairs sporting her belly and her bountiful bosoms, I just had to take a picture and share with all of you her tube top and yellow shorts.

kk is going for the big ultrasound tomorrow afternoon. we will check the sex and make sure he/she is alive and all that. We will also check on the hemorrhage to see what she's been up to. hopefully, she dug a hole out and has permanently left my beloved's body.

we will be checking to see what hangs or does not hang between the little thing's legs. these queers--that's us--are checking the sex cause we have two very gendered names picked for the kid and so one of those names will indeed be assigned to the kid based on the sex. we still live in a very gendered world and still happen to prefer two very gendered names...lifted, of course, from two dead people who left remarkable bits of stardust and wisdom all over the pages of books and in the halls of libraries and the bedside reading tables of many, many people.

back to sweating by my sizzling mama to be.

displaced, but ok

my darling is 5 months and 1 day pregnant today. and, lately, i've been submerged in the in between space of that which is to come. of course, i am thrilled beyond measure about the insanely huge change that is looming like an enormous convergence of clouds on the heavy set fields of some horizon, but I am also feeling a little displaced.

everything as we know it is going to change.
all of you out there with kids know this and tell this to us and we shake our heads and say, "we know, we know."

But really, I do not know shit.

K and I have been together nearly eleven years. We have forged through the good times and hard times like two pieces of granite or two stalks of corn. We love our time together: alone and with others. But we are so use to being alone, just the two of us.

And so this is where displacement starts to come in. Soon and very soon, we will never (or rarely) be alone.

And the other piece of the displacement is connected to the idea of what each of us will be like as a parent. This is all new territory. We are talking about it and soon will be writing down our ideas about how to parent together with our very different backgrounds when it comes to involvement with infants, kids, and teens.

I desire to fall even more deeply in love with k as we both take on this new cloak of parenting.

I grew up heavily involved in church life--in the evangelic.al pres..byterian church to be exact. two of the best things about this otherwise mostly repressive church was the community of caring people and the responsibility for child care that was taught to young folks growing up in the church.

As a preteen and teen, I worked in the nursery with infants, the toddler room with little ones, and the preschoolers. I know how to change diapers very well and keep rambunctious wee ones occupied. As a young adult (age 19- to almost 21), I worked with junior high girls at a sister church in detroit and then with the high schoolers and also with the kindergarten kids. Quite a few of the kids i worked with in detroit had not had much parenting at all and some of them had witnessed atrocious stuff. A 10 year old named S had seen her mama shot in the head when she was five, ya, she was a handful with a good heart buried beneath her steely, complicated exterior.

But, I learned how important boundary setting was for these kids and I learned a bit how to set those boundaries and how to enforce the boundaries in gentleness. Example: 5 year old throwing fit, striking other kids, lashing out swearing; me holding kid as he thrashes about until finally he calms down and then is just held in my arms--quieted, calmed and well-loved.

K on the other hand has very little experience with kids and babies. I think her most involved interactions with kids have been with my sister's three children over the last ten years. and she has enjoyed it.

Here i am an anarchist politically and at heart, but who on a whole believes in the legitimacy of boundaries for children, teens, and adults, alike. KK is much more laid back than me about all kinds of things. I do not intend to be a fascist parent. I do intend to develop rules (not necessarily etched in stone or chalk or anything else) and parameters together for all of us to follow.

K is so calm and stable and i cannot wait to see this all unfold in our endeavor together as parents, but damn am I nervous.

Sometimes, I find myself standing in random places and a song or a slice of life around me will startle me to stillness and my throat will seize up with a tightness and my eyes well up with tears and all I can think about is the cataclysmic event hanging on the precipice of december. I am willing it to be wonderful but every now and again the wonderful also has a hint of doom shadowing the W and L of the word.

