we're back in comic strip form!

hi everyone!
finally marlena shuts up her big complaining trap of a mouth and you get to catch up on the important characters, namely elvis and the growing fetus (and denzel, at least through the fetus' point of view...)

a rant... don't know what else to call it...

while just watching "this week with george stephanopoulos", i was struck by a bunch of iintense thoughts and feelings that came up when the participants were talking about the recent supreme court decision upholding late term aboriton ban. one of the commentators was talking about technology and trimesters and another person said something about calling it a baby and not "fetal matter"...

i don't remember the exact comments, but it got me thinking about my last post in which i referred to my growing fetus as a "baby".

and of course, when they start talking about abortion, i think about my past abortion, which was only a little over 2 years ago.

at first i was thinking, "hmm. what does it mean that i'm calling her a baby..." then i got to my answers. part of what got me angry is the juxtaposition of talking about women (and men, who are often part of the decision, though not always) making a crucial life choice about whether the pregnancy is a welcome one which they choose to follow through with or not, with the talk of the tragic events of the week at v. tech and always the backdrop of the war in iraq where parents have no choice about their young adult offspring going somewhere where they are likely to be killed for no clear reason and to my mind, not a good enough reason to sacrifice one's child for.

for me, being pro-life should mean that you value the life that is living out there and growing up in this world. that you want your offspring to be safe when they go to college, to get proper care that keeps them and others safe if your child unfortunately needs help with emotional pain and mental or physical illness, that your child will not be sent to another country to be killed for false reasons.

i realized that i think of my daughter as my baby already not because she is scientifically already a baby, but because i choose to be ready to be her mother and to want to welcome her to the world as a person. i remember back at the beginning of this pregnancy when we went for the first ultrasound and my former obstetrician (not the one i'm with now) pointed to the screen and said, "there's your pregnancy." it was at six weeks and there was no observation of a heartbeat. i was very upset about it and remember being upset that she called the fertilized egg my "pregnancy" and tried to read meaning into it like, "there probably won't be a heartbeat, she didn't want to get my hopes up or add to my thinking of 'it' as a real embryo or whatever... etc." i realized that i was feeling very irrational and that she was just doing the usual thing of using precise language about the facts, but my reaction was strong because i already had made the choice to continue the pregnancy as i had stopped taking my medications and planned for it.

on the other hand, when i went in to tell her i had to have an abortion because i was on medications that were very dangerous to the "pregnancy", and had no plans to go off the medications (in fact it was at a point where it would have been very dangerous for me to go off them) she also did an ultrasound. it might have only been four or five weeks. she said it was very early and did not specify exact weeks. she did an ultrasound to make sure what was going on and had the sensitivity to not print it out and give it to me. i know if i had been pregnant and in the office that early saying i was going to go through with the pregnancy, she would have given me the photo. it would have been her acknowledgment of our hope that things would work out with a baby being born. her not giving me a photo was her respectful acknowledgment of our decision not to go through with the rest of the pregnancy because of the risks involved.

so part of what i wanted to say just from one expectant mother's point of view having made both "choices" in my life, is that it is intention and choice that creates life that is viable and sustainable, and the first of many choices is the one to continue the pregnancy, but it is by no means the last. i started thinking of my current future daughter as my "baby" long before she was probably even a "fetus" and just an "embryo" or even a "fertilized egg". i called her my baby in the last post because of my choice and my and her father's commitment to her, not because of technology, although technology helps us to see her at 10 ounces looking like a little baby and to see all her organs and count her fingers and toes.

but perhaps if the outcome of that midterm ultrasound had been negative, perhaps if they had found a terrible defect in the fetus, we might have made the decision not to bring her into the world. this would still have been our choice and it would have been based on "quality of life" which i think is part of what it means to think about "pro-life". it would not have been a clear choice that everyone would make; in fact i have no idea what we would have decided as i'm now in "what if" land, but i'm sure others have been put in this kind of position. to me the important thing is that parents have a choice about what they are doing before the child takes its first breath outside of the womb.

once that happens, once the baby really is alive and outside of the mother, it seems that our country, or at least the government, does not take seriously enough the real "life choices" that affect our children. like choices about making guns less easily accessible to people who might kill your child and other choices about sending our children to other countries for dubious reasons to die 18 or 19 or more years after we made the very important choice to bring them into the world in the first place... part of what i'm saying is that our policies about live people need to be a lot more pro-life. in fact i would argue that allowing the potential mother and father to choose whether to go through with a pregnancy on their own and respecting their right to this private decision is ultimately "pro-life" in the real sense of the term as i believe it...

baby's big photo shoot!!!

here are some images from the big halfway mark sonogram today! in case you could not tell, the baby is....
a...... (drum roll).....
girl!!!!!!!!!!!!

mess...

