{anatomist}

only 4 more days and 2 finals until this godawful term is over. i mean, i have loved being in school, and learning and studying and writing papers and all, but this last couple of weeks have really taken their toll. not to mention the surgery and the sick toddler around midterms. i just want a fresh start and new ideas to bounce around.

i have all sorts of thoughts about this last few months. the classes and life in general. it has been both harder and easier than i thought to leave the stay at home mom life and start out in the world again.

now i wish that i hadn't thought of it all as jack's life so much. i wish that i had been able to realize that it was my experience as well, learning from him. and god i have learned so much from that kid. and more every day. i just wish i had the patience he deserves.

i'm looking forward to the weeks of winter break to spend time with him, playing and relaxing and doing christmas-y things. i am so excited that he is a kid now, i can't wait to have the time to show him some of the stuff i have been saving.

i'm working on an advent calendar. my intention was to fill it with candy and tom and i could eat our way to xmas, but at this rate i won't be done until new years. we'll just eat all the candy then i suppose.

tom took jack to visit my father for the annual boat ride with santa. jack got his first experience with the whole thing and it was sort of a backstage pass kind of deal and he seemed to be pretty impressed. i don't know how to do the whole santa thing, but i suppose we'll just play it by ear like other parents. but i am oh so good at overplanning.

my car is in the shop due to an unfortunate incident involving my mother sort of driving into traffic while i stood on the other side of my living room window screaming at all of them to stop and watching my poor subaru get smashed up once again. i feel terrible for her that she feels so responsible, so we aren't talking about it and i just tried to enjoy the zippy little toyota she rented for us. we return it tomorrow though and i am back to driving the tiny little honda that evilcat and poverty are kindly loaning back to us. i'm very grateful, but i am not looking forward to installing the damn carseat in that tiny car. (in the dark, in 20 degree cold. thus, my blogging to avoid it.)

my mother's cancer has grown and i am so scared about all of it. she starts on oral chemo this week and hopefully that will do it's job. some people can maintain "for years even". but those aren't really the sort of odds i was hoping for. if a couple of years is the best case, i can't even let myself think of the worst. so i stress about the final projects and final tests. and then i procrastinate until i am almost at the point of self-sabotage and then i save my own ass.

excuse me while i commence ass-saving.

gaaaargh

but also yay! 

 so i don't have cancer, i feel much better, i am not as behind in school as i had feared (which sent me into a whole cycle of "if i can miss a week of school without getting behind, what is it exactly that i am getting from these classes?" but then i realized that i am actually learning when i am there, as opposed to getting by while i am at home, so that brings me back around again.) and i am making friends who are going to help me study for my next exam at a coffee shop like a real and proper college student.

and then when i was getting really excited about registering for ALL ART CLASSES this quarter, some red print appeared on a screen that i just happened upon because i was checking into things a little early in preparation for my 6:30 am wake-up and register plan and i learned *measles immunization is required before you can register, click here to learn more...*  so now i have to run to campus in the morning, get my shot, try to get them to rush it into the system and then go register for my classes before they all fill up because ohmygod i don't know about you historians and your classes, but art classes fill up the second the professor even thinks about offering it. and christ there are so many limits to who can register. you've got tobe  a sophmore in period II and junior in period I no english majors in the first half of period III access code in period III elementary school weaving prerequisite blahblahblah. 

so i am still holding out hope, especially since i only have one writing requirement outside the art department and all my other requirements are studio classes. so basically i have to get in. and i have a much more open schedule thanks to my nutcase (but wonderful!) mother. 

and then i got a ticket for the pixies show tomorrow and suddenly all my concerns about college classes melted away (and what the hell? is it the early nineties?)

in conclusion, i don't have cancer, college is easy, college is hard, i love to rock.

goodnight.

twister

tom cleaned out the shed today, got rid of years worth of moldy backpacks and tents, folding tables, and empty propane containers. the bits that are left aren't any less moldy, but the twister mat was finally unearthed so something useful was accomplished.

it would have been a really good idea for me to stay caught up with my schoolwork while i was sick, but we all know how bad i am at following my own advice so now i have a few hours to catch up with a weeks worth of homework. i was really stressed out about that until i realized that i have friends who are doing far more work than this each night. at this point in my life, i have the mental capacity for far harder projects than what i have taken on, keeping this in mind makes manageable what would otherwise be a bit overwhelming. 

in other words, i ought to just get off my ass (and the internet) and do my fucking homework. right.

leaving you, as usual, with a picture.

