500-challenge

[500-challenge]

30!

Years ago, I stood in a line at a camera shop in San Francisco, waiting to check out. I was buying some limited stock film. The two clerks were chatting behind the counter as they were ringing me up. One clerk says, “I want to learn how to use a large format camera, but it's just going to take me so much time.“

Second clerk says, “how old are you?”

First clerk replies, “25.”

Second clerk says, “you're 25, you have nothing but time.”

He was right.

I read Kate Simon's entry and she reminded me to write down my goals. I used to write down my goals all the time. I once found a long lost goal list and was just shocked that I had accomplished every single thing on what felt like a very dreamy wishlist. I was like, “holy shit! I did ALL of this and then I made more lists and did those too!” I haven't sat down and written out my goals in a long time. It's definitely overdue and while I won't write them out here, I will be sitting down over the weekend to get them down on paper. Sometimes things move so fast I feel like my energy is going straight into the effort of just getting through each day and I'm not actively working on my personal, professional, and creative goals.

This month feels like it's flown by. Days with two small children are sometimes a long blur. There are many moments that drag on and on, especially the ones that are filled with big emotions, flailing limbs, long abandoned coffee cups gone cold, high chair buckles and car seat buckles that never seem to be untwisted when you need them to be. I look back at what I've done these last 30 days and sometimes it's hard to put a finger on it. What have I accomplished? There have been all the usual suspects; laundry, dishes, cooking, wiping tiny noses, cleaning tiny bottoms. This morning my son woke me up at 5am for a diaper change and a brief nursing session. When he drifted back to sleep I got up, took a shower, went downstairs and made a coffee. I sat at my table and opened up my big negative file binder and chose exposures to take into the camera shop to have high resolution scans made. It was so quiet in my house. I tiptoed around. I sipped my coffee while it was still hot. I washed the dishes uninterrupted. I read. It felt so luxurious. To do dishes. I did them without feeling rushed or torn between two different tasks. I could focus so well.

So much of my time is just gone, I look at what I did and I struggle to remember the details. Then, other times it's like everything slows down and I get to let the tiniest details soak in. Washing my daughters hair in a big sudsy bathtub. The baby sits in the tub too, his big fat baby palms splash the bubbles, sending water everywhere. The water is just hot enough. My knees feel better, kneeling on the fluffy bath mat is ok. My husband hands me a towel and I lift the baby up, he squeals as I wrap the towel around him. We have massage time, then diaper, then pajamas. I set him down with his toys while I help my husband get our daughter out of the tub too. She presses her forehead into mine as I carry her, wrapped in a towel to get ready for bedtime. We sing. We read. We hold hands when we turn out the lights. We have nothing but time.

[500-challenge]

29

If Scott were an animal, or if he has a spirit animal, or if he was an animal in his former life it was most definitely a walrus. He had a white handlebar mustache and he said “diabetes” just like Wilford Brimley in the Quaker Oatmeal ads. Maybe he was a very good walrus and he was rewarded by being reincarnated into a man. Maybe he was a very bad walrus and he was punished by being reincarnated into a man. I'm not sure if I would rather be a walrus or a human, actually now that I think about it, I would much rather be a walrus, but walruses are not my animal counterpart. I am definitely some sort of bird. Not Scott, though, he is/was a walrus.

I sat in a classroom today for six hours and Scott was my adult and pediatric CPR and first aid instructor. A retired policeman, he has more than enough experience with attempted resuscitation and all of its gory details for all of the students combined. He regaled us with his horror stories for six hours and for six hours I suppressed my full on anxiety attack because I didn't want to freak out in front of a room full of strangers. I am squeamish. I get faint at the sight of blood. I have no cool to keep cool when I'm in an emergency. Several years ago I remember being at work when a fairly sizable earthquake hit, I think it was a 6.8? Magically, while my coworkers were panicking and screaming and running around, I just calmly stood up, grabbed one of my coworkers hands, and walked her over to a doorway to brace ourselves. It was a strange calm, one that I can't find intentionally.