I guess this is where big change often leaves me, scurrying about wanting answers and plans when that is not the way of life and i know it. Sometimes i wish i could gut the calvinism (the theology of predeterminism) that is imprinted on the lining of my veins, even though i have rejected every bit of the theology of my youth in my mind, from under my skin.

in the meantime k and i will keep on loving as fiercely as we can and plan where plans need made and dream in the in-between places.

curly headed baby

i have started making a little comic about random thoughts related to wee critter living in my kk's belly. here is the first installment. it is a bit on the choppy side, but stick with me...



oh. and you should click on the pic in order to read my cursive!

party for penelope and pregnacy still hopping

okay. Sorry to flit away. But my life is out of control busy. I feel totally overwhelmed to the point of acting slap happy most days. Tomorrow we throw a big ass party for penelope. penelope was the director of where i work for over 23 years. she retired back in march and tomorrow is this big fundraiser/retirement party to honor her 23 years of prisoner rights work.

i ended up being responsible for most of the organizing even though i am so far from an event planner i smell extra strange when aiming to plan an event.

i think what starts happening is my mind drafts a story of how the evening should go--please understand the stories in my mind are not all that normal. so how the evening should go gets all goofy, and, in the end, i hope that goofiness turns to interesting.

simply put there is a party mix containing multiple covers of john denver's rocky mountain high; shitloads of desserts (provided in large part by my always pulling for me friends);a presentation that i've been working on for days; and dancing (international folk dancing and regular dancing).

in baby world, k had an ultra sound on monday and she saw the critter jumping around "like a monkey." those are her words. i was not there, cause i was working; busy life made flesh.

the doc could not see the hemorrhage and the bleeding has mostly stopped.

In another news, it is fucking hot for may. we are talking nearing 90 and the gardens are thriving and i have so many more plants to get into the ground, but they will have to wait until the weekend.

i also have another amazing bee hive experience to share, but that too must wait.

till then. happy hopping baby and parties celebrating a person who gave (and gives) a damn about those who are often considered the most unlovable.

we got the beat, we got the beat, we got the beat--yeah

kk had a doppler this morning and we heard the little heart a thumping. so it is still in there all alive and everything. k is also still dripping dots and skids of blood, so the midwife ordered an ultra sound and then we see her again on june 2 to go over it all.

maybe, k will have one of those strange pregnancies that consists of bleeding throughout. i'm hoping not, but if we get a kid out of it all in the end, well we will take whatever the planet has in store for us.

we decided to take the day off today and work in the yard. we have a new beehive to paint, 3 new garden beds to finish off (i still have to haul some more compost into them), chicken coop/run to muck, new bee frames to string with delightful wild comb in order to go as foundationless as possible, and other urban farmesque things to do.

i'm sticking with the go-gos soundtrack today. yes, we got the beat.

hilarity, horribleness, and absurdity.

Well. K is still wiping pink tinged stuff and sometimes spotting, but we are trying to chalk it up to the hemorrhage and not the beginnings of a miscarriage.

I also am chalking it up to the fact that last month, at this same time, is when her spotting was happening before, and last month, at this same time, it was also when yours truly was PMSing and having her period. I have a new hypothesis. My alpha hormones are pulling at kk's uterus and making her drop the remnants of the pool of blood that is hanging out in her womb.

Of course, this is totally my non-scientific conjecture, based on the leanings of my ass, but it helps me get a laugh in every once in a while.

With all that being said, kk is standing up in her dear friend's wedding this weekend and we will be staying down in the D Friday and Saturday night at the Ren Cen. So we are getting a little vacay and simultaneously keeping our fingers crossed that kk is not having a miscarriage that accidentally bleeds out all over the light green dress she is wearing in the wedding.

Believe it or not this morbid thought also brings us a little chuckle. Cause wouldn't that be just fucking perfect. You have to laugh at the horrendous shit every once in a while or how can you deal with it?

Really?

Even at work, day after day, we are bombarded with stories of abuse and isolation and desperation that would just break all of our hearts in thirds if we did not draw out a hee hee every now and again at the absurdity of it all. Undiagnosed c.olon cancer is no joke, but a dude collecting pair after pair of bloodied underwear, storing them up in his cell, and taking them with him over to pr.ison health to show the people who are entrusted with his life that he is not lying about blood seeping from his ass, well I have to smile at the smarts and audacity of the dude.

