been a while...

yeah, it's been a while. life got kinda crazy and overwhelming, and quite frankly perhaps i needed the lesson in humility. for some reason i've always believed i had to do it all, be it all, know it all.

no mistakes.

you should see it: the apartment's a mess, my finances are a mess, my mind is a mess. i'm working full time, schooling full time, mothering full time.

i'm sewing cloth diapers, getting into investing, and rejoining these crazy people here. yeah, like i ever knew when to quit, right?

but just look at that face! doesn't she just make you want to go back out and live life to the crazy fullest?

or this one?

it's never like in the movies!

oi vey. pregnancy always seems so beautiful and polite with little windows of opportunity for comedy to make a cameo appearance, and everyone's always so helpful and chivalric totally on board.

yeah, pfft! movies and sitcoms can kiss my [bleep!]

no matter how they word it in those pregnancy books (and yes, i bought one this time around), nothing quite describes "discomfort" like the lovely adjectives and phrases that now decorate my midwife's file like "freshly kicked-in-the-crotch feeling" and "itchy, burning nipples. no! not just irritated, but freakin' burning-like-sulfur-rounds-on-a-vampire burning nipples!" or, my particular favorite, "guano loco" (used to describe the state to which so many of these uncomfortable sensations drive me on a daily basis).

i'm juuuuust shy of five months, and i'm finally beginning to show. it's about freakin' time, yet on the other hand even that teenie pulling of gravity on a distending abdomen is making my lower back guano loco.

and i'm so sick of peeing!

i sent a text to my baby daddy (yes, i said it!) earlier tonight stating "the little bundle of chaos apparently thinks post-mealtime is trampoline time. YOUR kid."

him: "aww, takes after me already."

me: *saw my life flash before my eyes*

it's been fun, the last eight weeks or so, playing the "feel the fluttertwitch" game. considering how completely horizontal and still i've been (yay puking! funfunfun!) since way early, i felt the baby way earlier than anyone believed, but it was definitely not my body making some of those twitches. now it's much more noticeable, of course, but i'm finally starting to feel a bit better so i'm able to be up and around a bit (a bit) more, so i'm not noticing them as often. but this kid, omg! this kid is a super bouncy ball and my womb is one of those obnoxious plastic inflatable jumping gyms. especially after i eat.

remember these? kangaroo balls? yeah. i swear, the kid thinks that my bladder is one of them. and has a BLAST with it, apparently.

li'l brat.

can't you tell i'm loving being pregnant? lol in all honesty, i'm incredibly thankful that i'm able to enjoy at least some of being pregnant this time around. i can totally live without the puking, and it can stop at any time now. it totally has my permission. but other than the puking, the dry heaves, the dizziness, the low blood sugar, low blood pressure, and crap endurance, it's not all that bad.

though the term guano loco is still applied liberally every day...

couldn't've said it better

You might call it spiritual logistics, Delena, but sometimes you have to move away, to get closer.

Or you might just call it weird.

Either way, it helps to remember it from time to time.
Tallyho,
The Universe

(And while we're at it, Delena, sometimes you have to let go, to stake your claim. Be still, to move forward. Give, to receive. Cry, to feel the joy. Pretend, to make it real. Fake it, before you make it. And sometimes, oddly enough, you must first decide to feel their love, to find it was there all along.)

i swear, i couldn't have said it better. sometimes i think "succinct" is a gift...and it's one i don't have. today's note from the universe summed up the last few days. you wouldn't believe (or maybe you would?) how many people asked me in that tone of voice why on earth i was trying to fix things with the ex-bf and be a family, especially when i really want so very badly to be a single mom.

the answer, "because i believe in living compassionately and making the difficult-yet-right choices," didn't really make sense without context, but if there's one thing that i'm not, it's succinct.

so i think it's a gift.

this Note says it all. putting my faith in distance, demonstrating that i'm not just "full of talk" but am more than ready and willing to do whatever's necessary to protect my child(ren), yet also willing to put my faith in compassion isn't easy, but it's the right thing to do.

and it paid off. it was a nerve-wracking two days and nights, and i swear to all the gods i can think of, there were a couple of times when abortion honestly looked like the only solution (i'm not kidding). but compassion finally outlasted his cynicism.

it wasn't at all beautiful. it came about because i had finally realized that as soon as i dropped the ex-bf off at his apartment, i was going to call up my dr's office and make an appointment for an abortion. the peace talks had failed, and his verbal abuse and threats wouldn't stop. when i say that it was the only sane choice, believe me when i say i am not kidding.

the prospect made me so sad that i couldn't help showing it (damn those pregnancy hormones!) , and it was the simple fact that i was actually crying that finally made him stop and rethink a few things. (this only really carries weight if you know beforehand that i am not the type to cry even when i'm entitled to, and that despite the roller coaster and struggle this whole time, not once have i cried even with all these hormones.)

