kitchen alchemy

The ongoing kitchen experiments continue... I am thrilled to tell you I have made bread.

OK, sorta. It was tortillas. But still. The making of bread is the holy grail, the archaic and arcane mystery that awaits me at the end of my kitchen learning curve. Baking actual bread intimidates the hell out of me. I compensate my making all the easy things that are bread-ish. I do banana bread, cake, "batter bread," corn bread, beer bread, and now I have made tortillas.

The cooking thing is an obsession lately, a manifestation of my attempt to become a Real Person. I am not a Real Person, according to my Bu's definition, because of many random things... Real People get up at a reasonable hour, they cook at home more than they eat out, they do not go commando because all their underwear is dirty.

A kitchen covered in flour is one more tiny little step toward the amazing transmutation into the imaginary productive, creative, me.

in which i abuse Capitalization

So, I freaked out on Bu last night because he wouldn't let me go visit Molly at midnight at the grandies' to see the new tooth. Mamaw called in the middle of the party to tell us about the discovery. Yes, the tooth would still be there as Bu and a friend eventually convinced me, and sure we deserved an adults only evening followed by actual solid sleep. This didn't compare in my brain with the fact that her very first tooth ever was found by not-me, so me needed to see it as soon as humanly possible. Nevermind she probably cut the tooth on my nipple and I just didn't check her gums yesterday.

randomosity

A thing I learned this weekend: A charley horse cramp is not nearly as awful after experiencing labor contractions as it is before labor. Even Bu was impressed with my zen-like approach to waiting for the pain to end. Not that charley horses don't still suck.

As a matter of fact, the tooth was resplendent at seven a.m. following six and a half hours of uninterrupted sleep. The night of bliss proved that even the moodiest hormonally charged bad day of cranky badness can be made all better by a double strong Tension Tamer Tea, a cuddly husband, and streaming video of heroes on a laptop in bed.

The badness of my day was all in my head. I'm owning my bitchiness. I was the one who decided that, even though I am usually passionately opposed to removing my body hair, I would wax my legs and be Glamorous. Also, I would borrow my best friend's classic black dress-up outfit, including heels, and I would be Sophisticated. I would Do My Eyes and also be Sexy. I would then wow my coworkers, board members, and clinic supporters with my ability to Cinderella myself from funky-messy assistant girl to Put Together Foxy Mama at our Oscars Party. (Bu & I take red carpet photos of guests each year.)

Not so much. I forgot my wallet when I scrambled to the store for brunch items, and had to put away all the stuff WIC vouchers don't cover. Then it was too late to make it back & cook & get the Birdie to the grandies'. Later, the leg waxing began, in a messy and annoying way, and I spilled warm wax all over the bathroom. Cleaned that up, and met souster at the door to retrieve my outfit. Quick shower & make-up. Right. OK, mascara in eye- wash off, reapply. Stings, watering, ouch. On to wardrobe. Only the outfit doesn't fit, and the heels are lethal. They are several inches too high for any human being to walk in and they are so pointy-toes I have a toe cramp just imagining them. So I throw on the dressiest black dress I have- short sleeved very simple. My only dress shoes are ballet flats with bows. They are cute bows, and are adorable- with jeans. As a whole, my ensemble looks like a 12 year old girl at a funeral. My panty hose have no runs- at least there's that. So we go.

The printer won't work with our laptop so Bu has to run home to get drivers for the hardware. Meanwhile I have discovered that my hose are too big and they literally roll down under my butt whenever I walk four steps. So I'm tugging at my ass every few seconds trying to hike 'em back up. I'm an anxious mess by this time, and think I'd love a glass of wine. Only it's a cash bar and if we spend any money we'll overdraw our account. (Ha! Silly me- we did that anyway buying frivolous gasoline.)

