Black Dogs.

I battle with depression as some of you might already know, or suspect. Oh it's not something that I face daily, as some of my braver friends do, but it is something that rears its ugly head on a fairly regular basis.

Stress triggers it. Anxiety triggers it. Uncertainty triggers it.

Someone, somewhere has characterized depression as  the 'black dog'. It is a black dog, a dog that is constantly crossing your path and looping and circling around you until it brings you down and gnaws away at your self-esteem. I've been ignoring the threatening growls  for a couple of months now. After all, I don't have time to be depressed, there's too much going on.

But it's not something you can shake off. Ever since I was a little girl, predating my adolescent hormones, I have sensed the dog circling and known that the battle can only be delayed, not staved off. As a kid, I stayed in my room every minute possible, and slept it off. And when it passed, it passed not because of anything anyone did, but simply because it was time for it to go.

How does it start?

It starts with a vague feeling of anxiety or unease.

Then that vague feeling coalesces into a hole in the middle of my stomach, that won't go away no matter how much I eat, or exercise or take 'brisk bracing walks'. I can ignore it, I can will it away for a while, but it always returns, stronger than ever.

And then the storm hits. Perhaps some incident or a group of incidents triggers it. Incidents that normally would have me bounce back and keep going. But not when the black dog is waiting. Then suddenly, my anxiety has a face and a name and it all looks like fear and hopelessness wrapped up in a black shape that sits in my gut and gnaws at me every minute. It becomes a yawning maw of hopelessness and inertia and deep sadness, swallowing all the light.

The hopelessness stems from the fact that I think I should be able to rise above this, to function normally and to get through my day. And for the most part, I can. Not for me the days in bed, or the household that screeches to a halt - my pride won't let me become debilitated. It's important, you see, not to look weak. After all, other people face what I face and don't go under. What is wrong with me?

So what you get is a woman bobbing genteelly in the surf, waving gaily to those on the shore, while underneath, her arms and her legs are paddling wildly to stay afloat. Whose husband doesn't want to know, and whose child is too young to know and whose friends treat any hint that something isn't right by a quick change of subject. Depression is embarrassing. Depression isn't like being injured physically. In that case, people know the right things to say, the right things to do. But a depressed person looks normal. And to anyone outside my life, my life looks okay. Not perfect, but okay. Flowers, a card or a hug won't fix it.

Inertia. Nothing will help, nothing will banish it. It goes in its own time, when it choose to go. It can disappear on the ugliest of winter days, when the rain is pouring down and I have $2 in the bank. It can returnlike lightening, when it's the height of summer  and I am sitting on the beach, helping my daughter swim. I am powerless against its whims.

The sadness. It's hard being sad on your own.

It's harder still when there always seems to be something goin on that needs me.

• My unborn child. 


• My toddler.


• My husband.

When situations are happening that need attention.

• Selling the house.


• My pregnancy.


• My husband's issues at work.


• Finances.

See? No where, is there a slot that says 'ME'. And everywhere are things that threaten to drown me, and pull me under if I let myself think about them for longer than a moment.

No quick fixes. No drugs, because I am pregnant, and in any case, there is a big part of me that rebels against medicating my emotions. They may be awful, but when I have been on antidepressants, I felt like a shadow.

No therapists. Therapy for me, has always seemed lie the height of self indulgence. I hate paying someone to listen to me. besides, therapy costs money, and money is in short supply right now. I'd rather buy food and clothes, than sit in a chair, sniffling into Kleenex. And it's too hard to look at things. As I said, I survive and get through by not thinking too hard, by not examining my life too closely. I am terrified that, should I start to put my life under the magnifying glass, it would be as bad as I secretly think it is.

So all I can do is  kick the black dog until it retreats. And try and make sense of it.

So?

Honestly, I am not anyone who should be in a position of authority, I've decided. I see everyone's point of view, which makes everything a giant clusterfuck whenever there is disagreement.

My thought processes are like hamsters in those wheelie things, round and round and round.

Thought #1: Humph, I don't like that, I must put a stop to it.

Thought #2: Oh wait, someone has made a reasoned argument that it's really okay.

Thought #3: But someone else has pointed out the fallacy in that argument and restated my original position.

Thought #4: Oops, now people are getting upset. Time to put on my emperor clothes and make a grand statement.

Subthought #4a: Let me read and reread everything so I get a full understanding. Crap, now I should just shutup, but I can't cos if I do, things will get worse.