 

check back in 13 years, chances are you'll see this face again.

a breath

some photos to cleanse us all of the pain of the last weeks terrible boredom (and, at the risk of being redundant, terrible pain)

i made jars of pickled green cherry tomatoes

 

jack stayed plenty busy with my amazing (albeit crazy) mother

 

things got a little wacky at times

 

i made some cheater screenprints and printed some towels for tom's office's silent auction

 

and occasionally i got a great little visitor

i am glad to be back. i missed my kid and i missed being alive. i sure hope we don't get the flu next. (que foreshadowing...)

november 9th

well i meant to have a beautiful post with pictures of the things i have done and a breath of fresh air from feeling better and accomplished and caught up, etc, etc.
but as things haven't changed considerably in the last 24 hours you get none of that.

those of you in the seattle area though should go check out michael macgrath's dedication of the medal of honor memorial he built on the uw campus. it is a big deal thing, nationally broadcast and he could use all the support we can give him to make the day a wee bit more human and less insane i think. plus it is awesome when my friends get to do big deal things with their art, so hopefully i will be out of bed for that on wednesday afternoon.

tomorrow is jack's first field trip. he and a handful of other tinies are going to take the city bus to go see a play. i'm torn between being glad it isn't me in charge of a bunch of 2-5 yr olds out in the world, and wishing i could see my little boy. and maybe protect him. because he is still so tiny.

it is breaking my heart not being able to play with him and take care of him the way i want to right now. it is hard enough being out at school so much of the day, but being in the house and not being able to do my job. it sort of kills me. 

my head just keeps pounding

today's headache is worse than the one that i had in new york the time that tom and i drank our way through the lower east side.
i've never felt this way. i've never had a headache so bad i couldn't lie down and sleep.

so i've been crafting all day, cheater screen-printing onto tea towels and things, i made a felt-board for jack's christmas present. 

good lord, even the voice in my head is too loud when i try to write. 

i give up. here is a fuzzy picture of what i accomplished today.

just before midnight

every night at about this time, i think to myself, "i ought to type something on that there blog o' mine"
today i've been cranky and horrible from the painkillers. my throat feels like strep, and i can't eat anything except the milkshakes that cedar and john brought over. 
i did manage to print some tea towels for tom's silent auction at work. thrills around here, i tell ya.
now i'm going back to sleep in hopes that tomorrow i'll wake up feeling less beaten than today. and maybe i'll cut down on the drugs. i think they're getting to me. 
and if you know me, that is saying a lot.

little ideas and little lumps

so i had surgery this morning. quick and easy, but still exhausting and i have been in bed all day sleeping and sipping soup and being well taken care of by my lovely family. jack even brought me a bowl of his yogurt with blueberries. (have i mentioned that he has taken to carrying his baby doll in the sling? it is the cutest thing. i'll have to get a picture.)

so i am taking some pills  and sketching out little ideas for little projects coming up.

(the pictures are terrible but i was too lazy to find my phone or camera so i took them with photobooth and then photoshopped a little more contrast in for working with them later)

maybe i'll feel better tomorrow.

just under the wire

i'm lying in bed listening to the thunder, watching the lightning flash through the filter of my eyelids.
tomorrow morning i will go have a lump removed and then life will go on, and i am still so nervous.
goodnight.

love,

becky

my biggest fear

a tiny, tiny part of me is terrified that one day i will completely run out of interesting things to say, and i will be left with only boring anecdotes for the rest of my life.

right now, i feel as if that may have already happened.
wasn't school supposed to stimulate me intellectually? i think i expected that a side effect of mental stimulation would be an increase in what i could contribute to a conversation, but i seem to have only added detailed descriptions of my professors, and a slightly more fleshed out understanding of the history of chinese metallurgy. (by the way, i am curious about whether there is more than a geological relationship between the invention/adoption of metallurgy in china and the backyard smelting of the fifties. i taught english to an elderly man who had come from china and he gave me a copy of the book that he wrote detailing his life there that included stories of the backyard furnaces. that was the first i had heard of it, but learning about the history of the technology makes me wonder more about the cultural significance.)

