Today I was able to THINK instead of just worry. Thinking is proactive, while worrying is just brain noise. I try and think often, but it ends up being loud, staticky anxiety. If you could record and amplify what happens in my brain when I try and imagine or plan my future, it would sound like a cat walking across a synthesizer. It would look like one of those paintings that elephants make with their trunks.

Yesterday a friend sent me a link to a commercial, and the voice over was a Charles Bukowski poem. I searched for the poem, and as I read the words I got teary eyed. I work in advertising,so it pains me a little to admit that I hadn’t known this poem until I saw the Levi’s ad that featured it. That’s how life goes sometimes though, you have to be willing to find inspiration anywhere. These were the exact words I needed to read to put my thoughts in order.

The Laughing Heart
-Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Be on the watch. That phrase is like a kick to my heart. I can’t keep looking away from the opportunities that I’m given. I want to have the kind of life that I can tell my children I chose, I pursued, I worked and arranged. And I was able to weather the hard parts because I wanted what I was living. So I’m starting now, and I’m going to become the person I knew I could be in the third grade.

This baby doesn’t want me to forget s/he’s in there. S/he likes to wake up from a nap in my belly, stretch those tiny arms and legs, then kickkickkickkickKICK. Sometimes the kicking comes around 4 am, and my bladder gets in the way. Other times it comes when I’m feeling really hopeless, and the little baby reminds me what I’m working so hard for…who I’m working so hard for.

I’m working hard for this baby in another way. I’m trying to get my ducks in a row so when s/he arrives, our family will have options. I can’t go into detail yet, I just want to write about it here so my loved ones and supporters keep me accountable. I’m starting to realize that my goals haven’t changed very much since I was in the third grade. Maybe now that I’m 33 I can start making some of this sh*t happen.

My second Progesterone shot is tomorrow, the nurse is coming to my office. I’m excited to be at 19 weeks, excited that the baby seems to be cooking nicely, but not excited to get another mega-dose of hormones. I had been warned that the side effects might be challenging (I think my doc said it’d be like PMS) but I didn’t really understand what that meant. It turns out that a syringe full of progesterone every week leads to clever displays of femininity such as screaming swears at taxi drivers, sneering at jay walkers, having detailed murder fantasies about bad waitresses, and having hot flashes.

The good news is that this will all be a distant memory once I have crying, pooping, demanding, wonderful little baby.

I waited all day Friday and Saturday morning to hear from the company that would administer my progesterone shot. By noon on Saturday I was going through cycles of loud crying. I was supposed to meet with my book club at two, but by the time the final confirmation came that I’d be getting my shot at five, it was too late to make my meeting. So I cried again. When the nurse finally arrived I was back in the zone: I’m the patient who’s ever-so charming and easy going and you’ll have no idea that I’ve been crying and freaking out for the past 72 hours.

She totally fell for it.

The nurse had been kind enough to have me ice my butt so by the time she jabbed me with the longest, thickest needle I’ve ever seen my bun was frozen solid. I didn’t feel a thing. She stuck around for about an hour asking questions and monitoring my reaction to the shot- everything was good.

I guess the crying and keening was because I hate being reminded that this will be an uphill battle. And it’s not just my anatomical shortcomings, it’s the a-holes at the doctor’s office, my insurance company, the constant fear that I’ll bump into someone who says exactly the wrong thing. Or worse: I’ll bump into some one who hasn’t seen me since the last time I was pregnant. That’s a tough one. Them: “Hi! You’re pregnant again! How’s your other little one?” Me: “Oh he’s dead (or some slightly easier-to-swallow-version).

I know, I know, it could be worse. That’s the other challenge- trying to be nice to people who try and cheer me up. I’m not un-cheery, I’m just living the reality. Having people try and get me to look at the bright side just depresses me more, because it reminds me how lonely this whole process is.

The good news is we’re on a roll and as of Friday, I’m at the half-way mark. The bad news is that we’re on a roll and as of Friday, I’m at the half-way mark. This pregnancy is like a freight train- it’s either going to roll into the depot nice and easy or derail with a spectacular explosion.

