theology&geometry

The shape of this October is different from all the rest. Already we are nearly halfway in and the leaves are changing, tops of the trees first where they are kissed by sun, cascading down into the shade. Horror movies are on TV and for some reason I found myself watching Saw II the other day even though I’d never seen the first or any other in the series. It wasn’t scary and I didn’t find it particularly shocking, now that I live in a world where there are Human Centipedes. The Food Network is plating its Halloween-themed shows, during which I marvel at how beautiful and inedible a cake made of fondant and spun sugar can look, and how I would eat the shit out of it anyway, just because. I’ve put up my fall wreath on the front door and a strand of spider lights in a window (jankily and with packing tape that keeps falling, I might add), but the rest of the decorations (my big skull faces, bloody handprint window gels, skeleton garland, purple lights, pumpkin candleholder) are in a bag while I contemplate whether I am actually going to feel like taking them down come Nov. 1. I haven’t bought a pumpkin yet or even considered how to carve it this year. Okay, that’s not entirely true. I had a fleeting thought about a little jack-o-lantern family: Two big ones and a teeny one. Because my body is lousy with gestational hormones, that’s why. But then I thought about how much of a pain in the ass it would be to carve three pumpkins right now, considering how they will probably last for maybe two or three days, given the longevity of last year’s gourds.

No, this October is different. I’m counting down and not to Christmas. Well, in the conventional sense of the word. I am waiting on a big ol’ present to get here, that much is true. I am scurrying around much like a squirrel preparing for winter, picking up knick-knacks here and there to store in preparation. I’m organizing and reorganizing these knick-knacks into systems that make sense. I’m making lists of things we have and things we need, my hand perpetually coming to rest on my belly, which is so unavoidable now that people are beginning to ask me when my last day of work is (it’s in a month, groan).

My ritual lately has been reading a home birth story or two from the Mothering boards every night before drifting off to sleep. These stories are all so different and some of them more encouraging than others, but they all carry the same weighty beauty, and I am obsessed with tracing the patterns of labor from one woman to the next. I look around my house and try to imagine where I will pace, where I will lean, where I will leak, what spaces will open up to comfort me when things get tougher than I expected. What the cats will do. What Ray will do. What I will do.

Amy came over on Wednesday and brought a birth day gift — a bedpan full of medical supplies that will become my friends: A peri bottle, gauzy underwear, boat-shaped feminine pads, gloves, a bulb syringe. I showed her my birth supply bags and realized quickly just how much I have left to assemble. After this week, I will be clear to deliver at home should labor start spontaneously. That sure is something to think about. We talked about how and when to go about calling her if I think something’s starting, and the procedure for a hospital transfer should one become necessary. She took my blood pressure and listened to the baby’s heartbeat and everything checked out perfectly. He’s in the same spot he’s been in for weeks, little heart just thumping away. Only this week, he’s the size of a crenshaw melon and I’m betting he’s long ago passed the six-pound mark.

My guts are all smooshed by him. I can feel him stretch clear from the depths of my lower left pelvis all the way around to the right, up and around my hip area. He stays tucked up underneath my sternum sometimes but is usually polite enough to refrain from kicking my lungs. Last night, though, he triple kicked me rapid-fire in the side and took my breath away.

A few hours later I woke up choking on my own stomach acid again, this time unable to keep from puking everything up onto myself, my bed, and the big long pillow I hug throughout the night. The vomit was brown from a chocolate protein shake I’d had too close to bedtime, and there were chunks of undigested Special K in it. I couldn’t stop puking. Every time I tried to cough or clear my throat, it would trigger my gag reflex and up would come even more. Ray was in the living room and I couldn’t find my voice to call to him, so I texted him for help. His phone beeped … from right beside the bed. I stumbled my way into the bathroom and just kept puking. It was horrible. Puke, heave, choke, clear throat, cry, rinse, repeat. I am up and down, in and out of the bathroom so much during the night that he didn’t even notice anything was wrong and I couldn’t yell out to him. I finally stumbled into the hall and announced dramatically that I was okay, not to worry! This is my fear, always: That I will finally relent and need help and that I won’t get it in time, for whatever reason. We changed the sheets and I went back to bed, stomach empty and head elevated, pillow and shirt whirring in the washing machine. I conked out and dreamed about Blake Anderson, I guess because I read a bunch of his tweets right before falling asleep.

It was not my finest night.

I’m so ready to be done with work. Organizing the remaining days of child-free time I have in my life around my job is frustrating. I wish my company offered paid maternity leave, even a week of it, so I could take some time off, even a day or two, before my due date. But they don’t so I have saved up every vacation day and sick day I could muster this year, meaning I have had hardly any time off at all this year. It’s crazymaking, but that is how we do things here in the land of the free to work yourself to death, I guess.

