Then after church, we went on our usual walk to get a treat-drink at Starbuck’s. Steve and I always find lucky pennies on this walk it seems — something about post-party-night sidewalks. Rosie has little interest in details and has pretty bad luck seeing pennies on the ground, even when I’m pointing right at them to help. So I said I’d give her three dollars if she found one, and the stress began. She got anxious enough that she really couldn’t look for a penny with that state of mind. But then there in Starbuck’s there was a really-really shiny one just under where customers stand at the cash register. I hinted to her that there might be one there, she squealed, pushed away someone in line, and got her penny and her three dollars.

Then Steve and I went for a lucky penny walk in the alleys off of Stadium Street. We found eight in the grass outside Taco Bell, and overall through the course of our meandering walk we found two lucky nickles and sixteen lucky pennies. This was a good day.

March 24th, 2009 | Category: written | Leave a comment

This weekend Jack wasn’t feeling well and then he was about to ask to light a match and Rosie took the matches from him, lit one then blew it out and somehow it ended up in his eye. This is not unusual, and it conjures the same boring lectures about matches and fire while also bringing up the question of how much to coddle Jack and whether or not he is really okay. And he isn’t our kid, so we err on the side of checking his eye every fifteen minutes just so we don’t get in trouble. And then the lectures to Rosie, who can be so quietly aggressive to her brother, just under the parent radar. Then Jack fell asleep in the middle of the afternoon, after I had wrapped a scarf around his head to help him feel like a one-eyed pirate. We woke him for dinner but he didn’t eat any, though he did eat dessert.

March 24th, 2009 | Category: house | Comments (1)

This morning Steve and I went on our usual walk downtown for a cup of coffee. We went to the co-op and I ordered my treat drink, a spicy mocha. But they didn’t have whipped cream! Undaunted, Steve and I walked to the gas station to look for a can of redi-whip. Yes! For the price of another coffee, we got a can of non-organic whipped cream. We set up shop outside the gas station on a brick ledge overlooking the sidewalk, opened up our coffee lids and sprayed in the whipped cream. Then I looked down, and there was a penny! And another lucky penny, and then another one! We found eight lucky pennies and one lucky dime. I put them in my shoe, as I always do so that I don’t mix my lucky change with the regular kind, and we walked home with my left foot noticably heavier and more arched than my right, a spray can of whipped cream sticking out of my right coat pocket.

March 20th, 2009 | Category: written | Leave a comment

I worked today with gouache. After three years of working almost exclusively with inks, I suddenly feel my color choices limited. It’s not that I want color to be more true, but I want it to be more complex. I think at first I chose inks because it reminded me of writing, but gouache just has more chances for mixing and making the exact color I want. I suppose I could mix inks, and I may try that, but right now I am deep into enjoying gouache.

(note: these blurry photos were taken with my iphone — my camera had run out of batteries.)

March 19th, 2009 | Category: drawing | Leave a comment

I don’t know if this is an okay lesson to learn, but I’ve learned this year that the world is not usually poetic. I wanted so badly to have a baby that god picked for me, to have a miracle happen that was invisible and untouched by man. I wanted the egg that was meant to fall drop just as the sperm that was meant to win win. And then I would know that that baby was meant to be the one for me for exactly this moment. I wanted it to happen quietly. No shots, no artificial hormones, no plastic bag full of drugs like Lupron, Gonal-F, and HCG.

When I wanted poetry, I thought that perhaps the world was telling me to either take the path of poetry or be unhappy in this path — if it wasn’t working out elegantly, then it must not be the right direction for me and I should go now while I can. I wondered if perhaps god was opening up a door to leave my marriage rather than undergo an ugly procedure that might literally kill me. I tried that and instead I fell in love with Steve further. I had to accept that any sperm and any egg would do, and that a miracle of science is still a miracle.

But for the first cycle I had to at first hold as true to poetry as I was permitted: very few stimulating drugs and only one egg for that one month. It had a 10% chance of working and it didn’t. That embryo was due, exquisitely, to be born on my birthday.

After all we had been through, the failure felt unpoetic. This was supposed to be our climax. In a poetic world, all that we fought for would bring us to this sweet closure. I had visions of being on Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air” rallying for less drugs with IVF and more acupuncture and fish oil in its place.