Thought #5: Well doublecrap, now I've made everything much much worse. Me shut up now.

Thought #6: Now I will go back and restate what I said, and hope someone thinks I am smart. Or kind. Or actually give a shit.

I should really just wander round nude, in an apple barrel, with a big foam rubber finger on my head.

PS. This is not my weekly writing. I just needed to dance.

Musings.

(Dwaber dropped me a line to say he'd missed me. I miss you too. I miss here, I miss the discipline of putting something down and seeing how it pieces together. Right now, things are so very very hectic that it's been hard to find a moment to myself - let alone organise my thoughts into something worth writing (or reading for that matter). But right now, it's still and quiet in the house, all the other beings are elsewhere - and my pencil is sharpened.)

And this is very confronting for me, as a feminist, as a woman and as a mother. 

Let me explain. 

When I discovered that Mouse was a little girl, I felt devastated that she wasn't a boy. Oh, it's not because I thought she was 'second best' or not as good as a boy, but because there so many things in my life that I've had to face, that I hoped to spare my child.

I worked as a woman in a male dominated profession for most of my life. And I was good at it. I got things done, I stayed late, I put in the extra effort, I played for the team. if you'd asked me about a 'glass ceiling', or 'sex discrimination', I'd have sneered and told you that it didn't exist. Not for me. I could do anything you boys could. And in some cases, I was a whole lot better.

But when I got pregnant, things subtly began to change. Not so much when I didn't have the bump, but once it became obvious to all and sundry that there was actually something in there - then attitudes changed. People's eyes would drop to my belly when asking when the budget figures would be ready, or making arrangements for early morning flights. As if everything I could do was now circumscribed by my bump. Okay. I could pass this off as simple concern - for me, for the project, for future business. And I redoubled my efforts to work harder, to put in longer hours, to be superwoman so no one could suspect I was using my pregnancy to not pull my weight. And I worked these ridiculous hours until the week before I gave birth. Proving something to someone who forgot all about me once I had the baby. My husband kept the same hours, and worked a 40 hour week.

Ah yes. the baby. I've written about my difficulties in adjusting - so I won't go into that again. But I will stress that the biggest adjustment for me personally was that as a woman, I'd been told that if I only worked hard enough, tried hard enough, played with the boys, I could have it all.

Bollocks.

There was no way I could go back to the career I'd carved out over 20 years once I'd had a child. Both things required 100% of my energy and time. Both pulled at me, in opposite directions. There was no decent compromise. I could put the babe in childcare, and go back to work - but not 90 hour work weeks. And my former position in the company required that kind of commitment. For that kind of salary and that kind of prestige, you don't work 40 hour weeks. 
I found a semi-job, a cut down version of my old one, that didn't require those hours and dedication - and used what was left over for my child. The semi-job required me to work a set amount of time from home, out of the loop, out of the office political maneuvering, out of the information web, out of the promotion ladder, out of the salary stream. I got work only when I pestered. I was a charity case really. I was underpaid and undervalued. And inevitably, when I had a deadline, the rest of my life didn't suspend in midair. There was still meals to be made, chores to be done, and a child to care for. Resentment. Frustration. Because after all, I'd been given this opportunity to continue working a decent job (ie. not flipping burgers), and let's not let mundane things like a baby's colic interfere with 'getting things done'. The client doesn't care. Why should they? And one final day, after I'd risen at an ungodly hour to get the baby ready, and humped the diaper bag and supplies over my suit shoulder, and grabbed my briefcase in the other, and hidden my child with my husband so she wouldn't be an annoyance in the meetings I had to take - I thought "fuck this'. I love my child, here I am, pretending she doesn't exist. That I never ever had her." 

So I walked.

And then I had a new set of issues. I never realized how unfriendly the world is to women juggling children. Children who act out in public when you have hissed at them to behave, children who refuse to sit down and be quiet, children who want to run around and look and point and shout and generally behave as children do. I became the apologetic mum - the one you see murmuring 'I am so sorry' when her little darling is behaving monstrously. Me. An apologist. For my child. Who is NOT badly behaved, or a little monster. She just can't be programmed. And in between apologies for my child, I was busy apologizing for not being able to cope with a career as well, for letting down my feminist sisters, for resenting the hell out of my husband whose life had changed but not to the extent mine had, and being angry that no one had warned me that despite being able to 'have it all' - you can't have it all without sacrificing bits and pieces along the way. Sometimes those pieces are small, like the chance to stay up late, drinking red wine and talking about grownup things to your partner, and sometimes those things are large - like having your whole identity and worth called into question.