And sometimes when fellows send us blood samples in the mail and poop smears and sem.en samples, cause they think we have a full-on CSI style lab in our little garage of an office, well it makes me laugh my ass off and then wish that I always had latex gloves on when I opened up the mail:)

and did I ever tell you all about the guy who wrote the most detailed story of how he rose from the dead in the morgue of the local hospital with IVs hanging out of his arm. He, of course, was explaining how he had been killed by officers over a period of days. The story itself was so batty I had to smile, but the fact that the man believed this had actually happened--tears came a welling up over the edge of the smile. Cause something really bad must have happened to him sometime in his life--whether in the life of reality or the life inside of his brain that was as vivid as the realest of moments.

So, ya. I can try to make light of the nastiness that surrounds me. I can try to get through with chuckles and laughs. I can open my heart up to the absurd and think about how all of it is just that.

That's where I am at for a while. Riding on a pink tinged wave of hilarity, horribleness, and absurdity. Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts and the traces of things likes prayers that help us conjure up laughter and love in the midst of struggle.

compost and other updates on urban farm and kk

me and some of our compost (not all of the compost I've been shoveling is from our batch, but some of it is including this)

long week.
long, long week.

busy at work.
busy at home.

just so you all know, k has not bled for about 5 days. I hate to put it out there; it is like needing to knock on an all wooden ship from 1776, but here's to hoping the bright red liquid has eased off for good.

I took a half day thursday and a full day yesterday in order to get the garden beds a little more prepared. I rearranged my compost heap for maximum heat and space utilization. It was some back breaking work, but well worth it. I am attempting this eliot coleman, straw bale style compost. The back bin is for brown (on the left) and green (on the right) and the front right is my active pile. The front left is where I will layer the new pile. I am hoping the front right will be ready by July. It is tarped and I keep it nice and moist and turn it when I feel inclined. This pile contains a whole micro-world of goodness. I cannot express how much i love compost!


We adopted another chicken yesterday. Her name is Buffy (she is a Buff Orpington). Her sisters (10 of them) were all killed by a mink on the farm she lived at, so now she is trying to adapt to our flock of bitches. picture of buffy to come.

Yes, our chickens are mean little buggers. they have been pecking the hell out of buffy. Alas, yesterday night, we kept her separate in the mobile run i made last summer.

Hopefully, she will acclimate. She is beautiful and bigger than the bitches.

I dug up two new side beds where we took down three trees this spring in order for more sun to shine on our very shady space. I am loading them with compost.

34

i turned 34 this weekend.

i worked all day on saturday--the day of my birthday.

we went for beer at founders after working all day; it was yummy and we visited with good friends. we were in grand rapids.

k is still bleeding on and off. she is feeling sicker and sicker; i guess this is a good sign.

i have been reading like mad. i have been working so much that i turn off quickly when i come home by ducking my eyes and therefore my brain into a good book. I've read three kate delafield mysteries and one jane lawless mystery in the last week and a half and yesterday i read hood. yes, i am still on my "lesbian" fiction kick. I went through all the young adult lesbian novels at the whitaker branch library and now i have to get the other 4 i intend to read from the other branch. but in the meantime, i've been reading any other lesbianesque novel i can get my hands on. I go through these phases once in a while. these times when i cannot handle anymore straightness since it circulates around us like dandelions and grass and wind, essentially it is everywhere.

anyhow, it s just nice to read about two women finding peace and pleasure in one another. i like that. it helps take me away from the chaos of my working life and the stress of this living that is trying to happen in kk.

now, i am older--one year more notched out of the wooden trim lining the front door. now, i am hoping for longevity and limberness as this embryo unfolds into a child inside kk. i need strength. i need some bigger peace. i'll write about that more some other day.

my bleeding lover

This morning kk had another ultra sound at the repro clinic. The wee little embryo is still alive.

