.five months.

Five months.

It seems  like forever.  

People go through their days like they do every other day.  To most everyone else this particular day is like yesterday and it is like tomorrow.  That is the way this life works.  Our burdens are our own to carry.  To expect anything more is naive and unfair.  

In an hour it will have been five months since he was born.  In less than an hour and a half it will be five months since he was last alive.  

I wish there was more for him than this. 

I want him back.  With every part of who I am I want something that I can never have.  I wish I believed in something more than this life.

Time is hurtful.  

And the question keeps playing on repeat.  

How did this happen?

.flea marketing.

Yesterday Leif and I, along with our friend Jennie (God bless her, she has been my constant companion for the last three weeks), went to the flea market.  I love flea markets.  Stalls and stalls of dioramas into peoples' minds and their inner obsessions.  Incredible collections of cutlery, long parted from their sets.  Old maps, yellowed with age.  Wooden soda crates with names like 7up or Coca Cola scripted on the side.  Salt and pepper shakers for days on end...

Last year we made it a goal of ours to get rid of all of our Ikea furniture (even though I kind of love the place, like a lot) and replace them all with pieces that were more likely to stand the test of time.  Whatever that means.  The media cabinet was the last piece that needed replacing.  Well, except for the furniture we had bought for the nursery.  Those pieces still sit in our second bedroom, ignored and neglected for the most part.  

In almost twelve months we haven't been able to find something in the style that we both like that would also fit all of Leif's audio/visual components.  Yes, I am married to an electronic geek.  However, he is married to a nerdy scientist-type so it all evens out in the end.  We really weren't expecting much after many similar unsuccessful trips, but we were given a pleasant surprise in the form of a 50s/60s smallish media cabinet being sold for $45.  

It needs work but we tend to like projects so, good for us.

We probably won't have time to finish it before we leave but we will give it a shot anyway.  It is a good way to keep myself busy.  Busy is useful.  Busy keeps me living in the real world instead of inside my head.  A dangerous place for me these days.  

.under glass.

For years I've loved the art these two people create together.  Little snow globes, perfect and clear and strange.  Today I looked at the last one and became convinced that underneath that glass is a tiny version of myself.  

Walter Martin & Paloma Munoz

Huh.  Just noticed that this is my 100th post.  That's kind of a surprise.

.full moon horror movie.

Four million people in this city and only forty of us showed up for a hike under the light of last night's full moon.  Introductions were made but I don't remember any names.  Except for Bill.  It was Bill's 60th birthday and he said that you should do the thing on your birthday that you most want to do for the rest of the year.

I wish I would have known that last month.

Walking back far, far ahead of the group our conversation turned to horror movies, as is only natural while hiking alone back to the car under the light of a full moon.  We discussed how "We're almost there," is a phrase that should never be uttered while under these types of circumstances.  It is almost a guarantee that in the next forty five seconds you will be running for your life and that in the next sixty seconds you will be tripping over an unseen rock in the path thus leading to your untimely death, fifteen seconds later.  Other phrases to avoid while walking alone in the forest under a full moon include, "I think we are going in circles," "What was that sound," "I feel like we are being watched," "We can't turn back now."  

Luckily we made it back to our car with nothing scarier happening than my overactive imagination conjuring up a madman with every snap of a twig we heard.

.vamos de vacaciones.

Sun on our faces.  Sand between our toes.  Water on our skin.

And the best part...nothing but the sound of the crashing of waves and the songs of birds in our ears.

A sharp contrast from the incessant barking of neighbors' dogs, the shrillness of police sirens, and the apartment rattling whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp of helicopter blades that we are accustomed to. 

We are really, truly going on a vacation.  Aside from some short trips up to Portland we haven't been on a real vacation together in over two years.   Between my graduate program and then my pregnancy and George's death there just hasn't been a good time until now.   So we have decided to just go ahead and use some of the money that we have been saving for our future home and get ourselves somewhere far away from here.

We decided on Honduras.  First Copan to see the Mayan ruins and then Utila to see our pale skin turn an unhealthy shade of pink. Yes, maybe Honduras is a tad bit politically uncertain right now what with last year's coup d'etat and all.  But as my husband loves to say, "It'll be fine."

