Tag Archives: avery.pregnancy

Baby Amazon, 34 Weeks

Ed Note: The day before Avery’s birthday

Well at my appt yesterday Avery measured 38 weeks instead of the 34 weeks I am pregnant. So there will be an ultrasound and then a discussion about options if the measurement is due to her actual fetal weight (could be fluid causing the growth). SO, we might not end up at home birthing when she is ready- might end up in the hospital birthing early because she is a garganruan! We’d be disappointed, but at this point I want to meet her, and I don’t care how it comes about. I trust the midwife wouldn’t ask me to go to a hospital or be induced unless there was a real reason, so I’ll await her judgement on that and trust it when she makes one. Well know about the baby’s weight on Monday the 16th, but won’t know the game plan until the 26th when I speak to the midwife again. So stay tuned! We might be meeting baby Avery sooner than we all thought!

Nothing like a wedding, a move, a new job, and an early baby to fill up your year! Poor Michael. He’s such a sport about it all, and so is Hannah! I really love our little family unit. We’re all settling in and getting our ducks in a roww. Everyone at Michael’s school loves him (of course!). I’m going to be a volunteer up there so that he can have some help since he doesn’t get an aide- I can’t wait to see him with the little kiddies.

I’ve been trying to get control over the house. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think we might need a couple more pieces of furniture! We’re running out of bookshelf space. I guess when/if Alan moves his things off the shelves, that will take care of the issue. Right now, there is a pile of books, at least 8 of them, beside my bed and it’s driving me nuts! We’ve also got some issues with paper multiplying . Practically every surface in the bedroom has papers on it, that we can’t throw out and need to have quick access too. No place to put them, right now. Michael sauys it’s time to buy a file cabinet, and I suppose I agree. Maybe I can get that done today and surprise him.

This week’s resolution: Cook dinner every night till Saturday, and clear up Paper Mountain.

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May 9-Taurus

May 9,2001

It’s been a long time. I guess I haven’t felt philosophical lately. Spring is creeping into Asheville, leaving its signature in pollen all over the car and in dandelions that threaten to take over the lawn. Incredible, I am griping in suburban-ese. Sheesh. I never thought I’d see the day. I’m still not enough of a grownup to clean the house on a regular schedule though. I’d rather lay in the sun and read.

It’s been a strange few weeks. People from my past, distant and not so distant, are back in my life, causing me to go through shoeboxes full of memories and emotions, playing the what if game, brooding in contemplative silence for hours at a time. I’ve been spending too much time in bed. I’ve been having horrible nightmares. I’ve been revisiting ghosts I thought were dead and gone.I’ve been blindsided by anger and regret. I’ve been shocked by how many details I had forgotten, how completely experiences come back to me now, accosting all my senses. I think periodically I go through this, remembering, purging, comparing, measuring. I look at me then, and me now. At my friendships then and how they have evolved. I remember. I cry, and read letters and call people. I resolve to get back there, where I was reckless with my emotion, passionate about everything. And then it comes to me: I grew up, not cold. I have a family now, I take care of her above all else. Sometimes that means being less than passionate about my job. Sometimes that involves being cautious emotionally. Even on occasion I must do things I don’t want to do. Bite my tongue when I want to say my piece. Walk away when my instinct is to fight. With age I’ve acquired tact, and the ability to compromise. It feels good.I walked to work today looking straight up into the fog, smiling and listening to my favorite song.

