I could never have guessed that you would be
So comfortable, shapely and fitting for me.
Your grace of abundant elastic was daunting
But these sweet moments of snugness won't haunt me.
For you are beautiful and generously wide.
I promise I'll never again try to hide
You away in a closet where light never shows
Your wonderful girth. Which I personally know
For it's comfort and pleasing sensation. My hand
Will daily praise your elastic-waist band
With caresses passing over that shielded land
Where beneath your shelter
My baby sleeps.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Tender Regrets
My lovely cheese,
You are spicy
You are sticky
You are yellow
Nacho Cheese
My lovely cheese
With each scoop
My taste buds sing.
Stomach cheers for
Nacho Cheese,
My lovely cheese.
When I taste you
I remember
Why I love you,
Nacho Cheese.
My lovely cheese
At the bottom
What is left of you
Is lonely
Nacho Cheese
and I
have no
more chips.
You are spicy
You are sticky
You are yellow
Nacho Cheese
My lovely cheese
With each scoop
My taste buds sing.
Stomach cheers for
Nacho Cheese,
My lovely cheese.
When I taste you
I remember
Why I love you,
Nacho Cheese.
My lovely cheese
At the bottom
What is left of you
Is lonely
Nacho Cheese
and I
have no
more chips.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Dreaming of Names
A few weeks ago I had a remarkable dream. I intend not only to remark upon it, but to relate it to you in its entirety. I believe that it was an unusual dream that meant more than I have yet discovered. I am waiting to see how the messages it holds fit into my life.
The dream:
Derek and I are sitting in the steel frame of a very tall office building with our feet hanging over the edge. We can see hills in the distance and green grass at the bottom of the building. There is a street not too far away, and people walking up and down sidewalks. The grass all turns brown and the sun begins to set, and a man walks up the stairs of the steel building and stops right near us. He is smiling and says, "isn't it a beautiful day?" And I say to him, "The world is broken". He shakes his head and says, "It's a beautiful day". I scream at him "This world is broken!" and he continues up the stairs into the higher parts of the building.
It is now night time and the street lights illuminate from the ground up. The outline of the steel building stretches out in front of us on the ground. Suddenly the man who has passed us on the stairs is falling from the top of the building. It appears he has jumped, and has fallen far from the building into the median of the busy street. I feel convicted for screaming at him and feel like I am the reason he has jumped from the top of the building.
I run out of the building and across the road. People are already gathered around his broken body taking pictures and video taping. I push them away and shout at them to stop. They won't go, and I shout until I realize that they don't know his name. I am certain this will make a difference to them and at last I shout, "This man's name is Eugene!" The flashbulbs cease and the murmuring crowd quiets down and disperses.
Eugene has fallen so hard that his body is pushed deep into the turf. He has fallen on the legs of a small child. As soon as the crowd of media begin to melt away a new group appears around me. The child with its legs pinned under Eugene's broken body tells me its name (I can't remember it, or the gender of the child). Soon children are crowding hard around us as I hold the pinned child's hand and each of the children are telling me their name. The sound of their voices telling me their names becomes very loud.
I notice then that Eugene is still breathing, though his body is broken and bloody.
Men in yellow suits come running down the street with huge spotlights on rollers and are clearing the street for emergency crews. Several ambulances come rushing down the street from the West and it seems like there is another emergency somewhere nearby and to the East. Fire trucks and police cars zoom past on both sides of the road, and emergency personnel flock past on foot because there weren't enough vehicles. The street is crowded with people rushing East.
One ambulance stops near me and the crowd of children all standing in the median. As I watch them lift Eugene's body out of the lawn, I notice the pinned child is gone. I turn in a full circle before I see the child walking down the street lamp splotched street, in the same direction that all the trucks were going, holding the hand of a firefighter. And I am sad I did not get to say good-bye.
The dream:
Derek and I are sitting in the steel frame of a very tall office building with our feet hanging over the edge. We can see hills in the distance and green grass at the bottom of the building. There is a street not too far away, and people walking up and down sidewalks. The grass all turns brown and the sun begins to set, and a man walks up the stairs of the steel building and stops right near us. He is smiling and says, "isn't it a beautiful day?" And I say to him, "The world is broken". He shakes his head and says, "It's a beautiful day". I scream at him "This world is broken!" and he continues up the stairs into the higher parts of the building.
It is now night time and the street lights illuminate from the ground up. The outline of the steel building stretches out in front of us on the ground. Suddenly the man who has passed us on the stairs is falling from the top of the building. It appears he has jumped, and has fallen far from the building into the median of the busy street. I feel convicted for screaming at him and feel like I am the reason he has jumped from the top of the building.
I run out of the building and across the road. People are already gathered around his broken body taking pictures and video taping. I push them away and shout at them to stop. They won't go, and I shout until I realize that they don't know his name. I am certain this will make a difference to them and at last I shout, "This man's name is Eugene!" The flashbulbs cease and the murmuring crowd quiets down and disperses.