The event was wonderful, however. We made roughly twice as much as last year for the clinic. The turn out was amazing. I learned that it's possible to pump in a large bathroom stall in bra and panty hose and not let any of the bottles touch anything:) The whole night I was seeing a scene from The Secret where a woman has a Bad Day which is the result of her telling herself, "It is a Bad Day," and I'd tell myself to shake it off, but I couldn't muster up the conviction to radiate positivity with my hose rolled up under my booty and bunching around my adolescent shoes.

on sunshine & hormones

Ask anyone to describe me in one word? "Moody." (Actually, ask my supervisor and she'd probably say "flaky," but that's another post with this headline: "Woman with reasonably high IQ and mad computer skillz finds she can't function at job retarded monkey could do.")

My husband would definitely say "moody." I'm infamous for my hair-trigger tears. This morning? Bliss, pure silly bliss. Why? Sunshine, tiny woody buds on the lilac bush outside my window, a great cuppa tea with stevia extract not honey so I feel like a healthy chick. That's it. In contrast, reasons I have cried in the last 48 hours:

• Oprah inspires me to lose weight.
• Molly scrunches my boob while nursing and looks adorable.
• I'm ticketed for the dogs ands hate myself briefly.
• Mom on Style network gets makeover because she's been sad and frumpy after losing her 10 year old son.
• Tool song on radio.
• Molly learns to clap her hands
• I call the Grandies: "Whatcha doin'?" "Oh, I'm cooking breakfast while Mamaw's reading me Bible verses." (Because my parents pretty much hated each other by the time they were married half as long as these two.)

I think I may be having some chaotic hormonal surges. "Due" for my period if we count from my first one post-partum, but having signs of ovulation instead. Weird as I used to be a perfect 28 day full moon mama. Had to reassure myself via Breastfeeding Community that it takes a while to re-regulate when still nursing. I'm thinking about revisiting hormonal birth control. Maybe this new IUD I hear about? Or I think they called it an IUC. I dunno. I just know I'm not letting Bu get a vasectomy before the Mollybird's a year old. He could change his only child stance, but I so very seriously doubt he will. For the record, I'm fine either way. I was with him in the 100% only-one camp, but now I could sway:) You saw that coming, right? Me too. I'm still content with my onesie of course.

tool + jung = babble

The thing about the Law of Attraction, i.e. my new obsession, a.k.a. The Secret, a.k.a. a law of Wicca via Ceremonial magick is this: it works to a crazy degree. It's insane when you pay attention to your attitude how much of what surrounds you is brought to you because of the energy you emit.

I think it really ties into the idea of sychronicity. Whatever I'm focused on keeps popping up everywhere. So I'm seeing references all over the place about creativity and rediscovering it. The cool thing is that this reinforces my quest for changing from artslacker to artist. I heard my favorite Tool
song on the radio today, a song I don't have on CD or mp3 any longer. My love for Tool approaches a religious fervor:) The lyrics are so influenced by alchemy and the occult, and the music and lyrics are beautifully dark but transormative. This song is one of those pieces of art that just opens up my soul and reminds it of all the stuff it keeps forgetting- what with me letting my brain & body stay so cluttered.

a bit of the lyrics:

I am too connected to you to
Slip away, to fade away.
Days away I still feel you
Touching me, changing me,
And considerately killing me...
And as the walls come down and
As I look in your eyes
My fear begins to fade
Recalling all of the times
I have died
and will die.
It's all right.

It was awesome to be hanging out with the Birdie in her high chair, cleaning my kitchen like crazy, and this song came on, so I stopped, picked her up and danced and sang with her. It's the first time I heard it since she was born and I was struck with how new and the same I am. (?) How to describe? To be filled with love and light, and be so content in a simple task- cleaning my home with my little daughter eating her "scooby snacks" and yet remember that I'm still the same girl who has been through dark, dark times and dived headfirst into rage and mourning and sadness. Awareness that that girl went deep into her shadow and came out the other side with a better wholeness than before. (This itself is a paraphrasing of another Tool favorite.)

So, this is me: tag-team parent on the long-weekend shift, overstressed and worried, taking inspiration from random radio programming and the beauty of scrubbing a refrigerator with baking soda.

new flickr photos

New photos a la Bu at our Flickr page, including this one, which is a strong candidate for a new profile photo. Are you sick of seeing me topless and... well, saggy? Because I think I might be.

mother of the freakin' year

And you thought Britney was the most pathetic redneck mother in the country...

