Today, I won an office marathon

energized by my 100% focus

I pushed through obstacles and pain

triumphant

As an image of my father arrives

lying in a hospital bed

taking a bite from an imaginary food

Sick with infection, this time it’s different

The group texts begin

Maybe it’s time

The doorbell frantically calls

My kindly old neighbor pleads for strong arms

She’s locked out of her home

And her only hope is a window left open

Energized by the emergency

I find time for a meal and a hug for the baby

Then more work before saying goodbye to the nanny

We can’t be her family

She has to move on

The door closes; another opens

With the wicked energy of the day

I never quite anticipated the exhaustion

Even though I have an amazing support system…

I have to lean against the stairwell wall to descend safely, each six times per day that I go down to prepare bottles from my pumped milk

My thighs unsteady, my Achilles aching.

“You just had major surgery,” I can still hear the nurse chastising, when I refused pain meds on Day 3.

The majorness now sinks deep into my low back, which sears hot whenever I tilt my pelvis the wrong way

The majorness keeps me from returning to an exercise regimen, my mildly split abdomen struggling to hold me tight

My breathing, once full, is now shallow and full of worry, causing my digestion to slow and body to tense and vent

Tender pink lines crawl all across my pouching lower belly, a forever story of our expansion

Isn’t it great that the body forgets all of this? Someone said to me recently. I won’t forget.

We wrote an offer on a house today

Almost 2.0 years since my last offer

I don’t know why autocorrect thinks I mean 2.0 whenever I type 20

I’m not that high-tech

I barely fit my belly in the booth at the Mexican restaurant today

2 glasses of milk with lunch

Finally I can write about my pregnancy

Today my hips ache and I walk in heavy baby steps to start. Belly strains where it meets the ribs, forcing me to lift my heavy chest for room to breathe.

Bun-bun sits upright, kicking my bladder from time to time

A two pound head of lettuce

Our wood floor has become slippery, not wet, ever since we installed a humidifier. I have to walk with extra care.

We still get cigarette or weed smoke in one side of our apartment almost every night or day. It’s time to leave.

I’m trying to keep my blood pressure low. Today was not a great day for that.

When you are new to a thing, your learning curve is really high, so I’m hoping to capture some of the things I am learning as I move in to my new place here in Massachusetts.

Did you know that soap can go bad? I’ve kept little hard hotel soaps in my travel bag for probably a couple years or more, and I have learned by trying to use them that they can go bad.

There are lots of little neat things that are different when you go shopping here. I’ve noticed more things that are imported from Europe, and generally I’ve found that prices are cheaper here for groceries. Gasoline is about a dollar cheaper here than it was when I left California.

I came across my first Massachusetts sidewalk “free pile” today. It included some Ray-Ban sunglasses and a cool antique floor lamp. But I only grabbed an American flag pin. I like checking out local free piles. To me it’s like anthropology, “how do the locals live,“ LOL

The weather outside today was warmish but not at all oppressive. I am really enjoying the pleasant weather.

I kept the kitty locked up in the bathroom last night because the night before he got so scared of all the noises and hid behind the washer and dryer and I sincerely thought he had somehow escaped when he didn’t come at my call for several minutes. I think he might’ve been coming down off of his gabapentin drug and was a little extra paranoid. Note to self for future reference to keep him in a small room overnight the first couple nights. Tonight I’m leaving the bathroom door cracked open so he can go in and out if he feels like it.

I am in bed at 2:00 AM, a whole hour earlier than last night! I just have a ton of things to do and I’m hoping to get a little more rest eventually.

So far I’m getting by OK with very minimal stuff. It’s an interesting transition. I might be without most of my possessions for four or 5 weeks in total.

Off to bed then.

Let’s see if that was just a fluke or if my hosting company really fixed the errors!

My WordPress site has been difficult to publish to from my phone for over a year. I made some tweaks this weekend so let’s see if that worked! I like to blog from my mobile phone at bedtime. An old habit I guess.

Married, worked the next day. Went to Miami and NYC. Suffered hypothermia. Severely ill for 10 days in February. Realized I had a ton of pent up anger about my job. Wrote it down. Told the boss. The boss confirmed my fears. Worked hard anyway and taught myself high level corporate marketing. Sang a solo in the church choir. Learned to play Mah Jong. Saw Lana Del Rey in concert at a castle in Ireland. Fell in love with Tamino’s voice (an opening act). Spent 9 days in England and Ireland with Ramón. Paid off our trip and wedding. Paid off my car. Fell in love with Billie Eilish’s voice. Laid off in August. Saw Tamino in concert two more times. Learned to scuba dive. Finished some books. A friend died unexpectedly. An uncle of Ramon’s died unexpectedly. Experienced grief up close for the first time. Navigated crisis. Grieved for everything again. Navigated unemployment. Filed for unemployment for the first time. Many Facebook conversations about things that matter to me. Many timeouts from Facebook to recover. Bought Jagger a cat condo and he didn’t bite a cat sitter for the first time. Passed over 50,000 hands of Zynga Texas Hold ‘Em played. Spent Christmas in Idaho with parents and in-laws.

St. Francis of Assisi left his wealth behind for a different way of living. This is particularly poignant to me because he established the order of the Franciscans, the namesake of San Francisco. I too left a life that promised wealth and security to move to San Francisco and follow my passions.

Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that have received–only what you have given.

I’ve always loved this passage:

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

And I came across this new one today, which the last two funerals I’ve gone to have been helping me take to heart. It’s been a process coming back to my joy:

It is the devil’s greatest triumph when he can deprive us of the joy of the Spirit. He carries fine dust with him in little boxes and scatters it through the cracks in our conscience in order to dim the soul’s pure impulses and its luster. But the joy that fills the heart of the spiritual person destroys the deadly poison of the serpent. But if any are gloomy and think that they are abandoned in their sorrow, gloominess will continuously tear at them or else they will waste away in empty diversions. When gloominess takes root, evil grows. If it is not dissolved by tears, permanent damage is done.

How do we make room for miracles?

I just elbow-nudged R to move over so I can type freely. A queen bed is feeling smaller and smaller all the time!

I also just said, “I hate farts!” out loud. I hate farts in enclosed spaces. It’s like a sign that humans are not meant to live within 4 walls, but out in nature where the wind can do her job.

There is something interesting about preparing to be wedded during divisive political times. I heard it said poetically that when Kaepernick took a knee, Americans had to take a stand. They just arrested a radical right-wing bombing suspect, taking violent rhetoric to its ultimate end. Thankfully America is standing for peace together against this display of violence toward prominent democrats. It’s painful and gross to see Republicans try to spin this to somehow be a Democrat problem.

It’s all the more interesting given my heritage of conservatism. Quarreling with family members and their friends has been a flavor of this year, and it has left me with an intensified feeling that I am truly going through a rite of passage where I become my own woman, setting the stage for my own family–my own values. And abandoning those ways of talking, doing, and being which no longer serve me.

I see values on a balanced scale anyway: sometimes we tilt more right or left, but neither side needs to be demonized. Humans love to invent or root out problems, even where there are relatively few (given the scale of all the world’s problems).

I am grateful for the few problems we have.

I am slowly becoming more physically active again. Going to lots of yoga classes has been working, and now adding in interval jogging is working well. Personal training not going as great–hard to get a consistently good trainer. I asked for the most knowledgeable person, but they turned out narcissistic, so next time I’d just ask for a competent and attentive person. It’s like that Brendan Frazier movie–careful what you ask for.