I thought for sure I posted here more recently that I had...but time gets away from me when in baby land. All the babies are once again thriving, their parents are in love with them and they are also wondering what the fuck happened to their lives. They used to shave and eat regular meals and go to work and wear clothes without baby spew on them. We tell them and we tell them and they don't listen.

I think the not listening part is pure survival. If new parents really knew how seriously effed up their lives would become, they mighta used condoms, two or three condoms, many condoms.

And then there are the planned pregnancies. Ha, I had one of those. (hi Eden).

With hindsight and the fact that my kids are all grown and I didn't kill them, parenthood was the best ever. But, man, those first few months when you're dragging your ass around the apartment in curdled milk stained shirts and maternity pants because your regular pants won't come past your knees and your hair is rat's nest, it's not for sissies, I tell you. Somehow, you make it past the dreaded (((thoughts of killing, maiming, exposing in the snow the baby) thoughts and you all live happily ever after, until the teenage years, when you get to relive your own shame and humiliation through your child.

Fun!

Two births back-to-back. I had time to come home, take a shower, eat three bites of my vegan mongolian beef and get back up and go on out to the next birth. Up all night. My honey is home today and she came in with breakfast at 2PM. All the cats wanted to be on the bed so they were. A few tussles ensued. Mostly, I just want to cry. Everything feels too close or tender or breakable or I don't know what. Too too.

Maybe I'm just tired.

I attended a birth recently and the momma screamed bloody murder and thrashed around and pushed out a gorgeous wee babe, just like in the movies (the ones I hate because births are always portrayed as horrid messy screamy messes...but there you have it. After the momma laughed (well, she laughed the next day when the whole thing was a bit fuzzy).

Really, the mom is beautiful her own self and we declared her a fierce goddess warrior with monster growls. Watch out.

After all that, I had to have a lie down. Damn, women are strong.

Today was our Rainier Community festival and parade. AND because we're 98118, the most diverse hood in the COUNTRY, ahem, we went down there in the heat. We heard Eretrian music and watched women dancing in their long veils. We watched the Aztec dancers with massive feathered headdresses. And several Mexican dancers from different areas of Mexico. We heard the Vietnamese national anthem and watched women dressed like flowers and butterflies swaying and gliding in circles.

Someone had a basket of pug puppies for sale. No, I said, no.

It's so hot, the katz are tolerating each other and lying in the living room where a breeze occasionally comes through.

Sometimes there's nothing for it but to walk to the lake and ponder the vagaries of life. The geese are grown now and they got their lake back after the hydroplane madness.

All the babies are fat and happy, spitting up and burbling in their leetle shorts.

Another day in midwife land...there's a massive pileup of babies itchin' to come on out. I'm gonna go gird my loins ( I first typed girl my loins, maybe that's the right expression) with a walk and a shower and a wait by the phone.

The katz are rolling and play-fighting in the garden. Then they come in and get twigs and dirt all over the comforter, which is white. Never have white stuff in a cat house. It's a dumb idea.

After being gone a month, I had some serious catching up to do, especially reading the Sunday NYT. So I had a stack. I have made it through everything except for the Book Review. I have 5 Book Reviews to read. I save them for last, like dessert. If poetry is reviewed, I grump and gaffaw because, well, they only review 'established' poets, whatever that is.

But.

There's a new book about Vita Sackville-West and her lover Violet Everett that sounds excellent. After I'm done with Life-ah Keith and I are like {{{this}}}} now and the third Dexter book (trash but so delicious).

For Jumping Around in Your Livingroom

Dearly beloved, we're gathered here today to get through this thing called life. Electric word, life, it means forever and that's a mighty long time but I mean to tell you, there's something else, the after world. A World of never ending happiness. You can always see the sun, day or night. So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills...you know the one, Dr Everything's Gonna Be Alright....cuz in the next life, things are much harder than the after world, in this life you're on your own. And if the elevator tries to bring you down, GO CRAZY.
~Prince

At a long birth over the last few days, off to bed.... that moon pulling on the babies to come out and be a Leo, surely a fine zodiacal sign.

