BITS AND PEACES

Summer is, traditionally, a very busy time for us. This year, being the same, has also been different.

For one thing, we opted not to go to the festivals in New York which we usually attend. We made this choice for a variety of reasons…

First of all, we had some misgivings about sleeping outdoors with an infant, especially right next to Lake Erie. Though it is July, it can be very cold and very, very wet. (Frost has been reported there at this time of year, though that is quite rare.) This just didn’t seem like an environment conducive to the health and happiness of a baby.

Not to mention that I’m not sure how we would have managed to co-sleep with her on an air mattress… my partner and I have a difficult enough time with that thing by ourselves, much less with a squirmy and physically delicate little one to balance along with us.

Also, I had an unusually TERRIBLE time there last year, mostly (but not entirely) due to the weather. Unfortunately for our friends who did attend, this year was no better, and may have been worse. From the reports I heard, last year it rained harder with some breaks in between showers, whereas this year it rained less hard but more continuously.

And though I enjoy rain more than most people, it is no fun whatsoever when you have to live in it day and night, sloughing off soaked and muddy shoes to crawl in between damp blankets, feeling your slimy toes start to go numb from the cold and your limp wool sweater start to stick to your arms… No, it isn’t very fun at all.

We had considered taking an impromptu trip up there just for part of a weekend, but then we watched the weather reports and decided against it. Sure, it would have been nice to see everyone, but not under those conditions. Our friend from Boston who is always there said that he had considered packing up and taking the six hour road trip to spend the rest of his vacation at our house.

A few weeks ago, my partner and I also got to attend the labor of a good friend of ours, though unfortunately we were not present at the actual birth as we had planned. She took the same HypnoBirthing class that I took, though she had unforeseen complications which eventually led to the necessity of a cesarean.

For forty hours, she breathed and focused away a whole lot of intense pain. Her baby was in a posterior presentation position, meaning that the back of his head was toward her back. This causes a state known as back labor, a very painful condition which also keeps labor from progressing. After watching her, I think that she deserves a medal, a parade and a national holiday in her honor – what a tremendous amount of work! Her son was beautiful, healthy and apparently opinionated about which way he wanted to greet the world.

My partner was with her for about thirty hours and I was there for the last eighteen. (Her husband and sister were there, too.) This was the first time I’ve left my daughter for that long, though I did run home to feed her once. For the rest of the time my pump and I spent some quality time together at the hospital and The Little One had fun playing with Grandma.

Boy – she is so lucky to have Uber Grandma. I trust my mother totally to take care of her exactly the way I would want her taken care of. All through the night, my mother didn’t put her down once. When we came home at seven in the morning, there they were on the couch, my mom dozing sitting up with my daughter asleep on her chest. She did very well – as usual, she is very laid back and takes it all in stride.

Some time in the intervening weeks since last I posted, I had the unique experience of putting my fist, intentionally and with great force, through a solid object. This was the first time I have ever tried to break something in this manner, and though I would do it for fun, this particular occasion was for a belt test in Tae Kwan Do.

Prior to the test, I was very nervous. My partner (who has had a lot more experience in such things) assured me that I would be fine. In fact, it was he who encouraged me to break two boards instead of one. He claimed that I could probably do five or six, but I was intimidated enough by one for my first time, let alone two.

Nervous or not, the break itself was phenomenal. When my fist went through the boards it was
as if it had traveled through so much air – I felt no contact on my hand whatsoever. I was actually quite surprised to see the splintered boards laying on the ground since, to my knowledge, I had somehow managed to pass through them without touching them. There was that unexplainably loud crack, but I could barely hear that over the sound of my own voice.

Two pictures were snapped during this break, and both of them came out a little… strange. In one, there is some blurry cloud over me and by some trick of light and mirrors, there is a very bright white rod of light coming out of the hand which was not breaking. (It looks like I’m holding lightening.) In the other picture, there is an eerie ray pattern of light all the way around me; it is less dramatic but equally strange. None of the other pictures taken in this room in the same lighting at about the same time have any of these qualities. (My teacher got a big kick out of this.)

And oh, was it fun. Part of me feared that my hand would just come down painfully with a thud on the surface of the boards or that I would cock my wrist the wrong way and shatter my bones instead of my intended target, but when I saw how easy it actually was, I was ready for more. Someone called out that they thought I was ready for the concrete block, and in that moment if someone had set it up for me I would have happily broken it – I have no doubt whatsoever of my ability to do so. Of course, then my black belt test later would have been very anti-climactic…

For the next several days, I looked at nearly every object as something which I could potentially put my fist through. Not out of any kind of anger or aggression, but just because I could and it would be fun. The focus and follow-through is such a rush – if I could think of a reason, I would do it every day. I now understand why my partner enjoyed breaking huge stacks of roofing tiles back when he trained every day – it really is fun.

After that but before now, I got a second job (or third if one counts parenting full-time) that I can do from home. My responsibilities are to maintain and update an events calendar and parent resource list for the local branch of a national kid-oriented company. As long as I can work in my pajamas while nursing a baby at all hours of the day and night, I’m happy. I also get to announce and effectively advertise all kinds of things that I think are worthwhile, which is kind of nice. Oh yeah – and they pay me for this.

From looking at the site, I wonder how long ago the former employee wandered off, so for the next few weeks I’ll have my work cut out for me. However, once it’s all updated and ready to go, it should take a minimal amount of time ongoing. My changes haven’t "gone live" yet – they give me some time to add stuff, get the hang of it, make sure I know what I’m doing, etc., before the new updates are added. So far so good – it’s as easy to operate as a blog.

