Then and Now

I was from
every day outside
sleeping in caves
saw the stars
heard the coyotes
in my bedroom
fierce determination
to do it all
when I grew up.

Now I am from
short-clipped fingernails
never know when I'll have to fight
determined to do it all
but it's not that easy
negotiating my place at work
leaving work behind at home
working on a story
for eight months
waiting for the time
and the inspiration
the story deserves
writing to shout who I am
because doing it all
obscures introspection.

I am from
bewildering confidence
that I will never cede
what I need.

Short Story - The Chevy and The Smart Car

http://crazycoppertop.blogspot.com/2010/03/chevy-and-smart-car.html

I finally did write that short story - here it is.

My favorite quote ever. So far this week.

"During that time of life that is supposed to be a reproductive daze, with the woman's mind all swamped with maternal juices, we were still compelled to discuss Simone de Beauvoir and Arthur Koestler and The Cocktail Party."

-Alice Munro, Nettles, from her short story collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.

Better Than Sex

I'm a fan of drama, of finding the next high, of filling the empty void with excitement. Slow, steady contentment makes me cranky. I've been known to pick a fight just to feel the adrenaline. Since I'm content with my life, a state that holds no tension or drama, I will often use sex to fill the void. The problem is I'm not getting any lately, and I really have no grounds to pick a fight, and no fights mean no make-up sex. But I am grateful for some lovely squishy things that tide me over. Four things that are BETTER THAN SEX:

1. Philly Cheesesteaks from Off Broadway Cafe. Warm, melted cheese, sauteed peppers and juicy steak enveloped by wheat bread to add nutritional content. Orgasmic.

2. Driving to work at 6:00 AM in my Japanese car listening to Sugarland and Bon Jovi.

3. Writing. Disappearing into my head to the exclusion of all other thoughts.

4. Reading Alice Munro's short story Nettles and circling sentences I love and being humbled by one of the truly great writers of our time.

Of course, when I get some action again for the first time in months I'll wonder why I thought these other things even came close.

Level Playing Field: A Pantoum

every day always I am too little
except when Dad makes snowballs
wet snow and wood chips - our battleground -
under the slides and swingsets

except when Dad makes snowballs
the smalls do what the bigs say
under the slides and swingsets
in snowball fights I get to kill Dad dead

the smalls do what the bigs say
we have to follow the rules
in snowball fights I get to kill Dad dead
and he rolls and falls and screams and I pounce

we have to follow the rules
no rules in war
and he rolls and falls and screams and I pounce
he's the small and I'm the big

no rules in war
wet snow and wood chips - our battleground -
he's the small and i'm the big
every day always I am too little

Small Talk

Dear Wonderful Coworkers,

I love working with you. You believe in what you do, you support your friends at work. You have the best intentions. So when you see a pregnant lady, you ask her how she is doing. How she is feeling. When she is due.

I answer these questions about fourteen times a day.

So, I am going to get a T-shirt printed, to answer these questions. The words will be printed on the back of the T-shirt, because the front is rather bulbous at the moment and will make reading difficult. I've considered bold font, highlighting, playing with the colors, but after consideration, a consistent font and black text will suffice, especially since you will have to read it as I am walking away.

How am I feeling?

Well, since you asked, do you know what a pelvic floor is? Mine hurts.

I have to pee every half hour, which means I have to run into people in the halls, which means I have to answer questions.

I'm hungry all the time. In fact, if you are reading this, it is likely I just ate an entire package of chocolate covered donuts from the vending machine.

My current theme song is "She Bop" by Cyndi Lauper since my husband won't have sex with me.

A little irritated when someone says "You're so big, it looks like you could give birth any day now!"

Yes, I have four and a half weeks left. No, I'm not ready for it to happen right now. This little girl will come when she's good and ready. No, I'm not worried about the pain. Are you?

I'm feeling

wired

uninspired

tired.

Thanks for asking. Love, Me.

Stay Tuned

I just want to say that I have a wonderful short story lurking in my noggin but had to write an article for work, which was a total boring bummer compared to this crazy story in my brain.

