Everything I Tell You is Hearsay

Rolling In The Deep

Watch this. Listen with your whole self open. Let it wash you away.

I dare you to resist…

There’s a fire starting in my heart,
Reaching a fever pitch and it’s bring me out the dark.
Finally I can see you crystal clear
Go ahead and sell me out and I’ll lay your ship bare.

See how I’ll leave, with every piece of you
Don’t underestimate the things that I will do.

There’s a fire starting in my heart,
Reaching a fever pitch and it’s bring me out the dark.

The scars of your love, remind me of us.
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless
I can’t help feeling
We could have had it all
Rolling in the deep
You had my heart inside your hand
And you played it
To the beat

Baby I have no story to be told
But I’ve heard one of you and I’m gonna make your head burn,
Think of me in the depths of your despair
Making a home down there as mine sure won’t be shared

The scars of your love, remind you of us.
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless
I can’t help feeling
We could have had it all

Rolling in the deep
You had my heart inside your hand
And you played it
To the beat

We could have had it all
Rolling in the deep
You had my heart inside your hand
But you played it
With a beating

Throw your soul threw every open door
Count your blessings to find what you look for
Turn my sorrow into treasured gold
You pay me back in kind and reap just what you sow

We could have had it all
We could have had it all
We could have had it all
Rolling in the deep
You had my heart inside your hand
And you played it to the beat

We could have had it all
Rolling in the deep
You had my heart inside your hand

But you played it,
You played it,
You played it
You played it to the beat

Cheese fries and ice cream did this. There was a baby in there somewhere too, I think.

I looked like this. Actually, to own the truth, it got worse, but I lost that photo somewhere. Really; I liked to carry it around and show it to newly pregnant women as something of a morality tale: don’t think you can just eat whatever you want there, mommy. This could happen to you!!

I’m actually only at about 37 weeks in this picture. I had, by this time gained 50 lbs, dislocated my pelvis, and developed a set of stretch marks that gave a New York City subway system map a run for its money for terror inducing complexity. I had also been in active but non-productive labor for about 2 weeks. What this basically means is that I was having contractions on a regular basis, but they weren’t accomplishing anything apart from keeping me awake on tenterhooks thinking it might actually be about time to be done being pregnant.  By this point I remember quite vividly looking at my husband and saying plaintively

“I just want to put the baby down for a little while…”

Finally, on the morning of June 28th I fell into a labor pattern that justified a trip to the hospital. They took their sweet time about getting to me (dismissed as a hysterical first-time mother) but acknowledged that the contractions were both regular and frequent enough to consider legitimate. However, my water still hadn’t broken and I wasn’t making progress; the contractions were not causing my cervix to dilate as it should. My obstetrician, Dr DeCastro came out to check on me, and acknowledged my state of extreme misery with great sympathy.

Dr DeCastro was not only my doctor, he also delivered three of my sister’s children. I had met him under those circumstances and liked him a great deal. He was warm and considerate and charming, and best of all, he looked like the guy who played The Greatest American Hero.

Tell me this does not look like a man ready to catch your offspring

He knew that I could not move without significant discomfort, due to the dislocated pelvis I had been coping with since my sixth month. Since then (a bowling related injury that was my first -and worst- but by no means only) walking, standing, and sleeping had all become difficult and extremely painful. People told me my waddle was adorable, but really,  it was unavoidable. That coupled with my size and the length of time I had already been in labor prompted him to check on the baby and see if she was ready enough to warrant inducing me even before I was technically due.

Once we agreed that the baby was in fact cooked enough to come out, he said I could come back first thing in the morning to begin the induction. I will own the fact that I literally cried that he wasn’t going to start the process right then and there, but since she was my first he worried I would need a considerable amount of time to labor and wanted an early start after a good night’s rest.

Riiiight.

I was averaging about 3 hours of sleep a night in the week leading up to delivery. This was both because there was simply no position which the human body can achieve that did not leave me tremendously uncomfortable, but also because dammit, I was READY TO HAVE THIS BABY RIGHT FUCKING NOW and was thus too wound up to sleep anyway.

We went home that night and I did not sleep a wink. I puttered around packing and repacking the bag, looking at her room and making sure we had everything we needed, strapping the car seat into the new car and generally counting the seconds until it was time to go to the hospital. Right before we left, I kissed Bob on the cheek and apologized for making him spend his birthday in the hospital…

We arrived at 8:00 am as instructed and immediately discovered that Bob had failed to grab the hospital bag. While he went home to fetch it, they put me in a gown, strapped me to an IV, and unceremoniously broke my water. The nurse told me I could use the bathroom one last time before I would be confined to bed and as I walked back from my last trip to the potty, the first post-water-breaking contraction hit.

