About to make potato latkes with homemade apple sauce for Maya's birthday breakfast. Happy birthday Maya my love.

Your mom.

At night her halo lights up

In Calistoga at a spa for Maya's birthday. Gigantic swimming pool that's 95 degrees. Not really swimmable because you get in it and you just want to fall asleep. Had a volcanic mud bath yesterday and a massage. The California experience. California is a different planet than the rest of the US. People here are thinner and more fashionable and more organic than most of the world. Oh and more spiritually inclined in a fruity, hippy, ungrounded kind of way.

Perhaps I'm being unkind.

On the eve of Maya's actual birthday. Her birth was hard and painful and long. And I did it. I grew into being her mother even though I was young and arrogant and impossibly naive. And she became a beautiful, graceful and honest human being. She's a loving mother and my friend.

Today we're waking up to a cool morning, thinking about the ridiculous pool and the town of Calistoga for breakfast.

A friend just called from the East where she sits with her aged mother who is failing. They just got word that her sister has stage 4 breast cancer. Sorrow comes in and stirs and stirs.

As Maude says: "Ah, the great circle of life".

I got a letter from ~~~~Animal Control~~~~~~that my white curly headed dog has been running free or otherwise disturbing the property of others. And I better beware because they will come get him or I'll pay fines or worse (waterboarding?)

Geez, and I was telling some newly introduced neighbor folks how safe I feel in my new hood.  Who is watching me and ratting me out??? I run the Felix down the center of the street to the dead end and back. Yes, he strays onto a few parking strips. I always clean up after him.  He's harmless. Goofy, barky but friendly.

Who is it? I'll never know.

Ok, I'll be taking him to the park more often for his runs. He's not a leash kind of dog. Come to think of it, neither am I.

Obey the rules or else.

If dogs ran free, why can't we?

To California on Monday and Felix to dog camp where he can't get into trouble.

It's time to build a one match fire and huddle.

I applied for MEDICARE  today.




GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK.


My right knee is 'catching' and 'popping'. Perhaps my squats at the gym are too enthusiastic.

The lady above was nursing a baby in church. It was Italy so you know to expect such things.

My house is freezing.

I'm going tomorrow to my healthcare place for a lecture/discussion of MEDICARE as I turn 65 in a few months. Lordy. They have sent me vast reams of paper with dense writing to help me consider all my choices. Ah, well, um. I haven't a clue without some guidance what to choose.

Then there's the annual letter from social security reminding me that at retirement age (66? 67? 103?) I will get X amount of $$ and please don't think I can live on this amount. Fool.

Meanwhile, the remodel lumbers along. I have windows and a roof and they've strung up light bulbs for a truly ghetto look. Still I huddle in front of the fire every night with movies from the library and my dear NYT.

Next Monday I leave for California to visit the kinder and then off to a meditation retreat. Back after January first. The pregnant ladies are flying through the door so next year is looking pretty healthy.

Dina was as marvelous as ever. I'll leave you with this song from Seattle's premier chanteuse.

I'm going to see Dina on Sunday with Betsy and Kiara. It will be another tacky and tasteless destruction of all we hold dear during the xmas season. Therefore, I've invited two women who can properly appreciate Dina's ****special**** talents.

I forgot. I saw these women in concert on Wednesday night. They are purely angelic.  (Ignore the stupid ad.)

It's 4:30 and I'm already in my jammies, about to  build a fire in the fireplace. I danced my ass off this morning and took the white dog for a long walk/run/ball chase. Now it's time to knit some more rows for a snood...bet you don't know what a snood is. It's a scarf-y thing you wear on your head/neck and it is impossibly easy to make. The socks take more time.

Tis the dark season. Friends and I went to Playback Theatre last night and revealed ourselves to the improv actors. They danced/spoke/yelled etc. our stories. It alternated between being terrifying and funny, depending on their focus. There were a few children there and I wanted to throttle them. I'm not usually opposed to children per se, I do deliver them fairly often but last night they were obnoxious and hogging all the attention. Their parents tried reining them in, in vain.  The actors were gracious about it but jeez. Sometimes I do appreciate me some child-free space.

I have perfected the art of the one match fire.  I am also getting good at splitting wood for kindling. I love building a fire, almost as much as I love watching it and feeding it throughout the evening. Fires need tending. Sara and her guy brought me a bunch of apple wood, burns much more slowly than the pine from the remodel.

Speaking of the remodel. I now have a new roof and four new skylights. Hot damn.

Another week begins. Babies growing, babies being born, all in the great cycle of life.

Waiting for the corn bread to be done and some weird-ass soup I made with random elderly vegetables and a can of black beans. As we roll around here.

A wee babe this morning around 5 AM. The mom called in the deepest part of the night and the deepest part of sleep. The kind of sleep you crawl out of, the sleep cave where your clan is snugged up next to you and all are warm and safe.

Duty calls so you climb out into the freezing bedroom and the even colder closet to find you birthin' clothes (the ones you can get goop on and it doesn't matter), those delicious wool socks, all your gear, phone, car keys etc to sit in the freezing car with the defroster going full blast while you scrape off the ice so you can see to drive across town.

Quiet highway, perfect time to be riding to a birth; no traffic, no cops, no drunks bumping the yellow line.

The babe comes quickly. Dad is so beautiful holding his girl to his chest. Sometimes we look away because it is too tender.

We go make some tea, clean up, get the mom to the shower so we can strip her bed and give her clean sheets, give our postpartum instructions and head out.

I take my crew to breakfast. It's the least I can do. We've eaten in some interesting places-the all nighters where the hookers and gangsters and late night hipsters go for a steak at 3 AM.

At home I find the electrician and the guys. There's still snow on the roof and ice everywhere so no roofers today. The electrician has recently married her girlfriend. I congratulate her and she tells me she knows someone I might like to date. Oy.

Ok, but I'm pretty good by myself up here on the hill, looking over the mountains and the lake, as long as I have a friend to call who can help me move the dresser or have a meal with me or hike the Cascades on the weekends.

And anyone I ever date who wants to hang around? The moms and babies come first. They always have. They always will. That's the deal with midwifery. That kind of service is hard for some to handle. And that's ok. I used to be puzzled by my lovers who got cranky with me as I ran off into the night. Now it's ok. It really is.

We midwives have a special job. And it's impossible to explain why we do it. It's what our hearts lead us to do. It heals us and maybe it heals the world.