My wonderful sis-in-law is taking me for a massage and mani and pedi tomorrow, and I hope to squeeze in some writing before then. Tomorrow could be the best day EVER.

p.s. WHY I WRITE: Annie mentioned the other day that relationships have a way of making us lose our identity. As a woman who directs her energy mostly towards her kid (soon to be kids), husband and job - who in fact, is being alternately smacked and hand-fed cookie crumbs by her 3 year old even as she types - I understand that identity is a slippery thing. Writing is my way of thinking. It's how I figure out the world. It's where I do things I've always wanted to do. It's where I hope one day to be all edgy and push acceptable social norms and be seen as a totally unique brave soul. No pressure or anything.

The Chevy and the Smart Car

Zed sold his truck. The 1984 Chevy Silverado with the smooth brown and red leather bench seat and stick shift. Girls would scooch left to press their thighs against him while they bumped down dirt roads. The truck smelled of fall hunting trips: thick pregnant pine needles, red clay and sagebrush stuck in the undercarriage. All the work he'd done. A homemade scissor lift for the front end, crossover steering, a built 350 with 700 trans and 205 transfer case. Gone. For her.

Her lips, her jelly bean-colored high heels. Her power. The sex. Jesus.

Janelle had a good job, an education. She was a lawyer for the local city attorney's office. They met at a bar one night. She was smart, funny and held his hand the right way. At first she called him country boy, admired his farmer's tan, called the elk and deer in his freezer the "lean, organic alternative to beef."

And unlike any other woman he'd been with, she was passionate about her causes. She had her own life and it fascinated him to be blasted by a real opinion backed up by genuine thoughts. She took up the cause of breast cancer research. He missed a couple hunting trips to do some 5k walks where he wore pink over his camo pants. She marched with him, lacquered nails gently steering his elbow, walking next to the right people, the ones with political connections. She hadn't had cancer, nor had anyone in her family. The mayor had just gone through chemo for it though, and it was a way in for Janelle - a conversation starter.


She asked him to move in while they were waiting for their food at a taco stand: "This weekend my schedule's clear - bring some boxes over and I'll clear out some space in the medicine cabinet."

She lived on the hill overlooking downtown, in a three story modern jangle of metal and wood. He sold his house. She demanded that his guns and hunting gear go into storage, because "the camo doesn't fit the modern decor in this house." He drove his Chevy an extra twenty miles to the job site every day where he worked on the pipelines running natural gas from farm fields south to the big city.

Zed was watching Wheel of Fortune one night in her (their) cavernous media room. "Darling, look at this adorable Hummer!" Janelle waved the Hummer dealer's catalogue in front of his face.

He cringed. It was pink. A pink Hummer H2 with 22 inch double duece chrome rims. The phrase "sport utility truck," made him throw up in his mouth a little bit every time he heard it. "Beautiful," he said. "How much does something like that cost?"

"It's a statement, silly. It's not about the cost. I'm the chairwoman of the Tri-Town Breast Cancer Awareness Group. When they see me in this, people will know I care." Janelle wrapped her perfumed arms around him and whispered, "The salesman is adding a strut front grill. And they are making sure the bed is fully rhino-lined for your deer hunting trips."

Zed said, "Well, that's great. But I'll just take my old Chevy for the trips. We don't need to mess up your new Hummer."

Janelle slid her hand up his thigh. "Well, I was thinking...." She licked his ear. "We don't need two trucks. And yours is so old and nasty. I hear the brakes creaking when you come home from work."

"That truck is my baby, baby girl." Zed parted her lips with his tongue and put his hands under her shirt. "Let's talk about this later."

Hunting seasons came and went, and Zed didn't get to go. Too many political functions where he was hanging on Janelle's arm. November elections put a new mayor in office. One who wanted to implement a city-wide energy savings environmental plan. Janelle bought a Smart Car. The model was called "ForTwo" because, literally, only two people could fit inside. And they couldn't be tall people. The car was silver, shiny, tiny. She pinned a napkin-sized American flag to the antenna.

The night she came home with it, she didn't tell him until after they'd spent some sweaty time on the kitchen floor. Zed held her and stared up at the ceiling while she ticked off its features.

"I've had GPS navigation and Onstar installed in case some jerk in a gas-guzzling SUV hits me and causes serious injury," Janelle said. "And honey, can you whip up a survival kit that will fit in the trunk? I need something to hold me over until the ambulance comes - I just know that I'll get in some horrible accident."

"Sure, I'll get you an Action Packer and some gauze, sweet thing," Zed said.

"What are we going to do with those horrible big trucks?"

Zed didn't say anything.

"I mean, it doesn't look good for the next City Attorney to be driving around in a monster."