Honduras seems amazing but in all honesty until this morning this vacation hasn't even really stirred in me anything more than a moderate amount of relief that we will be away from this apartment and the hope that I may be able to escape myself for a little bit.  For quite some time I have been finding it difficult to be excited about anything.  Passing my board exam, a new career, possibly a new city...things which I should be excited about but I am not.  I've been so focused on the past that the future is no more clear to me than why Nicolas Cage is still paid to make movies.  And how could something as mind-numbingly bad as a Nicolas Cage movie entice any bit of excitement (except for Leaving Las Vegas and Raising Arizona, those are good but they are anomalies)? 

Acceptance of George's death and acceptance of the new path life has laid out before me has also flooded me with a sense of apathy the likes of which I've never before experienced.  The grief counselor I've been seeing these last four months tells me what I have been feeling is common.  With acceptance often comes a deeper sense of sorrow, which is why in her experience working with grieving parents it is often one of the more difficult parts of the process for people to experience.

These days I try to focus on doing things that I am able to find some happiness in.  Going on long walks, flipping through design magazines, vegging out poolside with a friend, taking photos, and the one thing that always makes me happy...spending time with Leif.  

Utila 

Utila 

 Copan Ruins

My hope is that in the weeks before we leave I'll be able to develop more excitement for our trip than I currently have.  I mean, just look at this place.  If I can't get excited about going there then maybe things are worse than I think.

.scienced.

The day after I took my exam Leif and I went to see an exhibit called Mummies of the World at the local science museum.  It was quite a broad collection of both intentional and unintentional mummies from Egypt, Peru, Europe, and Oceania.  Of course there were many of the usual mummies on display that we have all seen at one time or another or in some B movie.  Wealthy Egyptians with their mummified cats and the like.  But what surprised me the most and was honestly something that I was not expecting to see there was the large proportion of infant mummies in the collection.

The oldest mummy they had on display, and in fact one of the oldest ever found, was that of a ten month old child.  Named the Detmold Child, at 6,500 years old it predates King Tut by a thousand years.  Found in Peru, mummyologists (apparently this is a real word and trademarked, no less) have used CT images to ascertain that he/she had contracted pneumonia and that it had, in conjunction with a serious heart defect, ultimately caused his/her death.  The child was wrapped in linen and an amulet (also discovered through CT scans) was placed around his/her neck.  These wrappings have not been removed or disturbed but a replica of the amulet is on display next to the mummy. 

Nearly all of the infant mummies they had on display were very obviously well cared for in their deaths by whatever surviving family members had buried them.  It touched me to see that even in times when infant and child loss was so much more commonplace than it is now those children were still grieved and honored. 

After we walked through the exhibition Leif told me that sometime in the near future he wants to have a service for George.  We never had one and we haven't talked about having one in months.  When he died we were too unsure of what we wanted to do and who we wanted to be there.  We still don't know the answer to these questions.  All I know and something I was quick to tell him is that although I would be supportive of having a service of some sort I could not give up his ashes.  I'm not ready for that and I am not sure when I ever will be.

Despite what it may seem from reading the above ramblings of an insomniac who is writing this at 12:41 in the morning while waiting for the sleeping aid to kick in, the visit wasn't all about death and sadness.  In fact, seeing the things we saw in that exhibit didn't make me any sadder than I normally am.  The mere fact that I was with Leif, holding his hand in a museum in the middle of a work week, made the day a good one.

.L.

 .L.

 .B.

.L.

.B.

 .B.

 .L.

I think that the smart thing to do would be to wait until morning when I have a mind not beginning to feel the effects of sleep aids to reread this before posting.  But, I'm not going to.  I kind of want to see if it makes as much sense to me in the morning as it does right now.

Now, it is off to bed and hopefully I won't have to toss and turn too long before sleep takes me. 

.the center.

I am awash in a sea of faces and limbs and hair.  A current that tries to pull me along: I am becoming an erosion of my former self.  

Sediment.  Skin and teeth and mineral and bone.  Fragments of the organic and inorganic. 

I have given up trying to gather the pieces and detached I watch splinters of my self fall away and become part of the landscape of my history. 

I medicate myself with company.  Literal alone compounds the figurative alone.  

I hate this place.  I hate this person who is wearing my face.  She is unfamiliar and her proportions are all wrong.

