Steve and I went hunting for morel mushrooms this afternoon. I have no idea if it’s popular to do this in any other state, but I married into morel culture. It’s just like finding lucky pennies, except they look like little brains. We took the tip of a morel master and went to a specific spot of land just past Dexter. We couldn’t find any, so we called the morel master, and he drove out to meet us in the rain wearing his yellow rain costume. He pointed out all but two of the morels we brought home — he let us pick them even though he’d found them. This may be because yesterday he found 400 of them. We ate them tonight for dinner with omelettes and asparagus. It’s fun to eat them, but it is so much more fun to hunt for them. I just wish I could train my dogs to sniff them out.

April 30th, 2009 | Category: happening | Leave a comment

I believe more and more that I cannot truly know what something will be like until I am there. I had no idea two years ago that, if faced with infertility, I would choose the route I did. I had no idea what I would feel after the surgery, if I would feel resentment or love. I thought that once I got pregnant I would check it off my list and coast through a pregnancy — I had no idea that I would feel the grave statistic so deeply: 20% of pregnancies end in early miscarriage. I had no idea how I would feel about forming a baby. I used to be excited that I would get to eat more, but now that I’m here, I am a fanatic about what I eat: every calorie is worth something to a life that is growing 100 brain cells per minute. Right now my embryo is about 5,000 times bigger than the day it formed; therefore, I shouldn’t eat white bread or drink chlorinated tap water. I had no idea I would feel so much awe over life, that it forms out of almost nothing. I look at Steve in amazement: he used to be a ball of cells, components set to make fingernails and red hair. I look at my dogs in awe: their mothers formed them by accident, without thought, and they are perfect. What are the chances that we work out so symmetrically almost every time? It is a miracle. I had no idea I would feel so invested and in awe of the process. I don’t know if I would feel this way if I had adopted, but I don’t think I would. I had a dream last night that I adopted from China and I woke up excited about our future adoption journey, but for now I am glad that this is the way I am learning what a baby is.

April 30th, 2009 | Category: dream, inward, the baby thing | Leave a comment

Steve ordered a treadmill, and three weeks ago it was to be delivered. The delivery company came, looked at the route we hoped they would take — through the front door, down the stairs, into the newly titled exercise room. They said that it couldn’t be done. The had taken the 500 pound treadmill out of the truck; they put it back and drove away.

Another delivery company came last week, looked at the route, and said it couldn’t be done. We ordered the biggest treadmill, they said. There’s no way it will fit in your tiny house, I felt they implied. They tried anyway. I said I wouldn’t sign the waiver allowing them to destroy my house without responsibility, and they said they couldn’t get down the stairs because our stairs are under construction and have no railing — if they fall, they said, they’re not allowed to touch the wall because I didn’t sign the waiver and then they would be injured. They carted the beast of a box through the front door, which took a half an hour. They spent another half hour figuring out how to safely slide it across the hallway. I fetched them numerous blankets. They finally said it couldn’t fit through the door to the basement. They weren’t allowed to take the door off unless I signed the waiver. I took the door off for them. Then they said they couldn’t get it downstairs unless they opened the box. They said they could either leave the box there and go or take it back with them. So I signed the waiver. They never tried to open the box. They said they ran out of time and had to go. They took the box with them and ended up leaving a huge scratch in the floor, which they are not responsible for because I signed the waiver.

A third delivery company came yesterday. They looked at the route and said it could not be done. Yes we can. Yes we can, Steve and I chanted at the chorus of No. Let’s just open the box and see if maybe it will fit without the box, Steve said. They said it was too big and unwieldy, that they needed the box to keep it secure. This wasn’t true. We opened the box: the treadmill came in multiple parts and was one foot wide.

There is some moral here. Maybe the fable has already been written. About a group of people who feared they could not climb the huge mountain but discovered upon arriving that it was a hill. This is a story about No and how the Yes inside is so possible, it just takes opening the big scary box.

April 30th, 2009 | Category: happening, house | Leave a comment

Two weeks ago or so I was cooking dinner and listening to the radio and there was breaking news on NPR about horses that were dying in a derby in Florida. One by one they were dropping, and in total 21 died. 21 horses. The most beautiful creature to me. Like my Moby but larger, larger hearts possibly and larger brains, larger intuition. I felt sick to my stomach while listening; I turned the radio off. Too much sadness. I went to the New York Times online to see if there was any information, but there was no mention of it. If it were my newspaper, it would be the headline. No word the next day on NPR. Nothing since. I wondered if I had dreamt it, this horrible story. A part of my brain has been set aside for this story, waiting to hear the results — how did they die? Are the families sick with grief? Nothing. I googled the story tonight to see if I had dreamt it, but I didn’t. I found the news story from that day’s tragedy, but nothing since. I keep waiting, this strange space of waiting for the completion of a story that it feels like no one but me has heard of.