But I have had to give up on that undrugged dream for the sake of my sanity–I would rather undergo the full regime of drugs for one month than go through the trauma of another negative result. Instead, I am in the most unpoetic place for procreation I can picture. The first day we took out all the drugs and Steve sucked out Lupron from a jar into a needle and shot it into my leg, I cried for all I had surrendered about what I thought the world was going to offer me: poetry. The doctor will pick my baby. The strongest sperm will not survive, but one sperm will. The egg that was meant to drop that month will not, but in its place will be ten fat overstimulated pieces of me, not on god’s schedule but under the influence of chemicals.

I have a 45% chance this time that it will work. And if I am like 25% of people who suffer through / choose IVF, I will have twins. I don’t know if I am brave to take this path or if I have just surrendered my principles so that I can stay with my husband and still fulfill my dream. But it doesn’t feel so bad. It is not elegant, but we are laughing our way through it. Maybe-maybe-baby poetry sometimes appears in retrospect.

March 19th, 2009 | Category: written | Leave a comment

- I am sad for Rosie. I cannot at this moment save her from two competing themes.

- I stir my tea which helps heat clear in the body, thus promoting fertility.

- I am interested in the contrast of wanting to bring one child into this world when the one we have needs a good retreat in the woods alone for at least a year.

- Energetically I am not supposed to wear diamonds until November 2009. After we found out the first round didn’t work, I put the diamonds back on. Today I took them off again.

- Rosie watched her father put a needle in my thigh after dinner (homemade broccoli and tofu in brown sauce). Actually she closed her eyes.

- Since the needle I have been weepy. I am sad for Natasha Richardson and her family.

- The drugs make my skin dry and suck the liquid out from around my bones (and seems to collect it around my stomach).

- Last night we went to the hospital at 2:00 a.m. for a scheduled MRI (it was the first available). We left at 4:00 a.m. and we slept until 11:00 a.m. For two hours I stayed in a tunnel where a voice through a speaker said ‘now don’t breathe’ and ‘for four minutes don’t swallow or move your mouth in any way.’ Sometimes I fell asleep, I think.

- I only want to watch a movie tonight if I can order out Thai food.

- I am in the market for a scroll saw for my studio.

- And also a letterpress. I am ready for one now.

- I am almost ready for a studio opening. Maybe in two months.

- Summer nights are filled with longing. I felt it bowl me over tonight in the car.

- Today we got raw milk out of the back of a truck.

- Steve is playing KEXP across from me here at the dining room table, he with his glass full of red and mine full of white.

March 18th, 2009 | Category: right now | Leave a comment

I spent many hours yesterday in the studio feeling like I was only fiddling. I spend so long there sometimes just feeling useless. And then an idea comes and I am full or overfilling. Yesterday a tiny idea snuck in at the last second and changed a huge way that I plan to show my work. I needed to spend all that time in order to get to that feeling, but I couldn’t see it coming. I cannot weave, where each line is a mark of time and in the end time is tangible. It can be so frustrating. Today, again: to try so hard to hear what my hands are making, then to have it come popping out of the ground like a tulip I didn’t know I had planted, right when I was thinking of taking a nap.

March 17th, 2009 | Category: written | Leave a comment

I had pain in my spine at C1 and T4. My acupuncturist put tiny 14k gold balls onto my ears (they are taped there) at the acupressure points that correspond to the pain in my spine. I really truly was instantly in no more pain.

March 17th, 2009 | Category: photograph | Leave a comment

Yesterday we went on a field trip to Somerset mall and bought cloth napkins (the non-stripe ones above — the stripey ones this friend of my mother-in-law wove). I love the complex colors, mixes of seasons. We also bought this rug, which Moby rubs his face into, maybe to mark it his like the cats do?

Then we had a margarita and came home. I gave myself a glass of wine after Steve gave me my first of many shots:

The nurse drew on my thigh with a marker so that Steve would know where to shoot. He was brave; I was not. I did cry. Then we watched episodes of Arrested Development that we have only seen ten times, to forget about pain, and drank wine, to numb pain, before we slept, to temporarily disappear.

March 16th, 2009 | Category: photograph, written | Leave a comment