He is gone and acceptance comes in starts and stops.  I am sputtering.

My mind wanders but still it orbits the center of my universe.  

George.

.certified.

I passed.

I keep writing and deleting, rewriting and deleting again.  Nothing really to say except I wish I felt more excited than I do.

So there you go.  An anticlimax.

.gulp.

Well, today is the day.  In three hours I take an exam that is more or less 420 minutes long, including some scheduled breaks.

I'm nervous.

I'm more ready to get this thing over with.

.this is a stupid post; consider yourself forewarned.

Signs that I am pushing the limits of my sanity in regards to preparing for my board exam:

I've read and reread the same damn paragraph three times because by the time I get to the last sentence I can't remember what the first three said.

It is 7:00 p.m. and I want to go to bed.

I would rather not eat anything for dinner rather then get up from the couch to walk to the kitchen.

I think I may have the energy it takes to turn on the bath water so I can take a bath, but I am not totally convinced so I am still sitting on the couch.

I am writing a really stupid blog post like this one so that friends and family can be assured that I am still alive even though I have been basically unattainable by phone or email during these last few (ok, seven) days.

....................

And I am alive.  But just barely.  Five more days. 

.prepster, that's me.

I haven't had my haircut in a ridiculously long time.  My hair had become so long that it was impossible for any item of clothing in our house to not have at least one strand of my hair on it somewhere.  Leif's clothes were even coming out of the dryer with my hair still all over the place.  You don't even want me to describe the size of the dust/hair bunnies that we've found in the corners of our hardwood floor. 

So Thursday morning, the morning that I woke up with the stomach ache, I went to get my haircut by a new-to-me stylist.  I am nothing if not consistent in my hair stylist-hopping.  The last time I got my hair cut by the same person twice in a row was sometime when the novelty of legally buying alcohol had not yet worn off for me.  I guess that would be, like, nine years ago.

This one I liked even before she cut my hair.  I like the self-deprecating hipster and she was a pretty good one.  It was her comment about how she was at her limit of cutting mullets for Silver Lake hipsters.  You see, the hipsters have ruined Silver Lake and now have their sights on Echo Park, where she grew up (not my words).  But she said that the gangsters in Echo Park would make sure that didn't happen.  I believe her.  Her dad is the largest pot grower in Maui. 

Then she cut my hair and I liked her even more.  Six inches gone.  Felt pretty good.  It was the highlight of what was to be a shitty day.

 Returning to the topic of hipsters for just a moment...

Last night Leif and I jokingly coined the word "prepster" to describe ourselves.  We wear way too much J. Crew and Banana Republic to be called hip but we often find ourselves at the same venues as the hipsters, listening to the same bands.  If hipsters and prepsters were at a family reunion, they would be the hip cousins from Hollywood and we would be the blazer-wearing cousins from Upstate New York.

By the way, those photos of my new haircut were taken with the Hipstamatic application for my iPhone.  Fitting.

Yesterday I went to see my therapist.  Good news is that I am not crazy, just in case anyone was concerned.  I'm actually quite normal and all the anxiety I have been feeling about passing the exam, finding a job and (most likely) moving are all just compounded by my grief for George.

We can all sigh a collective sigh of relief.

.disquiet.

Last night I had a dream in which Leif and I were part of a small group of survivors of some unknown catastrophe that left most of the human race dead.  I think it must have been happening in the far future or on another planet because there were absurd flying ships, strange technologies, and a once-human-now-talking-feline sidekick involved.  Hayao Miyasaki films have obviously made quite an impact on my subconscious mind.  For most of the dream, at least the part I can remember, Leif and I were separated on different ships and I was desperate to get to him. 

Oh, the amount of subtext in this dream is quite something, I think.

I woke up with a stomach ache; the kind that convinced me that my stomach had finally decided it had had enough of being a slave to my bad eating habits and was extricating itself from my innards to look for greener pastures.  Fair enough.  But the stomach ache quickly turned into nausea; the nausea quickly caused the already brimming water in my eyes to spill out onto the white pillow cases.

Some days I just wake up feeling his absence so strongly. 