My grandmother was a nurse for 40 years, she worked in the neonatal and newborn intensive care unit at the hospital in Great Falls, Montana. Nothing rattled this woman. She birthed ten babies and worked overnights for decades and never lost her cool. For years I thought I should look into nursing school but whenever I am faced with blood or bodily fluids my fight or flight, well usually just flight, kicks into high gear. I could never be a nurse and today was a confirmation of this fact. I kept thinking to myself, “Oh shit! Oh no! I hope I never actually have to do this!”

I completed my course and obtained my certificate though, one step closer to my Maine massage therapy license. My ambivalence about working as a massage therapist is still strong. On my last day photographing babies I cried in my bathroom a lot because I felt so sad to walk away from a job I loved so much, but it just doesn't pay the bills. Photography is just a hobby right now. Turning it into a significant source of income is just not something I can do, so I'm letting it be something that is just for me right now. Perhaps it will become more of a career path someday when I have the time and energy to develop the business side of a business.

[500-challenge]

I think I have hit the proverbial wall. Historically when I have committed to a challenge it's like I'm one of those little toy cars that you pull backwards to launch. I start out moving backwards and then I take off. This time has been a bit harder. I have been in the middle and now the end of a long process with my students. A project that I've been collaborating on that has twisted and turned and I'm really ready for it to be over. I have more projects in the queue and I need some closure. I need to shift my focus and figure out my work situation because my husband has been working way too much for way too long and I need to give him a break. My husband is a very patient man but he has been beyond burnout for a while now. Teaching dance is wonderful but financially it's just a tiny bit of money and it's not enough, not even close.

At the beginning of the month I was also doing a photography challenge and I decided to step away from it. I plan on returning to it, or starting over again in April but it was a bit over ambitious for me to take on all these challenges at once, even if they are things I really enjoy doing.

I love reading everyone's writing. I try to read as many as I can but dang it, it's so hard to find the kind of time that I need to read everything.

One really delightful surprise about parenting is just how much I get to read out loud. I love reading out loud and sure, sometimes reading the same book over and over is less than fun, but it's still reading. I push pretty hard to read new books on a regular basis. We visit the library at least once a week and we are constantly checking out new selections and turning in old ones. Books that Zelda gets really attached to I usually go out and purchase.

The other day I was in a workshop and during introductions we were asked to specify the gender pronouns that we would like people to use for us. I felt a little uncomfortable with this because I had never had to do it before but I really liked it. There were a few people who specified that they used “they” or “them” as their gender pronouns, neither male or female specific pronouns were appropriate for them. I encountered a problem and I'm reaching out to really anyone who may be smarter in linguistics and syntax than I am to help me.

Here's where I got stuck, I'm not sure how to explain so I'll give examples:

“She handed me the apple.”

“He handed me the apple.”

Both refer to an individual.

“They handed me the apple.”

Suddenly it's plural.

“Them handed me the apple.”

Feels so wrong, this is very bad English.

So, what do I do with this? Help! Seriously, heeeeelp meeee! Our society is changing and challenging our language and our language has not caught up yet. I can't possibly be the only person who has run into this problem.

[500-challenge]

26!

Through a somewhat surprising series of events it looks as though now, after nearly two years of sitting idly, trying to get my massage license in Maine, that it may actually happen. I am genuinely surprised by this and sort of looking forward to the prospect of working in a spa or wellness center. I don't want to get my hopes too high but I am open to returning to this work. Perhaps it would be a good thing for me financially and it may be a different industry situation here. In San Diego it was neither good financially or good any other way. I found the best situation that I could there and it was still pretty awful, but not in the ways that you may expect or guess if you have never been a massage therapist.

