Colorado National Monument Haiku

Red rock, raven wings,
desert silence. Feathered whoosh
reminds me of home.

There is nothing like the pure dry silence of the Southwest, where I grew up. No city noise means that if I pause, I can hear bird wings in the air. They sound like brooms on dry concrete. During our recent trip to Colorado National Monument in Fruita, The Old Man and I watched and listened to two ravens playing in the January drafts. We were hiking in the snow at 7,200 feet looking over the 4,500 foot canyonlands of red rock formations below.

My favorite quote ever. So far this week.

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ---Sylvia Plath

Bodily Functions, Whether I Like It Or Not

I feel like I'm at the end of my rope.

Between furloughs and no pay raises for two years, and with the baby coming, I have stopped taking online writing courses.

I haven't slept well since September. I currently have bronchitis and am getting four or five hours of sleep a night, well below what I need to feel sane. I have been suffering from depression. I have been cringing when I look in the mirror, because of the weight I've gained in the past three months. Between sinus infections and bronchitis, I haven't consistently exercised in three weeks.

With no writing goals my creative outlets are narrowed. I refuse to look into medication for my depression because it feels like a capitulation, and I don't want to give in, although if therapy continues to fail I will take medication rather than enter post-partum depression. I feel less like myself than I ever have.

There are ludicrous, hilarious, sometimes beautiful moments juxtaposed to all of this.

For example, last weekend I took The Kid to a birthday party at an indoor playground and he peed and pooped all over the play equipment. He rarely has accidents, so I did not have any extra clothes for him. He was very upset and I held him and rushed him to the bathroom where I cleaned him up. He wanted me to leave him there, go home, and get extra clothes for him. He did not want to stop playing. Another mother offered me her extra clothes - she had a little girl, so they were pink pants.

Me: "It's either your dirty jeans or these pants."
The Kid: "I don't like the color! Those are girl's pants!"
Me: "Well, you can't play naked."
The Kid: "You go home. Get me clean pants. I stay here, wait for you."
Me: "I can't leave you here alone."
The Kid: "You go home."
Me: "Which ones? The dirty ones or the pink ones?"
The Kid: "I don't like those girl pants!"

We are in a restroom stall where other mothers can hear us. Both of us are getting increasingly upset at this point, and he is crying, and I'm about to cry. I take his little bare-butt body in my arms, and I hold him. He instantly relaxes and his breathing becomes even, calm. I wrap his jacket around his waist, and we go home. I ignore offers of birthday cake. At that point, I really don't want to sit with a naked kid and eat birthday cake, especially when I'm about to cry.

I was embarrassed that my son had an accident, embarrassed that I wasn't prepared with clean extra clothes, embarrassed that I couldn't get him to wear the clean pants. But also, proud of him that he can assert himself: style evidently comes before practical considerations. And so grateful that I can comfort him and choose to accept him as he is, and convey that to him, and make him feel loved no matter what.

And this bronchitis. Because I am seven months pregnant, when I cough or sneeze, I pee. Involuntarily. Cough, cough, cough. Pee, pee, pee. Great huge jets of it, even though I go to the bathroom every five minutes to keep my bladder empty. High barking coughs. Flooded pants. Maybe it's because I'm at the end of my rope, or maybe I'm just going crazy enough to find this funny, but it makes me laugh every time it happens.

The Old Man is doing extra laundry just to keep up with the two of us.

Dream about Annie

I was setting up my dorm room, getting ready for the new year in college, when Annie called. She doesn't call on the telephone; instead I get an image of her walking with her ex-lover, saying goodbye to him, and I know she wants to talk to me.

I tell her we'll meet at Hoagie Haven. Hoagie Haven is not a couple blocks down the street like in Princeton, but down three twisted back alleyways and into the woods. There are two dirt paths, red dirt, leading to the restaurant, and Annie is walking barefoot down one dirt path. I'm heading up the other one, the one that is littered with trash from the city I just left. Annie's path is leading from the woods, from a sunlit forest on a ridgetop. Two men are following her, like puppies.

The two paths intersect, and we all stop, barefooted Annie and her followers, and me. One of the guys, a dirty, long-haired scruffy man, is asking Annie if it is ever acceptable to die for a plant. Specifically a tree. He's all fired up about some development project, and wants to make a statement by killing himself in front of the trees they are about to destroy. He is arguing philosophy, moral standards, ethical principles. Annie simply says, "No. It's never acceptable to die for a plant." She brushes him aside like a bug circling her head. The other guy is there for advice too, apparently, but after her reaction and figuring out that he is not going to get the answer he wants to hear, he leaves too.

I look at Annie, tall, confident, and I know she's good. I know, in fact, that she is better than she has ever been.

The only bad part of the dream was the 5:00 AM alarm woke me, and I never got my pastrami sandwich.

Men and Women in High Places

Practice for women on how to assert themselves in the workplace.

You could say:

"Dear Blowhard Jackass, every time you ignore the role I play at work and go straight over my head with your ideas about how I do my job, I want to kick you in the shins. You are a chest-puffer, all talk, high and mighty talk about how things need to change, but not one ounce of practical advice for how that change has to occur. Give me some advice, and I'll take it into consideration. I understand that because of your short stature you may be compensating for something. You may feel as if you have no control over anything and it drives you crazy to see a woman in charge of all the things that are dear to your heart. You may think you are a brilliant negotiator. You are not. I am your peer, you juvenile idiot. Take your moustache and Wranglers and suck it."

