oh, everything is going to be MORE than all right

Last night, the best thing in the world happened - something so great, I barely know how to tell you. My heart is so full, so happy. I – I can’t…it’s too…so happy, so happy.



Dave and I were watching American Inventor. Have you watched it? We’d never watched it before. It’s a marvel. Retarded, tragic, hilarious. The cringiest, most wonderful car accident ever. A man comes on who’s given up his whole life – job, house, 26 years – for this game he invented, Bullet Ball. It’s awful, how on fire he is for this game. He’s sweating, nearly weeping. He’s positive that this game will one day be an Olympic event. It’s this little round table game where you bat a little ball back and forth with another person…it’s…no. The judges ask him what he has left of his life. He answers, his eyes blazing with tears, “I HAVE BULLET BALL.” He doesn’t move to the next round. This bizarre 12-year-old boy from Atlanta comes on, he’s accidentally invented an “invisible tear gas”. He’s the roundest, most deadpan, crazy-accented little man you’ve ever seen. The judges are all, oh, hey. You’re a good guy. You’re a good guy. But, no. Later the boy is seen in a montage of weeping losers against a white background. He looks almost completely stoic, but then he sniffles twice, slowly. Hugely. Majestically.

But you want to know about the thing that happened that’s the best thing. That’s what you want to know. I almost don’t want to talk about it. It’s so sacred. I’ll do it, though.

A man came on. A tender, wobbly man. He was holding one of these:



This is My Therapy Buddy.

Dave and I grabbed at each other.

The gentle, traumatized man spoke tremulously to the judges about My Therapy Buddy. By the looks on the judges’ faces, they were not as transported by My Therapy Buddy and his creator as Dave and I were. And then the gentle man pulled one of My Therapy Buddy’s feet (MTB was not wearing his velvet sarong on tv, his spindly legs were bare).

My Therapy Buddy said in a tenderly robotic voice:

Everything is going to be all right.

I hit Dave, Dave hit me, I hit him, he hit me.

The judges turned him down.

NO! NO! NO!

Dave and I were horrified. He walked away clutching the buddy with tragic dignity. The buddy had its long weird arms around him, hugging him. Dave and I instantly had the same frantic thought,

GetontheinternetlookupMyTherapyBuddyGOGOGO!!

And we threw the computer open and got right to it. We were in no way ready to say goodbye to My Therapy Buddy. We needed to see it a little more.

The first item we see on the search page is the My Therapy Buddy online store.

We can buy it??


We barely have to discuss it. My Therapy Buddy is $70. Sold, SOLD, it’s a bargain. We’re moving lightning fast through this transaction, I’m typing our information perfectly at top speed, the whole exchange is practically lubricated by how in favor we are of what is happening.

We’ve done it. We’re thrilled and exhausted. He is ours. She. It is ours. It’s coming to our house.

We go a little more languidly back to the search page and find the whole website. More treasure. This is a holy, holy night. My favorite quote from the website: "98% of the people on this planet can find comfort from a Buddy. " I enjoy imagining the benighted, stonehearted 2% who cannot.

We’re so happy that Finn is going to grow up in a house with My Therapy Buddy, where he will learn:

a. that everything will be all right

&

b. irony.

From our hearts to yours, Dave and I give you

http://www.mytherapybuddy.com/. *

*Be sure to have the sound on.

You are so welcome.

first day of spring & countdown to reality

Spring is my favorite. I'll say it. I've said it. I might say something different come the autumn but shut up. It's spring!



When I was a tiny girl in New York state, we had a next-door neighbor named Mrs. Thomas. One day every spring she would let me and my brother come into her yard and pick daffodils. There were rows and rows and rows of them, a little daffodil farm under a giant weeping willow. I loved how tall the daffodils were compared to me -almost up to my waist. Crazy white and yellow and peach and orange trumpets! And I loved how the scent immediately drove springtime home, drove it right up my nose, the imminence of the Easter Bunny and how gorgeous it was to play outside again. I loved how it felt in the shade of the big tree, cool and warm and perfect. We were allowed to pick as many daffodils as we could carry in our arms on that one day. There was the tiny tinge of sadness as we left her yard and hit the unlovely asphalt of the street on our 20 foot walk home, arms full of blooms, fun part over.

****************

Here comes the boy, now, in just a few weeks. Could be 3 weeks. Could be 7 weeks. Could be anywhere in between. As we get closer to the day, the reality of the situation is pushing its head out more and more. We get these vivid moments, where the reality has this strange new texture to it. I can't get it right while I'm writing this, this isn't one of the moments. But last night I had it in rolling waves.