The heart was thumping--strong.

The doctor was just fantastic and I wish she could be my regular obgyn. Anyhow, we saw what's been causing the bleeding; it's a Subchorionic Hemorrhage. The doc explained that the gestational sack is like a cancer and it is burrowing deep into the womb and it disrupted a vessel which then pulled up blood and came out kk's vagina.

So, now she may bleed a bit more here and there. It will take some time to heal. Anyhow, it is toward the front of the sack and not very much of it is touching the thick wall surrounding the embryo.

Hopefully, there will be no more disruption and the wee thing will keep growing and a healthy pregnancy will ensue.

It is still a waiting game. A worry game. As the doctor said today, when the baby gets born and is out of the womb it is still all about wearing your heart inside out.

Very right.

In the meantime, I am trying to relax in the middle of a whirlwind of emotion...

staying alive

K has not bled in two days. Before those two days, it was mostly just pinkish brown spots.

I have this thing called caution tied around my neck; it is like a steel weight--a jacob marley style chain necklace tearing at my muscles turning sinew to rock. I am cautiously happy.

I keep seeing that wee spot--the flickering heart, the thud, thud, thud. It is something we've wanted so bad, but the path to this place where we are now has been littered with obstacles and heartache and the unknowing. All in all, we've had too much room, due to circumstances beyond our control and so totally in our control, to think about every move we've made before we've made it. We've pondered the ways to try to make it happen until pondering pounced all the life out of our own life-making ways.

My thought life around pregnancy and potential parenting has been too thick, too full, too vivid, too real. And now we just have to ride this wave of doubt and unknowing for a little longer. Except in reality we will always never know anything for sure. Well, I guess we do know that one day it's all going to end for each of us. One day that small beating heart inside kk's abdomen will no longer pump. Just like one day the strong, able heart of kk will cease and mine and yours will stop. We really just don't know when. I am hoping that all of our hearts keep that lush constant rhythmic quality for years and years to come. This of course includes that lovely little thistle seed heart rushing in the watery world of my beloved's womb.

Caution keep me close, weight of worry stop strangling my esophagus, hearts of the beloved community keep thumping to the pulse of the planet, day keep dawning, night keep falling, kid keep growing...stay alive, stay alive, stay alive...

the potential

Spring teaches us lessons. Lessons in watchfulness. Lessons in living now. Lessons in the fast fading of beautiful moments. Lessons in rebirth. Lessons in possibility. Lessons in the powerful potential for new life.

The potential.

It is hard for me to write about this. It is harder for me to think on it. I am trying to stay in the moment. I am striving for hope where I was not hopeful.

On Thursday, K felt a gush between her legs while she was at work. It was blood. It happened around 3:30.

I had been in Lansing all morning for a House hearing with AFSC's new staff (it was his very first day of work). The hearing had gone well. The day was hot, too hot for the season in Michigan. P, the new staff, and I drove back. I got home around 2:30ish. Grabbed food, grabbed my bicycle and put it on the car and drove down to the park and rode into work. I planned to park the car at the park so k and I could ride back to it around 9:00pm from a panel I was supposed to speak on in Ann Arbor.

I was sweaty when I got to work. Dripping cause it was 82 degrees on april 15 in Michigan. I planned to train P for about an hour and a half and then go to the event I was going to be speaking at when the phone rang and K said I'm having a miscarriage.

And then my heart sank. But it did not sink too much cause I had built foam and other soft substances around it. I know that a large percentage of pregnancies end in miscarriage. I know that this struggle we have been going through is bigger than I am able to wrap my head around and I know it is a struggle. I do not take it as anything else.

Kk had called the repro clinic and they scheduled an ultra sound pronto for 9:00 am friday.

Back at my office where I had been standing dripping with sweat with a partially sinking heart, P instantly dropped everything and took me in his car over to K at her work. Where her boss and colleague had been there for her, supporting her, loving her amidst her tears.

We scooped K up and P took us to our car down in the park.

