My daughter, Penelope Violet Elena, was born a little over three weeks ago, January 7th, 2009, 12:57pm in an operating room at the hospital, six weeks early. The story of her birth (which I do not have the energy or stability to tell right now) is full of dips, ladders, bridges, like a child's board game but full of guts & horror. But she is beautiful, healthy, strong, serious, funny, and most wonderfully, alive. Unfortunately, her mother (me) is in/ has been in a much more fallible state. But her father (Rob, wonderful, amazing, gorgeous, dependable, rock-like love of my life, Rob) has taken wonderful care of the both of us, and I feel like I'm being pieced back together like the sand-castle I have proven to be, maybe further up on the beach this time, maybe for my own good.
Pictures?
( if you like )

Well, we're 24 weeks along on this big experiment. Overall, things have been much better, physically and emotionally. I'm still really struggling with my sugar (I have gestational diabetes) and I get the occasional fright/weepy feelings from losing closeness and intimacy in my friendships.
I'm not polyamorous or anything, but I confess that all the Oxytocin in the world and having the best partner in the world and the best pharmaceuticals in the world and and all the wonderful things about my life do not fully fulfill me right now. It's hard not having gainful employment/ any real plans for the future/ alcohol to treat the funk/ (most importantly:) my freinds!
i'm not sure what can be done about all that, but I had to vent.

hi, it's been a while.
catch me on the radio today from 11am-1pm est or wednesday, the 15th, from 12-2pm est at 88.7fm for locals, wxdu.org for not-locals.
xo

October 1st
in black midnight I am in bed with you
and it is all too much: the hard way
I hand my hand to you. My hand is a broken bird --
but so pretty. It sings
unless silenced. I am no waterbird and
you keep me from drowning. You are the island
in this unexpected lake and the pine tree
which grows there: your needles are all I need
for nest and nurture. Things go deeper blacker more midnight
until they go back to blue and then lavender sleep.

October 2nd
in some ways I don't know how I lived.
before you there were days, minutes. all the clocks
kept ticking. all the calendar pages turned, relentlessly.
closer but never arriving. it's hard to find a reason
i made charging forward until i tumbled, tripping,
over every brick in the walkway, into you.

October 3rd
Is that it? That our love is always
finding the incredible horizon (this one a sunset,
a single early star, a cartoon-cut moon)
as if we were out in the desert, but not us.
We're just leaving a stripmall in someone else's nowhere.
We are our own somewhere, hurtling toward infinite more.
Like a blackhole of presence that I want, every day,
to leap into. Maybe I'd exist without you, but if I did
I'd just be alone in a parking lot without
any reason to look up. Happily, we have no singularity,
hopefully no highway that ends.

October 4th
A phone call, a misplaced parking place. Does that sign
mean it's time to sing? You found me anyway and then
it was strange and decadent: the way the world wrapped us
in sheer tapestries and ice. Never frozen now, I look
at you like the painting you are: all deep green and burgundy
and roundness and depth. A note on your placemat. A trip
for a pillow. A bended knee to collect spilled things.
A warning for the carpeted stair. A permission slip for
sleeping on a foreign couch. A chair you insist is for me.
Water and strawberry-flavored creme brulee. Every moment
is a photograph I forgot to take where you are
more lovely than architecture. And every photo you are in
is a ridiculously inept copy of the aesthetic of you.

Four days ago I was doing so much better, now I'm laying in bed wondering if I will be able to get up to pick Rob up from work.

I am lost. What have I done?

All the rowboats untied from all the lake-side docks, lined up in a straight line over the earth pointed right at me.... I feel as if I'll never re-find the truth.

Rob and I finally saw the psychiatrist/OB I've been trying to see for the past few years. It went well and everything, it's just the first time I've seen a psychiatrist and wasn't in crisis -- so it was fairly to-the-point instead of that whole untangling the web of crazorz slowly.
As a result, as the symptoms were coming out of my mouth, I couldn't believe how insano I sounded.
And when it came time for the dx, it turns out I'm crazier than I thought...
I have OCD.
I was *told* I had "OCD without the compulsions" by an old psychiatrist 12 years ago -- but he told me this in LIEU of a diagnosis because back then it wasn't a real dx. Well, now it is.
I feel astonished that I went 12 (well, 10 actually) years without treatment and am still alive and not holed up somewhere in a tiny apartment with 20 feet high stacks of newspaper washing my hands and knocking on the walls.

but it gets better.
turns out OCD intensifies during pregnancy and puts me at high high risk not only for PPD, but also for developing Bi-Polar disorder (due to my mom's having it).
So yeah.
Crazy lady might get crazier.
lock your doors.

