Tough stuff
Friday, February 27th, 2009
This entry deleted.
Back to writing
Saturday, February 21st, 2009
Today I’ve moved away from obsession with my changing anatomy (though not completely – are they getting smaller now?) and more toward other things.
This morning Doug and the kids and I went to Ballard to experience the neighborhood shops, and specifically the Nordic Heritage Museum. Not only does our family have some Scandinavian heritage to appreciate (mostly Norwegian and some Swedish), but Doug has been inspired by Nordic mythology and rosemaling in his recent works of art.
After the Ballard adventure, we went to the Seattle Baha’i Center, where an arts and crafts bazaar was being held in preparation for Ayyam-i-Ha. While there, Andrea and Johanna got in the act by making some impromptu craft pieces using paper, stickers, brightly-colored foam shapes and puff balls and setting them up on an empty table. Andrea actually made $5 from one of her pieces, but Johanna was not so lucky. It might have had something to do with her pricing, although she did offer a range of prices, so people could choose what to pay. Her most notable piece was a 2″ long, 1″ high triangular piece of paper colored with pink marker and decorated with a few pink puff balls: asking price “10$ – 30$”. When I explained to her that people probably wouldn’t be willing to pay that, she erased the zeros. But still no takers. (The procedes were suppose to go, at least in part, to the Baha’i Fund, but Johanna didn’t realize that.)
When we came home, we ate Scandinavian food (puchased on our trip), and then I went to work on writing – sort of. I actually signed up for a Writer’s Retreat in Federal Way in April and for a Children’s Book Writer’s Conference in Redmond in May. Both of these will provide opportunities for me to meet authors, agents, and editors, plus they will give me something to work towards. When I registered for the May conference, I paid $35 extra for the opportunity to have my manuscript (at least the first 5 pages) analyzed by an expert. Who the expert will be depends on the list I send them (my favorites of experts participating) and a first-come-first-serve basis. Whoever it turns out to be, I’m nervous. But I’m hopeful, too.
Now I’ve got to do a little garden planning before I get ready for bed so I can wake up early for another 9-hour session of Ruhi Book 5 Animator Training.
Busy busy days.
What’s on my chest?
Friday, February 20th, 2009
My breasts are bigger! I first discovered this maybe 5 or 6 days ago. I immediately showed my husband Doug, with a mostly-to-myself-question, “What’s going on?” His response was to say, with a tone of awe, “It’s an answer to prayer!” (He was kidding.)
Just to clarify, by bigger, I do not actually mean “big”. I’ve been a full-on A-cup for years, and a semi-saggy one at that, ever since the post-nursing deflation of temporarily expanded tissues. (I’ll try not to get too graphic here.) But NOW, for some reason, my breasts are a healthy B cup (woo hoo!), and firm and plump and lovely. Not that I’m asking for an audience other than Doug… or myself. Sometimes I find myself holding both my breasts, squeezing them, marveling at their new composition, and jiggling them a little for effect.
Of course, such a situation causes one to ask “Why is this happening?” Three possibilities come to my mind:
1. I’m pregnant. This seems very unlikely, since Doug had a vasectomy 10 years ago, and I am 40, an age when fertility is supposed to be going down. Even if Doug’s little guys somehow managed to escape the decade-old minor surgery designed to contain them, wouldn’t the chances of them actually fertilizing an egg be pretty darn low? But I have to admit that my current enhancement reminds me strongly of pregnancy-bosom. I went to the website “WrongDiagnosis.com” to look up “swollen breasts”, but wasn’t able to find much of value to me except for the humorous question, “Do you have pregnancy?” So how about…
2. Menopause. 40 seems a little early to be going through “the change”, but it is a gradual process, I hear. And menopause, like pregnancy, plays havoc with a woman’s hormones. And those hormones are responsible for certain things, like breasts & stuff. Not to be too scientific or anything. And to be even less scientific…
3. Age. My mother-in-law told me once that when a woman gets older, her breasts get bigger. She didn’t specifically connect it to menopause. And she didn’t attribute it to weight gain (I’m pretty much the same weight I always am). It’s just the way it is. So there. Maybe it’s karma to make up for years of being little.