at least his defenses finally --finally-- came down.

not once did i give up on compassion, nor did i rise to the bait and go on the offensive myself. i felt like a tide breaker during a storm, wave after wave smashing against me. i hadn't eaten since early sunday evening (watching a Godfather marathon with my dad), had slept very little, and it isn't like i have these huge energy reserves lately.

but it worked. seriously, i kept an image of the dalai lama in my mind the whole time, trying to live up to his example. it gives me a whole new appreciation for the remarkableness of that little holy man, especially compared to my own clumsy efforts.

i honestly don't know what to title this

i'm sitting in my parents' living room, staring out the window at the small two-lane sorta-highway that runs by their house. they're out in the middle of garden country, with huge industrial nurseries clustered together and growing everything from conifers to japanese ornamental cherry trees and wisteria. big business, where a yearly budget of $30 million is somewhere around the numbers they work with.

it's kinda like the boondocks, but not quite. but with nothing but plant life, two-lane highways, and a local coyote pack feeling at home in a place with no street lamps, it can feel like the middle of nowhere at times. though the middle of the night on a full moon, especially after a snow, is particularly enchanting out here.

right now, the gentle ripple of the cats' water fountain and the occasional truck passing through is all i can hear. well, that, and one of the cats snoring on the recliner next to me. i suppose when you're a 20+ pound cat, snoring's a way of life.

lately, i've been acutely sensitive to stress. even something as minor as knowing i have to be somewhere on a particular day is enough to be halfway to debilitating because my constitution's just so shot. and at my parents', even if none of my problems are fixed, something about feeling this safe...helps. maybe it's muscle tension, because as i hear my massage therapist tell me time and again, that's where i store everything. tense muscles means even my smooth muscles can't relax, and the more stressed out i am, the more i end up with the dry heaves. even on zofran, it can get bad enough that i still can't keep anything down.

vicious, vicious cycles. and the ER bills are piling up.

but that's not so much a worry. that's what payment plans are for. no, what has me so puzzled is this thing called "growing up." a few years ago, i used to resent doing the right thing. don't get me wrong, i'd still do it, but the pain of responsibility and integrity was at times almost physical. i would sigh and gripe about how growing up sucks and doing the right thing was at times damned...inconvenient.

well, maybe i've grown up since then. maybe i've just grown out of my childish selfishness and self-centeredness. (i like to think so, anyway!) or maybe it's just simply that my priorities have changed, and in light of what's truly important everything else just seems expendable.

i've learned that if a situation or a person is making it difficult to do what's right, then they're not in alignment with my honor and integrity which i've worked damn hard over the years to foster. "the right thing to do is only difficult when surrounded by fucktards." in light of that, it's easy to give up what's not important.

what's important now? this is the Year of the Basics. honesty is a basic. so is honor, integrity, and doing everything in my power to raise the iGoddess child right.

so i sent the ex-bf an electronic olive branch. i emailed him, asking if he truly wanted to be a family. it was a simple yes-or-no question, but it took several replies back and forth to get any kind of answer out of him. stubborn son of a bitch.

y'know, tony robbins says that cynical people are cowards. they don't want to trust, or believe in love, and are always believing the worst of a situation so they can protect themselves from getting hurt. that's not smart, that's chicken. he locked himself down so that what happened to him in the past won't ever happen again, instead of making smarter choices, changing a few habits, and trusting the right people.

love is always a far better shield than cynicism. true self love and a thorough knowledge of your own self worth is far better immunity to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune than being meaner than a "potential" enemy. and love and joy are far better healers than time and cynical coping mechanisms.

and love heals clean, with no scars.

i stand by my decision to be a single mom if i feel i must. honestly, i don't know if the problems that created our impasse have solutions. but we're sitting down tomorrow morning with a mediator to find out. it was for love i left, i told him, and for love i'm trying again.

my goals, as always, are to be true to myself (not compromise my self-worth or integrity), and to embrace full responsibility as this baby's mother by doing what i believe is best for it.

so, i dunno. we'll see.

things that make you go "hmm..."

quick note, just an observation i made:

talking with single-mom friends of mine, i noticed that they and their children fell into one of two categories: 1.) well-adjusted and happy, or 2.) maladjusted and in desperate need of therapy.

now, bear with me, this is just an observation that i made among my own friends, so it's by no means any sort of official or scientific. it was, quite simply, a thing that made me go "hmm..."

those friends of mine who fell into category 2 were, blessedly, the very small minority. what their single motherhood all had in common was a very young age (20 years old or younger), and single motherhood was thrust upon them by circumstances beyond their control. in some way or another, the father left them and they had no choice but to raise their kid(s) alone. they felt abandoned and sad, afraid and confused and very alone.

in category 1 are the moms who were more in my age group (30-33), except for one who was in her early 20's when entering single motherhood.