I can't really go into all the different things that fell flat for me as far as being a “holistic health practitioner” go but I will say this: Enduring ungodly amounts of pain in the form of “deep tissue” or whatever people want to call it is not a goal. It is not some badge of honor to have a massage therapist hurt you. It is bad technique that walks and often crosses a blurry ethical line and if you like to boast that your massage therapist is “beating you up” or other such nonsense then I would like to just put it out there that perhaps massage is not what you need. If you can't comfortably and fully breathe throughout the entire massage, then it is too much pressure. If you feel bruised the day after a massage, then you are. I spent a lot of hours building trust with clients who had been injured by bad massage therapists. I have also had some terrible massages and can empathize with people who don't speak up while they are on the table because you want to believe that the person who you've paid to help you knows what they are doing.

There were and still are things I loved about massage: Learning about the body and injury rehabilitation and prevention was a big one. Kinesiology is my nerdiest of jams. Helping people who are going through major physical transformations in their bodies, usually because of a dramatic shift in lifestyle due to health concerns is another. Helping people to learn how to reconnect with their physical self, so major. Our bodies, whether we like it or not are constantly changing. Constantly. Every breath we take, bite we eat, thought we think is influential to our cellular makeup. People who are disconnected don't feel this as much, and I'd say they have it much easier than those of us who feel everything in our bodies. People who are going through physical transformations are in the shit pretty deep because they oftentimes have spent most of their lives disconnecting and now they are having to face all of the things they've been ignoring for years.

[500-challenge]

I gotta get my words in for today. It's the home stretch and I'm feeling it. Today's thoughts:

Was Dave Coulier really the inspiration for Alanis Morissette's song “you oughtta know?” Alanis Morissette has gone on record saying that it was in fact a song about a real person in her life, but that she was never going to reveal who. That song launched her career and was a pretty major hit in the nineties, what with all the girl power music going off the charts and everything. It's hard to imagine anyone getting ragey and heartbroken over uncle Joey from full house. There is great debate about who it is written about, but he is apparently the best candidate.

Since we're on the subject of uncle Joey. There is a theory that Joey was actually the father of all the Tanner children and that's why they all look like him and look nothing like Bob Saget. Was Uncle Joey even their uncle? Was uncle Joey involved in some long term affair with the girls’ mother and now he is helping to raise them because he looks at Stefanie and it's like looking in a mirror? Is he baby Michelle’s true biological father?

Bob Saget is the narrator on another show, “How I met Your Mother.” The main character on the show, portraying the young version of Bob Saget is played by another actor, Josh Radner. Are we supposed to believe that Josh Radner at some point turns into Bob Saget? When? When does he turn into Bob Saget? Is it before or after he meets my mother? I think that's a plot twist that would really blow people's minds.

Remember “The Wonder Years?” The main character was played Fred Savage when he was a tiny kid. All of the narration is supposed to be the same character, just grown up, and was played by Daniel Stern, a completely different person. It was a great show and is perfect how it was but am I the only person who thinks that Fred Savage should go back and re-record all of the voice overs so he can really be both child and adult version of his character? Is that weird? It is. You don't have to answer that.

I used to watch a lot of television. Then, I got rid of my tv for several years. My mom bought me a little 12 inch television with a built in VCR so I could watch the news. I lived in this weird building in Portland Oregon. It was a secret cheap apartment in the middle of the city, $375 for a huge studio, three blocks from the Morrison Bridge. Free cable. Also, closed circuit security footage of the whole building on channel 1. You could watch the drama of life happen in real time which mostly looked like people walking around in the halls. It was fascinating, but more than fascinating it was creepy. I was being watched as much as I was watching. Nothing bad ever happened to me in that apartment. It was weird, but it felt safe.

[500-challenge]

24

I feel like I blacked out and lost a week. Today was a lot. We woke up early, my husband went to a yoga class and I was on my own with the kiddos. I was determined to make it to the march. I am ceaselessly impressed by Portland, Maine. I have no idea how many people were at the march but it was in the thousands. For a city this size in a state as conservative as it is you would not expect the kind of turnout that we have. You probably also wouldn't expect the art museum to be as huge and incredible as it is either.