where do i start? i've had a shitty day. it's been terrible weather and i've been sitting in front of the computer doing frustrating work that takes forever and in between spending hours on my taxes which are also frustrating and awful. i won't go into detials but basically i've been angry all day and in between felt like bursting into tears. and now the apt. is a mess again and we just had it cleaned yesterday...
poor elvis had a crappy day too due to the horrible rain. his first few walks consisted of standing in front of the building avoiding getting wet and finding a few places to do his business. i just took him for a wet nonrainy walk around the block. he's so low to the ground that even with his coat on he somehow gets a bit wet. but at least he could move around...
my big highlight of the day was searching the neighborhood for ice cream and other foods to satisfy my cravings and bad mood.
time to go eat: grapes, fontina cheese, special potato chips (we discovered this boulder brand on vacation that has amazing flavors like salt and malt vinegar), and vanilla chai flavored ice cream. (i went to 3 places to try to find ben and jerry's new flavor cinnamon buns that is so great and seems like it was invented for pregnant ladies but alas, to no avail...)

2 comics...

these comic strips reflect the two sides of my life at present. the more healthy support system of two healthy males in the house who express themselves freely and move on without dwelling and festering and obsessing and feeding on their own anxieties...
and me and myself and my crazy mind that gets me into all kinds of trouble...

post vacation blues...

wow. they have a term for it. did not know that. and with this "post" i even have a double meaning going on, ha ha. posting about my post vacation blues...
ok. resorting to silly puns.
one of the reasons that i avoid going away is that i dread the return. the good thing about this time at least, lookin on the bright side, is that by the end of our stay in new mexico, i was a little tired of travelling and missed just being at home, not to mention of course, missing the doggie.
last time we went away, we were in a little cabin in the woods and it was even worse coming back to the big city because i just wanted to stay away in the woods for the rest of my life.

so on the bright side, this is not the worst "pvb" i've experienced.

so we arrive home after flying on redeye and walk in the door at about 7am and i realize we left the fucking heat on all week. our coned bill is dreadful and horrible every month so this week would have been great to not pay for the fucking heat. especially after i spent too much money on all kinds of fun things in new mexico from gifts to little handmade peices and jewelry etc. and a wonderful hand made doll that was worth every penny spent on it.

i left feeling stressed about money and not having done my taxes yet and thinking i have to get my finances together and be a responsible parent soon and my money situation is not great at the moment. we stayed in very inexpensive lodgings and we're lucky there was a roach in the room of a more pricey place we stayed. denzel complained about it and the other things wrong with the place and we got that night free (a wonderful savings of $66 that i immediately blew at a bead store the next day...) that place had a hot tub, probably the best thing about the place. and it was not too hot for pregnant lady to soak in.

in fact the only time i felt wierd from the high altitude and pregnancy was in the bead store in taos. i had just picked out all kinds of wonderful things and was trying to figure out what not to buy so as not to spend too much money. denzel came in with coffee and i started feeling weak and dizzy and had to sit down. of course he, being the sweetie he is, insisted i just get all the stuff i had wanted and figured it out for me while i sat there feeling faint. i was fine a few minutes later and many dollars later with some water and that was that...

i am basically terrible with money. i am both very frugal and "cheap" in many ways. don't mind in fact enjoy cheap motels. love eating out and trying good restaurants while on this type of vacation (normally with better weather and no pregnancy we'd be camping, sleeping in tent and eating food cooked on the fire, totally low budget) but don't have to go to fancy expensive restaurants. this vacation was a funny combo of low budget fun and then me shopping a lot-- it just does not feel like shopping when you buy little handmade things ranging between 2$ and $40 in little galleries and pueblo shops etc. after having a delightful conversation wtiht the shopowner, artisan, gallerist or whoever, but it all adds up...

it was really a great vacation. we spent most of our time driving through the countryside and in the mountains and stopping in small towns. we saw the gila cliff dwellings and the carlsbad caverns. the caverns were awesome in every sense of the word. i would descibe myself as very spiritual but not too comfortable with organized religion and indoors type of worship in groups, so to me, going into these cavers just felt so much like being in a natural temple that took millions of years of time and absense of humans to create. it was intense. it felt great to walk through the caverns and sense the immensity of time and the timelessness at the same time. stone is the most evocative incredible material. the caves were just so awesome and beautiful and "created" that i felt like i could not look at any human made thing ever again... and it was so great to walk through with denzel and the little one growing inside, of course the metaphor of being inside a big stone womb came up, ha ha.

anyway now back down to earth and concrete and garbage adn no mountains, except mountains of bills and things i've been putting off doing and an extreme mess of an apartment.

but also the little elvis! he got super good care from my parents and he is definitely the best thing about the homecoming. home is not where the heart is, home is where the DOG is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!