Something I’m struggling with today, this week, is how to reconcile my personal, familial existence and how good it is right now, with the general state of horrible disrepair the country is in. I don’t know where to start, but I know finally that I have to do something. I have always believed in the silent, personal protest, a general rejection of authority when you can get away with it…I boycott, I don’t eat meat,I walk. But I am finding that’s not enough. I can’t just sit by and watch capitalism take over the world, can’t just silently grieve for the unarmed man (and the many more like him all over the country) shot by a police officer last month. We have to do something about this system. It must be torn down and rebuilt, it is corrupt all the way to the foundations. It can’t be saved. For 200 years our system has been proving itself faulty, and the gap between rich and “middle class” widens more each day. I have said that I hate money, and the nasty behavior it brings out in people. I do. I have said that I want out. That the answer is to withdraw, to create a new community, a new system. Well withdrawing won’t work for me anymore. Even if the government were to allow me to, which is doubtful, I couldn’t sit by and watch the world go to hell. Even if it’s just 100 people, even if no one listens…we have to,I have to, have a voice in this. I have to know I did everything in my power to make a change. It will never be enough, I will never cover all the bases-but I can do something. I can walk to work. I can not eat animals. I can teach my daughter to stand up for herself, to respect her earth, to make her voice heard. I can make a positive impact. I can encourage the people around me to do the same. At the very least, I can do those things. And then I can sleep at night.

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Dream a little dream

It was a long dream. It seems like part of it we were on vacation with Michael…I remember specifically one part where we were trying to take a picture of a ship sinking and my camera was getting wet because we were in the water. Then we were looking at the inner tube things looking for one for four people..and that took us to this weird room lit with blacklight where older kids were skating and riding scooters, and the room was made of rubber so they were throwing stuff everywhere watching it bounce off the walls, so I took who I was holding and left. It later turned out I was holding a small poodle, and walked around looking at stuff in shops until it was time to go. I was mad when we left because we spent a bunch of money and didn’t do all the stuff.

It was Universal Studios, but none of the stuff was stuff I remember from there. Then we (me and I think Genie) were walking around, I get the feeling it was my last day somewhere and I think it was Cali. I was shopping for things to bring home. I went into this weird store with a DJ in the back and started looking at records, then saw these really cool books to bring everyone for 2.95. They were called keepsake ovens and they had a hole in the pages, and some regular pages, so you could put little things in there and write about them, and the books were covered with this handmade brown paper that was really beautiful and they tied with string. I picked up a bunch of those and went around the counter to the back, and was looking at clothes on sale when I saw a receipt with my name on it and remembered I had been there before. I talked to the guy about it, saying that’s so funny I was here like 6 weeks ago from (somewhere far away) and then I come back and there’s my receipt sitting there! and he and his friend were trying to place me…then we started talking about the record that was playing (the Fat Boys) and where he got it and how I had bought it for a friend of mine (which I was lying about, for some reason) some girl brings them food, I gather it’s the one guy’s wife…then Jess walks in and is really PISSED because she couldn’t find me; she took an ambulance home, and we argue about that until she turns into Hannah and I’m asking her didn’t she remember my cell phone number, etc. etc…(chronology might be wrong here.)

At some point we (the wife and I) are watching the guys from the shop surf. We’re at their house, I guess, overlooking the beach, sitting there drinking beer. I don’t remember drinking but I remember the brown bottles and the patio table made of glass.

Then I’m watching this lady teach her kid to ride a play tractor with pedals and he flips over and says to her, there’s something wrong with the wheels, mommy…so we are pushing him backwards so he can try again, I am making car sounds, and we push him far, over railroad tracks (that were green).We are on the beach and above us is a shopping/restaurant area. Then everyone involved in the tractor thing is in this covered area, and somehow this giant golden retriever is climbed up on the tractor so the kid can’t go, and trying to climb in the seat with him. Then I hear Hannah say, 2 people can ride in that! So I say run up there and get in. And I’m up, away from them now. Before I was laying there with the dog. She is tiny here, just under 2 years old. I tell her to throw me a tennis ball so I can throw it for the dog, who belongs to Blake. (but the person who I am calling Blake isn’t the person I know as him)It takes her a couple of tries to get it to me. So I throw the ball and it gets in the water and off goes the dog. My boyfriend I guess, (I don’t recognize him) is shaking his head and laughing at me. The dog flops around in the water a bit and can’t see the ball right in front of him, so I go after it, and pounce on it, then see a huge wave, so I try to go under the wave. I remember breathing underwater and thinking, I can’t do this, and stopping. Then my grandmother’s wedding ring started to slip off my finger and I thought distinctly “first things first” and I got the ring on my middle finger so it wouldn’t slip.At this point I was on my back and I was waiting the wave out, waiting for it to break above me and clear so I could come up. Then I was out of the water and I was looking around for everyone and I began to panic.