Sadness!

Goodbye, free girl. I can barely buy into the idea that I'm a woman. I feel so young. But somebody in the house is going to be THE YOUNGEST OF ALL and I will need to be OLD and GOOD and ON TOP OF IT. And also, the nice sadness of admitting that I am an actual woman, and I've always wanted to be one, and how sweet it will be to be old and good and on top of it and loving somebody small. That's the sadness of having a dream sort of come true, hitting the asphalt with my arms full. It will have happened. No more wondering what it will look like.

Permanence!

We're parents, we're parents, we're parents, we're parents, we're still parents, we're still parents, we'll never stop until we're dead, nothing else is so certain and so permanent. This is a string which ties us to our mortality more thoroughly than our marriage can, however exactly right our marriage is.

Terrifying love!

Already I love Dave in a way that aches - that, like our baby, holds our deaths in it. There's no time to appreciate him, I can't drink him in enough in any given moment. And here comes somebody else, who is going to drag this aching love out of me and be horribly central and precious to my life.

Clarity!

Dave and Finn, here they are. They're hired. They are the most extremely essential personnel that will be traveling with me through this life. So, it's you! You and you. Me, you and you. Of course, there are others, lots of other essential personnel, but these two - I will see them just about every day of my life. My life looks, will look - among other things - like their faces.

Fear!

This large, lumpy baby is seriously coming out from between my legs. Seriously. You mean it. In a matter of weeks. And in the meanwhile, he's getting larger, you say. Well. Well, well. And if I try to make a break for it, the baby is coming with me anyway and will come out from in between my legs in Puerto Vallarta or southern Oregon or wherever it is I'm hiding. So, I am, as they say, fucked. Every night I'm online googling "good birth stories", "wonderful first-time births", "idyllic home births". I'm trying to re-establish connections with Ganesha, the excellent Hindu god who is responsible for the placing and removal of obstacles.



Hey, you great big good old elephant head! Remember me? Say, so, what...what do you think about removing some obstacles for this birth here? Hey, um, if you don't have anything else to do, you could remove some obstacles, maybe hook us up with one of those super-smooth births that I've read about? I just, you know, love your work, man, and just....keep us in mind! Oh - Om Gum Ganapatayai Namaha. Yes. Straight up to you.

Like many people, I become a total kiss-ass when I'm in need.

Tomorrow is our last childbirth class. Roll it out, lady. Break out the Ark of the Childbirth Covenant and open that mofo for us. Shine that face-melting light of knowledge right in my face. ANY FINAL TIPS YOU HAVE, I'M LISTENING.



P.S. The Beatles were right that happiness is a warm gun, only the gun is a bra that just came out of the dryer. Hold 'em up, y'old warm horse.

blog nesting

I'm changing my color scheme now because a) I was tired of the Miami preppy theme and b) once I give birth to the bunny, I think I won't want to spend four hours futzing around with my template and the non-dithering color chart. Not now, Finn. Hold up, child. You'll eat soon. I just have to try fifteen or sixteen more looks for the hover-over-the-link color. What do you think of #CCFFOO? Is it...? No, you're right. Too muted. That makes me cry, too. Shhh. Hang on. I'm fixing it.

I call this new color scheme

"Blueberries and the Sea"*.




*YES, THAT'S WHAT I CALL IT.

Some people who have different brands of blogs have a little thing at the bottom that says "current song".

Current song: Styx, Too Much Time on My Hands

Good night.

Edit: All right. For La Ketch, I have altered my beloved Blueberries and the Sea scheme. She wanted it all legible and shit. But that's it.

*Blueberry Lagoon*

stays like it is now, unless I get like 25 comments that are like, I can't read Blueberry Lagoon. And Miami Preppy can never come back. It was making me want to pull off my eyelashes.

more lovely and psychedelic as the months go by

Is everybody here? Right on, right on.



So, I'm dipping into this battered old 1970's copy of Spiritual Midwifery that I borrowed from my childbirth class library. Here's a taste of what I'm learning:

Stretch marks are less likely to happen if you're not uptight.

Oh, yeah? Is that right? Well, then, it appears as though I must have a telephone pole up my ass, because I look like I've been mauled by a tiger. I had no idea it was because I'm so rigid.

Now, here's a nugget of advice to husbands on the care and feeding of pregnant ladies, courtesy of "Stephen":

Be tantric with your lady - be subtle enough in touch with her that when she tries to steer you, you feel it and follow her like a good horse follows a rider. Try to do it with her exactly as she directs on the most subtle planes. If you do that, she'll trust you and get you high. It's a tasty yoga - you have to work at it, but you can do it. It's actually fancier than just dancing by yourself. You feel somebody else and let them direct; and if you let them direct, they'll tell you what to do.