I want to write poetry but none will come, despite tornados and best friends, despite all the wonder around me and spinning crazy-fast inside me.
I think I just need to write for a few minutes about "the sad me".
( read more if you wish )

what it is.

Lately it is homemade mango salsa and zombies. Badly deformed nightmares and great big boobs. Couchbound, hating it. Bed-bound, loving it. Not bound at all, very much hating it. Scans that say they are of a baby but I don't see it. Maybe? My social life appears to not be *entirely* dead, despite the gnawing hole that breaking up with alcohol has left (yeah i know i'm an addict. whatofit?)

happy, in spite of car crashes and their aftermaths. maths not figuring into it. doing my best to be mathless.

love.

Because of many, insane complicated issues, I am starting all over at a new OB-clinic for my prenatal care.
This OB clinic is "the" high risk clinic in my health system, but it accepts low-risk patients as well. Since I am at high risk of becoming high risk (dizzying, yes?) I decided just to go ahead and see them and let them put me wherever they like on this imaginary high-risk spectrum.

( cut for length )

x-posted to my lj

I feel like this whole week (two weeks?) has been a cosmic exercise in pre-parenting testing and I fail fail fail fail over and over.

I am losing a client, my other client's agency can't pay me a living wage.
My car was almost reposessed last week, I skipped a mortgage payment to pay it off instead.
Then yesterday it turned off while I was going 50mph in the left lane of a 5 lane road.
My cable was turned off two days ago for non-payment. Not that I should be subjecting a fetus to my crappy reality tv watching, but dammit I'm missing the first top-20 so you think you can dance.
Yesterday the lab lost my blood sample to confirm my pregnancy so I had to go back, but only after ridiculousness.
And I have $20 in the bank. And I need a rental car. Woohoo.

if you had a friend who was a hard drinking, chain-smoking party-oriented thing whose 30th birthday were coming up this thursday, the party scheduled for this saturday
AND
this same friend found out she was pregnant today
WHAT
do you say she should do for that big 30 birthday?

a. cancel
b. move from late night drunken debauchery to mid-day lunch & board games
c. move from late night etc to next-day brunch
d. fuck her, you're going to go get your drink on without her.

thunderstorms flare up constantly and my bare legs
are tucked up under pillows on the couch.
downtown cafes feature fruitstands which in turn
feature apricots but best of all the two of you
were there with me. the oven winds give way
to these tornado watches, so my dreams are full
of kitchens and wrist-wear. come back, I call
to the one who went to oz. pop the top of something
alcoholic, smoke happy on the porch, and don't stop
wondering if it could get more perfect;
answer: yes, in bed. my life with you is a fortune
cookie, sweet and full of paper. thanks.

i guess i have this to say to everyone who is disappointed:

if you're going to cross me off -- just go ahead and do it. i deserve it. i know that. i'm not even pretending to be better than i am. i am just trying to do *one thing* that i think i can do without fucking up. maybe you understand.

i'm awful, i know it, so do you.

so just say it.

i regret to inform you that i have my head severely up my own ass, making me not much of anything to anyone who doesn't live in my house (and therefore can't see me in gaps between the sick-depressive-naps)

but if you want to hear a moment of emergence, tonight i'm subbing for rick c's shows "Border Radio" and "Soul City, NC" -- Border Radio is at 8:00 and features alt-country/ roots stuff, and "Soul City, NC"at 9:00 is 60s and 70s soul. 88.7fm or wxdu.org

(.for celeste

what if the monsters all had beautiful fingers
made of hand-blown glass, and whole towns
in europe sold little reproductions and
young children were given to the masters
so that they could learn how best to make
the blood-colored swirl in each? would you
come a' smashin' them with me? i could
build the planes and you could spin
the propellers. your dark hair would
fly out behind you from the wind I'd be
making, a velvet-feeling wind that would carry me
in and out of fire and hell. i'd find a bomb
load it into our machine's belly. I'd find a way
to break every tiny, delicate digit to keep them
finally and forever off your skin. I'd be
begoggled and baronessed, I'd be happy to do it
for your eyes, alight with drink, to better shine.