Well, in my defense, my human baby is accounted for and it's been 7 years since I shaved my head under the influence of a fifth of Jack Daniels.

But still: Animal control just dropped off my dogs and issued me four citations, two for each errant dog. They were "unconfined/no leash" and I couldn't show him licenses. I don't know if we have licenses or not, but I'm thinking we don't. The supreme irony is that I was telling Bu we should start walking them out with leashes to poo so we can confine the lumps to one area that Molly can avoid when she's big enough to play outside. He thought I was insane and silly. No one in our holler* does that- the big dogs run the neighborhood pretty much.

So now we have to go to court (at least $65) and show our licenses (who knows how much that costs) and proof of rabies shots (have they gotten those lately? Gods I suck. I have no fucking idea.)

The officer also informed me they had skin problems and I told him they'd just been to the vet and were being treated- they both have nasty allergies. So now I'm dreading telling Bu, because we already are in the hole for this month, and also I feel like the skankiest shittiest most careless trashy dog-mommy in the world.

And Baby Einstein's over so I have to go read to the baby for 8 hours to alleviate my TV guilt.

*that's WV for "hollow," here meaning the cheap real estate in the valley between the hills where the nicer houses are located. I'm feeling acutely socio-economically bitter today since we don't know where our mortgage payment will come from. My apologies for the downer after my Rainbow Goddamn Brite post yesterday:)

positivity & artistic limbo

Warmer day, start of my weekend. Feeling groovy today: perky, possibly to an annoying degree. Hence, a digi doodle for you:

This is a welcome change from yesterday, in which Bu and then I plummeted into a Funk. Apparently, for me, it was a short lived Funk, which rocks, as I have been known to wallow for months in a dark place. Thank gods I seem to be moving further away from that as I grow more wrinkles and silver hairs. My impression of my life is that I was sleepwalking from age 15-25. A decade lost to just nothing.

I'm doing a lot of daydreaming about reinvinting my life, "Evolution of a moon-eyed etc..." being the presumptive raison d'etre for this blog. Molly has changed me so drastically and beautifully that it's wild. I was thinking about that nursing a wiggle baby fighting sleep while I watched a Sex and the City rerun. It was an episode before Miranda had Brady and there was a pregnant chick breakdown. Their minds were blown pondering how much it changes you, being a mother. My reaction is that it change as much as you want it to. I wanted, needed my daughter to allow me to focus on something huge outside myself. I see her as a cuddly little fire lit under my ass to get my life in order.

When I got pregnant, I wondered what the impact of motherhood would be on my artistic life. Certain professors of the non-namesake variety (Molly's named after my ceramics prof) seem to think it's pretty much a death sentence for my hypothetical career. So, what I thought was that I want her to see me being the best version of myself I can be- that includes producing art regularly. I think it would be so harmful to her to see her mother wasting her talent.

How much art have I made in the time span since I was barely pregnant?

Zero art.

The thing is, it isn't the diapers and the nursing and working two jobs. It's my slacker self doing the same thing I've always done-nothing of consequence. For hours at a time.

So I'm trying to organize this life and family. We are living so loosely, with no routine and no direction. The baby's sleeping in with us then is up too late. The business plan's sitting there in a notebook with weeks?months? of dust on. My studio is a catch all storage room piled to ceiling with miscellania. My clay is in dried bricks, my kiln has never been turned on.

I'm implementing some ideas from The {cheesy} Secret, and I'll go into more detail later about that. My biggest thing need is to just create some structure in my/our life. I've got to start managing time better. I mean I will, I will, I will. I've become the thought police, trying to frame things positively. Constant battle.

Oh, and look: blog pretty again:) It's evolving too. Yay for BlogU.

home, a cozy little prison?

David Byrne has visited Savannah, Georgia recently, and made me wistful for that amazing city. I've only been once, but Shane and I fell in love. The architecture and garden squares, spanish moss looking all lazy and drapey and sexy everywhere, the sultry heat just cast a spell on me. Something reminded me of the New Orleans of my imagination (never been there much to my disappointment.)

