verde verdi vert ding ding ding green card!

Oh my little green onions! Sweet fried green tomatoes! Holy guacamole!

We had our green card interview for Dave this morning and the nice man said yes so fast that time turned backwards and we were babies right there in front of the desk. Boing!

We had a big old box full of evidence: wedding photos and love photos and Finn photos and notebooks full of financial stuff and even pages and pages of this blog printed out with everything that ever related to Dave. Gas bills and bank accounts and house building invoices and tax forms and zoo membership cards. A big fatty fat old box and the most well organizedest binder with fancy plastic insert things and everything. And the only thing he looked at was Finn's birth certificate. Nothin'! He didn't want to see nothin'!

He said, "Where'd you meet?" and we answered, "A yoga retreat" and he said, "Yoga?! Good for you!" It was like that.

We should be getting that sweet little card within a month. And it's the one that lasts for ten years, which we will never have to re-up because Dave will go for citizenship as soon as he can. Then we can bring sweet Larraine out here lickety-split and we will have a total quorum.

Relief at its finest! We were so freaked out and procrastinatey and full of dread for so long for no reason. Now we feel like little happy floating fairy feather dandelion seeds. Poof! Our family will not be rent asunder or transferred across the globe prematurely! Sweet green grapes. Sweet greeny kiwi honeydew moneydew grassy mossy GREEN CARD!

Naturally, Finn chose last night to never sleep all night and instead to punch us and talk and moan and roundhouse kick us til the break of dawn. So, next to happy and relieved we are also superthefuckball tired. Bring on the couch and the pizza and eclairs and the So You Think You Can Dance. Flopping flophouse goodness.

Thanks for the good green wishes, beloved elves of ours! We smooch you with great legality!







We'd also like to give a special Rowley family total prostration to this guy:



Good old glorious go-to elephant-head Ganesha, remover of obstacles! This cat layed it on with a trowel for us. We're flat out on the floor with our faces in the linoleum for you, big G!

P.S. As if the good green card news weren't enough, Pagliacci gave us our pizza order for free tonight! Man, this is a good day. We have got some serious good vibes around here.

P.P.S. I forgot. That free pizza wasn't an anomaly. Pizza's ALWAYS free once you crack your way into the inner circle. Now Dave knows what we Americans have known all along. Welcome to the secret, honey. America: Free Pizza!

somebody else hold the football next time

Rewind this picture by like five seconds to where Charlie Brown is just coming up to make the kick and that is how I feel about trying for a baby again in a little while here. We'll be trying in just a few weeks. Would wait a little longer if we could, but ti-i-i-ime is not on our side. No, it's not.

Who is Lucy? Is God Lucy? Is the not-here baby Lucy? Who's freaking me out? Somebody is. Somebody's holding the football.

Listen, football holder. Why did you do what you did? See, this is where it's not so hot when you don't believe in an empty, random universe. If I really felt this all were empty and random, I'd have my answer. No reason! But I do think that things happen for a reason, and I'm not feeling so dialed-in to this one. If this wasn't a good time to be born, why break my heart like that? Why didn't you just wait until the better time in the first place? Who am I talking to? The baby? Who's in charge, here? What the hell happened? What was THAT all about? Are you fucking with me?

I'm afraid to want the baby again. I feel muffled about it. I feel flat and glum and not wanting to be fucked with. I was so excited before and I don't feel it now. LaKetch advised me to just go for it, and allow myself to really want the baby. It's good advice, but I can tell that to do that I'm going to have to feel a bunch of pain that I'm squishing down. Damn. She's right, but I don't know when exactly I'm going to kick off that weepfest. When's good? When's good for one of those? I know. A little bit LATER.

But it can't be a lot later. I'm too OLD.

I'm just going to swipe at the keyboard with my paws now, self-pity style:

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That is all.

why do i refuse to go to sleep?

It's 3:07 am. Honest to Christ. This is happening all the time. I blow past all my good intentions to get sleep. Why do I hate being rested? Isn't it nice? Is it? You tell me, because I forget.

And when I do go to bed, I'm so tired that my body freaks out about falling asleep. It's like, don't make me fall down there! It's many stories I will fall! I'm clinging to the ledge! My body resists it, garnering me even less sleep.

Do I really love snoodling around the internet that much? Because that's what I'm doing up at these hours. Pointless goobering around. But rest is important, and this is the pointless goobering that kills. Am I mad at myself?

It's 3:11 now. I'm making me go. I'm going to make me. Me and no army.

myanmar and china

I don't know what to say, but a space must at least be made here in which not to be able to say it. When a disaster gets too large, my mind just kicks it out of range instinctively. An effort must be made to reel it back in. Oh, damn. Damn. I have to correct myself. When a disaster is too large and too far away (read: in a non-Western country), that's when my mind seems willing to let it drift into outer space without more than perfunctory consideration. What a vapid and ugly fact. So then I have to find some part of myself that has a small pincer's grip on humanity and compassion and awakeness, and put it in charge.