I drove quickly to the post office to purchase stamps I needed for work the next day, and then I took K home. Our dear friend R brought K a chocolate chip blizzard and some maxi pads. And then, our dear friend and no longer roommate but now neighbor, A, came to walk the pook with me. Later that night she also brought us yummy dahl for dinner.

We walked through an alley I had never discovered before in Ypsi. It is old and dirt and gravel and it feels right beneath human feet. It feels as though it has been tread on for 150 years. We stopped at P's to hand off the stamps I had purchased for the mailing that I would or would not be at work for the next day depending on what happened with K's ultra sound.

I stayed at P's place and A walked pook back home. I drank a cold beer with him in his new apartment, talked, and listened to dylan. He had moved in the day before. We found it together on Monday after a day of apartment hunting. It is a great pad. A good sized efficiency in a very old house with ultra high ceilings and access to two great porches.

It was calming to be sitting there and tuning out a little. But then I knew I had to get back to KK.

I walked home with a small buzz that comes from drinking a cold beer in hot weather as though it were a glass of water. I kicked dirt in the alley. I took in the magnificent green that beats through even the milkiest dusk. Because the green that accompanies the rousing of sleeping vegetation in spring, is different--more vivid, more elaborate than any other green. It glows with the pulse of life. it busts open with that which wants nothing more than to be alive.

When I got back to our house, our good friend G was there with K. She just happened to be in from florida to be with her ailing papa in windsor and was able to slip over the border to visit us and some other ypsi friends. It was perfect timing. Then our good friend N came over and we sat around catching up and three of us drank beers.

They left.

We went to bed.

In the morning, we drank coffee and drove on over to the repro clinic.

Some mother of some straight girl waiting in the waiting room gave us not too kind looks too many times as we sat there. So, I held K's hand tighter as we waited. I held her hand and rubbed her neck and displayed vigorous affection.

We waited and waited.

Then we were taken back to an exam room.

The boy doctor finally came in. Remember, my hope was not high. It was cushioned safely in the cottony confines of my chest.

He wanded K and then instantly said there it is with a strong beating heart. And, then my sweaty hand squeezed K's hand so tight and ghostly little fingers with a mind of their own seemed to rip out the foam and cotton and soft stuff that had been surrounding my own heart, and it became all bare and vulnerable and open.

That is what hope is like. It leaves you open for let down and pure disappointment. So, the 6 week 4 day old fetus has a strong heart beat. We heard it. We saw it. It was alive. Yesterday, it was alive. The blood indicates a threatened miscarriage.
So, k's taking it easy. They tell us the blood could have been from anything. There is still some blood. We can do nothing but wait.

Now, I have this raw heart. This open heart. This heart that saw the beating heart of a little seed.

It is spring. There are many lessons in all the potential bounty. There are reminders of the cycles of life all around us. There are the trees coming back to life and the compost breaking down what once was alive into stuff that will be full of goodness and the potential for even more newness. There are two of us waiting intently for a heartbeat to stay strong. We are counting on spring.

I am learning about hope.

prayers working...for realz...

to those of you who know us in person, please do not take offense to the fact that you may have not heard this directly from us first. this is blog world and a large part of the reason i ever started this blog was to blabber incessantly about this trying to get pregnant that has consumed portions of our lives for the last three years.

i've laid off on the posting about trying, cause it was all starting to drive me a bit mad. i was getting brittle.

and brutal to my own heart. putting effort into something without any results, well, it can get old and tiresome after a bit.

Anyhow, k has been taking femara the last two cycles. it is an estrogen blocker and it makes her eggs develop in a more identifiable way or some shit like that. so the first month did not work.

it just made k strange and emotional.

this month she went in for the ultra sound to detect eggs on day 10 of her cycle instead of day 14. she was almost ready, so then on day 12 she went back and there were some eggs about ready to fall. so she had the trigger shot and we opted out of an iui this month and did a home injection the next evening.

anyhow, then last thursday she peed on a stick and it said, not pregnant. and we were like we knew it...