A tasty yoga, indeed!



The book is full of the birth stories of groovy 70's couples who all, all have the same hair. Long, thick, wavy, parted down the middle. The men all have long beards. A quality that all their experiences have in common is

psychedelicness.


This comes up all the time, I tell you. Let's catch a few quotes:

...It kept feeling more psychedelic as the baby grew, and that night I felt very calm and high...

...I remember my mouth hanging open, drooling, and feeling very warm and psychedelic and light-headed....

...Having my baby was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. It was the best psychedelic experience yet......If you decide you want to keep yourself together and get high on the energy of your kid being born and have that agreement with your man and the midwives, it can easily be the most Holy day of your life...

...We had a good time the rest of the morning hours, smooching, joking, and napping. We felt loose, psychedelic, in love...

Now, despite what my stretch marks would have you believe, I'm fairly groovy. On the spectrum from square/mainstreaminess to far out/grooviness, I fall pretty far to the latter. I fully embrace many hippiefied ideas. I was brought up in a relatively unusual family of Eastern philosophy-embracing, vegetarian Theosophists. I have eaten the mushroom, taken the acid, worn the round colorful sunglasses in the style of Meg Ryan as Pamela Courson in The Doors. And we're planning a groovy birth for Finn, with the birth pool and the candles and the breathing and the midwives. But this book makes me feel like...Patricia Heaton*. I mean, I'm enjoying the book, but wow. Wooo.

*the gross Republican who was the wife on Everybody Loves Raymond and now haunts those horrible Albertson's commercials

That said, I am engaging in what might appear from the outside to be some whack shit in trying to bond with Finn. One thing I've been doing to help make sure his head goes down in the right direction, away from breechiness, is staging Concerts Between My Legs. This, a of all, is not something I invented. I heard about it somewhere. It means that I hold the earphones of a Walkman in the general vicinity of my, you know, vicinity, in the hopes that he will float downwards interestedly to get his ears closer to the stage. Tonight some of our selections were "Here Comes the Sun", "Over the Rainbow" and "Follow the Yellow Brick Road". A previous concert consisted of Men at Work's "Down Under" on repeat about eight times. And...there is no b of all.


I chose this version of the yellow brick road to put here because
I like the idea of luring Finn out of the womb not only by telling him
which road to follow, but by insinuating that there will be an appealing
menu once he reaches his destination - one that caters to children.

I leave you with the words of one of these Spiritual Midwifery husbands:

Stay real well-connected with her if she's emotional and don't get upset. Keep your body connection strong and make her feel good. She is going to get more lovely and psychedelic as the months go by and it is a blessing to be in her presence.

Oh, amen, groovy man. I know that as I lie there burping and bitching next to him, Dave feels as I do that it is a blessing to be in my presence.

i love a new blog and who is our secret santa?

No, um. The blog that I love isn't new. My love is new. I've seen this blog linked on many, many other blogs, so it would seem that it's a famous blog. Its name is Fussy.

I feel like I'm like, have you guys listened to this band?? I think they're called The White Stripes*?? You should listen to them! I found them.


************Well, helLO there! Who are you?***********

*This is not Meg White's blog that I'm speaking of, I say to head off confusion. I don't know if Meg White has a blog. I'm going to go ahead and surmise that she doesn't. This is the blog of one Eden Kennedy.

But really, I read a few posts and then I've started from the beginning of the archives and am reading all the way through. Hitting the spot, is what you're doing, you famous blog that I'm the first to discover.

Um. Anything else?

Yes. I have to sleep on my left side, and what's new is that Finn sticks some part of himself out of that side at some point in the night, so it's like I'm sleeping on a random rock. It is so comfortable. Also, when he moves a lot I'm like, JEEZ YOU'RE WOW WHAT ARE YOU DOING? and when he's having a slow mover day I'm like, HEY, WHATSAMATTER? HEY, MOVE AROUND SOME MORE!

I fear and expect that this will carry over into parenthood.

Wait - and also, ALSO...a mystery person sent us this beautiful Maya Wrap sling for the baby, and we don't know who it was!! It came with no note!

It looks like this:



Was it you? If you're out there, tell us, so we can aim our gratitude in the right direction. Right now, our gratitude's swinging around like an out-of-control garden hose. It's forceful, but, um, the right target is...not getting watered.

Dear somebody, we love it.

P.S. Mystery solved! The recipient was outed when more treats arrived from her in the mail. Now we know what we have to do.