We talk about moving there when we daydream together. I vascillate between completely loving the relatively small town we live in, and feeling smothered my the familiarity. I love that our families are close, and I love the friendliness and comfort of this place, but sometimes I feel so sheltered and ignorant of the real world. I'm sure a lot of this feeling comes from living 10 or so miles from the house I grew up in and isn't a West Virginia thing necessarily. I've only ever lived one other place- Pittsburgh for a brief alternate universe of a time- and I feel like I'm missing so much culture and experience. In ways I feel insulated here. Time's strange in Appalachia. The mood of the people of older generations seems like it's the same as their grandparents' grandparents. Very slow, resistant to change, and conservative. My generation has the advantage of living in two communities- the global environment technology has created and the small old one we were raised in.

I love it and hate it. I think how lucky Molly will be to grow up in a safe tame world, then I remember how we are ranked 49th in quality of education. I have reveries of living on the east coast- the left coast, where I'd feel at home with the liberal green attitude that's so alien here still. Then my love of the earth reminds me how much I'd miss the green hills and little wandering creeks. Shane hates that idea, but moving to Savannah or the Outer Banks sounds good to him. The ocean would be a more than fair trade for the mountains I think. When I'm on Hatteras Island, where my mom's ashes were washed into the sea, I feel more at home in myself than I do here.

Beneath all these musing is the reality of our situation. We feel trapped by our bank account- if we could travel more, would we be happier to come home? How would we make a move if we wanted to? We also know Molly will be starting school in a few very short years. We'd rather be settled for her- someplace else or here. And what about the grandies, who see her every other day now. How could we take her away from them? But are we hindering her by staying here? I hate thinking I'm doing things by default. Like I'm not choosing anything, I'm just letting circumstance do it for me. If we have a choice some day when money's coming more easily, and we decide it's best to be here, we'll be here on purpose and that's wonderful. I'm just feeling trapped because our options in so many areas are severely limited.

happy moonday

Molly, nine moonly-months. Hobbies include naps in the Mei Tai sling, eating hummus and beans, growing teeth, and practicing standing all by herself. Bedtime is midnight. Mama tired.

oops i did it again

So, I keep blowing up my template and being generally unable to change ANYTHING without doing so, so I'm off to recreate it and you'll just have to live with a wonky right column until then. OK, so it's fixed but needs improvement. Carry on:)


CrazyHip Mamas, I am the worst ring applicant, I promise I'll get your code reinstated ASAP.

(so sorry)

someone's grief

Sometimes you read a terrible thing, and it's a stranger and it's so sad, and you pause and you send some healing thoughts out to them, but you don't even know where you're sending them. You are momentarily gloomy, and you prepare to navigate away from the blog where her friend posted about her loss of her newborn baby.

Then a small detail in a comment drags your heart out of your body and turns it inside out and you have such a vivid image of being this women that it takes your breath away.

Wannabe Hippie, who has the cutest girls ever, posted about her friend's tragedy. Asking, "What can I do? Anything at all?" Someone mentioned relief for sore breasts, because her milk would come in of course, with no mouth to feed. This just shatters me- to think of a mother's tender newly milky breasts leaking and hurting like her heart would be. Nursing to me is so much more than just feeding, it's a physical representation of the link I feel between my suddenly-mellowed spirit and Molly's bursting, new one.

All kinds of love and prayers for this woman, and her sweet friend who feels helpless.

ah, the morning after

I propose that February 15th be dubbed International Eat Chocolate for Breakfast Day. I scrounged up a nice dinner at the supermarket and found some chocolates for us to share. We rented "Click" which was a little better than I'd expected. The best thing?

...FIVE (5!) hours of solid sleep, in the crib!

So I actually slept with my husband on Valentine's Day. *Swoon* Could have been more romantic if someone hadn't been cranky with a sore throat and stuffy nose and hadn't kicked her husband's well meaning gentle advances away, but still: awesome.

melancholia & the secret

I feel so wistful and sad. I'm not sure why. The weirdly fragile mood set in before I read this and then this, so these beautiful loving posts aren't exactly the reason I feel tears in my throat.

