we gotta get outta this place if it's the last thing we ever do

*********************This buffalo is how I felt.********************

Oh, friends. So sorry for the long absence. We’ve been up at my mom’s place taking care of her, as she’s had pneumonia. We’ve been away from our house for 2+ weeks. And now we’re home, and home is

SWEET.

The atmosphere at the house where my mom and brother live can get oppressive. (I love them both within an inch of their lives. However.) My brother suffers from both chronic pain and mental illness. And my mom, of course, was suffering from the pneumonia. She was a tough patient for the first week or so. Cranky, picky, morose. I mean, I get it. Pneumonia. No fun. But whoooosh! Some of her sample text for that first stretch:

I need hot water.
This applesauce is sour.
You abandoned me.

Finally, she started on the up and up; her mood lifted, and she was very appreciative and lovely. But then my brother’s mental illness started to jack up a bit. There’s no need to go into the details, but I will say that it’s maybe not the most relaxing thing in the world to hang around. Far less relaxing for him, I dig. But there you go.

So, I hain’t been feeling too bloggy. But now I’m home, and I’m all stuffed up with fried chicken from the 5-Spot, and there are cupcakes in the kitchen, and we have a stack of dvd’s to watch – we’re catching up on The Sopranos – and Finn is whaling and dolphining around my innards like a champ, and we’re going to sleep in our nice comparatively big bed that has room for me, Dave, Finn and my big pregnancy pillow to sleep without anyone falling out. Hallelujah.

I want to thank you for returning to this erstwhile tumbleweedy dustbowl. May I quickly make it re-inhabitable for you.

let's pretend we don't exist

For a long time, if someplace like a library or a video store sent me home with one of their items, or if a business accepted a check from me, or if a phone company let me have a phone or the city let me have light, my feeling was:

You're a sucker.

Or it was something slightly less malevolent and slightly more totally stupid, like:

I live in a magical world where everything for me is free! (or very close to it)

or

Nobody requires anything of me, ever!

Really, it was a blend of the three.

In a future post, I am going to be very classy and blame my mom. But look for that another day. And in the meantime, imagine how awesome I am, that that will happen.

Rain City Video was one of the sucker-entities that I crossed paths with back in the day. And in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen-Hundred and Ninety-Seven, when my level of personal irresponsibility was waxing strong and getting ready to peak, they allowed me to bring home this movie:



Have you seen it? It’s great. John Cassavetes. Rain City Video has it, if you want to go rent it. I mean, they have it NOW. They didn’t for a while.

It was out.

I really enjoyed watching it. And when I was done, I put it back in its box. And when it was back in its box, I put the box down someplace close to wherever I was standing. And that transaction, in my view, was complete.

I got on with my life.

Rain City Video had my phone number, and they used it a lot in the ensuing days and weeks…could it have been months? I don’t know. I was busy living. And what Rain City Video didn’t seem to realize was that there’s no law that a person has to answer their phone. And when you get messages, it’s so easy to delete them that a baby could do it. A baby DID do it. A baby did it a million and a half times.

Kristina, this is Rain City Vid-DELETE
Kristina, this is Rain Ci-DELETE
Kristina, this is Rai-DELETE
Kris-DELETE
DELETE
DELETE
DELETE

DELETE

I was at home one night, blissfully ignoring the phone, probably reading one of the magazines that I never took out to the recycling the whole time I lived there, as that was a task. This resulted in a situation where, when I finally moved out of that apartment, I had to make SIXTEEN TRIPS* to the recycle bin with HEAVY BOXES OF MAGAZINES. I was under the impression that at some point I was going to make a collage.

*A huge, big, ginormous task, yes, you know it. I was not what you would call a good predictor of the future**.

**And clairvoyance runs in my family. So that's sad.

Loodle doodle doodle, I am reading about celebrities or dresses, phone, I cannot hear you. I cannot heeeeear yoooooou. Blooodle doodle doodle dooo…..

And then my apartment buzzer rang.

Hmm. Who is here? Maybe it is the world delivering me some charming item that I deserve simply for having been born! Maybe it is a friend of mine, who grew weary of my never answering the phone or listening to my messages or returning phone calls, but somehow magically didn’t grow weary of my very friendship!

Who will it be?!

-Yes?

-Kristina?

-………yes?

-It’s Rain City Video.

!

!!

!!!

-Oh, um, uh…

-Look, we’re not mad. We’re not mad at you. We just would like to have the video back.

I buzzed the two nice young men in, trying to keep my face from melting off while I rummaged around for the video. My face was so hot, you see. So hot, so red. Never so red nor so hot. Hot red face.

Here you go, fellows. Hot, hot. Mind my face, there. There you are. There you go, there. Off you go.

It will have been soon after that that my phone service was turned off.

the enormous dare

I’m finding it increasingly incomprehensible that three-ish months from now, Finn will be born. Dave and I have accepted the most enormous dare from the universe. In fact, we dared it to dare us.

How much do we dare to love a person?

I’m afraid that we’re going to find out.