Eugene has fallen so hard that his body is pushed deep into the turf. He has fallen on the legs of a small child. As soon as the crowd of media begin to melt away a new group appears around me. The child with its legs pinned under Eugene's broken body tells me its name (I can't remember it, or the gender of the child). Soon children are crowding hard around us as I hold the pinned child's hand and each of the children are telling me their name. The sound of their voices telling me their names becomes very loud.
I notice then that Eugene is still breathing, though his body is broken and bloody.
Men in yellow suits come running down the street with huge spotlights on rollers and are clearing the street for emergency crews. Several ambulances come rushing down the street from the West and it seems like there is another emergency somewhere nearby and to the East. Fire trucks and police cars zoom past on both sides of the road, and emergency personnel flock past on foot because there weren't enough vehicles. The street is crowded with people rushing East.
One ambulance stops near me and the crowd of children all standing in the median. As I watch them lift Eugene's body out of the lawn, I notice the pinned child is gone. I turn in a full circle before I see the child walking down the street lamp splotched street, in the same direction that all the trucks were going, holding the hand of a firefighter. And I am sad I did not get to say good-bye.
Friday, January 4, 2008
a poem I fell in love with
The Supple Deer
The quiet opening
between fence strands
perhaps eighteen inches.
Antlers to hind hooves,
four feet off the ground,
the deer poured through it.
No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.
I don’t know how a stag turns
into a stream, an arc of water.
I have never felt such accurate envy.
Not of the deer—
To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.
- Jane Hirshfield
The quiet opening
between fence strands
perhaps eighteen inches.
Antlers to hind hooves,
four feet off the ground,
the deer poured through it.
No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.
I don’t know how a stag turns
into a stream, an arc of water.
I have never felt such accurate envy.
Not of the deer—
To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.
- Jane Hirshfield
Windy Days
Today is a windy day, but I feel like everyday has been a windy day recently. I feel one way and then the wind blows me another. I decide on something and the wind changes direction and I have to make the decision all over again. I feel pushed along in front of a wind I have no control over.
I feel sad after a very large dose of hope begins to wear off.
I feel sad after a very large dose of hope begins to wear off.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Christmas Hoopla
My dear friend Kathy tagged me to write 12 random things about myself that revolve around Christmas. Hers were so cute and funny that I decided to go for it myself.
1. My Dad's side of the family has the tradition of everyone gathering for a soup dinner sometime around Christmas and after dinner we take turns reciting something we've memorized that has been meaningful in some way during the year. After each recitation, the person is allowed to choose one gift from the table (which we've filled by each bringing one gift). People sing, recite Scripture, recite poetry in other languages, recite their own poetry, and do dramatic readings. It is always quirky and fun.
2. Growing up, my sisters and I would each take a bag of candy from church at the end of the Christmas Eve service, take it home, dump it all out on the bed together and sort out the chocolate from the non-chocolate candy. The chocolate candy went into Mom's stocking, and the non-chocolate candy (mostly peanuts and peppermints) went into Dad's stocking. We've gotten a little more creative as we've gotten older, but we still prefer the brown bag stocking fillers :)
3. My Mom makes Christmas casserole for breakfast every year. She makes it on Christmas Eve, and bakes it Christmas morning and we all dig in while we open presents.
4. My family opens presents on Christmas morning in our pajamas, not much different than many families. But we have always been very careful that only one person is allowed to open a gift at a time (unless the gifts are the same).
5. Stockings are never hung on a mantle, we don't have a mantle. They are laid on top of the piano.
6. Amanda always walks over from next door around 10 am and she and I swap gifts on Christmas morning (this year she is in England...I don't think she'll be walking over).
7. Our church sings Silent Night on Christmas Eve, by candlelight, and at least once through in German.
8. Derek's family opens presents on Christmas Eve, and one year the neighbor boy across the street asked why they had opened all their presents already. Derek's dad told the kid that it was Christmas, and Santa must have missed his side of the street!
9. My first snowy white Christmas (in Shafter it is usually foggy white) was Christmas 2004, which was also my first Christmas away from home, and my sister Sarah came to stay with me and we made Christmas casserole to make it feel like home.
10. Putting the lights on the Christmas tree was always Dad's job. Making sure the lights worked before he put them on, was a job for us girls. We would sit and yank light bulbs out and try new ones for HOURS, so that we wouldn't have to drive all the way into town to buy a new set of lights.
11. I was always the first one to wake up on Christmas morning, and was usually unsuccessful in waking the rest of the house, so I would spend the first several hours of Christmas morning "inspecting the presents", making tunnels for the train around the tree out of gift boxes, and staring at the lights on the tree with the dog.
12. In my family someone always gets a movie for Christmas and we watch it as a family that afternoon as we clean up wrapping paper and continue eating casserole. The worst Christmas movie ever, was the year that I got "Babe, Pig in the City". There is a scene where a dog is dangling off a bridge by it's collar choking and it goes on and on and on. I ran out of the room crying. My Mom was shouting "Turn it off!" and Dad was shouting "Who has the remote?" and I never finished watching "Babe, Pig in the City".
And so I tagJolene to complete her own list of Christmas Hoopla. I look forward to hearing it!