...it just is not ever gonna happen. the doctor at the clinic acted like it was a for sure thing because of the super positive response to the femara. and we were like ha, she does not know this journey we've been on.

Anyhow, on tuesday k was spotting; on wednesday she called the repro clinic to ask if she should start the femara when she started full on flowing at day three or when she count day three from the spotting day. and then k was like maybe i should check a pregnancy test again just in case and the nurse was like ya do so.

so, k did. and it said pregnant and we were both like no fu.cking way.
we were in total disbelief. then the repro clinic said go for a blood draw, so she did and later that afternoon it said she was pregnant, too.

And so my kk is pregnant. for the very first time in her life, she is pregnant.

I am keeping hope in check cause we know the whole fiasco with me and my pregnancy. she is ultra early on. and she could easily miscarry, so hope is in my back pocket. it gets sat on daily and ground into my ass. simultaneously, i am trying to stay optimistic and send the little spot that is growing inside her lots of good energy.

cause really i am not sure i can go through the whole losing it again thing...argh.
pins and needles, pins and needles, pins and needles for another 8 weeks.

argh.

and good.

last month when the femara did not work, I prayed so hard for my kk to get pregnant. I prayed to that which i do not know, i prayed to that which i think i know, i prayed to the tops of the branches of trees and the sun in the cool spring air; i prayed with cawing of the crows and the soft rush of river water. i prayed that she, my love--my sweet beloved--could have this one thing she wanted so deeply.

and maybe this prayer was heard in the rambling of the rest of our days. maybe it was heard on the tight teeny molecular structure of wind and rain. maybe just maybe, we will be parents 9 months from now.

praying for stickage and all good things.

the uncertainty is maddening.

around 11:00 this morning i had some spotting. just a little, but some nevertheless. then some more around 1:30. it is brown and old looking with no cramping. i called a midwife friend and she explained that it could be the 9/10 week fetus now living off placenta blood. i've also had some burning in my crotch--not while i pee, but after when i am sitting around--the bacterial vaginosis/yeast infection kind of burning.

i did end up calling the on-call doctor at the clinic. and he was really nice and wants me to call and make an appointment for monday or tuesday. he said he wanted me in way before february 6th especially cause of the spotting and rh issues and all of that. he told me he understood how the receptionists at the east ann arbor clinic were about scheduling appointments (which is basically not so flexible or nice) and so he said he would leave a note and he wanted me to call monday morning and get an appointment for monday or tuesday.

in the meantime, if cramping and heavier bleeding occur, i need to call back and then make my way to the er.

i am trying to be positive and understand that k and i will weather whatever befalls us, but keeping my mind centered and at peace is so hard. my heart is sort of sputtering--flipping around trying to make sense of all of these opportunities before me for practicing patience. i want answers and heartbeats. but alas...

coping

i know it has been a long time...

i've been down and out. learning to cope with this critter living in me, has been quite a ride so far. as kk so eloquently put it, i've been feeling downright crappy. i lost about eight pounds, but i am gaining it back. i straight up lost my appetite for two whole weeks. for one week, i shoved bits of food in my mouth, but not enough food so i felt like even worse crap. i was glued to the couch and depressed--depression to the point of no shower for almost one solid week.

i went from being super active to no action...at all. now i am walking at least 40 minutes a day which helps immensely. and i plan on visiting the bicycle at the gym as soon as i am eating more veg and protein again.

anyhow, this ride is something. it is miraculous that the sperm took after one time. i feel blessed and scared and thrilled and more scared and excited and scared.

i also feel loved. i feel loved by my bio-family and my chosen family and neighbors and old friends and new friends. i am so thankful for this abounding love. i am so thankful that k and i get to bring a wee one onto this life surrounded with good and strong and caring and loving people.

i have my first phone interview with the clinic next week and my first appointment with the midwife is on february 6--one more month of waiting. it seems like forever, but i know it is not.

that's it for now.

happy,happy new year!