I grew up in very gun friendly hunter-culture heavy places; Montana and Arkansas. My parents were strongly anti-gun and so am I. If you're hunting to feed your family I can forgive you, sort of, but not really. I have known many, many hunters and only a few of them actually fed their families with their dead animals. One of whom is my aunt who knows how to dress and process an elk start to finish, using everything and wasting nothing. Most hunters I knew growing up were there for sport. In a strange twist, several years ago my father, a lifelong fisherman, took up duck hunting. Now he goes to Canada every fall and hunts. I have no idea what he does with the dead ducks. I forgive my father this, because he is a fastidiously careful man, a responsible gun user, and he shoots a rifle.

I can't forgive people who advocate that the second amendment is some sort of sacred article that can't be challenged or amended. Or that it is on par with challenging freedom of speech. For those people I'd like to invite them to run into a crowded theater and yell “Fire!” Or call their governor and threaten their life. Then, try to defend themselves with the first amendment and see how that goes. Or people who argue that the framers of the constitution would want this shit. That they'd want schoolchildren to be gunned down? I can't suffer fools who want to argue that owning a semi automatic, military grade weapon is the same as owning a rifle. It is not the same. But there are similarities, namely that both could be used to kill my children. Both could be used to kill my children's parents. My children need their parents and I need my children. Need.

The constitution is supposed to be a living document, the framers intended it to change with society because they knew that they had no clue what the future was going to be. Article five, bitches. Read it. If anything, this entire Trump Presidency has been forcing me to relearn everything I had forgotten about how our government works and actually read the documents that supposedly govern our country.

I wasn't planning on writing about guns but here I am. I had actually planned this whole post about my amazing homemade coconut pecan granola recipe. I made a batch of granola and took photos of the whole process then I burned the shit out of it. Total kitchen disaster. So here's my granola recipe:

2 cups old fashioned oats

1 cup shredded coconut

1 cup raw pecans or almond or whatever nuts you like

¼ cup raw pumpkin seeds

¼ cup maple syrup

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ cup vegetable oil or melted coconut oil

Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix it all up so everything is incorporated. Spread evenly on a cookie sheet. Bake for 25-30 minutes stirring every 10 minutes to evenly toast. Or you can get so distracted by your gun nut mother-in-laws hate speech filled Facebook posts that you completely lose track of time and burn the shit out of your granola. Fuck guns. The end.

[500-challenge]

I’m trying to write this while getting my cardio on via a recumbent exercise bike. I read once that the there was a study on multitasking that showed that people’s brains are not actually capable of doing more than one task at once. We can switch rapidly, very, very rapidly between many different things but truly multitasking as we have been led to believe is not really possible. I’m not sure if I would agree entirely but I do know that jobs where I’ve been asked to multitask are by far the most frustrating. I’m definitely multitasking right now. Sort of exercising and sort of writing. I’m doing all of this because it’s my wedding anniversary and there will be no time for writing later. I’m not a very sentimental person and I rarely celebrate special dates but it’s been a trying year for my husband and I and we NEED a date night. We rarely get any time together at all and the time we do have together is usually filled with our children and their needs.

I didn’t want a wedding, I wanted a husband. I never dreamed about my wedding when I was a little girl, I dreamed about safaris and being a ballet dancer and seeing the world. The traditional life path was just not me. I tried really hard to get into the wedding planning process but the whole thing just seemed like such an epic waste of money. It’s a point of contention in our relationship. My husband wanted a big traditional wedding and I wanted the Justice of the Peace and a ticket to Norway. I need to get over it. Sure, having all the people who were from different parts of my life in one place was magic, but I still wish I could have used the money we spent on paying down our debt and traveling. We did nearly everything ourselves and it still was expensive.