It feels like this small, not-insane part of myself is like a feeble subsitute teacher in a classroom full of hostile, apathetic high school students with ADD. The kids are just back from lunch and they're either stoned to the gills or zooming around on Red Bull. Plus, it's the substitute's first day ever on the job, and also the substitute has no lesson plan. The substitute is also physically unprepossessing and dressed unfashionably. Pale, a little sweaty. Hair unfortunate. Small voice. Not resonant. Also, the class is large. Fifty kids at a minimum.

Okay, the subject is massive human loss of life and also buried xenophobia. Hit it, sub.

Yeah, so that's what it feels like, and I don't even think the substitute is writing this post. I think at best we have a mildly sympathetic student in charge of this entry. Massive loss of life. Oh, yeah....that sucks. Totally, I bet it sucks. But, um, I have a magazine here on my desk, I want to read it. It's got, um, hairstyles in it. And famous people.

Hundreds of children crushed to death in a school. I don't want to understand. I don't want to understand. I don't want to understand. All Finns. All Finns. Everyone killed by the cyclone, no matter the age, all Finns. Everyone left alive. The old woman in Myanmar who was given a blanket for a photo op, only to have it taken away from her again when the cameras were gone. And then someone else tried to give her a blanket later and she was too afraid to accept it. She couldn't go through having it taken away again. An old, female Finn. Infinitely precious. Grief to infinity times so many thousands. Not vice versa. I want the picture of thousands of little dark silhouettes of people each alone under an enormous starry sky, facing infinity in the form of sorrow. I don't know what I'm saying and I don't care, I'm just trying to say something, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm not the teacher or the student, I have no plan. I'm just opening my mouth and making a sound.

I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know the good way to crack myself open for this.

A Drastic Remedy: The case for intervention in Burma

'No Hope' for Children Buried in Earthquake"

a little one in the middle of the night

When Dave and Finn and I were driving in the car yesterday, I said something and then followed it up with, "But that's when I thought I was pregnant."

Good lord. I didn't think I was pregnant. I was pregnant. The fact that I miscarried so soon is making me feel like it was a dream. It wasn't a dream. The fact that I miscarried so soon is making me feel like I should be over it. The fact that it happened so soon is making it seem sometimes like I am over it. But I'm not. I look good on top but I'm crumbly, shatterable. I'm good if nothing goes wrong but the definition of wrong has been expanded to include just about everything.

Those of you who don't enjoy Too Much Information can check out now. But really, those of you who are on that bandwagon probably abandoned this blog long, long ago.

I can always tell when I'm ovulating, and that's happening now. (Are you gone? I'll just tell myself.) I find it shocking that my body is proceeding. The ob/gyn I visited told me that we should wait through one normal cycle before we start trying again. I see what she fucking means. The whole cycle feels suspect to me, wild and unruly. I didn't give permission for the miscarriage to happen and I didn't give the go-ahead for my body to go ahead and release more eggs, either. Stop doing everything without me for a minute, body. Let me call the shots for a bit.

I mean, I've been pregnant before so I'm very familiar with my body going ahead and doing crazy shit without consulting me. (I'm clear that ovulation does not fall under the banner of "crazy shit".) But I gave my body permission to make a baby, and in doing that it got carte blanche to do whatever it needed to do to make that happen. In the wake of this miscarriage, I don't want even a metaphorical pencil put away in my body without me greenlighting it. Control.
Damn it, damn it, damn it, I'm having that feeling where I'm feeling like I ought to put a sock in it. Tina, c'mon. You just had a little miscarriage! You were only five weeks along! Which is more like, what, two or three weeks! What about people who had miscarriages at 6, 10, 12, 14 weeks? What about people who lost their babies after six months? Or after they were born? Shut up on their behalf, at least, right? But I hate feeling that ghost sock getting shoved in my ghost mouth by my ghost neurosis. It makes me want to fight. You want a piece of me, sock? People bitch about smaller things. I'm trying to work this stuff out and this is where I go to do it.

But seriously. I can't handle my body releasing a tiny little egg? Get it together, sister. Pull it together, mama.

I don't know how to treat myself here. But that last thing there, I would never say that to a friend of mine in this situation. If I were my friend, I'd tell me to treat myself how I'd treat a friend. There's a little guideline for me.

Okay. Egg, stop moving. Body, don't do anything without asking me. Everyone stop. Everything stop and let me get some trust back.

A couple of dear friends recommended that we take a trip to Cape Disappointment, down in the southwestern corner of Washington state. Take a day and go and throw some pain in the ocean. Whether we go or not, I want to go. If we don't go, I'm going to find a little place on the water nearby to call Cape Disappointment, and I'm going to go there, and I'm going to do something. I'm going to honor something. I mean it.

It's 3:15 a.m. I shouldn't be here. I should be sleeping. Sleeping is kind to bodies. I've heard this. Never tried it, apparently. People whose nerves are fried should sleep for a godforsaken second, shouldn't they?

Yes. Goodnight.