AHEM

Up till this point, the contractions had been persistent and vaguely bothersome, but in no way were they painful. That changed in a hurry, let me tell you. I stood with my hands gripping the edge of the bed and turned to the nurse and said

“Wow. That one was different.”

She chuckled a little and helped me climb into the bed. I asked if it really made sense to give me the pitocin after all; if maybe just breaking my water would be enough to kick my labor into gear. She told me that no, once the water was broken, they wanted to ensure that I delivered within 12 hours to minimize the risk of infection, and since it was my first baby, and with my small stature, they didn’t want to take any chances it would go on longer than that.

At the point they began to administer the pitocin, I was dilated to 3.5 cm.

Very soon after this, I began to experience pain like I did not know was possible. One of the two nurses keeping track of me came in shortly after this transition, and I asked her to check my progress to see if I might have come far enough along to have an epidural, since I was in considerable pain. She eyed me contemptuously and asked how much progress I think I could have made in 20 minutes.

“I’m not really sure. I’d check myself, but I CAN’T REACH.“

She sniffed and left the room to go check on her other patient. Meanwhile the nicer nurse came in and I repeated my request. She was much more diplomatic and said that I probably had a long way to go yet, and might need to tough it out a while longer before they could call the anesthesiologist. As she was delivering this news I began to have another contraction. Trained by my choir director never to scream in case I might damage my vocal cords, I instead picked a high note and simply sang on pitch at the top of my voice.  She paused and raised her eyebrows. Then she said,

“Wow. That was pretty intense, huh? Let me go ahead and check you…” Her eyes got really wide for a moment, “Well, you’re at 7.5, so I think we can get you something for the pain now.”

In between then and when she got back with the medication, I had another contraction resulting in another top-of-the-lungs exhortation. Shortly after she had administered the shot, another nurse came to the door and asked when they were getting the anesthesiologist up here.

“She is scaring the other mothers!”

By the time they’d drugged me up to the point where I could no longer feel anything south of my chin, I was fully dilated and ready to push. They effectively had to tell me WHEN to push because I was too numb to be able to sense for myself. The dislocated pelvis came in handy at this point though, since I only had to work through about 4 rounds of 5 pushes each before, as Bob winningly put it, the baby “escaped the cave of doom.”

It remains the best day of my life, and the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, and though it was Bob’s birthday, I feel like I got the greatest gift ever.

I get lost in my own world sometimes. Akin to those people who pick their nose in the car forgetting that the windows are, in fact, transparent, I will occasionally do silly things failing to appreciate my setting.

As when, this morning, at work dancing a flailing sidle down the hall.Unabashedly awkward, this dance with arms and legs splayed, booty-shaking, head wiggling, and lacking anything even approaching grace. The look of surprised amusement on the face of my coworker did awaken me to the fact that I am not, in fact, invisible when I act like an idiot. Probably for the best; not sure anyone would ever be able to spot me, else.

From Explodingdog

I like to know exactly what is going on.

This is because I am a bit of a control freak. Having spent much of my childhood in circumstances which were chaotic and unsettled has turned me into a person who prefers a rather high degree of consistency. This is not to say I cannot enjoy spontaneity, or that I crumble in the face of the unexpected, but it is rather the case that in my day-to-day endeavors, I am happier if I know what to expect. To this end, I give a lot of thought to why things are the way they are, why I have made the choices I have, what drives me, what I might want to do differently, and occasionally, how my actions affect other people.

Turns out, not everyone does this. This came as a major WTF when it was finally explained to me. Apparently, many people do what they do without giving it a tremendous amount of thought. They don’t chase themselves around in their heads, analyzing the motive and origin of every action  they have ever taken. Weird, right?

So, I like to ask a lot of questions. Questions to which I want very specific answers.

By which I do not mean I want an answer in particular. I want the truth, whatever that might happen to be. I just want it in scrupulous detail.

“Well, was it that you found it confusing, or just annoying?”

“Did it just surprise you that it turned you on, or are you expanding your notions about your sexuality?”

“Was the whole thing gross, or was it only the texture that bothered you?”

Apparently, some people experience this as The Third Degree, and do not much enjoy the treatment. It is not that I am trying to pick them apart, but to peek inside and understand them better. I think I believe if I do this,  I can remove some of that pesky unpredictability from human behavior. For me, this is just about ensuring a high degree of accuracy in communication to facilitate more accurate predictions about the future.  Like any data, the more explicit and specific the information is, the better.

I wonder how we became friends. Not, I mean, how we met. I probably remember that. Less likely that I can point to the moment, or the time where we crossed that ineffable border from knowing each other to being friends. But, I realize I want to, and that I think it is important and meaningful.