It was hard sleeping in late with Bu & Boue and then having to face the fact that the roads had cleared and I had no excuse to avoid work any longer. I nearly teared up while microwaving watery hot cocoa in the cold back office, thinking of them snuggled up in bed warm and cozy. (I later found out they were actually napping then, like I imagined.)

I'm bummed and pissed at myself for not staying up late to make Bu a Valentine card, thus breaking a five-would-be-six year tradition of arty Heidi Valentines. They usually feature an actual human heart image because a) they are cooler than fake-heart-shapes, b) the vampire loving former goth girl adores the idea of giving Bu a bloody organ image for a gift, and c) I love anatomical imagery. I get creative chakra orgasms watching the opening credits for House or looking at old Vitruvius etchings.

But, can I be excused because I don't think he got me anything this year either and we are new parents and broke? We have a gift certificate to a new local organic restaurant we usually can't afford, but we elected to stay in. The weather's ick, and we want to be with the Mollybird. So my task is to stop at the grocery store, pick out something for dinner, buy wine or not, and get a movie. I feel the opposite of creative. I'm pissy because I feel like pasta primavera and Bu doesn't like it. We have opposing tastes in food. Hmm. No, now I want sake and sushi takeout, but that's too spendy. Fuck.

We got our The Secret DVD's. I was put off by the production- so drama queeny cheesily overdone. The message is cool, though. I'm so down with the Law of Attraction. It's a principle of Wicca flavored magic. Bu likes it except for a couple of the lecturers/Teachers/cult leaders. He felt motivated, so I think we can work some positive mojo into our lives. i fell asleep before gleaning any knowledge of how to implement the ideas, so I'll give it another open-minded go.

Happy Valentine's Day if, like me, you find it a good excuse to make gory cards, drink wine & eat chocolate off of with your loved one(s.)

arty night, the mom photos

Bu was at the photo lab today picking up a job, and our friends let us know an old friend was in from Brooklyn to show his new work at the school gallery where we all got our BA's. We decided to go have Middle Eastern food and see the work.

It is awesome. He used to sandblast tomb stones for a living, and his work is on marble, and it's images of graffiti and found objects and junk food. So weird and brilliant to juxtapose this random stuff that we see as a casual, un-thought of texture in our environment and use permanent heavy material to frame it in a new way.


This is his site.

Molly enjoyed herself thoroughly. She feasted on hummus, eaten off my fingers, and we got to see a lot of old friends who'd never met her.

My friend brought me the photos of mom that turned up at the lab.


These are the Yayas, mom leaning out in the top left:

This is mom and her best friend, a.k.a. Molly's LaLa, on her right:

It's so amazing to have this sudden little surprise of her smile out of nowhere.

poem * little star

I posted a new poem on AllPoetry a while ago, and there are my old ones available as well. Just remembered to link it here.

little star

Back to work now.

Again.

unconscious mutterings

1. The best thing :: would be chocolate


2. Hold :: me closer tiny dancer i love shane


3. Rapture :: =blondie, but would I have written that if Eden hadn't? maybe I would have typed sex, but as we know I'm a nursing born-again virgin.


4. Cover :: make-up. can i find a good shade at the health food store? can I afford that? need some for fundraiser party. will aunt P still buy me a dress?


5. Restrictive :: corset


6. Baker :: dozen i want sugar cookies


7. Author :: who am I reading? who wrote Life of Pi? Martel? that was great. need new book. Second Nature was OK but reading large print made me feel cheated like the book was artifically long. Nice to hold book at normal distance. why don't I wear my reading glasses?
   
8. Pill :: hormones


9. Months :: pregnant. i'll never have a giant belly again how sad but i was so miserable at the end


10. Valentine’s Day :: red; see #1; do i have time to make shane a card this year? i always do have to sneak & do one by hand maybe

thanks, Eden, for the link. never heard of Unconscious Mutterings. now I have. 'S good.

molly's shout out & books you never thought i'd mention

Molly waves "Hi!" to Marianne. Thanks for the *beautiful* hat. We finally got her to leave it on for a trip out by taking off the (adorable!) ribbon. The wave thing is the cutest thing ever. She knows the word "Hi" means to wave her itty bitty arm and sometimes she groks "Bye Bye" too. So far, there is not a sign of Mama-leaving-trauma, mostly because she's so bonded with the Grandies.