_!*for courtney

what is pride if not all the salt water in the sea
coursing straight for you? darling, I drown to know
you've done so well -- but don't look back at me.
I can be blue and you can be green. You are kudzu
creeping fast across the telephone wires towards
more southern states, and I have to love your vineyheart
more than ever now that it is being stretched away.
whether you mark your leaves with new tattoos
or with the muscled weight of your books, I hope
some clipping of you is preserved in my backyard.
And since I am sea I can also be sky, stretching
over highways and through cloudrings and over every
wooded isolation, reaching right for you.

&*(and for me

things i wanted to do, very recently, included
wearing thigh-high boots, losing weight, gaining it,
kissing a stranger, being in the velvet underground,
becoming uncool, breaking all my cred like eggs
over my own ugly-haired head, quit seeing exes in
imaginary shadows, growing a secret like those
mythological errant watermelon seeds of my youth,
driving to the beach, and having a good, old-fashioned
yardsale. i did other things instead.

So I use a Macbook circa 2006 that has happily run both safari and firefox until recently. Slowly at first and now more frequently I got/get what my husband calls "The spinning death rainbow" whenever visiting websites that are high-traffic or high-data transfer -- in other words, not just a static sheet of html. If something has embedded video or even for fucksake banner ads, I get complete lockup. (just of the browser) examples of sites that have crashed my browser recently: gmail, fandango, yahoo movies, espn, and myspace/facebook.
Please help me, clueless as I am, to get my geek on.
kthxbai
ps. already rean software updater.

wet your lips. your five-0'clock shadow bristles
against everything i own that is soft, and i am nothing
if not soft everywhere. in each corner of this room i
sink to my knees in my mind, praying toward your direction.
your absences are many: the funeral homes and stat sheets
call you from me; your heavy footsteps here tremble
the furniture, remind me of the earthquake that revolted
along my heart when you arrived. when they are gone,
you leave this whole house too empty. whenever i imagine a kiss
or execute one, it is your lips i am touching, even if all
i kiss is the cheek of an old friend or the forehead
of a troubled child. no love i give is free.
i submit all receipts to you, my sweet mathematician. i ask
that every time you pull from the well you fill me again:
because i am a vessel, a vase, a freight-ship,
a watering can, a small green bucket, and want to hold you,
with these tiny hands, but can't.

I could have seen any face and kissed it, tonight.
Tonight with its cold snap that has frightened
the bursting pear trees and with my big blue house
still full of boys (maybe forever now?) and with my
imagined lisp and my quick hands flicking lighters
that didn't work for me, tonight with it stars hanging
not perfectly but close enough over the roof --
I could have pretended to be Spanish, pretended to be
anything, and kissed anyone but you. But there you were
among the pews-turned pub-chairs and the wooden Gothic
arches and you looked to me like a broken rosary --
all beads and scattered and wrong. I didn't even
say hello, and could you blame me? When I loved you
my own fingers were still broken while my legs
had just begun to heal. What you don't know about me
fills all kinds of blood-red aisles in all the churches
in this town. The one thing I would have told you,
if I had bothered to lean my plump body with its
forgiving lines in your direction, would have been:
go back to the hell from which you've risen. Or just
go back to sleep, it makes no difference to me.

my eyes shift up. from what? it doesn't matter--
a book a child a cigarrette a candle a cat a dog --
we could semi-alphabet this list forever. but
so it's like that: busy with something, a shift
of eyes of mind of ears and the feeling rushes into
the empty space. a time that needs no clock, for
obvious reasons. a room that has only walls. not even
a dirty floor or water-stained ceiling.
my chest ignites, there is wildfire spreading to my throat
and i try but can't clear it
not with coughs or sips or waterfalls or rainstorms.
so in response, my stupid eyes start the thing that
brings me closest to put-out. the salt starts de-icing
of all those waxy bridges, and I slide off
into rivers called sorrow but at least they aren't burnt
right?
you won't be the first one to set off the sprinkler system
but i have to tell you, honestly, if it didn't go off
i think i'd wake up one day, nothing but a pair of shoes
burnt from the chest out like an old black and white photo
i once saw. that's how it happens, i've decided: the ashes
leap into my body from the cinders of speech, and there
they grow and bloom into a hearth -- but what makes it
lose its bounds and what makes it sputter out? i don't know.
i can only tell you why it happens, and why it's terribly,
disastrously stupid, to sit there & say, "don't cry."