The one where she gets all teary...

My baby starts kindergarten in the morning. I am busily gathering together the last minute necessities - re-packaging her peaches so she can open them up, chilling her apple juice, making sure her jacket and backpack and lunch box are labeled, jotting down the things I need to remind her teacher of when I meet her tomorrow.

I can't believe she's this old. I can't believe five years has gone by so quickly. My beautiful baby has morphed into my beautiful little girl, and in the next blink of my eyes she will be my beautiful big girl and eventually my beautiful adult daughter.

I don't want the time to go. I want to hold her close to me while she's still small enough to fit on my lap, and whisper in her ear for ever how much I love her more than life. I want to always keep her safe in the same way I did when she was tucked away inside of me, nurtured by the very essence of my being.

I can't, though. I must put away my tears and nostalgia and my fear of change and instead dust off my confident smile. I must soothe her trepidations with assurances that I will be there the moment the bell rings to scoop her into my arms and tell her how proud I am of her for being herself.

I don't want her to go.

Saturday Satisfaction: Questions for my readers!

So, I'd like to get to know you guys.  There's 64 of you who think that I write well enough/interestingly enough that you publicly follow me, and often comment.

Do you have kids?  Are they yours biologically?  Were they planned or unplanned?  For those of you who are new, I'll answer my own questions.

I have two children.  Kinder Major is five and will start kindergarten in a week.  Bug just turned nine months.  Both of them are my biological children.  I have not ever had step children or adopted children, nor have I had foster kids.  Someday, I'll be happy to welcome any of the three.  Kinder Major and Bug were surprise babies.  I was on birth control (perfect use,) with both of them.  Kinder Major is a DepoProvera baby, and Bug is an Ortho Tri-Cyclen baby.

What about you?  If you don't have children, do you want some eventually, or are you contentedly child-free?

So this is growing up.

You know, I've spouted often that part of being a parent is growing from the rebirth that occurs when you give birth.  I was smacked upside the head today with a reminder of the things I've spouted.

Just when you become complacent in your ideas and your grudges and your loves, the foundation is shaken, reminding you to never, ever be complacent.

Apologies can be given at the most unexpected times, and so can they be acknowledged, and even granted.  The day we stop surprising ourselves is the day we must sit down and realize that we are no longer truly living.

Be well, my darlings.

iHappy Monday

Because, damnit, it is three hours and seven minutes into Monday.  It is already a "Monday" kind of Monday.  And also, because I damn well need a happy.  Have for weeks, and it's finally beginning to culminate into a palpable presence.

Poltergeists are not the manifestation of the energy left behind by the others, IMO.  They are instead the manifestation of all of one's stress and worry and anxiety and even to an extent, sometimes, the sadness that has been left to fester under a facade of smiles and super-mama feats of incredible strength.

Why the hell am I talking about Poltergeists on iHappy Monday, you ask?  Because, as I was taking my iHappy photo, a distinctly humanoid-profile white spot appeared on my otherwise lovely shot of my art in progress.

So, I will leave you with a different iHappy instead.

Behold, the mock-up for my newest tattoo:

And one more, because I'm feeling vain.  New hairs and *gasp* make-up!

FlogYoBlog Friday!

FlogYoBlog time again!  Some of you know the drill.  For those who don't, here it is!

1. Follow Brenda's blog. (if you haven't already done so.  And perhaps follow mine, as well.  Again, if you haven't already done so.)
2. Grab the FlogYoBlog bubbly button and post it on your sidebar. 
3. Link your First Name and/or Blog Name and URL (not your homepage) below. 
4. Add a short description (max of 125 chars). It could be a description of yourself, your blog or a teaser to your latest post.
5. Follow at least 1 linkyer/blogger (Pay it forward is the name of the game).
6. The list will be open for linkyers on Fridays (Brenda has extended the linky for us non-aussies).
7. A new and fresh link list will open every Friday. And you will have to link up AGAIN. The previous link list does not carry over to the following week.
8. And lastly, have lotsa fun.  (And wine.  Let's totally have lotsa wine.  And chocolate this week, too.  Maybe some cheese.)

That cup isn't for drinking, my dearest.

I have been issued a challenge by the ever thoughtful and lovely Lori.

"...to you, should you choose to accept it- to write openly and honestly about the topic of menstruation, without Puritan instincts kicking in..."

I've debated and pondered this challenge, thinking about it as I lay on my bathroom floor, begging for death today.  (Food poisoning is a cruel and heartless mistress when you're in her clutches.)  It kind of amuses me that I can ponder blog topics while I vomit up internal organs.  Anyways.

While I lack Puritan instincts (as anyone who knows me IRL will tell you that, with a sigh and a shake of their heads,) I certainly have a hesitancy to bare it all about menstruation right now.