My stomach ache and the nausea are manifestations of my anxiety, I know that for certain.  A quick look at my nails will tell anyone that anxiety is something I struggle with.  It is a gross habit.  At one point in time I thought I had it conquered but the day we were given George's diagnosis was the day I returned to my old ways and my pretty nails have not been seen since.

Over the last five years that Leif and I have been together my anxiety has significantly improved.  Somehow he is able to quell the rough waters that often occupy my mind.  He is magic.  He is salve to my soul.

But there are still times when even his magic fails and I am left alone to face those stormy waters in my mind.  So that is where I am right now, making a desperate attempt to batten down the hatches by myself.  I've been here before but very seldom am I as anxious as I am today.  As I am right now.

The pounding of my heart is marking the passage of time toward the date that I take my board exam.  Twelve days.  It has been beating so loudly the last couple of days that I can hardly keep focused enough to study.  It certainly isn't helping matters that I am studying the second of two disciplines that I dreaded the most.  The first being obstetrics and this one being cardiology.  

But I wonder if it is really the exam making me anxious or if it is something else.  After all, I think the last written exam I was nervous about was the MCAT and that was almost nine years ago.   My best guess as to the cause of this anxiety is that it is not the exam itself but rather the part that comes after the exam.  The applying for jobs part.  The interviewing part.  The huge change that Leif and I are going to be making part. 

 .L.

And I am pretty sure that the huge cup of coffee I had this afternoon wasn't decaf as I had asked for.  Because otherwise I would not be wishing that I had a zipper attached to my skin so I could more easily crawl out of it.

.small town museum.

While Leif and I were cat-sitting for my parents a couple of weekends ago we managed to extricate ourselves from playing with the kittens out back in the soul-crushing heat for long enough that we were able to visit some local museums.

The thing about smallish cities and their museums is that while they may be, um, petite, they have much more charm than their counterparts in major metropolitan areas.  More often than not the people who are responsible for the success of these places are volunteers.  So it is because of sheer love and passion which enables these places to exist at all.  I find that admirable.

Often they are cobbled together in the best way that they can be with limited funds and limited interest from the general public.

Case in point, the Natural History Museum in my hometown occupies 22,000 square feet of what was an old Radio Shack.  It has water stains on the ceiling and not enough funds or equipment to provide air-conditioning for the entire space (as is evident in the photograph of me with my hair plastered to my face with sweat).

.L.

.L.

 .L.

Our docent?  A thoughtful sixteen year-old kid with braces and a very apparent love for dinosaurs of the scary, meat-eating variety.

 .b.

.L.

.L.

 .b.

Home made signs, placards, and displays.  Too much to do with not enough resources.

 .L.

.L.

.L.

Yet these are all the things that make museums like this so perfect.  They are the accumulation of years and years of unnoticed hard work on the part of very committed individuals.  Their one goal is to pass on knowledge and inspiration to other people.  

And so you leave these museums with a sense of gratitude and a little more knowledge to boot.  What did I learn?  Aside that for the 19 years I lived in that town I was overlooking something very special?

That the place I grew up- that dusty, hot valley that has been pumping out oil for decades and decades used to be at the bottom of the ocean some unfathomable millions of years ago.   

 

.ebb and flow.

The space inside my head is a tangle of webs and spiders.  Webs catch whatever is good and the spiders work quickly to drain, leaving behind dried husks that blow away with the slightest breeze.  I try to dip inside and pull out something meaningful or at least something worth rummaging around for but all I come up with is soft gauzy wisps of nothingness and dessicated remnants.

Two clear days are followed by a day nailed together with gloom and self-loathing.  Today I am carrying with me my hammer. 

I'm not sleeping well.  I can hear the hands from a not-really-there alarm clock ticking, ticking, ticking.  Only I don't know what it is ticking toward or if I should be worried.  

My baths are so hot that they turn my skin pink.  I tell myself to relax.  To breathe.  Everything is going to be fine.  But I know that there are no guarantees.  Statistics are our bedtime stories.  Fairy tales.

After three days spent back "home" Leif is excited about things to come.  Right now I am just relieved that he is here with me.  Safe. 

I think I am too indulgent.  That was the word I was looking for all this time.  Someone else found it and presented it to me without even knowing that she did.  Her words giving a form to my thought.

Today I am the mangled mess of metal and rubber that people slow down in their cars to look at and cringe.  That girl is so broken.