One almost red tomato in the garden.

Sheesh.

I just had dinner with my gay husband, James. It's his birthday and I fed him minestrone and beet salad and molasses cookies. We talked about high-falutin' stuff like Buddhism and meditation and visions and dreams and we only dished dirt a little because, well, because that's what we DO.

Then he got in his leetle blue car and went home. He is dear and beautiful and I only wished I'd met him about 30 years ago.

The sky is gray and pink and closing in. The clothes on the line will just have to dry tomorrow.

I just read the first Dexter book. Definitely not Buddhist. I basically couldn't put it down. I read so fast my eyes swam over the words, like Nancy Drew books when I was a kid. The equivalent of hopping from one foot to the other, real fast.

There's this laurel tree in front of my house, well very close next to my house and it has to go. So the tree guy came over and we discussed how and when and I told him to be careful of the trillium that grow at the base....very careful because trillium grow in Upstate NY, land of my birth, and it's a bit of home, nostalgia and far away so when I first moved into this house and found trillium growing in the yard, I was so pleased, so happy to see them and therefore I'm the keeper of the trillium, endangered as they are. They grow in Seward Park too and I look for them every spring. I didn't see any this year and if thieves didn't take them, maybe the weather was too weird so they stayed away. But. They are close and big by the laurel and the tree guy better be very careful or else I won't pay him. And worse.

I made beet/carrot/apple salad from our beets (!).

One or two beets
A few carrots
An apple
Apple cider vinegar
Olive oil
Fresh dill
Salt

Grate the beets and carrots. Cut the apple up fine. Mix together. Add a splash of vinegar and a bit of olive oil. Add salt to taste. Throw on chopped dill, about a tablespoon.

Yum.

Check your tongue and hands for brilliant beet color.

Eating cauliflower "mashed potatoes" from our own cauli!

Head of cauliflower, steamed
Into blender with (soy) milk, a blob of (fake) butter, salt

Blend to ultimate creaminess

Eat with great satisfaction and yummyness.

Have a second helping without guilt.

You can read me here and here.

Dear all.

I've returned from the wilds of Vader, Washington along the Cowlitz River and the train tracks and the deer and raccoon and the dharma hall and my musty little cell and terrible food (gruel) and a nameless pond where I saw g-d. Well, I saw teeny fish and salamanders and two kinds of water striders and dragon flies and koi and polliwogs and and a blooming waterlily. I lay on my back and watched how the undersides of the leaves rippled when the reflected sunlight hit them while the bugs made overlapping circles on the surface of the water. Raccoons visited at the water's edge. A kingfisher came to fish. A hawk sat in a snag at the other end of the water. I became four years old, completely absorbed.

Then I came home and hugged my sweetie for about a whole day.

I'm back on retreat for another 5 days. This time we are going to (gasp) talk and write. I read a book by Jason Siff, Unlearning Meditation, and so intrigued I'm back to the woods.

The 15 days I was gone it rained and was so cold I borrowed socks. The damp crept in. And the guy cooking was, uh, awful. When you're sitting for several hours a day in silence, meals are a real highlight. I lived on peanut butter and tea. Complain, complain.

Very fruitful. Encounters with a doe and her fawn, a raccoon family, a beautiful slender stripey snake, a toad (!) and a lime green spider on a purple thistle. Slant light through the trees and rain on the zendo roof. Wide paths with wild flowers. A daily hike along the power lines very far into the forest where I stepped into mud over and over. My tangled mind that gradually became clear.

This time I'm taking food and chocolate.

By the way, Life, by Keith Richards, is fantastic. I'm listening to it on CD read by (((swoon))) Johnny Depp and some chap with an accent. Essential reading and/or listening.

Meet Lola, cat of mystery and suspense. She loves me. I love her. Without her I am nothing.