A couple of times I pried my eyes open (trying to wake up) and then I saw my mom through the window of a restaurant I guess, she was standing up. Looked like a teacher thing, I think people were wearing nametags. I had this weird feeling…can’t describe it-something like if this is a dream then I won’t be able to yell because it will wake me up (kind of like when I hit someone in a dream and it’s always in slow motion and doesn’t hurt them). So I started screaming for her, through the window, MOM, MOM, MOM… and I could hear myself and I knew it wasn’t a dream and gradually everyone around me faded away and I realized I was dead. I ran down the beach screaming for Blake, for the dog…then I was walking in the amusement park shopping area (which was empty) thinking to myself, I am not done, I can’t spend forever writing …(I think the phrase was bedroom secrets)..for stupid magazines…I tried to pry my eyes open a bunch of times during this, tried to wake up.I was crying hysterically. I wandered until I found my car, which was wet because it had been raining, and the guys that were surfing were putting their boards away in their car in front of it (I am above all this, and the cars are in a clearing in the woods)I was yelling for them too… That’s when I said, please, god please let me wake up and I will listen to them, not the Christian stuff but I will listen I swear. And I woke up.

needless to say I am fucking freaked out. That’s the second death dream I’ve had in a month that I really thought I was dead, and to have the deal with god thing thrown in just isn’t cool.

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Easter

Easter Sunday. I read last night about the actual origins of Easter, having of course nothing to do with Christ. Very interesting. I am more and more disillusioned with religion every day. Even non Christian religions perplex me, the rituals, and traditions, and ceremony-I just don’t understand the need for it.

Amazing date with Michael last night….I forget how important it is for me to debate and converse intelligently. When I am discussing something political, or just anything outside the realm of my immediate life-I feel more alive. My brain seems to wake up and stretch, and I find ideas I had forgotten I had, and new conviction in the beliefs that I’ve been building. It’s so very important for people to exercise the brain, to take the thought process outside traditional comfort zones. I would expect that kind of intense thought to wear me out, but it instead energizes me, helps me organize my thinking, and leaves me wanting more. I find myself less satisfied with my day to day interaction, chats about babies and food prices and music preferences. In that way he is spoiling me. I finally feel like I can be myself, not have to worry about one day hearing “why do we always have to debate everything? you think too much”. It’s my nature to be analytical, to seek out the logic in any situation, to find a practical explanation for everything. I am so lucky to be able to embrace that now, and to have someone in my midst who will challenge that and bring me fresh insight.

I am beginning to notice that my daughter has one of my more annoying traits. She too needs to know reasons behind decisions, and excessive amounts of information about task she’s asked to do. I found myself annoyed and snapping at her yesterday about doing something I asked her to do, instead of asking me a million questions about why-and that’s when it hit me. She was just trying to understand. Neither of us takes absolute direction well. We both are more comfortable doing tasks and making decisions when we have a wealth of information to refer to. In this instance I stopped, answered her question and said, you just wanted to know why it had to be that way, didn’t you? Smile, nod, head duck…”is that OK?” We don’t realize how incredibly important our approval is to a child. I want my child to question everything, I want her to know her tasks inside and out! If I have to, if her teachers have to, take the extra time to explain things to her, so be it. Too often inquisitiveness is mistaken for insubordination in schools, and I see it happening here at home sometimes as well. I don’t want my daughter to be taught to “just do it”, to blindly follow direction. She’s not in the military. I guess it might make things harder for her as she ages, especially if she gets a job like mine, where there isn’t time for each little thing to be explained to me…but sooner that than have her wake up one day and find herself in someone else’s life because she just went along with the tide.

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