"You can park Pinkie in the garage," Zed said.

"I'm going to sell that horrible thing," Janelle said. "I don't know what I was thinking. But I want to get a good price. In the meantime..." and she dug her fingernails into his abdomen, "we need to downsize." Then she climbed on top of him and bit his chest and he forgot to answer.

Janelle did some research, and discovered that a 1984 Chevy Silverado in excellent condition was considered a classic by some, and she arranged for Zed to meet a buyer the next week. The buyer smacked him on the back and the tears Zed had been holding back shot out of his eyes.

That's how he ended up sneaking out at four in the morning with a pink Hummer H2 to pump gas so none of his buddies would see him. The gas station attendant gave him funny looks, so Zed kept his head down under his camo ballcap and his eyes fixed to the ground. He'd get to work about 4:30 and park a quarter of a mile away behind an old gravel pit, and walk in with his lunch.

After work one day he took the thing up to the forest service roads and got into some muddy two-tracks. Brown globs covered the pink mostly, even on the roof. Zed saw a cliff in the distance, drove off-road straight for it, gunned the engine, and fantasized about jumping out at the last second while the vehicle flew through the air over the edge. He put on the brakes in the slush and the mud at the last second, and stared out at the sunset. What about next year's hunting trips? What would his buddies think when he threw a deer in the back of this pink beast? What the hell was he doing, sneaking in to work? Filling up a gas tank once a day at four in the morning?

So the next day he called the buyer. Told him he'd do a straight up swap - Zed's $50,000 Hummer for the $9,000 1984 Chevy. Maybe it was the money, maybe it was the choke in Zed's voice that convinced the guy, but it worked.

Then he bought a ring. A simple gold band. It bounced in its box on the red and brown leather seat.

They pulled in the driveway at the same time: the Smart Car and the Chevy. He got out of the truck, gathered her up in his arms and threw her over his shoulder, ignoring her stream of words:

"What is that truck doing here? Where's the Hummer? What are you doing? This is a five hundred dollar suit!"

Zed tossed her on the bench seat, peeled out of the driveway and headed for the mountains. "Come here, darlin'," he said. He pulled her over the stick shift so that she was almost in his lap. "Shut up until we get where we're going."

It was his favorite hunting spot. A road that ended in sagebrush with a view of the red rocks below. He snaked his hand under her - she jumped - and he brought out the box. He killed the engine and showed her the ring. "Will you?"

Janelle looked at him for a minute. She smiled, a real, genuine smile. Then her lower lip puffed out and her mouth took over: "I like the platinum with the princess cut diamonds, five of them, set in a curve..."

"Take it or leave it," Zed said.

Janelle slid out of her heels and rested one bare foot on the dash. The truck engine ticked. She looked at him, at his truck, at the ring. "I suppose you want me to bear your children, too?"

"Just a passel of 'em or so, sweetheart."

"Dreaming of the Ex" Poem

Check out my poem on the blog Seven Days Seven Answers: http://7days7answers.blogspot.com/2010/02/dreaming-of-ex.html .

Synesthesia means a sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied to another modality, as when the hearing of a certain sound induces the visualization of a certain color.

Dreams can be hard to describe. You are immersed in a very real world behind your lids and then BAM!, out you roll into life. I have always struggled with describing the colors and sounds and most importantly, feelings of my dreams. Synesthia - taking one sense like smell, sight, touch, sound, and replacing it with another - is an interesting writing exercise.

On a side note, last night I had my recurring girl power, kick ass dream, wherein I beat someone up. This time it was an evil old lady who was trying to boil me and my friends alive in a prison hot tub. I organized everyone and we swarmed her control tower. She did not survive. I surmise this dream came about because my body tends to overheat while sleeping these days.

Game Warden Mama

I am a commissioned wildlife officer. This means that even though I am in human resources in a wildlife agency, a job that is 95% desk-jockeydom, 5% of the time I get to borrow a truck, drive around the sticks, and be a game warden. I have busted some bad-ass poachers in my time, mostly because I'm smarter than them, and more stubborn.

The required annual training to keep my law enforcement commission consists of time on the firearms range with shotgun, rifle and handgun, re-certification of my defensive tactics and tactical baton skills, and two days of rather boring classroom presentations. I'm a tactical baton instructor.

I also have a rather full life as a working mom. So I have begun to question all the time I spend training to keep my badge and my gun. It's optional, my choice.