Of course the option that has the biggest implications and potential worry-factor is #1. And, my increase in cup size occured around the time I would have ovulated. Just an interesting but unrelated coincidence? Yoig. I hope so. But I won’t know for sure about option number one until about a week from now. I’ll keep folks posted.
Journal entry from yesterday
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
[Upon realizing how long it’s been since I’ve blogged.]
Oh no! Have my blogification goals gone the way of every other new years resolution out there?
My friend (sister from a different mother) began the year adhering to the South Beach Diet. And today I encouraged her to share a leftover piece of delicious red velvet Valentine’s Day cake with me. From vegetables and protein every 2 hours to rich layers of chocolate decadence for breakfast in less than two months. Is that where my blogging is?
“Resolve”, of course, by definition, shouldn’t be something that fades away in a month or two. That would be “temporary resolve” at best.
I am still resolved to keep blogging and to write write write and progress in my writing. But that resolve gets diluted once in awhile. I need to metaphorically boil myself so my resolve becomes more concentrated once again.
[And then I took a nap.]
An open letter to my cold virus
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
Dear virus that is causing my cold,
I wonder if you know who you are dealing with? I feel you brewing in my sinuses and throat, dripping downward into the back of my mouth, trying to multiply, invade, take over. And I wonder, oh tiny creature, if you think of me as just a group of cells that you can attack, invade, take over one by one. Of course by now you’ve met with the cells of my immune system and have met destruction because of them. But do you know that these cells are part of me as well? Do you know that I have many types of cells ready to combat your kind, and vast networks and systems of cells that work together so well that they coordinate a giant human body?
Maybe you have some inkling of my organismic existence and would find pride in taking me down. But I am an organism complicated beyond your fathoming. Do you think that by killing a few tiny cells or taking over their function that you have any chance of taking down the whole person that I am? You, no-nucleus wonder that you are, have no idea that every cell in my being is connected by code – we, despite all our differences, are all the same. Heart, sinus, ear canal or nerve ending, hair root, toe skin, lung or spleen – all of the cells of these amazingly different organs all have the code of one connecting body. My body is like a religion that accepts and welcomes all races and cultures, knowing that the diversity is what makes this being possible. The religion of the inner code that connects all my cells together – that is what you are fighting. Destroy one part, and all other parts will come to the rescue. They can’t help it. Whether far away or near, whether directly or not, all of my energy goes to making the whole well.
And if you or one of your buddies manage to take me down, pull me back to earth so that my coordinated elements disintegrate and fade – even if this happens, do you think you will have won? You will die when I die. Without me, you have no life.
And even if one of your clones or a mutation thereof manages to live on in another human being, do you think you will ever win? Do you think someday you will manage to kill all of us? Without us, you have no life. And besides that, there are billions of us. Billions like me, with a connected code of human life that makes us a collective organism. When one dies, the rest rush in to find out how to help.
Despite the futility of your endeavor, little virus, I do not begrudge your existence. You are a creature of God, and I suppose you must have a role. You cannot switch sides and become a being that you are not. Your presence makes me stronger in my own immunity mechanisms and makes us humans stronger in compassion. The stronger you get, the stronger I get. Even if I die from your influence and disintegrate back to the earth so that my elements may be redistributed, the “we” that I belong to becomes stronger. What connected me together moves through empathy to connect the “we” together that much more.
You give me a headache, sap my energy, make it unpleasant to breath because of the pain in the back of my nose/throat. But I glory in the way I was built – a whole that is part of a whole that is part of a whole – body to humanity to souls here and beyond. I cannot be stopped, because I am more than myself. And you are not. You need a larger life to suck from in order to be alive. But I am alive whether alive or not. You are less than yourself, and I am more. If I die, I still live on – humanity is my legacy.
But I won’t die. Not from you. In a few days I will recover and be working as well as before you invaded – even better. Because you are small, and I am big.
So do the work you do, the only work you know or could ever know. I’m sorry you will never know me.
Best wishes,
Sydney