wait... where did everybody go? i haven't even gotten into my thoughts on third declension neuter latin nouns....

it was that major chord struck that held up that starlit night. and i'll never hear that sound again without remembering the words, falling from a tongue (to say it was forked would be biblical, and this wasn't temptation, it was the only option). we were so young under that bottle-rocket sky, it was ridiculous to imagine i would still remember it now, but i did, and i still do. every scent is imprinted into my skull, the feel of warm blood, the cold breeze on my fingertips, the smell of burning sage and matches, the smell of skin and blood. we took chances and missed them, we lost each other in the mountains and i only found you in the darkness after fasting, like a dream, you were my hallucination and to be honest i never imagined you were more. but i bet you were. when that chord strikes, that sad dead voice like wine, i imagine you are gone -then it would make sense that it haunts me- but you are skin and blood and inside you is more than bottle-rockets and that is where we went wrong.

choked up

i've got a lump in my throat. literally. on friday i'll go in to have them drug me up, cut it out and send it somewhere to see what it is. so... you know... that'll be interesting. 

i'll keep you posted.

in the meantime! my little brain is rattling full of 3rd declensions, verb phrases, chinese metallurgy, and whether or not to worry about my poor baby's rattling cough. 
so that isn't much to post about. how about a picture?

 

that's pretty much what life is about these days.

fear vs my aching body

now that my mother is living with us (temporarily) and is able to take over toddler wrangling duties when necessary, the worst part about being sick these days is my fear that i will fail my classes just because i am not allowed to go to campus with a fever. not that i would want to, but seriously, pandemic fear is great on campus and i don't want to contribute to it. so i email my professors and hope, hope, hope that they will allow me to turn in my assignments when i am no longer lying dramatically like death hidden in the backroom of my house so that my son doesn't know that i am available for jumping on.
(hmmm... speaking of jumping, that time out i hear in the next room does not sound particularly effective. also, i hope that crib is strong because that is A LOT of jumping happening in there.)

november: day 1

(inspired by, well, a whole crapload of nablopopo bloggers)

(google nablopomo if you aren't sure, i am too lazy for linkage this morning)

things i don't like:

babies with fevers
too much candy after halloween
feeling guilty for feeling sick and not being able to do all the things i promised to do, or the things that i need to do.
the taste of chewable vitamin c tablets after brushing my teeth

things i DO like:

cuddly babies
tasty homemade marshmallows
crawling into a clean, blanket-piled bed to read
the smell of eucalyptus and lavender and menthol clearing up my stuffy head.

october

we've got blankets and sheepskins, pillows and books and mugs and big bowls of popcorn. the air outside our door smells like rain and the beginning rot of pumpkin, a bit of gas from the motorcycles, always coffee, our house always smells a bit like coffee. i can smell the ocean from here too some days, we're close enough to know there is saltwater just over the next hill and i like it that way.

my body is tired in that soggy fall way. the northwest is working it's way into my bones, making them soft and rotten like pumpkins. the coffee keeps me standing until i wrap up in blankets and sheepskins at the end of the day.

my poor little pumpkin is getting a little sick, waking wheezing in the night and i hold him in the dark and rock him until the medicine makes his head stop aching and then i lie him back down and put the blanket over him and he says "ni-ni" and i just can't believe he old enough to speak to me. 

and i am late for class. 