And the simple fact of the matter is - men don't have to make that choice. They CAN have it all - they can have a career that fulfills them, and be good fathers. My husband is adored by my daughter - never mind that he comes in past 8pm every weeknight if he isn't out on his weekly boys night out,  and his idea of spending time with her on the weekends is to take her round hardware stores and fly-fishing shops. She worships him. All on 8 hours a week of his time. 

And this is what it means to be a woman in a post feminist world. We can have the hot partner, the high powered job and the prestige we were promised in university, or we can be the kind of mother we know we should be if we put any thought into having children at all. Maybe there are rare individuals who can find the time and the energy to burn both ends of the candle and not feel broken in the middle. And do a great job at both. But I suspect there's very few. Not me. 

I remember crying when I discovered Mouse was a girl. Because when she became a mother, she was going to have to go through the same self examination and torment that I went through. I wanted that not to happen. I would do anything to spare her that. But the only way I can see to do that, is to tell her right off that it ain't possible - that even if she works her tail off and struggles and plays the game - she will discover that once you have a child, you have limited options.. You stay still, or you go backward but you don't go forward in the business world, once you've opted out. And if you don't opt out, you are left with the consequences, until the child you sandwiched in between meetings and business trips grows up and has a life of their own.  Did you make the right choice? Time will tell. You live with it and hope you haven't screwed up too badly. Either way.

I want my daughters to have children.  I want my daughters to know what it's like to feel the kind of love I feel for them. To know that I would sacrifice anything, even kill for them, to keep them safe and happy.  But on paper, it looks like a raw deal. A very one sided deal. Your life that you lived and built, or a new one where everything is upside down and you have turned into someone who you don't even know. An angry apologist. A mother. One that, in all likelihood, your feminist daughters will patronize because, like me, they won't know until it happens to them.

The choice. One that only girls have to make. And they don't know the payoff until the choice has been made and it's too late to change directions.

Notes to Self.

NTS: Do not ever plan to garden on the weekend. It will rain.

NTS: If you make a long list of things to do - you will only end up hiding the list and eating an entire bar of Cadbury's Fruit and Nut instead. Make short 'doable' lists.

NTS: Lenny Kravitz is a great way to start off Sunday.

NTS: If you are going to fall off the 'perfect pregnancy' wagon and drink a glass of wine - make it GOOD stuff, will ya? The heartburn and nausea occasioned from the flagon of Chateau Bilgewater really isn't worth it.

NTS: When you come in on Saturday afternoon, that flashing light on the answering machine is your MIL whining about how lonely she is and how terrible you are. Don't listen to it. Your blood pressure needs all the help it can get.

NTS: Maybe if you spent the one day a week you get childfree doing something FUN, you might be less of a bitch the other 6 days.

NTS: Do not fall for marketing gimmicks with respect to food. Your kid hates it all. Give in gracefully.

NTS: Stop feeling guilty about letting your child watch videos on rainy days. Lots of mothers do it, and not all of their kids grow up to be drooling delinquents.

NTS: Bacon sandwiches are not nutritious, healthy pregnancy food. You WILL look like a latter day Elvis iffen you don't cut them out.

NTS: He won't change. He wants to change, but he can't. Deal with it in whatever way you deem best, but FUCKING DEAL WITH IT.

NTS: The battery recharger never has batteries in it. So go out and buy some cheap ones, you aren't saving any money.

NTS: Stop feeling guilty about being online. If you were watching TV or reading a book, no one would raise an eyebrow.

Poop.

(Well poop. I am not 'premium' anymore. I might be again, I don't know. I feel that if I use this place, and take advantage of all the good things it offers - then I should try to support it. But I am broke. So not this month fellas.)

And this is Friday, so it's my writing day. I haven't really got a main 'anything' to write about, but I am trying not to be such a slacker and trying not to blame my complete inertia on a)being pregnant b)having a busy life and c) being sick as a dog.

So let's rant, shall we? THAT I can do.