Or you could say:

"I am a firm believer that in this organization we have an important mission to achieve, and that we are all working together to achieve that mission. Your behaviors, specifically providing input to my supervisors rather than speaking directly with me, fosters competition among our units rather than collaboration. It is much more useful to understand what we are doing and the reasons why, speak with us about what you see as possible improvements, and then jointly collaborate on alternatives. Your belief in "Verbal Judo," a method to defuse conflict, should benefit you in a time like this. Your actions are contributing to the conflict. Until and unless you give your ideas about my responsibilities directly to me, I will not incorporate any of your suggestions. You need my collaboration for any initiative to be successful."

Raw

"Even raw and messy emotions are a form of light, crackling, bursting with energy." - Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves

The veil between the mask I use to protect myself from the outside world and the animal self on the inside is thin.

I have raw

cravings
sarcasm
sexual desires
dreams
anger
savage moods
fatigue.

I'm supposed to be glowing right now, apparently, and buying baby blankets.

My body is raw. It is open for everyone to comment on how big I am and how much weight I've gained - I'm a maternity shirt on display. Too big? Not big enough? Ornery? Ornerier than usual? How am I feeling?

How are you feeling? Would you like to be asked this question 12 times a day? Would you begin to formulate creative answers? Would you avoid people, or would you love the attention?

I had this crazy notion last night while I couldn't sleep from 2:30 AM to 3:45 AM, that perhaps I should embrace all these changes, stop trying to keep the wolf on a chain and just let her out. After all, I can't control the way I look. To pretend I can is a waste of energy.

There is energy in this. Energy in the cravings and the strange sleep cycles and the dreams where I'm taking swimming lessons with past boyfriends. Directly beneath the fatigue, so close to the back of my eyelids, a restlessness is bubbling up. I feel it in the kicks and turns of my little girl.

I sense that there is some wild energy that needs to be let out, that I need to relinquish control - to give in to the cravings and the fatigue and even the rage - because it is something special that I will only have while this little life is inside me.

Fran's Room

Janet, Fran's seven year old daughter, had gone into her mother's garden shed and cleaned everything. The flower pots, the spades and pitchforks and the seed packets were all neatly organized. It was early spring before the first planting, and Fran could only assume that Janet thought she would be doing something nice for her mother.

The truth was Fran's garden shed was the only room that was purely hers, and she liked it messy. It was an antidote to spotless floors and the sparkling kitchen and pressed curtains. Dust bunnies did not survive, could not find a nest in the darkest closet corners of the house. Garden dirt was something Fran needed, so she let it creep into the shed and stay there, let the seed packets fall out of alphabetical order, kept cracked flower pots for their character. She had one pair of garden gloves, unused. Last fall her dirt-caked fingers had traced a design in the soft yielding muck that lived on one of the shelves. A sun, a river, a tree. A reminder for Fran in the spring of the peace the garden would bring.

Janet had wiped clean the design, the muck; had thrown out the cracked flowerpots.

It was the first grown-up talk Fran had with Janet, the first of many.

"Sometimes women need messes in their lives," Fran said as she hugged her daughter and wiped the tears. "This year I want you to help me in the garden and learn how good it feels to get dirty once in a while."

Senryu Times Two: No Beer For You

my love means High Life
and a note on the doorstep
"Mexico. Good luck."

after last week's fight
I could head south and leave you
with two kids, no beer

New Year for Fran

I wrote about Fran for the One Minute Writer's Fiction writing prompt today http://oneminutewriter.blogspot.com/2010/01/friday-well-saturday-fiction-new-year.html .

P.S. Lots of women leaving men-themed fiction on this prompt... interesting.

Looking Back

Around New Year's everyone turns into a redhead. There's an obsession with looking back over the past year, making lists, counting what was best, and what was worst. We want to improve on our past, make the next year better. Where did we go wrong? What did we do right? People, this is a very redhead view of the world - it's how I live my life. And I warn you...spend too much time doing it and you'll go nuts.

That being said. Here's my list:

What I did right:

• I spent time with my friends. I traveled to DC and put in face-time rather than cyber-face time, and spent time with people I truly care about and always will.
• I spent time with my family. My son knows his grandparents and aunts and uncles in a way I never did.
• I was nicer to my Mom. She deserves it.
• Me and the Old Man potty-trained The Kid. Gave ourselves some diaper-free months until the next little monster comes along.
• Spent more time having Fun with The Kid. Let some chores slide. Best trade-off I ever made.
• I fell in love more with the Old Man, and let my guard down around him a little bit.
• I reconnected with an old childhood friend who haunts my dreams. Funny how people don't let you go. Nor should they.
• When my boss wanted to delay an assignment for me until after maternity leave, I called her on it. Just because I'm gestating doesn't mean I can't think and work anymore. Jesus Christ.
• I published an article.
• Blogged a lot. Dreamed up Fran, a character who will make me write about her more in 2010.
• Traveled less and made sure the three of us had more time as a family.

What I regret:

• Spending time with worry. At times letting it consume me.
• Getting drunk in Wichita. Although I didn't know I was pregnant at the time.
• Letting my sadness this fall spill over and affect my family.
• Being mean to my Mom.
• Feeling alone in my own home way too much.

Song of the Year:

• "It Happens" - Sugarland

Did I learn anything?

• I understand communication in theory, but in practice, I suck.
• A husband and a child can bring more depth to life than I ever imagined.

Happy 2010 everyone. I hope we can all learn to live in the present more, and worry about the future less.