 

jack and i stopped at archie mcphees after his preschool halloween party. he liked the gorilla.

warming up and cooling off

i'm reading about the urban revolution in china, the beginning of the bronze age and the story behind jade carving.
i am transcribing everything i see into the international phonetic alphabet and learning to make sounds that are heard in other languages but not in english.
i am translating latin, or rather, i am trying to learn latin so that i don't have to translate it.
jack is learning about dinosaurs and quiet time and sharing and how to say alligator.
my mother is watching law and order in the living room.
tom is a saint, my hero, my best friend and lot of fun to hang out with.
we went on an impromptu date last night and that is why it is wonderful to have my mother living with us.
i just spent an hour and a half cleaning the kitchen and that is why it is hard to have my mother living with us.
the air is getting crisper and soggier and i am trying to decide which jacket is best, which bag will keep my books dry without killing my back, which shoes suffer the least from the puddles. i am thinking i need new galoshes.
i haven't got any pictures because my camera has been sitting silently on the shelf, but i have sketches, ideas rolling around in my brain, and i think i might be getting close to the fall creative burst. 

locked up inside, sewing warmth up around me, loving the fall.

falling

the world is exploding for all of us, growing rapidly, my eyes are opening with every second that i smell the wet tired wind, every step down the hill and into the massive doors. who knows where i have been, i've been lost in a million ways, i've been in another world, a good one, but an unfamiliar one, or familiar rather (from familia L. slave, servant; household). my latin teacher is younger than i am, and painfully awkward, but he picks on the freshman athletes with the biggest whitest smiles so i am safe in the back with my quick answers and nerd glasses. 

my son brought home a paper bag pasted with black and white circles of construction paper and it made me cry. i don't care that his teacher made it, or that i will see hundreds of these things in the years to come, i love it like the world. my boy exists outside of me completely now. he knows people who don't know me, little people who have nicknames for him and greet him at the door to help him put his name on the board. good little people who are nice to him even when he won't share.

i love all the parts that i am putting together here. i love the time in headphones, alone for longer than i have been alone in years, walking, thinking, imagining the world in new ways even than before i left it. (i know that i never really left, but i also know that i may never really know where i am. i am beginning to learn that about myself).

i love coming home to my boys, the kisses and stories and yelling and messes and the couch covered in huge pillows to sink into with them both.

now i am holed up in the dungeon by the furnace, surrounded by my things, my art, my books, my music, and i can't help but think of happy harry hard-on. ("i've got that feeling, you know that familiar feeling?...")

fall is here, and i welcome the sweaters.

readying

i'm spinning in circles, madly nesting in preparation for the winter that will come at a time when i will be too busy to prepare for it. moving furniture, painting walls, searching for a new couch, scrambling to pay for it all and at the same time scrambling to make sure i've got everything i need ready for school.

jack didn't cry when i dropped him off today. there was another little girl there wailing for her mother and he just watched her curiously as i took his shoes off and signed him in and put his lunch in the fridge and his backpack in his cubby and then he kicked off of me as he does when he is finished riding around on my hip and he sat down with the trucks and looked at me like, "what are you doing here?". so i left. it might have been heartbreaking but after all the tears the last couple of weeks, this was like a miracle. 

of course i had to pick him up 2 hours early because he went through 4 diapers in an hour and they were worried he was sick. which he is now of course. only a cold i think, making his whole little body all loose and gross and i feel so bad for the poor little punk in his crib for the last few hours coughing through his nap. i hope nobody else got sick at school because i didn't notice him sniffling or anything when i dropped him off.

i suppose i ought to get used to the viruses that travel in the toddlers crowds.

and i ought to go get him up and let him lie on the couch and cough with some snacks and juice. it is a sad sight, but i sure do love when he slows down to cuddle a bit.

i haven't got a damn thing to say.

life has been hard. but we have it good. i've been depressed, but things are going to change. just when i want to snuggle my little boy the most, he is off to spend the day with other kids and nice hippie girls who really like him and can get him to eat his broccoli. 
i've been realizing lately how awfully depressed i was after jack was born. things were very, very hard, especially inside my head, and i wasn't always the person i want to be. often, i was someone i don't like at all. i can't believe that my husband never left. he is good.
so many things are changing right now, i can't get ahold of it all, things are slipping away, and at the same time i am getting everything i have wished for. 
and in the middle of it all, i can't think of a thing to write about. i can't think of any way to tap into the sea of thoughts and let some of it out.
but maybe now that i have time to read a book, i'll find a way to handle words again.

changing

everything is changing. 

i'm registered for school

jack is signed up for preschool

my mother is moving in

(i wrote a long post that beautifully summed up how i feel about it all, but typepad ate it so we have to wait until i am inspired again)

my son is a badass though and i am so incredibly lucky.