Dear MotherInLaw,

I don't give a flying fuck if when you were my age, you went out to work to help your husband cos he was so stressed, cos you wanted a fancy house and endless buckets of Elizabeth Arden makeup. Jolly hockey sticks for you. YOUR son (MY husband) believes that the time I spend at home with our child is valuable and believes me when I say that I don't park her on her own in front of the idiot box for 3 hours the way YOU do when YOU watch her. That ain't parenting. Parenting is listening to them, making sure they aren't little horrors in public, getting what they are trying to tell you and finding that last morsel  of patience to play Snakes and Ladders with a kid who doesn't understand about the snakes and cries. 'Staying at home' is about getting up at 6am with my husband to iron his shirt and pack his lunch and make sure he doesn't go off to work without seeing why he's working. It's about cooking a hot nutritious dinner when I am so tired I am gagging so that when my hub staggers in after a long day, he knows I give a shit. It's NOT watching the goddam Ricki Lake show and eating take out pizza from a box which is what you are doing every time I bring your grand-daughter around for a visit. Which is every week, please note. So you can gobble and suck on whatever food you have in front of you and tell me stories about how wonderful you and your hub's relationship is. Well yeah. Maybe you might have thought about your kid in between smooches. Cos he sure doesn't feel like he came first with you - always your sainted husband. Always.

And even if I COULD find daycare that didn't cost $60 a day (that's $300 a week doof) and could find a job that justified paying that kind of after tax income, I still wouldn't do it until she is older. OKAY? You had a choice between a nice home and nice things, or your kid. You parked your kid with an almost free babysitter who taught him advertising jingles cos he sat in front of the box so much. Does he read now? NO. Has he got a problematic relationship with you now - YES. I chose the kid. And my husband supports me for it.

So fuck off you bloated old bag of fermenting bile and gas.

Respect.

Well I deliberately avoided posting anything on 9-11, since I figured my voice would be lost in the crowd of clamouring people. But its over now.
I don't want to talk about bombing the shit out of terrorists. Or their families. On that path leads more death and destruction and more weeping.

I want to talk about respect. Respect for lives lost.

I lost 3 friends in the World Trade Center.

I lost my friend Ed, who danced with me at my wedding, whose wife Elaine taught me how to make 7Up cake and frybread and whose warmth and graciousness will stay with me forever. Ed came out here on a 2 year business transfer, and became a friend that I will never ever get over losing. We took on aussie racists who'd never seen an african-american and taught them a lesson or two in politics. Ed taught me how to appreciate early blues - not the Stones ripoffs and he and I got drunk and silly and stayed up till the sun came up and we had to cab it back to work. I shall miss him. And I shall miss the family that he had, since it will never be the same again.

I lost my friend Penny - an old friend from Toronto, then New York. She was a woman who was witty and beautiful and sharp as a knife. I stayed at her apartment on the Upper east side and saw how the rich lived. It was fun - since Penny wasn't above junking work for a day and dragging me down to Greenwich Village to get our palms read. I'd known Penny for 15 years. It seems funny I'll never get another email from her with scathing commentaries on the big swinging dicks she worked with - or a letter with a cartoon from the New Yorker inside and a 'please explain' scrawled in the margin. Dammit.

I lost Luis. Another friend from Toronto - who stayed with me for a couple weeks on his dream trip down under, and who never failed to wish me happy birthday or let me know about the new bands happening in New York. Luis had beautiful curly long hair, which he wore in a sparkly furry scrunchie with his Hugo Boss suits and Ferragamo ties. That sense of irreverence is one I tried to cultivate in myself. His loss leaves a terrible hole.

I couldn't watch the so-called tributes. The endless replaying of the planes crashing and the building collapsing. It seemed as if the world was using what happened as marketing ratings fodder. People died when those planes hit - it wasn't some action movie trailer. I wonder how the families of the lost felt watching it being replayed over and over again, with some suitably sombre faced talking head intoning fake words of grief in the background. Shameful. Shame on us for watching it and proving the networks point.

There isn't a news anchor in the world that can make me believe that they understand what howling grief I feel. There isn't a so-called tribute program airing anywhere that begins to touch on what impact that day had on ordinary people who were going about their lives and then suddenly their lives became anything but ordinary.

The mothers who dropped their kids off at daycare, juggling careers and motherhood, knowing it was just 'a little longer' till they paid off the house/boat/car and they could breathe a sigh of relief. The husbands who phoned their wives and asked them to make reservations for dinner because they'd finally got that big break they'd been waiting for and easy street had come at last. The guy who got up every morning at 4am to work a second job so his kid could afford cool running shoes or piano lessons. The immigrant who'd sacrificed everything to get to America and send money home to make his family's life better. The parents who kissed their kids goodbye, proud that their son or their daughter had finally made good and they could stop worrying.

Gone, all gone.