P.H.R. or Pregnancy Hormone Rage is a very real problem affecting pregnant women all over the world. I am in the process of conducting the first study on this important topic, and using myself as the subject. I assume it’s the first study, but haven’t really checked for others because I’m super busy taking on-line IQ tests.

Recently Tom G and I had dinner with friends. Because Tom is the most even-tempered, cool headed, respectful, awesome person on earth, he can have friends with radically different political views. He can have political discussions with these friends and engage intellectually and with utter courtesy. Even when things sound heated, or I catch him rolling his eyes, you can tell that he’s just enjoying being with people and having good conversation. Tom and I have so much in common, but we are not alike.

I have had friends with opposite political views, and unless we agree to a cage match to the death- we have to agree to never ever discuss politics. For example: I once almost lost a job because I couldn’t stop bickering with the Jehovah’s witness who sat next to me. I swear she was baiting me all the time, making offensive declarations and watching my reaction with glee. Eventually we were separated and vowed not to let myself be manipulated like that again.

So, at dinner the other night, everything was going along nicely until I was gripped by PHR. The friend and I started out talking about a political subject, then he referenced a concept that drives me crazy in my regular life (Entitlement Programs) and I snapped. I suddenly felt like I was sitting at another table, watching myself sneer and roll my eyes and say horribly disrespectful things TO MY FRIEND. Over some dumb political argument. And I couldn’t’ stop myself. Our friend was too polite to point out that I was being completely rude and nasty and he couldn’t have gotten a word in edgewise anyway, because I was doing a monologue of ranting.

I was so embarrassed by the way I was acting while I was acting that way. I kept thinking SHUT UP SHUT UP to myself, but I wouldn’t shut up. In fact, it wasn’t until Tom G said he was going to leave the table if I didn’t cut it out that I finally felt like some one had pulled out my crazy plug.

My heart raced for another hour- long after we had moved on to more gentile subjects. On the way home I apologized to Tom and told him I was so ashamed of myself. Until he told me that he thought I didn’t understand what our friend was arguing. To a woman suffering from PHR, that sounded like he was agreeing with our friend. And I went crazy all over again.

In the end of course, everything was fine. No one suffered permanent damage and I will now try and remove myself from a situation that might trigger PHR. Please, be sensitive of your loved ones who suffer from this affliction. Imagine your pregnant friends are delicate, sensitive 15 year olds, because that’s kind of how it feels. Every minor inconvenience or disagreement feels like you got blown off at the Sadie Hawkin’s Dance all over again.

I am a malcontent, and I hate admitting it. However, lately I can’t ignore that my favorite topics of conversation are the following: Who’s annoying me, which politician is an idiot/scumbag, the Walmartization of America, how I’m getting screwed over/ignored/misunderstood, and how most people are idiots.

I don’t really believe that stuff, I just can’t stop talking about it. At first maybe I think it’s just easy to talk about, or easy to make people laugh through a little ranting. Then I build up some steam and the next thing you know my face is red and spittle is flying out of my mouth.

When I lie awake in bed at night I make big plans. I’m going to make so many changes and when the lights are off and everything is quiet, it seems so easy. Then I get up in the morning, and I’m stymied at the prospect of taking a shower. “Another shower?” I think, “Damn I just took one yesterday.” It’s hard to implement a lot of change when you’re emotionally exhausted at the thought of washing yourself. On the other hand, a lot of incredible art and literature was produced pre-daily-bathing, so you do the math.

Just so you can follow along at home, thanks to a winning combination of the idiots at my doctor’s office and the scumbags at my insurance company I’ll be 18 weeks on Friday and still haven’t gotten my first progesterone shot.

Last weekend I started trying to put old blog posts into a document- I wanted it to be laid out like a novel. Well, the truth is I was hoping it would just turn into a novel because I changed the layout. Reading all those old blog entries made me realize something I hadn’t noticed before: this is some seriously depressing shit.