Like falling in love, though it happens gradually, there is usually also a moment where it strikes like lightning, that this is now so; true and without question.
I realized this while mulling it over this morning, just how it was that the godmother of my child and I made that transition. I knew in the more general sense; we met on the speech team my first year of college. We weren’t  debate partners and so we didn’t initially spend that much time together. We were in the same orbit, but moving at different speeds and in different trajectories.

After consulting her, we decided it was probably when, at a team dinner, I announced that I wanted to go to the beach and she and her then boyfriend were game for taking off to do this, even though it was already 10 pm. We loaded into the decrepit  VW Bug he was driving and rumbled off to Cannon Beach. The moon was fullish and low and orangey. We lay there on the sand together amusing each other, until about 2 am when I heard a very unfortunate rumbling coming from my midsection. Fucking Montage. I hate that place.

It is no small thing to wander through Seaside at 2am with someone you don’t know all that well desperately searching for facilities. The security guard at the Shilo Inn was sympathetic and let me scamper by at top speed.

When I came back to the car there was some fear that I would be upset to discover that it wouldn’t start, and needed a push. You see, they didn’t know me well enough at the time to know that I come from a long line of finicky cars with all manner of ailments, and that push starting was old hat to this girl.

It is my stated belief that you cannot help but bond with someone after both your car and your bowels fail you in the same evening together.

And now that I think about it, I suppose I can say with surety when I claimed certain other people for my own; Lyza and Emma came to Kah-Nee-Tah with me. Getting drunk in a tee-pee with someone may be unconventional in this day and age, but it was effective in this case. Jeanne spent my birthday with me on a fruitless but nevertheless totally enjoyable quest for hot springs into the gorge. I dragged Hilary to a strip club. Pretty sure I got Catherine that way too…

I like to gather people in, and I like to think about how it was done. To turn over in my mind the wondering about what brought us into the emotional proximity we now enjoy. The work of time is taken to account, but to acknowledge as well the undeniable elements of circumstance that drew us together, that bound us to each other, at last.

If you remember, or have a theory, do tell…

“And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in.”

– Haruki Murakami

Eventually. If you’re lucky, you get to witness it happen…

Karl casting into the confluence of the North & Middle Fork Willamette

I had no notion of it at the time, but when I was a child my parents were in the habit of making up words. It is true that every family has it’s own vocabulary, but most of the time it will not jump the confines of words that actually exist. No such constraints seemed to occur to us, and occasionally as an adult, I will find myself trotting out some expression of the created sort and receive anything from mild confusion to utter consternation in return.

The most famous and important (in the humble opinion of this author) example of this is:

Hodie: While it was generally used in a much broader context to mean anyone meddlesome or vexing but still pretty cute, I have over time co-opted this appellation to particular use as the main Nom-de-Plume for my child. However, it can and is still applied in the wider framework mentioned before. Should I spy a particularly charming little mischief, I will remark

“Oh, lookit the little hodie.”

but other examples of the concocted language of my life abound. Also in the pantheon we find:

Phlegmbot: This one requires no translation, but is a colorful example of the created lexicon.

“You ate the last of the Doritos? God, but you are a phlegmbot.”

Yucky Grawdoo: Signifying anything odious or vile; particularly if in reference to something moist, damp, or viscous.

“This bathroom is not clean; there is yucky grawdoo all between the tiles.”

Having had a hodie of my own, it turns out this manipulation of language continues, spurred by the inevitable mispronunciation or misapprehension of words already existing:

Attackative: To imply an aggressive or unnecessarily harsh response:

“I am sorry that I ate all of the Doritos, but why do you have to be so attackative?”

Niblings: The children of one’s siblings, irrespective of their gender:

“All of the niblings will be in the pool, and one of them will probably poop in it.”

Duplica: A replica or duplicate of something else:

“My iPod got stolen by some pigdog* so I had to get a duplica.”

Packack: Something in which to tote and carry one’s belongings:

“Didn’t you make sure you put your sunscreen in your packack?”

Dudes: Sunglasses

“I am jealous of your styley-fresh Ray-Ban dudes.”

Mazagine & Nakmin: Magazine and napkin:

“I saw this super hot babe in the mazagine and then I needed a nakmin to clean up the yucky grawdoo.”

It is of course, my fondest wish, to spread these linguistic gems as far and wide as I can. You know, V.D.

Vernacular Dispersion.

*The provenance of Pigdog is unclear, somehow I doubt we made that up.

Whatever it was that came before was only difficult because there was no hint of the trouble about to arise. Clairvoyance being a fantasy, omniscience a dream, there is no way to see the other side of the horizon. What might seem dim at the time may soon be recalled as a glorious, dazzling moment full of light.