There is this running joke in the office now that when the baby is born, he’ll only be comforted by sounds of grunting and stomping and snorting and sneezing and sing-song yawning and humming and throat clearing — the sounds I hear for 8.5 hours every day. Seriously, the human cacophony around me on a nightly basis is sometimes too much for me to take. You would not believe it unless you heard it yourself. I get annoyed and then outright rage-filled because the offending parties have NO IDEA their tics are so loud and annoying and constant, and some of them like to complain about others’ noisemaking. Even headphones can’t drown it all out most nights so I just sit there and selfishly wish for a meteor to hit and make it all go away.

I am ready for a break. Spit-up and around-the-clock breastfeeding and diaper changing sound like a vacation to me. In small part because I will finally be able to see sunsets again, at least for a few weeks. I have missed almost every sunset that has happened since January of 2005. That is deeply, deeply fucked up.

Yesterday evening while I was at work, a summer storm rolled through (from the east, apocalyptically enough) and the sky rumbled and crackled louder than it has in months, making me jumpy and making the ear-of-corn-sized baby inside of me flail around like a kid who can’t swim who’s just been tossed into the pool. I hope to get one of those kids who’s fascinated by but not afraid of thunderstorms, so he can teach me his blissed-out, zen ways. Because I get pretty uptight during the dang things, especially ever since I came into possession of a roof that lies beneath a few ancient oaks.

He’s in there right now, shuddering and moving around, trying to get comfortable, I guess. Good luck with that, kiddo. My midwife told me Tuesday I have a tight uterus. Yay? She says that might spare me some of the infamous Braxton-Hicks contractions but naturally, I think means I am going to squeeze the life force out of my unborn child. I’d really rather not, as I’d like to save any smothering for later on in his life, when I can do it with weepy emotions, preferably while he’s bringing home his first girlfriend (or boyfriend! I am a Cool Mom™).

My midwife also told me that my blood pressure is up. It’s hanging out in the lowest tier of the danger zone, so maybe I can coax it back down after this week is over. Actually, I think it was up because she made me weigh myself just before she took the reading, and I was kiiiinda reeling from my first significant weight gain of the pregnancy. Eight pounds in a month! Faaaaahhhhhhhhhcccck. I know, I know. But you can’t stop your brain from sitting there and doing the math and calculating that by November you are going to be the size of a tiny planet or maybe a parade float.

Developmentally, my darling ear of corn should weigh more than a pound now, but not quite a pound and a half. His ears should be fully functioning (I suspect that’s why he got all jumpy during that storm, or maybe he was just cracked out on my adrenaline) so I have got to start piping some crappy hipster music in there to him so he will rebel the first chance he gets.

Lots of stuff happening in the house this weekend. The crib and changing table are being delivered Monday, and the electrician is coming to repair some outlets so I can move the office into the back bedroom. We’ve got to do something with a queen-size mattress until my parents can come get it. I’m excited to get things really moving on the nursery front. That will make it all the more real.

Monday I spent some time in Babies R Us, getting woozy from hunger as I walked the aisles with the little registry scanner gun. I saved the big stuff — car seat, stroller, high chair — for when Ray can make the trip with me, so we can hash out what we like and don’t like. I got to the big wall of diapers and felt overwhelmed by the entire process. The little book the store gives you lists two and a half pages of “essentials” in small type. I know much of that stuff is anything but essential, but it all just becomes a jumble of stuff to pilfer through and consider and, Jesus, how can I possibly expect people to buy us things anyway?

I am so irritable right now. My internet is all jacked up (will this crap even post?) and I’m trying to get work done before I go to work. I think all I do is work sometimes. I’m attempting to build up inventory for my C-Y Fest booth and I’m organizing stuff for a big yard sale. Gotta make some extra money since the day job isn’t cutting it, you know. Which is sad, considering I live in a modest house and drive a modest car and work 40-plus hours a week for a major corporation in the good ol’ U S of fucking A. I am so ready for some time off. I don’t care if I’m going to be up to my elbows in baby puke. It will be worth it.

Night before last I dreamed that I was with a group of people at the Harry Potter world at Universal Studios in Orlando. It was hot and I was clearly, burdensomly pregnant, my shoulders slung low with bags that I realized belonged to the other people. I kept trying to stop and examine the incredibly detailed set pieces of the village, all of which seemed to be handmade and placed meticulously throughout the sets to give them an intensely realistic feel. I’d be turning a piece over and over in my hand, feeling the contours of its artisan paper, when I’d look up and see the people in my group moving on to the next attraction, leaving their stuff behind for me to pick up and add to my already heavy load.

I was trying to stall long enough to set up a photograph of some of the set pieces, when Bill Gates and his entourage came into the area and clearly wanted everyone else to vamoose. He gave me a withering look as I gathered up everyone else’s things and tried to make it out of his way without dropping anything. I could barely walk under the weight of what I was carrying. Maybe he was pissed that I was carrying an iPad along with everything else, I don’t know.

I woke up and instantly knew what that dream was about. Here we are on this magical journey — wonder! whimsy! etc.! — and I am trying to stop and marvel at what is happening around me, to truly appreciate the intricacies of what is going on, and I am struggling under the weight of so much other stuff.

I wrote a long post about this last night, and saved and re-saved the draft, scared to hit publish. I miss the feeling of being able to write freely without fear but that is where I am and that is where I will be, I suppose, as long as I know certain eyes are always on me.