however, where category 1 differs is in the simple fact that they chose to be single mothers. for whatever reason, the father/sperm donor was severely lacking to the point where these extraordinary women made the decision not to include these males in their children's lives despite the traditional view that "no matter what, a child needs both parents!" yeah, no matter what, indeed.

these women turned their noses up at that and said, "Eff that! One responsible and mature, emotionally/mentally healthy parent is better than a dysfunctional pair!" and chose their path with courage and decisive action. their children lack for nothing in the grand scheme of things, are happy, love their mothers, and no one that i can see needs any therapy.

coincidence? honestly, i think not.

adventures in gestating

i know, my bad.

here i wrote all about how excited i was that the iGoddess child was going to be here, and then dropped off the face of the planet.

again.

oi vey. so no, i didn't really fall off the face of the planet. pregnancy hormones are kicking my ass, though. for the life of me, i can't recall if i ever mentioned the hyperemesis gravidarum which plagued me when i was pregnant with li'l *c*, but i'm sure i must have. that hit around the twelfth week and lasted until his birthday.

well, this time around, it hit around the fifth week, and it hit HARD. i'm still down, and i'm at thirteen weeks. by this time, i figure i've lost more than twenty pounds (last weigh-in was 18 lbs down a week ago), have had two ER visits for dehydration and, of all embarrassing things, fainting. yay super-low blood pressure.

so it's going to be another one of those. thank the gods for Zofran because, without that magic little 8mg pill 3 times a day, i wouldn't even be able to eat the little that i do. it's going to be a tough ride, baby.

also, i dumped the sperm donor. there's something about men that like the idea of a thing more than the actual thing. yeah, i have a problem with those. not that i'm keen to put up the details here, but suffice it to say that in this iVillage of ours, none of us really shy away anymore from making the tough-but-right choices. i like to think that i've continued that little tradition.

been thinking about you a lot, boho mom, and our conversations about single motherhood. and it wasn't a tear-filled or painful choice, either. i'm not sitting here eating ice cream, using up kleenex, and watching titanic or anything. actually, thanks i think in part to the nesting instinct, it felt more like house-cleaning than anything.

though i am eating ice cream, it's mainly for the heartburn. OMG, the heartburn!

now, for the first time, i actually feel excited about this whole thing. in my head i'm already decorating the funk palace, and can already see myself in the kitchen with the iGoddess child, side by side and cooking something gluten-free and awesome with the white album playing in the background.

it looks good, and my way finally looks clear. so, single moms in the audience (both current and former!), you ready to add another to your exalted ranks?

This is the Year Of

it's kinda funny. not funny ha-ha, but funny make-the-corner-of-your-mouth-kinda-curve-up-a-little-when-you-bemuse-yourself kinda funny.

i wrote the title to this blog entry and immediately began hearing the Tears for Fears song "Year of the Knife." now, i love Tears for Fears but they got it all wrong. summer won't turn to winter, love won't turn to stone. if anything, tears will turn into laughter, lead will turn into gold.

back in 2007, it was the Year of Secrets compete with: the Season of Temporary Insanity; the Invasion of the unFunk; the writing of the Funky Love Letter of Closure; the Inner Demon Tea Party and Imminent Fatal Gorge-Fest; the Multiversal Jiggy Snake and Funktastic Yayness; and last but not least, the introduction of Delena of the Funkywild.

2008 was the Year of the Delena with...well, wetter, wilder, and more interesting problems to solve. it was a greater definition of who Delena is, what she stands for, where she's going.

2009 was the Year of the Funky Wow! (exclamation point included). since i had a rather good handle on Delena of the Funkywild, it was time to realize my place in a bigger picture, and to develop a closer, intimate relationship with the Jiggy Snake. because i am God, and you are God, and i just thought i'd let you know. *grin*

so what holds 2010 in store for me?

well, as i sit here at 03:45 on New Year's Day, with my cat (my very large cat) whom i rescued on Christmas of the Year of Secrets as a cold, hungry, desperate kitten now sprawled on my lap looking up at me with a very contented kitty smile and purring like thunder...as i feel this thickness in my middle that can only be my burgeoning new child...as i listen to that child's father breathing deeply and evenly behind me...

...after looking backward, then downward, then inward, then upward...growing in love and soulfunk and passion and strength...

...knowing i have a whole, wide world to begin showing to a brand-new person here soon?

well, i suppose that makes 2010 the Year of the Basics, now doesn't it? =)

may the Funk be with you.

Dear 2009,

...I'm actually going to miss you. I know. Loads of people hated you and, let's be honest, you were a total bitch to a few of my really good friends. But you and me saw some good times: I found a fantastic job that I love, met the man of my dreams, fulfilled one of my remaining deepest desires (to get pregnant again), I know who my friends are, and didn't have to let anyone go. So...thanks! We had some times. =)