April 30th, 2009 | Category: happening, pet | Leave a comment

I don’t know why I haven’t been able to go to my studio. It started because I was recovering and trying to stay in or near bed. Then it was because I would rather be writing than drawing, and writing in my studio is difficult right now. But I miss it. Instead, I’ve been painting my house all over again, doing something visual and important to me, but circumventing the studio in the process.

I painted the wall with the fireplace red because the fireplace seemed to disappear and I wanted more attention in that direction, and because fireplaces are warm and the red feels warm even with the fireplace off. But the red felt too stuffy, like it was trying too hard to be rich. So I painted the mantel bright pink to play off of the red. But the pink was so very bright, too bright. There was nothing in the room that matched it and it asked for too much attention. So I painted it a color just off from red, more raspberry, to clash nicely with the red. I liked it, but when I saw it from the outside at night it just looked like it was trying too hard. It looked like I was poor and this was my sad way to make something look nice. So today I painted it fishing hole blue. So far I like it okay.

Below the mantel, covering the fireplace, is a brass cover that I’ve always disliked. So today I spraypainted it black, which may or may not have been a good idea. The black is so shiny and really looks like plastic. And it’s noticeable enough that even Rosie asked about it when she walked in the house.

I also decided to paint the adirondack chairs. They’re in the front of our house and last year I stained them to match the cedar accents on our house but they faded and the stain stripped off. I tried painting on black, but it looked hot as tar and I didn’t want to sit on it. I thought about painting it white, but it’s in the front of the house and that draws too much attention to it. So today I painted them the color of the house, and tomorrow I’ll paint accent colors on them that will help them not look so uniform.

The paint spray gun I used broke literally every three seconds, and on top of that I was wearing a massive ventilation mask all day so that I wouldn’t have to inhale any paint fumes. This might be akin to writing an essay in a class, while gagged, with a pencil that repeatedly snaps. I had to lie down twice because yesterday I read that the embryo learns from the cortisol levels in its mother what kind of world it should expect to come into — a stressful one? a peaceful one? Yes, embryo! Peace is even in the paint gun.

April 29th, 2009 | Category: house | Leave a comment

Last I saw the embryo it contained eight cells. They enlarged it in a photograph and I taped a copy to a wall in my kitchen. Out of those eight cells, It formed an inner and outer layer.

The outer layer right now is becoming the placenta which will feed the embryo for the duration. (Yes: Placenta comes from the Latin word for cake.) The inner layer becomes the human. How wild that the outer part of what is being created is something expendable soon enough but necessary for now. All that energy for a component that will only last nine months.

The inner layer is right now becoming three distinct parts: inner, middle, and outer. The outer will become the skin and nails of the human. The middle layer becomes the muscles and bones. The inner layer becomes the digestive system.

That’s all so wild. Somehow I can appreciate that abstraction of circles and layers more than I can appreciate that for most of the next nine months the human will most resemble a tiny kittycat alien.

April 28th, 2009 | Category: the baby thing | Leave a comment

It really is amazing that my biggest symptom, the only real sign to me that anything is happening of note inside, is that I am out of breath at the easiest task. Steve and I walk like clockwork each morning for an hour, and for the past two days I’ve had to beg him to slow down. He seems to be walking so very fast, but he insists that he’s walking no faster. Today walking up a flight of stairs I had to stop halfway because I was gasping for air.

April 28th, 2009 | Category: the baby thing | Leave a comment

Steve planted about five hundred tulip bulbs when it was beginning to get cold out. We’ve been taking tulip walks around the yard to chart their progress, and this week they began to bloom almost all at once. I love that I married someone who never seems to have enough vases.

Tulips don’t return every year like I had thought. Some do, but the climate in Michigan doesn’t let them hibernate enough. Some people dig out their tulip bulbs and put them in a dry, dark place and then replant them each year. I’m not sure if we’ll do that, but knowing that we might only get to appreciate them this week makes them all the more precious.

April 28th, 2009 | Category: house, photograph | Leave a comment

Steve carved these steps out of the dirt as a temporary solution to get us from one level of land to another. I love that mix of human effort and nature. It almost looks like the dirt made these itself.

April 28th, 2009 | Category: house, photograph | Leave a comment