I'm back. My family is in town including my beautiful grandson with the golden hair and skin.

What has happened in Norway is so breathtakingly horrible I can't write right now.

Sometimes what lives in the minds of others is dark and broken and vile.

Vile.

Yesterday I worked in my clinic for 12 hours. I can't think after 5PM. My brain freezes up and words won't float to the surface so I stumble and bumble and my eyes water. Clients don't seem to notice. As I was saying goodbye to the last client and her son, one of the homeless men who lives up the street under the viaduct came in to tell us a pickup truck parked outside had it's lights on. We assured him that neither of us owned a truck. He supposed that the truck could be jump-started if the battery went dead and he seemed reassured by this idea. He said his 'Indian money' hadn't arrived yet but he didn't ask for anything from us. He was just being neighborly.

There is a small community of homeless men who live right beside the parking lot up the street. They have some furniture and a stove. They're very quiet. Sometimes the cops park in the lot and sometimes I see them in the encampment. Mostly, they leave them alone. All around are condos; young people with small dogs on leashes, babies in $300 baby strollers, and researchers at Fred Hutch, the huge research center across the street. So much money. The Gates Foundation is in the building across from us.

Tomorrow I leave for two weeks on retreat. Talk about lucky. I'm going to sit in the woods in silence with a bunch of other retreatants while others cook our meals. All I have to do is follow the schedule, if I want. We pick a chore. Maybe I'll work in the garden or clean the bathrooms.

In the hall, you can hear the train whistle off in the distance. There are deer and raccoons and bunnies and frogs. I've been there many times. During afternoon breaks, I'll go visit the creek and the hand hewn bridge a father dedicated to his children. I won't write (well, not officially) or read or talk, except during interviews. I'll eat sparingly and go to bed at 9:30.

I'll sit with my own damn self. No distractions except for the ones I invent. And I'm very clever so I invent a multitude of distractions. Finally the mind quiets down. And who knows what's there, lurking.

And back home, the babies will keep coming and the men under the bridge will hopefully be safe and protected from harm.

I'm sitting with my feet on the coffee table eating baked beans out of the container. They're from the health food store and they're very good. They're cold. I don't care. I can eat with my feet up on the furniture. I can eat cold food if I want.

The whole city is at the park on blankets eating chips and potato salad and burned animals. Women in burkas eating watermelon with their babies under an umbrella. A clutch of Guatemalan kids at the water's edge with sand toys. Frisbees. Footballs. Loud music from the boats in the water.

July 4th once again. I always forget what holiday it is. Babies don't know about holidays, or day and night or 'special date nights'.

Anyway, there will be the sound of fireworks/gunfire in the 'hood tonight. Children in the alleys with leetle noise makers that scare the bejeezus out of the cats who hide for two day. And no birds sing, well, it is night. Maybe that bit was a kinda melodramatic.

Yesterday I went for a bike ride along the Burke-Gillman trail which winds along for many miles by the lake. I stopped at Magnusen Park to pee and hang out before riding back. The lifeguards all had red blankets around their shoulders, the lake was choppy and waaaay too cold for swimming with our arctic spring.

Even so.

I watched a chubby kid in baggy shorts walk down t0 the edge and into the water up to his armpits. Then he swam the length of the roped off water by the diving raft. I remember my brother jumping into frigid water and staying there until his lips turned blue. He was fearless and so interested in the joy of swimming, cold water was no impediment. I was a wimp, whining by the edge of the pool, the concrete lip scratching the backs of my legs. I didn't really learn to love the water until my late 30's. Now I swim way out to the buoys in the lake when the water is warm enough...and I don't fear drowning.

Today there will be more kids, chubby and skinny, in the water adults wouldn't tolerate without a wetsuit. Childhood vigor.

I watched a documentary last night called "Little Man" that was so disturbing I can't write about it yet. It's about a couple who hire a surrogate to have a baby for them using one of their eggs. He's born at 25 weeks and survives, with great effort, technology and money. Oy.