this woman’s work

Beautiful.

I have a cold and am deeply, unequivocally blue. I’ve got iTunes programmed to play all my favorite misery songs at random while I pretend to work on an article. Right now, it’s Leonard Cohen’s voice murmuring to me.

I’ve figured out why I’ve been unable to get pregnant but am not quite ready to talk about it with the rest of the world yet. The good news: I know what it is. The bad news: whether or not I can do anything about it is questionable. I can try and I might be able to improve things but I know that there are limits to what I’m willing to do medically. Meanwhile, I have an appointment with a midwife next week and I’ll ask her for a referral to a specialist and I’ll spend the summer (since there is often a wait-list for these specialists) doing what I can with herbs, diet, etc.

That all sounds more dire than I feel. I mean, I am pretty sad right now but I don’t feel hopeless. Cautiously optimistic, maybe, and very shocked.

Ooops, bad iTunes somehow slipped in a lullaby and I’m not in the mood to remember being a loving mother gazing at the baby at my breast. Off to change the song list!

We spent the weekend in Indianapolis where Brett ran a mini-marathon. He did very well, thanks for asking. It’s his second half-marathon this year. Then we took Noah to the Children’s Museum which is huge. They had the top of the building done up like a giant birthday cake and for some reason Noah keeps calling it “that rockin’ museum”.

On the way home we sang showtunes until we were hoarse. At one point Noah crowed, “Mommy! Sing another song from Annie!” I said my throat hurt and Brett leaned over and said, “You better go ahead and do it. This may be the only time in your life that someone actually requests that you sing Tomorrow.”

My brother, who is a regular reader of this blog, will understand the humor behind that.

When I was a kid, I used to pick weeds from the undeveloped lot across the street to leave on the neighbors’ doorstep. I would ring the bell and run. At the time, I imagined them opening the door to see the bounty of flowers and thinking, “My, what spring magic is this? Could if be fairies?” In reality they probably said, “Damn kids leaving these stupid wilted weeds, who do they think they’re fooling?” Anyway, today for May Day, I planted an azalea and some flox. There you go. Happy May.

First year of hand-coded entries, now imported to wordpress. May 2001 below the cut!
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Importing my old entries! The go from newest to oldest. More below the cut.
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Old entries. Below cut.
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He was hot, hot, hot all last night but was keeping down water, tea, and pedialyte. He woke up at 11am, then sat on my lap ’til he fell back asleep at 12:30 and is sleeping now at 2:36 exactly. He’s much cooler, too. I got him to eat four bites of squished up ripe banana and he’s peeing all right so I’m letting him sleep. I have writing deadlines staring me dead in the face but I’m too jumpy to sit and concentrate on anything real so instead I’m cooking beans, doing laundry, typing this, and leaping up every few minutes to go feel his forehead.

I hate hate hate hate hate when he’s sick. And I’m dealing with my stress by slowly but surely eating my way through a bag of (milk) chocolate chips. This, my friends, is why I’m not svelte.

Noah woke up vomiting last night. It’s our first throwing-up illness and we’re just (cough) thrilled. He can’t even keep down water, poor guy. I did just give him some catnip drops and he’s sleeping now so maybe that helped. I made a “hot sock” with salt and we cuddled with that on his tummy which may have helped, too. I hate it when he’s sick!!! He rarely nurses anymore and only hit the breast three times today–considering how we used to spend entire days of illness mouth to breast, this is the surest sign of weaning I’ve seen so far. Things would be much easier if he was still a nursling but I’m pretty grateful that it took him four years to get his first stomach bug.

The worst being one where Noah was nearly kidnapped and ending with a bloody car crash (not involving family members). I woke up and started thinking about how I could wrap barbed wire all around the top of the fence in our backyard.
Usually I have fabulous, vivid dreams that keep me inspired and focused. I’m not sure why these nightmares have arrived; I’m not under any unusual stress or anything. I’m going to go hunt down some dream interpretation sites.

Here they are:

My rabbi said that he was willing to convert me despite my (deep) reservations about circumcising future sons. He said that a colleague of his said, “You’re talking about not converting a person because of potential people.” Still, Rabbi Huber wants to introduce me to a mohel for discussion. I said that I welcomed the dialogue. As I said before, even among Reform rabbis, he’s a pretty liberal rabbi.