I say a big "Fuck you" to the phoniness. The televised bagpipes, the closeups of grieving widows and stunned and staggering families. Shame on you for marketing loss and grief. Shame on you.

If we really really wanted to honour and remember the dead - a simple service would have sufficed. Not endless footage played for dramatic effect. Not some junior league president using this as a reason to go out and cause more deaths so he can be assured of a second term in office. Not some senator trying to increase a crediblity quotient or a friend of a friend of a friend getting their 15 seconds of fame on a newsbite. Where's the honour in that?

I remembered by writing letters and calling the families of those I loved. And by not watching a damn thing on 9-11.

Endings.

Our dog left us today. She's gone to live on a farm in the country, where she can chase cows, swim in the river and run all day long.

It's been a while coming, but for me, it was inevitable.

She is a good dog, but our relationship had deteroriated since the birth of my child over 2 years ago.

She digs holes in my yard that span a foot across. She ring barks trees, so they don't recover. She kills birds and possums and bats and leaves their mutiliated carcasses in the middle of the lawn as a trophy. She shits and poops everywhere, and it's fallen to me to clean it up. She's boisterous and knocks my child over with enthusiasm, resulting in a terrified toddler who won't go into the yard unless the dog is out of sight. She escapes daily over our 6 foot fence to roam the neighbourhood in search of interesting smells and sights.

In short, she takes up a lot of attention and time. Both of which are in short supply, and scraping the bottom of my capacity.

I can be patient and kind when I am tired and ill, to a child. My dog just became the recipient of too many lost tempers as I spent valuable time searching for her, or filling in holes in the lawn, or scraping shit off my shoe.

It wasn't fair. Not to her and not to me.

I got her when I returned from my first trip home to Canada, and had a miscarriage. She was a black little bundle of joy and I forgave her all the accidents on the carpet and the chewed shoes and the cheekiness of her breed.

She was a part of my life before marriage, before mortgage, before child. She was warm and solid and loved me. Her intensity, her insistence on being included in every part of my life was what I needed.

But I don't have the energy or the inclination anymore. And my husband thinks I am unfeeling because I am not sad she is gone. I am just relieved. Relieved not to feel guilty because my dog is bored and stir crazy. Relieved not to be angry enough to kill her because I am putting on my coat in the rain to trudge door to door looking for her. Relieved not to be swearing a blue streak at a cowering dog while I am nailing down chicken wire over the lawn to protect it, and relieved not to be crying with disgust at picking up dead little baby possums from the garden beds.

Have a good life Katie. I let you down terribly, and I am sorry. No animal deserves to live a life of benign neglect. To live for meals and the occasional kind pat on your head or scratch behind your soft ears. To have faces hurriedly scrubbed where you licked them, and to have to endure endless berating tirades on your latest transgression.

I have not been what you expected.

But believe me, I hope that the life you will have from here on in, will more than make up for my neglect. I loved you. Have a life full of green fields, no cars, cool rivers and little boys who think you hang the moon. You're a good dog. You deserve it.

MotherLove.

I've been thinking alot about newborn babies lately. Not surprising really. And it occurred to me that there is this myth that all mothers find their newborn babes lovable. Or maybe that mothers instinctively love their children right from the start.

That's a crock.

Anyone will tell you that I am madly, joyfully, passionately in love with my child. But that wasn't always the case.

I don't think I loved her from the beginning. Hell, I don't think I even liked her all that much.

Let's face it. You go from being an independent, financially viable woman to being someone's maid service. And lunch counter.

You spend 9 months harbouring something which is, for all intents and purposes, a parasite, and then when it finally comes out - causing as much pain and mayhem as humanly possible - you are supposed to go all squishy and melt.

Nuh-uh.

I remember blind panic. Panic that this was not a kitten, or a puppy where you could make mistakes and no one would ever know. This was a human being. Who could end up seriously warped and writing a 'Mommie Dearest' book if she lived that long.

Where was the manual?

And more importantly, why was I so numb? I'd just nearly died to have her - and I felt nothing more for her than you would the kid next door. I loved the idea of her MORE than the reality, in the beginning.

Let me tell you about the beginning.

My child didn't sleep. Well she did, she slept 20 minutes out of every hour for 24 hours a day for 4+ months. I'll repeat that.  FOUR AND A BIT MONTHS.

She didn't feed well. In fact, she was nearly hospitalised because she had lost so much weight.