Speaking of the Grandies, Papaw heard me talking about The Hillary's run for the White House and decided that I should read Rewriting History, as well as Hating America and something by Bill O'Reilly. I grinned and said "I don't know if I should read these- they may piss me off." He insisted I'd find them very good and I replied, "I don't think you realize how liberal I am." He said, "If you're that liberal, you're in trouble, honey." (He loves me even though I'm a tattoed Goddess worshipping Hillary lover.) I told him that yes, actually I was "in trouble" politically because I am indeed so radical that I will see little or none of my favorites in office in my lifetime. He said something about Social Progressivism, and I said, "Um, yeh, like supporting gay marriage and the like?" His answer was, "No, not necessarily. Social Progressives want to change everything and they are against traditionalism."

I politely exited then, because both of the following things are true: Social Progressives aren't against traditional values per se, and many traditional values suck.

The books are in the bathroom with the good ol' King James, old parenting mags, and my cheesier "Wicca 101" books- where things that I am interested in but not very much go to live and be perused idly while I do bathroomy things. I chatted happily with Bu about what books from my collection I could offer in trade. We decided lesbian erotica would be best:)

cave womyn

I've been deep in hibernation this week- nursing myself through a nasty cold with hot toddies, Sudafed (accompanied by an arsenal of oatmeal and brewer's yeast and vast lakes of water to preserve my milk supply,) and soup. The weather has only added to my insulated feeling. We had a pretty serious snow- maybe five inches, which is great for our area in these days of global warming. Molly caught a bit of the cold, but seems much more comfortable than I was at the worst.

Tomorrow I'm planning to emerge from my coccoon to tend to grocery shopping and a serious housecleaning. This house is driving me insane. Chaos has taken up permanent residence and I must drive Her out.

Bu is joining me in a renaissance mood lately. We are reinventing our attitudes and healing the fragmented craziness of our lives. We cemented our commitment to change by buying a copy of The Secret DVD. I feel a little flaky jumping on board the self-help machine after getting giddy seeing these guys on Oprah, but that's totally what happened. I'm more excited that Bu and I got hyped about the same idea that I about the actual idea I think. It just seems like a good dose of positivity and a good reminder of how important thinking purposefully is. I really think one's focus creates one's reality (if that's not a direct Jedi quote it's close, lol) but I don't live that way, and I need to. We need to. So, I'll post after viewing the DVD to see if I'm as excited as I imagine I'll be. There's probably a whole post in me somewhere about my desire for self improvement. Hence the "evolution..." tagline.

Map of my brain: hibernate --> cave--> womb --> da Vinci drawing --> my old digital sketch from when I was insane thinking I was pregnant and knowing I was but being terrified I wasn't for some unknown reason only explainable by the fact that I was indeed pregnant and my whole body was flooded with strange new hormones. I forgot until I found the file that I called it "My Own Red Place."

During the Great Hibernation of 2007, I read Life of Pi. It was fantastic. Molly was unphased by the passages I read to her, but then she's really more focused on learning to finger-feed herself, the strange technique of crawling she invented (on hands and one foot, dragging the other leg,) and practicing standing alone then thudding on her booty.

charge of the goddess

A piece of art for my dear UU friend, who is also a Mary-revering pagan. The text, unfortunately illegible here, is the Charge of the Goddess. Since it's one of my favorite prayers, I'll indulge myself & post the text below:

Listen to the words of the Great Mother, who of old was called Artemis, Innana, Demeter, Aphrodite, Cerridwen, Diana, Brigid and by many other names.

"Whenever you have a need of anything, once in the month, and better it be when the moon is full, you shall assemble in some secret place and adore the spirit of Me who am Queen of all Witches. You shall be free, and as a sign that you be truly free you shall be naked in your rites. Sing, feast, dance, make music and love, all in My presence, for Mine is the ecstasy of the spirit and the Mine also is joy on earth. For my law is love of unto all beings. Mine is the secret that opens upon the door of youth and Mine is the cup of wine of life that is the holy grail of immortality. I give thee knowledge of the spirit eternal and beyond death, I give peace and freedom and reunion with those that have gone before. Nor do I demand sacrifice, for behold, I am mother of all things, and My love is poured upon the earth."