I don’t know what to expect, but I'm imagining a sort of tidal wave when Finn arrives. I’m fascinated and terrified by accounts of what mother love is like. A tidal wave is what I imagine, in which we’ll be flashing between swimming and drowning for, I don’t know, maybe the rest of our lives.

We’re planning for a water birth at home. A small sea creature is going to wash up on us. I can’t imagine the moment of his birth any more than I can imagine the moment of my own death. And the little sea creature is going to have to trust us. We’re whom he’s going to have to trust. We’re the parents. He’s looking to us. We’ll have to keep him alive, and that’s just the beginning.

!

I have the vaguest memory of being awake at nighttime as a tiny person, I have no idea how old, awake and alone in my dark bedroom with the little night light. Everything was stopped in the house, and my parents were gone. I had no idea how this worked, or if this night would end. Where did they go, my parents? Why was night so long? Where were the sounds? Was my brother at peace with this situation?

My parents were at their largest at night. If they weren’t gods during the day, this shifted after bedtime.

I’m horrified to think that a tiny person could regard me as some sort of saving god. “Please let that lady rescue me from the vastness of night.” I’m daunted that there’s no way around this. I will have to rescue Finn from the vastness of night, over and over again. I’m afraid to feel his little fear in my chest as my own.

Is the heart seriously built for this? If a heart can take this, and by taking it become something larger, then that’s thrilling and it will all be worth it. But that is the dare, whether it can take it, and how much.

T minus three and some months.

the towering...redemption!

On the other hand, this ending scored extremely well with audiences everywhere.

Instant karma, mofo.

Apparently, I'm into the animal...human...animal interest stories lately.

the shawshank...not redemption

Test audiences booed this ending.

Also, please suggest the antonym for redemption. I can't cook it up.

the smartest, weirdest newborn in the world

I had a dream about Finn last night. I dreamed that he was born and ready to be picked up at the hospital. (Apparently I didn't have to be there for the giving birth part.) I hurried to the hospital, and found a nurse tending to a tiny little baby that looked a lot like this:



Except newborn-sized and just wearing a diaper. And his glasses looked more like this:



And also, one of his internal organs was hanging outside his body with a note attached to it telling us not to worry, that it would eventually make its way back inside.

But the thing about this baby was that he was brilliantly precocious!

I said, "Hi, Finn!" - not expecting a response, of course - but he came back with "Hi!" and then I said, "Do you know who I am?" and he said, "You're my mommy! And I have a brother and a sister (huh?*) and my daddy is Dave."

* I took it to mean that he was dialed in with our future babies, so he didn't blow his credibility.

I grabbed his little carrier and made off home with him, and we were grinning at each other the whole way. Later, I attempted breastfeeding him, and a doctor from TV came into the room and confirmed that it was going well.

I'm just realizing that this isn't the first time I've dreamed about a precocious newborn who can speak. I had a dream once that Pete and Carolyn had a baby, and it had a huge head like a tennis ball and a teeny tiny body, and it could carry on conversations. Hmm.

happy new year

Hello, everyone! Look, I know this same picture is over there in my profile, but I wanted it on here a little bigger for a minute. When the picture is smaller, I look like a snaggletoothed hillbilly. I wanted this picture to be slightly cuter for a minute, before I embrace the small snaggletooth.

How I love to change the colors in the template! Oh! Jesus! The pleasure it brings me!

I have very little to offer you today. But:



Up there is a little hobbit house from the Lord of the Rings set.

Yes, but why?

I will tell you why. Dave and I are going to sell our beloved Pink House this year, because we are having a new house built for ourselves. My mom lives up in North Seattle, and the lower half of her lot is an unused orchard. (Well, no, it's a used orchard. Plums grow, get eaten. Apples live on it. Raspberries are there.) But now the orchard is going to be used for us living in it! We have a builder, and a great architect, and we are underway designing the joint.

We had our first meeting with the architect yesterday, and we got to tell him everything we wanted for the house: the specifics, the vibe of the place, the sort of architectural principles we wanted highlighted in the design. And the more we told him, the more of a glint he got in his eye! We love him, we love him. He asked us if we wanted some little space that could be used for casual performances, since he knew that so many of our friends are performers. What?! Thanks for asking! Yes, we would!

And best of all, as I was struggling along trying to articulate the sort of feeling we wanted in the place - not particularly traditional and not that cold icy modern angular feeling either, just something warm and rounded and harmonious with nature - he busted out with, "...Are you looking for something kind of like Bilbo Baggins' house?"

YES! YES! WE'RE LOOKING FOR SOMETHING LIKE BILBO BAGGINS' HOUSE!

Sputter, sputter, point to the nose, on the nose, bingo, that's it.

Oh, architect. Architect. We love you.

Our builder (who's a dear old friend of the family) told us later that Guy (our architect) said that we had described a house he'd want to live in. So we know he's going to be working with his heart in it. We're so happy. Before the end of the year, we will be ensconced in our Bilbo Baggins house. With our boy.

We decided that if we have another child, and it's a boy, we're naming him Frodo. Frodo Rowley.