I had two things to do for this child - feed her and comfort her, and I seemed to be able to do neither. I stumbled around completely inept, in a haze of self loathing and bitterness, cursing the very idea of a child. I had a husband who reacted to my slow decline into despair by spending as much time away from the nightmare as possible.

It was tough to feel love for her under those circumstances. Hard not to imagine a 'do over' where everything was back to the way it was and life was smooth and sweet. Hard not to resent this child who seemed to deliberately not sleep when I was retching from exhaustion and who turned her head away from my breast.

I don't know when it happened. This fierce angry love I feel for her now.  It grew from a tiny flicker to something so encompassing that I cannot imagine a minute of my life without her in it.

Maybe it was about 6 months on, when I was so used to feeling awful that I stopped thinking about it. When I finally accepted that, for better or for worse, she was here, she was not some little doll I could dress and parade - she was an angry, squawling, puking, screaming being who was also capable of such dependence that I couldn't just abandon her.

Maybe when she fell asleep for the 10000th time in my arms as I walked the hall, jiggling her in time to some made up lullaby.

Maybe when it was when she finally stopped crying when I pulled a funny face or tickled her tummy.

Maybe it was when she seemed to notice me as something separate. Separate and GOOD. So I had to be good. For her,don't you see?

I don't know. But I do know that I am not the only mother who didn't fall in love with her child instantly. I don't think that's a terrible thing to admit. I think it's terrible to tell mothers (and fathers for that matter) , especially new ones, that they will immediately adore their child.

I think motherlove comes out of those hard early days. I think it's calculated. You are driven out of your self, you are beaten and bloodied and stripped of everything you hold true. You are exhausted, you are shattered and you are confronting things about yourself that you never knew.

And then, when the old you is gone, you and your child build a new you. Together. From the beginning. And it's stronger and better than anything you could do on your own.

Strength.

She's awake most of the night, coughing and spluttering into my ear. She sweats on and on, soaking the pillow, the mattress and me.

She wants applesauce for breakfast. No she doesn't. She wants juice or milk or water or nothing at all. She wants to sit on the floor. She wants me to hold her.

She doesn't want Bob the Builder, she wants Pinocchio. No she doesn't, she wants a cuddle.

No she doesn't - she wants me to go away and leave her be.

She hates sandwiches. And juice. And cheese. And raisins. But don't let the dog eat them. They are hers. To throw and stamp on. She wants to hang onto me and cry her heart  out.

She sneezes, wipes her nose on her hand, her shirt or me. She coughs endlessly, hackhackhack. Her temperature is up, her temperature is normal. My lips on her forehead feel cool. She smacks me away.

She clings, she cries, she whines. Nothing is right and I can't make it right. Actually all I want to do is run away.

I can't.

She clings. She cries. She clings.

MIA.

subtitled Pukepukepuke.

So - I am here. Moving gingerly, cradling my stomach in both hands lest it decide yet again to jmp out and make my acquaintance.

Morning sickness. That's a complete and utter lie. It's "all day sickness, lie on the couch feebly moaning for crackers and praying for a higher power to remove me from my earthly chains" sickness.

This time, obviously, I am meant to enjoy every nanosecond of the change happening. This time, I am supposed to learn that 40 year old women have no business getting pregnant. This time, I am bound to learn that I am no damn good at this - cos despite the hives, the swelling, the toxemia, the weight gain and the mad life or death dash to the hospital last time - I didn't learn a damn thing.

So this time - someone is making sure I get the message.

I do little all day but drag myself out of bed, nod blearily at the husband who is equally bleary from doing DIY home renos till the late evening, gag while sorting out breakfast for Mouse, and then sit. Until my good mother conscience dictates that I take Mouse out, since it's not her fault her mother is a damn fool and as a result, wants to barf all day.

I've had some spectactular moments. I've upchucked in a shopping bag at the mall, ralphed into a public waste receptacle at the playground and continued conversations about tiling with my hub in between sickness bouts. It's not fun. And I can venture, it's not making the 'top ten sights of Sydney' for those around me, either.

And at best case, I've got another 3 weeks to go. 3 more weeks before I can look at a computer monitor without feeling seasick, read a book without wanting to hurl, or move suddenly without feeling like I left my head some where in back of me.

Yup. I am bitching. Ironic isn't it? Spend the last 9 or 10 months bitching about NOT getting knocked up and then when I finally do, I do write nothing more worthy than a treatise to puking. At least I tried. But somewhere, someone's having a good larf. And I am humbled beyond measure. Thank god I am too old to have any more.