In other news, we finally decided to take the plunge and join the 20th… er, 21st century… and traded in our dial-up for a high-speed connection. Wow! Living in the Stone Age, I had no idea that technology had gotten so fast. Literally, what used to take an hour now takes less than a minute. It’s like, instant!

I’m sure that this is no big news to most (read: all) of you, but to me it’s like discovering electricity. Here under this rock, I had no idea… Who knew? (Ok, everyone else, I guess… but that’s not the point.) On top of that, we switched out the old, slow machine (which up until a few days ago I still found impressive) for the newer, faster machine which had been the Designated Audio Computer up until now. Everything is fast, fast, fast – it’s like trading in a Shetland Pony for a Ferrari, though without losing the cute, cuddly factor. Maybe the Ferrari would have to look like a Bush Baby…

My metaphors are a bit cumbersome, but you get the picture. Even the cursor moves faster…

What else have I been doing?

Well, I helped plan and facilitate a huge surprise party for my grandmother’s eightieth birthday a few weeks ago. My parents hosted the party, so I helped clean, make food, hostess, etc., for a fairly large group of people. (It was my first time making a birthday cake for sixty.) Grandma really had a great time and was actually completely surprised. Luckily, gullibility runs in the family.

When she and my mom pulled into the driveway and my grandmother asked about all the cars, my mom nonchalantly made up some story of how my dad was starting a used car lot. Grandma believed it at first, but then she started recognizing some of the vehicles and the gig was up.

This event was a little strange for me in that it was the first time I’ve seen my extended family in about fifteen years. When I was nineteen, I was at the annual Christmas Eve get together at my aunt’s house when I realized that 1) I didn’t know most of these people and 2) I didn’t particularly like many of them. From that point on, I started having my own Christmas Eve party with my Family Of Choice, rather than with the accidental and arbitrary biological one.

But, for Grandma’s 80th Birthday, they were all there. I wasn’t nervous about it – it was just something that made me say "huh." Yet another reason that having a baby is absolutely great… For all intents and purposes, I had effective invisibility – it was like wearing an Impenetrable Cloak of Cuteness behind which I was barely noticeable.

It also helped matters that I was busy hostessing – filling ice buckets, dumping chips in bowls, pointing the way to the restroom and arranging napkins. I was inside while most of the guests were outside and my partner had our daughter in a sling strapped to him. He walked around and talked to my relatives (who LOVED him, by the way) while I politely avoided them and helped my mother. If I had our daughter she was breastfeeding, which kept them away as much as if I’d had a dead animal strapped to my head.

It all worked out beautifully. I was able to converse individually with the couple of favored cousins off to the side of the action without having to actually interact with the family as a whole. No one felt snubbed and I can honestly say that I had a lovely time – I just smiled a lot and hid behind my adorable baby.

A couple of weeks later I also happened to have the chance to visit with the long lost relatives on my father’s side of the family. (I had never purposely "avoided" them – they just live far away.) We had a great time going through a box of old pictures… I finally got a copy of my grandparents’ wedding picture, my father when he was a baby, my great-grandmother and one of me standing under my favorite tree (which is no longer there) when I was a child. That, too, was a lovely time.

We’ve also been busy with the Ongoing Saga of Home Renovation, finally completing the projects we were scrambling to finish when our daughter decided to come live with us much earlier than expected. The New Revised More Attainable Goal is to have the house baby-proofed before she starts walking, which will be sooner than I like to think. We now have electric lights and a big fan in the attic, which is very accessible, thanks to a borrowed saw and my partner’s ability to bend space.

Since we didn’t go on vacation this year, we also got to be present for the gigantic neighborhood block party which the lady across the street hosts every year. Our street is blocked off, and in place of the usual parked cars there is a classic car and motorcycle show. She also has a live band, DJ, marching band, dancing, professional photographer, caterers, horse-drawn carriage rides and a disco ball suspended across the street.

This year, we actually were able to go to the party, which was a lot of fun. We spent a good deal of time talking to Father Len, the priest of the Catholic church right behind our house. And, as should be expected, our daughter was a magnet for happy ladies to coo at. Luckily, she’s a naturally social little girl who loves to interact with and smile at people, and the noise of the music didn’t seem to bother her one bit.

It was odd, though, after we had gone back into the house. For one night, it sounds like we live over a nightclub. As my partner noted, he didn’t think that "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" would be in the soundtrack of his life, but there it was, filling the background as he chewed his freshly grilled hamburger and sipped his wine in our dining room.

We found, however, that we were unable to seriously resume "intimate relations" until after the DJ had packed up for the night. Contrary to what may be portrayed in movies, it is difficult (if not impossible) not to crack up in that situation with loud funk in the background with some unseen Voice of God saying things like "I see you brother," "get down" and "shake it."

And the weather… My Gawds – it’s been beautiful! For most of July it has been in the seventies to mid-eighties, not very humid and often breezy. The other day I actually wore a SWEATER when we went hiking. At night, it is often too cool for the mosquitoes, which is nice when we’re sitting out on the porch swing. Even so, we still light the glass encased citronella candles, but now it’s more a question of ambiance than survival.

It’s been a really good summer, perhaps even a great one. It is my First Summer As A Mother, and so far I am enjoying the B’Jezus out of it – even the weather feels like a celebration.

Life is good… life is really, really good. In fact, I’d have to say it’s great.