That should be obvious to the person who went through it, but my mind is sparing me the glaring details of the past. I can’t believed I survived it, but I do know how I did it. I remember the first week Tom G and I were home from the hospital. We didn’t do much besides sleep and cry. The first day I felt like a shadow, or a ghost. Tranquilizers allowed me to sleep the day away, sit in front of a cooling diner plate, then sleep all night. The second morning I woke up and clung to Tom and screamed cried. I didn’t stop crying until I had decided to live through the pain. And once I decided, I couldn’t change my mind. I don’t know exactly when I told Tom G that I had made up my mind, but I know that he believed me. Things stayed bad, then got a little better, then got bad…but I always promised TG that I would come out the other end, and he always believed me. So I just had to get better.

Someone I love so so much calls this my “stupid blog”. I laugh when he says it, because I know exactly what he means, and I often feel the same way. This is the place where I write the worst stuff way more often then the good stuff. And this is the place where all the raw ugly pain gets splashed all over everyone, including me.

When I told my sister in law and my brother about my attempt at a book, they both reminded me that I was to use this blog for inspiration. I pretended to agree at first but quickly confessed that I was probably too lazy to REALLY write a book. Maybe I could take like a creative-cut-and-pasting class at the local college? Or maybe someone else could do it?

If I were a REAL writer I would obsess about it all day every day until I finally just quit my job and burrowed into a dank room somewhere with a key board and a pack of cigarettes and a pain of fingerless gloves and just eat rare steaks and drink whiskey until I birthed the fiery novel that had been growing in my soul for three decades. But I don’t like smoking or red meat and I’m pregnant anyways so I have to spent most of my time obsessing about the baby. Maybe in a few more decades I could try the type writer thing. Or maybe I can take a more bright loft/bathrobe/hot tea approach.

I’m four months pregnant today.

My body is starting to look just like a bowling pin, which I think is charming especially because I bowl about a 60. It’s a really nice conversation starter. I could either be a pregnant lady or some one who just loves beer and nachos. Both would be accurate. Sometimes I hang out in the liquor store and try and make eye contact with people to try and provoke them into saying something about me shopping for booze and being pregnant. No one has come close to acting judgmental yet, which reinforces my fear that I just look over-fed.

I’ve been trying to convince my dog to switch places with me. I’d have to have some clothes altered for the extra legs, but I think she’d be a comparable worker, driver, cook, and housekeeper. She doesn’t think I’d be able to fulfill her duties of napping and sniffing gross things and trying to eat chicken bones off the sidewalk. So it’s a negation in progress.

We’re moving out of this apartment at the end of August, so I’ve started to get really frantic about spying on the neighbors across the street. I’m just short of buying binoculars, and that’s only because I’m scared I’ll see some one watching me try and spy on them with my binoculars. I do press my face to the windows and cup my hands around my eyes to redirect the light. I would probably look pretty insane if someone saw me doing that. I mean, I’m sure the people who have seen me doing that think I’m insane.

Frustratingly, I’m back to being shrink-wraped. The pain and aches of the cerclage keeps me submerged self-pity. “No one understands how this feels” I keep thinking, which makes me feel very naive and whiney and silly. Especially because I do have several women in my life who know exactly what I’m going through! My brain and my heart conspire against me though, and I spent long stretches of the day hiding my physical and mental pain.

Laughing hurts my cervix. I was previously unaware that my vaginal was involved in any way with my laughter, but maybe I don’t really understand my anatomy. Being on pelvic rest means avoiding lifting anything over five pounds, but I’m pretty sure my purse weighs about 16 pounds. My dog weights 52 pounds and she’s always dragging me from one pee smell to the next. Every activity in every day is weighted with a constant ribbon of anxiety. “I’m not doing this right, I’m going to f*ck this up”. Then I think that anxiety is going to damage my baby.

I knew I would worry throughout this pregnancy, I just didn’t know I’d experience such impatience and disgust with my own worry.

Socializing is difficult when you are consumed by self-pity. I also think it must be boring for people to hear me find new and interesting ways to talk about how tired I am. It’s also difficult to be nice to people when they offer me stupid or insensitive advice. I try my hardest to be nice though, since I am the reigning queen of stupid and thoughtless advice. So I lie on my couch, watch TV, read magazines and books, and torture Tom with isolation. He never complains, but I feel tortured by my own presence so I have to assume he feels challenged as well.

On the bright side…INSERT CHEERFUL OBSERVATION HERE