And it's not just about analyzing the best use of my time. It is about belonging to this culture, this all-important group of people who, because of their badges, have credibility within the agency. Promotions and friendships seem easier, and assumptions about my abilities more forgiving, because of my badge. There are about 30 of us anomalies - women - in the ranks, and while we cannot grow handlebar moustaches, we try to blend in as best we can. And I am an anomalous anomaly: mother of one, soon to be two. And, lemme tell ya, blending in is hard to do with monstrous boobs and a belly so big I can't see my feet anymore.

Last week I was at the annual training, where we sit in class and then do some defensive tactics and baton recertification. Maybe it's my super newly developed human resources ears, or my redheaded temper, or my preggers hormones, but several phrases and statements stuck with me during the classroom training:

• "Brotherhood" was used more than once to describe the group of people assembled there, even though there were women in the group.
• A presentation about search and seizure laws included a cartoon of detectives entering a room where a woman in lingerie was tied to a chair. A large female police officer was ready to search her while the two detectives watched. "Are you ready for your full body cavity search?" the detectives asked. "That's never a good idea," smirked the prosecutor giving the presentation, and snickers came from the audience.
• In the same search and seizure presentation, the presenter showed a video clip from My Cousin Vinny, where Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei were arguing about him going hunting. Tomei is dressed in a white lacy nightgown that barely covers her. The presenter says, "The guys in the room aren't paying attention to the dialogue here." More laughs from his audience.

Frickin' backcountry redneck sons a bitches. Anyway.

I worried about instructing my portion of the tactical baton class. There were six instructors, and we each had to teach about 10 minutes. I was assigned to teach strikes. Essentially, I had to hit the bag four times, and yell at the class for 10 minutes. The lead instructor had said, "Let's see how you feel, you may not feel up to instructing." I told him yelling and hitting are two things that pregnant women can do just fine, thank you very much. I also reminded him it wasn't his decision whether or not I would instruct.

I wasn't worried about the logistics. I have spent so much time trying to prove myself and blend in as a game warden, that I was worried that my shape - my pregnant body - would elicit smirks and snickers from the guys in sweatpants and camo hats. No matter that many have pot-bellies. Their bellies are earned from years of beer and junk food and driving around in their trucks. Here I was, bringing in a reminder of the feminine to a male culture. Of course I was worried. I didn't have my normal 5k, weight-lifting bod to disguise my curves.

As much as I would like for it to be, this post isn't about the subtle misogynism of the agency I work for, because there are many male game wardens - mostly younger Gen X and Y'ers - who don't perpetrate the ridiculous macho culture. This post is about how I take my worries about fitting in, and do the work anyway.

And I stood up in front of 50 game wardens, I puffed my chest out (not hard to do), stuck out my belly, waddled up to the punching bag, and with a strong snapping motion opened my baton. I gave my normal full-throated command - I do have a black belt in karate, after all - and smacked the hell out of the punching bag. Then I gave commands to the group, one, two, three..., to do their best with the strikes.

One of the other instructors interrupted me to tell the group to use their trunk muscles to really make the strikes powerful. It annoyed the hell out of me, because no other instructor was interrupted during their time.

I said, "Thank you John, for pointing that out." I pointed to my belly and said, "Some of us have bigger trunk muscles than others, so don't be intimidated." John's lucky I didn't point at his beer gut.

Frickin' backcountry redneck son of a bitch. Anyway.

My 10 minutes was over, and I survived. It would have been easy to skip this round, claim I couldn't do it, and make it up later. I'm glad I didn't. I projected confidence, even though I didn't feel it.

Besides, later on this year, I won't be pregnant, but I'll be breastfeeding. Waddling around with a big pansa is easier than leaking milk. If I am going to keep my badge, I will need to complete many hours of rifle, shotgun, handgun, and defensive tactics training. I'll be making time during the training to breast-pump; I'll be managing leaky nipples. Three years ago I chose not to pump while I was at the gun range for six hours (the only private place was a Port-A-Potty) and payed for it with double mastitis and a milk cyst.

Normally I compartmentalize my life: I am a mother at home, a worker at work. During this time, when the physical realities of motherhood need to be integrated into the law enforcement "brotherhood," all I can do is pretend confidence, and get the work done. Is it worth it, to keep this optional badge? I'm not sure. I'll make the decision when my head is clear (sometime in 2011 or so).