The Po Show

Reading

The one bright point to the hellacious bout of the flu (or whatever...flu is such a catch-all for the gazillions of viruses that seem to make their way around) that I had for the last week was that I got to read. I can't do much else when I'm really sick (other than the things I *have* to do, like take the kids to school and feed them and so forth). I have a hard time napping when I'm really sick, which is a bummer. I even get insomnia at night, which really sucks. Nothing like staring at the clock for hours and hours when you feel like you might die.

So I read. I finally got to read The Blind Assasin by Margaret Atwood. I'm still wondering how I missed this book before, since she's one of my favorite authors. I do know though: it came out in 2000 and I do NOT buy hardcover books (the last Harry Potter book being the exception, since it was so cheap at Costco!), so I was waiting for the paperback to come out. Then I guess stuff like getting pregnant with Tessa and giving birth to her and having a nervous breakdown and all sort of got in the way and I never picked it up.

Anyway, it was brilliant, and as is often my habit with books I really get into, I not so much read it as devoured it. It's 518 pages and I basically read it in a day, though I was so sick I really should have been resting more.

Reading a really good book makes me want to write. I have no pretensions of wanting to write a really good book, but I want to write *a* book. Especially reading a book like this one, so personal (though fictional), so evocative, one that I so internalized. It ends up pissing me off though, that I have no time, I can't write, I can't get past certain points. And it ends up all about me, and while I know it's common to the point of cliche for first novels to be autobiographical, I don't want to write that. Writing my story is a journal, I feel, not a novel.

But what other stories do I have in me? Perhaps the other stories can't come out, can't get to the front of the queue, till the all-encompassing *me* story gets to see the light of day. It sure as hell is tired of rattling around in my head all the time, and I'm tired of it being there. Would putting it down let me put it away? At least it would be cheaper than more therapy, in dollars if not in pain.

Flashback

I just watched an episode of Coupling (fabulous British comedy that we absolutely adore) that ended with one of the characters having a baby. Apart from all the usual TV bullshit regarding labor (she perches on the top of a couch while supposedly in labor, she delivers this long speech while supposedly in the middle of a contraction, she "chats up" the anesthesiologist after he gives her an epidural and actually says the line "I'd do you right here if there wasn't someone else coming back the other way!"), the end totally made me cry.

She is failing to progress (so why'd they give her an epidural just before announcing she still wasn't making any progress?) so they pull out her boyfriend and say she might have to have a csection. She gets the section. The baby cries. I cried. I'm still crying.

Matthew was born via csection. I can see him in my mind's eye on the warming bed after they pulled him out my body. As they put my guts back into me and sewed me back together, they covered my baby with saran wrap on the isolette to bring up his body temp. His little hand reached up and touched the plastic wrap. He cried. He turned red. He had such a conical little head. He was beautiful beyond words.

I didn't get to hold him for two hours after he was born. Ross held him. My mom held him. Even my sister snuck back into the recovery area and held him. I watched and shook and was so incredibly relieved that the labor was over. Then, after two hours, the nurse swaddled him tightly and placed him in my arms. He was asleep and beautiful beyond words.

He's eight years old now, he's still my baby, and he always will be.

The End of Summer

School started for Matthew yesterday, and Tessa had her meet(s) and greet(s) with her new teachers today in preparation for starting next Tuesday. Poor thing has so many new names to remember, with two new teachers in Pre-K and three new teachers in nursery school. She keeps getting confused as to where she'll be going, when.

Matthew started off the year in a fabulously positive way, and I'm so relieved. His new teacher just came back from a 4 year childcare leave, which is why I couldn't find her listed in the district website anywhere. But she has a slew of experience with special ed classes as well as regular classes and she seems absolutely wonderful. Matthew's aide from last year is with him again, which was probably the most encouraging element for him. This morning at drop off he was confused as to which line he was supposed to stand in (the kids were sort of milling around and the lines were getting merged) and when I offered to help him figure it out he just said, "No, you can go. I'll just ask Ms. J." Ah, the thrill of obsolecence :).

For weeks now I've been telling people how I just couldn't wait for school to start. I'd hear other mothers talk about how sad they were that summer was ending and I felt like the world's worst mom because I was SO looking forward to school starting, so I'd have some time to myself. It was an insular summer, with much of the time feeling like it was just me and the kids, and it was wearing.

Now of course, since I can just never be happy, I'm feeling all wistful that my children will be away from me for large chunks of the day. Tessa kept talking about wanting to start school too and I kept trying to convince her of how nice it was for us to have a few more days together.

Poets and writers liken summer to childhood, and perhaps this summer was a time for me to be child-like with my children. Though I bitched endlessly, felt overwhelmed with their constant demands, and yearned desperately for adult time, me time, there was truly goodness to the summer and being so immersed in my kids.

So Angry

Damn it, there was a reason I wasn't watching the news, was skipping over the threads on my 'net group (not the August list, my Gymboree related group) concerning the aftermath of Katrina. I couldn't watch the news because I could not bear to see the suffering and devastation, and I couldn't stand to hear the idiot pundits go around and around. I didn't want to hear a bunch of middle America women (who ostensibly are together because they're addicted to putting Gymboree clothing on their children) go back and forth about who's to blame or not to blame for the hideous situation. I just didn't want to hear it.

Tonight though, everyone is asleep (including Ross) so I made the mistake of reading the thread entitled something like "Don't blame Bush, here's some information" with this lame "explanation" about how it wasn't his fault that he didn't do more right away, that a president doesn't have the authority to send in troops without first being invited by the state (so instead he went to San Diego to hang with his business peeps). This whole "I'm so glad you posted this" parade followed, with all these women talking about how poor W is doing his best and he's such a Godly man and Clinton or Kerry never would have had his compassion for the victims. Oh my fucking god I want to kill someone.

A woman who lives outside Baton Rouge and is LIVING this whole thing (she's in good shape, comparatively: she has power and her family is all safe. They can't drink their water and all the local stores are running out of food and bottled water, but hopefully that will change soon) posted about the lack of funding for the Army Corp of Engineers for levee renovation and about how that impacted the devastation. I'm glad she did, though it probably won't shut up the idiots who don't realize that the HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars squandered on Iraq could have prevented or ameliorated so much, if not virtually all, the suffering. Money to put poor people on buses and get them the hell out of there before the hurricane. Money to make sure those damn levees held. Money to feed and shelter the people who were trapped there. Money to compensate every single person who lost a home or business.

This is why I was avoiding this whole issue, because now I know I'm not sleeping tonight. I can't stick my head back in the sand again, now that I've seen the infuriating stupidity out here.