end and beginning

beginning:

wednesday at 12:45pm i saw a baby get born. i had an amazing close-up view 'cause i was standing on the right side of mama, holding her leg back while she pushed for an hour. (i was going to put photos of babies crowning to show you how beautiful it all was, but then i remembered that maybe not everyone wants to see that...so, you're welcome.)



my favorite part of the whole experience? everything. i liked everything. i was there for 11 of the 14 hours of labor. it was totally natural and mama, partner, and i were in sync and in our bodies and intuition. we were being present and breathing together through every rush (better word than contraction...).

i liked the noises. i liked that they just came from somewhere within her. they were so powerful they gave me goosebumps. and everything was quiet and peaceful in between.

i liked the pushing. the sounds were especially moving during this part. the midwife brought in a mirror when the baby's head was crowning and mama looked into the mirror and had fire in her eyes and made the most beautiful, terrifying, human sounds i've ever heard. this is the part where i secretly cried a little.

i liked that she reached down to touch his head to give her strength. then she dug her fingers into my arm again for the next push and i had baby juice on me. but it wasn't disgusting. it was more like...baptism.

i liked the pure, raw awe that happened when they held the new baby. i liked when the baby found her nipple and she just kept saying "he's so beautiful. he's so perfect. he's so perfect."

i liked the placenta and i liked videotaping and i liked biking to the hospital at 1:45am and stopping at the gas station to get them coffee and steamed milk.

i liked everything.

immediately after, i called my mom to thank her. and i felt totally intoxicated walking down the street. partly because i was so sleep-deprived, but mostly i couldn't stop grinning because i felt so...connected.

no matter how i try to explain it, it sounds ridiculous and woowoo, so bear with me or skip this part. i'll just say that it made everything so clear. and i understood why we do anything we do and what it means to be a person and how simultaneously fragile and temporary, yet strong and eternal we are. i learned something about being a woman and something about being a man and something about tenderness and purpose.

end:

my cleanse is over. in the end, i cared a lot less about it. i guess it was a good thing to do, but i decided against the liver flush. i want to enjoy food.

i want to eat delicious things and hang out with wonderful people and be okay with it all and smell every lilac tree i pass because lilac season is so short and i always miss it when it's over.

here's a quote from harold and maude, one of the best movies ever. then i will be done writing sappy bullshit and go outside and play:

"vice? virtue? It's best not to be too moral. you cheat yourself out of too much life. aim above morality. as Confucius says, 'don't simply be good. make good things happen.'"

yeah, that's damn right.

and they're all make out of pickles.

day 15 of me being particularly wholesome and vice-free. although i did eat a piece of bread last week and that made everything harder. bread= gateway vice.

also, my house is full of 400 POUNDS of chocolate right now, so i can't even get away from sugar when i'm not at work.



we saved 575lbs of cherry almond and mint dark (vegan) chocolate from its dumpster fate, and now i'm twisting everyone's arm to take some. if you are reading this and you live in seattle and you do NOT have at least one of these boxes in your posession, you must take one. if you are a true friend. please.

i wish there were more exciting things to write, but now that i'm so virtuous, all i really do is go to yoga and fall asleep at 10pm. well, also i go to roller derby and poetry slams and parade around the city singing "bad romance" with an accordion...


(he is playing while driving, yes)

...and eat burritos in the park on a sunny day and have my own private spa at hothouse and drink mud shakes and watch documentaries on a giant projector screen. and go to the tuliptown. it was like being inSIDE a bob ross painting:


(above is actually the tulip festival, not a bob ross painting...seriously.)








here is a broken tulip...in the 1600s in holland, a single bulb of a specific kind of broken tulip was more expensive than a fancy schmance house on the canal...then they found out the bulb looked that way 'cause it had a virus and the economy crashed and everyone got mad and started destroying all the tulips. oops:



life lesson learned the hard way by the rich dutch tulip fanatics of the 1600s: things aren't always what they seem. think about it. and if you're going to spend a shit-ton of money, buy a house, not an infected bulb. iesh. you can't live in a bulb.

well anyway, mercury is in retrograde. we'll see how my disaster preparedness works for me or if the universe is just going to make life more difficult to show me i can't outsmart it.

...i'm writing this whole entry to distract myself...my doula client just lost her mucus plug, which sounds disgusting, but is very exciting to me. it means i get to welcome new life into the world any day now...any minute now...*bites fingernails anxiously*...

flow

saturday someone told me that it's bad bedroom feng shui to have your bed against the wall and your head under a window. bah! mine is both of these things! plus, i have a trash can in my room, which apparently is also bad energy.

then last night i had a creepily vivid dream that i was having a baby. the dream was so long and emotional; at one point i was at the hospital in labor and the doctor reached inside of me and couldn't find the baby. then she found his foot and he started crying while he was still up in there. and he pressed his whole body up against my belly...you could see his face and hands and feet. *shudder* well i think there are plenty of reasons to explain why i'm having baby dreams, but nonetheless, when i woke up this morning, i decided it was time to rearrange my room.

if you've ever visited my shoebox of a room, you know i have very limited space to work with. i did what i could, but there's so much to think about and i know absolutely nothing about feng shui. internet searches direct me to sites with helpful, reliable-sounding information like: "Avoid the overhead beams, the low side of a slanted ceiling, sharp angles from interior corners, and an overhead fan in a room with a low ceiling are some of the common Feng Shui bed room tips that you can find in any Feng Shui book or web site. Beyond that, would you like to learn how to get rich without winning the lottery? If so, please click here." hmm...beyond that, i wouldn't mind getting rich by winning the lottery, either.

today was day 1 of my detox/de-vice. damn, i forgot how hard it is not to eat chocolate when you spend 9 hours a day in a chocolate factory. tomorrow, i start my psyllium husk-bentonite clay milkshakes to scrape out my intestines. if you think that sounds repulsive, you're right. i haven't even had one yet and i'm already gagging. so i'm supposed to drink these "shakes" twice a day for 30 days, then it'll be time for that extra-repulsive liver/gall flush....it's gonna be a long month. i better feel like a million dollars when this is over....like i've won the lottery...or gotten rich without winning the lottery 'cause i clicked on that sketchy feng shui link...

mmm, i love me some self-improvement in small, strong doses!

but i'm mostly focused and in it to win it; this weekend i got all funny business out of my system by frolicking around a park, looking for easter eggs. after wandering around a rainy park dressed in my deviled egg halloween costume, we returned home for "hoppy hour:" lots of ipa and rabbit stew. lots of delicious. and egg salad, of course. which was also delicious. and chocolate. everything was magical: we ate and ate and ate and played music and ate and told stories and ate until we all fell asleep and lived hoppily ever after...

p.s. i played a funny april fool's (fools? fools'? i never know how to properly punctuate that because they could all make sense, i guess) day joke on my tour thursday! i had them all take a bite of "mystery chocolate" and guess the flavor...then i told them we were experimenting with flavors inspired by the countries from where we source our beans and that they were the first test audience for the grasshopper bar. bah hahaha! APRIL FOOLS!

p.p.s. i got overalls at a clothing swap and i'm never taking them off.