Hear the words of the Star Goddess, the dust of whose feet are the hosts of heaven, whose body encircles the universe: "I who am the beauty of the green earth and the white moon among the stars and the mysteries of the waters, I call upon your soul- arise and come unto Me! For I am the soul of nature that gives life to the universe. From Me, all things proceed and unto Me they must return. Let my worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals."

Let there beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you. And you who seek to know Me, know that thy seeking and yearning will avail thee not, unless you know the Mystery; for if that which you seek, you find not within thee, you wilt never find it without. For behold, I have been with you from the beginning and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.

Blessings!

mom

The craziest, most serendipitous thing happened:

My souster (bestest friend, soul+sister=souster) works in a photo lab, and she called me to tell me she and our friend were printing a set of snapshots, and the women in the photos really reminded them of the YaYas (my mom's girlfriends.) They looked closer, and realized they were the YaYas and my mom was in some of the pictures. I asked her if there was any ethical way to get me a set of the photos, and they'd already contacted the woman and told her who I was and gotten permission to give me a set.

It's so crazy. Mom hated being photographed, even though she was so gorgeous, so I don't have a lot of photos. These are at least seven years old, so it's just crazy this lady happened to find them and decide to print them. Then, she took them to souster's lab, which is unlikely because they usually do high end processing for professionals and I doubt they get too many snapshots like that.

It's freakin' awesome. I can't wait to post some photos.

-------------------------------

I've been dreaming about Mom again, and they are disturbing lucid dreams where she's alive and I know when I wake up she'll be dead. Also she doesn't know she is dead, and if I mess up and let it slip she'll be gone. It's so weird. I always have to ask her why she's not dead or why she doesn't remember that she is or was sick, and there's a horrifyying scared look on her face. It's so vivid. I guess my own motherhood's bringing things up again- I used to dream this constantly.

Or it's in the stars, because a bunch of people are dealing with this. Thordora at Spin Me I Pulsate has a beautiful heart-wrenching post about her grief today. And when I talked to souster the other day, she was telling me that she and her eldest son have been missing her Dad a lot. He died the year after my mom did. The strange thing is that her little guy was just a year old when his grandpa died. He keeps talking about Grandpa like he knew him, in a sends-chills-down-your-spine, psychic and beautiful way. That kid is so amazing and cool. He's named after my mom, because souster got pregnant within weeks or so of mom's death. That was such a beautiful gift to me that she named him for her. It's a good reminder of how, in the big picture, birth and death are perfect mirrors and there's such beauty in the light and dark.

The macrocosm of death is easy to revere and understand. It's when one small, specific life is gone from you that the devastation happens. Someone who's echo keeps making patterns in your life long after they've gone.

new layout... so exhausted!

My adventures in designing have worn me out today. I have plenty of client work to do, including the exciting layout for the urban wear website. (Let me just say how ecstatic I am to be working with a hip awesome client, because the last website and logo I did was for someone with very, very different taste than mine.) But, I haven't taken time to play with my precious, beloved blog in so long, so I messed around with PsychoKinesis template generator (because I barely know html, much less CSS or whatever the fuck widgets are) and finally came up with brilliance incarnate. Then it wouldn't work, so another hour later I realized I have to revert to the old blogger template and that seems to have worked.

There are issues that need ironing out, like my having to manually put in my labels links, but I seriously need to get to work Four more hours of Mollylessness (OK, so that's not my best invented word ever...) and oh Goddess I haven't pumped since she nursed at noon. Gonna 'splode.

A note: The Boue can crawl, and she is eight months. I'll do a moonday graphic later, and since this is MY universe I'm making the executive decision to change to normal Gregorian dates rather than lunar, regardless of my lunar dating rocks rant from a while back. So moondays will not always be Mondays, and I'm already late anyway.

And now I pump, and rest, and then jump headfirst back into Fireworks, the best program in the world.