1. My Dad's side of the family has the tradition of everyone gathering for a soup dinner sometime around Christmas and after dinner we take turns reciting something we've memorized that has been meaningful in some way during the year. After each recitation, the person is allowed to choose one gift from the table (which we've filled by each bringing one gift). People sing, recite Scripture, recite poetry in other languages, recite their own poetry, and do dramatic readings. It is always quirky and fun.
2. Growing up, my sisters and I would each take a bag of candy from church at the end of the Christmas Eve service, take it home, dump it all out on the bed together and sort out the chocolate from the non-chocolate candy. The chocolate candy went into Mom's stocking, and the non-chocolate candy (mostly peanuts and peppermints) went into Dad's stocking. We've gotten a little more creative as we've gotten older, but we still prefer the brown bag stocking fillers :)
3. My Mom makes Christmas casserole for breakfast every year. She makes it on Christmas Eve, and bakes it Christmas morning and we all dig in while we open presents.
4. My family opens presents on Christmas morning in our pajamas, not much different than many families. But we have always been very careful that only one person is allowed to open a gift at a time (unless the gifts are the same).
5. Stockings are never hung on a mantle, we don't have a mantle. They are laid on top of the piano.
6. Amanda always walks over from next door around 10 am and she and I swap gifts on Christmas morning (this year she is in England...I don't think she'll be walking over).
7. Our church sings Silent Night on Christmas Eve, by candlelight, and at least once through in German.
8. Derek's family opens presents on Christmas Eve, and one year the neighbor boy across the street asked why they had opened all their presents already. Derek's dad told the kid that it was Christmas, and Santa must have missed his side of the street!
9. My first snowy white Christmas (in Shafter it is usually foggy white) was Christmas 2004, which was also my first Christmas away from home, and my sister Sarah came to stay with me and we made Christmas casserole to make it feel like home.
10. Putting the lights on the Christmas tree was always Dad's job. Making sure the lights worked before he put them on, was a job for us girls. We would sit and yank light bulbs out and try new ones for HOURS, so that we wouldn't have to drive all the way into town to buy a new set of lights.
11. I was always the first one to wake up on Christmas morning, and was usually unsuccessful in waking the rest of the house, so I would spend the first several hours of Christmas morning "inspecting the presents", making tunnels for the train around the tree out of gift boxes, and staring at the lights on the tree with the dog.
12. In my family someone always gets a movie for Christmas and we watch it as a family that afternoon as we clean up wrapping paper and continue eating casserole. The worst Christmas movie ever, was the year that I got "Babe, Pig in the City". There is a scene where a dog is dangling off a bridge by it's collar choking and it goes on and on and on. I ran out of the room crying. My Mom was shouting "Turn it off!" and Dad was shouting "Who has the remote?" and I never finished watching "Babe, Pig in the City".
And so I tag
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Restrictions
As a pregnant person, there are many natural restrictions, not all of which I have yet experienced. But I look forward (with trepidation) to restrictions such as not being able to see my toes, or not being able to shave my own legs, paint my own toenails, walk like anything other than a duck, sit down on the floor and not be able to get back up again, or get out of bed without a support beam. Some of the restrictions I have already experienced include not being able to eat the things I love, not being able to sleep through the night without having to pee at least once, and not being able to sit in a restaurant with other civilized people because the aromas wafting from the kitchen make me nauseous.
However, today I found out there are even more restrictions than I had at first imagined. And what makes them worse is that someone out there seems to be enforcing them. I don't know who it is, and I don't know where they are, but I know they are out there lurking, waiting for me to participate in activities that pregnant women are not "allowed" to participate in. I know this, because that's what the website said. What they will do to me when they catch me in the act is unimaginable...and the website doesn't specify, so I can only assume the worst.
According to the internet, I am no longer "allowed" to participate in activities that I may have formerly enjoyed, like ice skating, roller-blading, snowboarding, skiing, water skiing, jumping on the trampoline, sky diving, roller coaster riding, and recreational drug use.
Well now that you mention it all I want to do is wear rollerblades on the trampoline while I snort dope. All I want to do is sky dive off the top of a roller coaster while shooting up! The temptation is powerful...and yet I know that someone is out there waiting to catch me snowboarding behind a boat drinking beer...and that will be the end
With all these restrictions, what is a girl to do?
However, today I found out there are even more restrictions than I had at first imagined. And what makes them worse is that someone out there seems to be enforcing them. I don't know who it is, and I don't know where they are, but I know they are out there lurking, waiting for me to participate in activities that pregnant women are not "allowed" to participate in. I know this, because that's what the website said. What they will do to me when they catch me in the act is unimaginable...and the website doesn't specify, so I can only assume the worst.
According to the internet, I am no longer "allowed" to participate in activities that I may have formerly enjoyed, like ice skating, roller-blading, snowboarding, skiing, water skiing, jumping on the trampoline, sky diving, roller coaster riding, and recreational drug use.
Well now that you mention it all I want to do is wear rollerblades on the trampoline while I snort dope. All I want to do is sky dive off the top of a roller coaster while shooting up! The temptation is powerful...and yet I know that someone is out there waiting to catch me snowboarding behind a boat drinking beer...and that will be the end
With all these restrictions, what is a girl to do?
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