The gist is that I feel like a mess. Work is difficult, money is tight, the clock is ticking — the predictable whine. I’m at that point where all life’s little papercuts and lemon squirts are wearing me down, and I’m getting out of bed in the middle of the night to have heaving sobfests on the couch until I feel calm enough to fall asleep to the quiet flickr of America’s finest infomercials. None of this makes much sense without specifics, I suppose (or it just sounds like hormonal bullshit), but I can’t get in to specifics here because there is too much at stake.

I know all of the anguish will be worth it when baby boy makes his entrance into this world and clings to me and I to him. But it doesn’t make the mountains of bullshit any less difficult to plow through.

… although this year’s lineup is pretty sweet, so I really recommend that you make it down there if you can.

My colleagues and I will be posting updates to our live-coverage Tumblr tonight, tomorrow and Sunday — gomemphis.tumblr.com. Follow us there or on Twitter: @gomemphis. You can also watch the action at our Memphis in May info site, where lots of tips and tricks are posted for your perusal. We’ll be the first to know if the river decides to swallow Downtown, so stay tuned for that.

Happy weekend!

Weathering the storm(s).

[Project 365]

[Project 365]

[Project 365]

Saturday was an adventure. I took the day off work so I could go photograph some living history events at the Cherry Mansion that my dad’s pals were going to be a part of. I was told to be there at 11 a.m., when photographers would be allowed inside the Cherry Mansion to take pictures with the re-enactors. I hauled ass and got there thirty minutes early, met up with my dad and brother and nephews, and began surveying the surroundings to try and get a good idea of what I’d shoot and where.

I was introduced to several people whose names I don’t remember. Everyone was nice for the most part, and I milled about, snapping pictures here and there of my dad and the group of people I was there to photograph. Then a lady who was a coordinator of sorts apparently mistook me for her personal photographer, and began art directing me and telling me who to photograph, and where, and from what angle. I went from confused to annoyed in a hurry. I’m not sure if she thought she was going to have access to the photos she was telling me to take or what. I was told that her photographer had flaked out, so suddenly it made sense why she would be encouraging me so boldly to take certain shots. I obliged mostly because I am non-confrontational like that, and for a while it was easy to take the shots I wanted to take while placating her with some shots she clearly wanted me to take. But eventually it got to the point where I couldn’t even break away to get a cup of lemonade without her calling after me, wondering where I was and could I come over here and take this shot and this shot and get over there and take it from that angle, too. (By then I had been there for three or four hours out in the hot sun with no food or water, and yes, I know that the crazy re-enactors were doing the same while wearing wool coats, but they are crazy like that and I am not.) I eventually had to just walk away and go about my business. I was being bogarted for big grip-n-grin shots while my dad and his fellas were standing by, and the whole reason I was there was to shoot his people. It was dumb. Plus I had an assignment over in Shiloh for The CA to get to.

Oh, one really funny thing happened. I was shooting a group photo of the Dixie Belles — you know, the ladies who dress up in hoop skirts — and some other photographer sauntered onto the scene with his camera and tripod. First thing he did was wander over to me and ask me, “What are you using?” I thought he meant a lens so I just held mine up because, you know, there it was. But he was talking about my settings, and leaned in and looked at my screen — WHILE I WAS WORKING — and read the shutter speed and aperture aloud. I was actually shooting on program mode (toggling between it and aperture mode because that is often my jank-ass way of getting my bearings in new settings) but he mistook it for auto (probably because I self-deprecatingly said something about shooting on auto, nyuk nyuk). And then when I was changing angles for another shot, he said, “Do you know how to use your manual mode?”

>.<

My patience was already growing then by that point. So I spat, "I'M SORRY, WHO ARE YOU?!" At which point he told me his name and then promptly shut the fuck up. I will not tell you his name or link to his portfolio because I am trying to make a renewed push to be a nice person these days. But let me get one dig in and say that, based on his portfolio, he had no business whatsoever readying himself to offer "helpful" suggestions to me, regardless of what settings I was shooting on. So, photographers of the world, when I want your help and condescending input, I will certainly let you know. Until then, put a sock in it and keep shooting your mediocre, soulless photographs. And I will do the same.

Ahem.

After a trip across the river to watch my dad and nephews shoot a cannon (photos to come eventually, after I edit all 600 of them), I grabbed a soda and some trail mix and headed to Shiloh with my sister in tow. After three inadvertent trips down the same one-way scenic route, we finally found the living history campgrounds, which were largely deserted, save for the fellas pictured above, and some other folks. I took some shots, scribbled down names and info, flicked a tick off of Krissie's hand, had a brief freakout thinking ticks were in my hair, and headed back to the car. My head was starting to hurt and my skin was starting to sizzle. I had to call it a day. That night it felt like my skull was trying to leap out of my skin. Chalk it up to being nannied for hours and hours in the sun without a break by people who were not my boss. I've really got to get over this mousey non-confrontational personality stuff so that I can better help people understand when they best be backing off.

[Project 365]

[Project 365]