It has not always been like this - normally, I am all too happy to tell you precisely how much I bleed and how terribly I was once afflicted with cramps and leaks and stains and stress.  I will wax poetic about my menstrual cup and cloth pads, and try my hardest to get you to think outside of your tampon box for a few moments and consider that your period might actually be a satisfying thing.

I'm vulnerable right now.  Vulnerability hits me hardest when I am conflicted, and now is one of those times.

I missed it quite a bit while I was pregnant with Bug.  Part of that was due, I believe, to my unhappiness with the circumstances I found myself in.  I won't lie or sugar coat the truth - I was angry, and I resented that little life inside of me more often than not.  It was a very real case of dueling emotions - one moment I would be mournful that I felt his kicks, wishing more than anything that I could go back to the day he was conceived and change it, so that instead of pointlessly buying a pregnancy test four weeks later to satisfy a question I already knew the answer to, I would be buying a case of back-up pads instead, experiencing one of the most bountiful withdrawl bleeds ever.  The moment that would follow that would be spent awestruck at the love that I had for him, and terrified about how strong it was despite my moments of resentment.

After I worked through my resentment, I found myself yet again wishing for menses.  Not because I was angry, but because I hurt.  Physical pain, emotional pain, the pain of wondering if he was well, the pain of knowing that my daughter was moving on in life as I sat and watched, unable to partake, for Bug's health and my own.

When he finally made his entrance, I bled enough to satisfy those months of wishing.  Granted, not quite the same, but blood letting is blood letting, in an odd and unexplainable way.  It was as if my body was making its own atonement to the universe for my negativity, and even though it fell on the delivery room floor (and the doctor's feet, and the nurses' feet, and splattered the walls, and their legs, and my legs, etc. etc.) and not into the earth, I felt a certain and strange peace.

I spent the next few months fighting the battles that were put in my path, and didn't once think about the absence of my menses.  When all had settled, I went in to be fitted with my little borg implant, my friend, my copper IUD named Optimus Prime. 

At the time, I had not resumed menstruating.  The day of the insertion, I found myself excited for the things to come:  No more pregnancy (hopefully,) no more artificial hormones flooding my system and giving me a false sense of security, no more terror at the thought of falling pregnant with a bad choice.  I was nervous, though.  Was I setting myself up for heartbreak?  Would I, who was blessed with the type of fertility that a rabbit would envy, somehow curse myself?  Or worse, would I be one of the percentage of women who fell victim to one of the nastier potential side effects and not be able to even ponder any more biological children?

I brushed it aside, I went through with it.  I remember thinking to myself, as the CNM parted my labia with an uncharacteristic gentleness that sticks out in my mind, "It will be okay.  Just breathe."  The insertion was fast and painless.  And... once again, my body offered up blood.  "Is it normal for her to bleed that much?" questioned the nursing student I allowed to sit in on the procedure.  The midwife simply smiled at me and said far better than I could have:  "Well, Miss AccidentallyMommy has her own thoughts on blood and bleeding.  There is no normal for her." 

Again, months melted away - a bit of spotting here, a few false starts there, but all in all - nothing that really screamed "You're back to where you should be!" to me.

I have had two "real" periods since then.  Periods where I could pinpoint my fertility without question, without temperatures or cervical length or dowsing with a crystal over my belly.

And you know what?  They have turned me upside down.

Gone is the time where I look forward to the days when I can break out the cloth pads and the cup that I so lovingly stored and missed so desperately, gone is that time where I can take geeky, suppressed-researcher joy in measurements and observations.

It's like puberty all over again.  A total rebirth into being me.  Leaks and cramps have returned, cycle days are unpredictable, and I find myself no longer at peace - I find myself filled with nerves and stress and generally being displeased.

I will come full circle again - there is no doubting that, that is the way life works.  I will stop being horrified with myself when I find myself debating the pro's of the disposable products that make me rash and itch, simply because they're so much easier in a time where nothing is any longer easy.  Gone will be the time when I find myself telling Kinder Major "No, baby, that's not a cup in the drinking sense.  Right now it's just decoration." because it can no longer handle the bounty that my body is offering up.

For now, though, I wait.  I wait for my patience and my re-establishment as a woman (in my eyes, above any,) to return to me.

Collectively, as humans, we seem to have forgotten the definition of the term "Human Rights".

An Iranian woman, mother of two, is to be stoned to death.  For adultery.  For loving someone other than her husband.

She was flogged publicly in front of her children, and now she's to be murdered slowly in front of them.

This is a harsh but truthful description.  Does it make you cringe?  Turn away?  Does it make you sad?

I hope it does.  It should.  Because if it does, then it means that you'll take action.

Read Jessica Gottlieb's post that outlines how you can contact your local government officials, and gives a better overview of the situation, including links to CNN, as well as an interview done with her son.

Tell your friends, your family, and post on Facebook.

Tweet the UN:  @UN when will you intercede on behalf of #Ashtiani? http://bit.ly/bCeWGe 


GET INVOLVED.  THIS IS A HUMAN ISSUE.