The life we have together is beautiful. Sharing a life is a challenge sometimes, but it’s never been painful the way that I thought it would. I dated some rotten eggs before my husband and I started dating and the feeling and experience of this relationship is such a stark contrast to everything that came before it. My husband has always been able to simultaneously support me and create a world together while giving me the immense amount of space that I need. I can say quite confidently that our partnership is the one thing in my life that has not been a constant struggle, if it were it would never have made it as long as it has. Four years married, eleven years together, and sixteen years of friendship. I’m not sure what I would do without him. Surely I’d be lost.

[500-challenge]

21

Things that need to happen tonight. I still need to brush my teeth and at some point I need to use the bathroom. Earlier this evening I definitely needed to use the bathroom but it never happened and then I forgot, so I'm sure that I should do that sometime soon before my body starts shutting down. I'd love to get some more reading in before I pass out. My husband is out with a friend and talking about black metal and horror films and I'm here trapped under a sleeping baby. If I'm careful I can get a bathroom break and some reading in without disturbing any children and ruining my own life. I'm in the middle of two books right now, “We Were Eight Years in Power” by Ta-Nehisi Coates and “Born a Crime” by a Trevor Noah. I love to read. I am a VERY slow reader though. I have all but given up on checking out books for myself from the library. I never finish them within the three weeks and then I have to renew and what if someone is waiting for the book to come back and I never finish it? I need more time than libraries allow so I usually buy books and I try to buy them from one of the local bookstores here in town.

I especially love bookstores if they are old and have special collection sections and really especially if they have a cat. Bookstores with cats hold a special place in my heart and when I walk into a little local bookstore and it has a cat with a name like Copernicus or Barnaby or Digory I basically just hand them my money. I'm allergic to cats so I can't have one of my own but I would totally have a cat if I could. Sometimes I fantasize about buying a house with a barn and then I would get a barn cat and name it something like Mordecai or Vera and they would be independent and a little wild but have a heart of gold and protect the barn from vermin. Mordecai would never hurt me or the babies but he will be damned if he lets a rat sneak past him. He's seen a lot of shit, patrolling nights all these years, but his wisdom, that's what makes him a valuable member of the family. He trusts his instincts and his instincts never fail. Don't get too close, though, he's spent enough time outdoors that he is just a few steps closer to being wild than your average house cat. At one point Mordecai disappeared for a while, almost a week, we were so distraught. I kept hoping he'd come back but I feared the worst, that some coyote or raccoon or mountain lion had tried to trespass, there had been an altercation and Mordecai had gone limping out into the wilderness to die with dignity in nature. Then, I heard him, gently scratching at the back door, he was home! His paws were cracked and he had been a fight. We gently cleaned him up, took him to be checked out at the vet, he came back with a clean bill of health but he was never the same, something had changed. He was a bit harder, a bit more reserved, but still, a gentleman through and through.

If I can't make it to a bookstore or my budget is too tight or I look over and realize that my bookshelves are packed full, two layers deep and there's not a single extra square inch to accommodate another copy of anything, I download a book via cloud library. If you don't know about cloud library you should. It's an app for your smartphone or tablet that you link to your library card and then you can check out anything that has a digital copy for free. It's pretty incredible.

[500-challenge]

20

Tonight I had my first ever “stage” pronounced “stahhj” I thought it was great and all very exciting. I prepped coconut macaroons and sesame crisps. I shredded carrots and parsnips for cake. I cleaned. I was sort of amazed that this was a job interview because I freaking love to bake and it was so much fun. I have never been formally trained so I have absolutely no gauge of how I did or if I will get hired based on this trial. I find out Friday. I'm not getting my hopes up. Portland is the foodiest town I've ever been to and there are so many people here with serious kitchen skills. I have no doubt that there is some amazing legitimately qualified baker that wants this job and if so they probably deserve it more than me. Conversely the unemployment rate here is like 1.5% and businesses are having to shorten their hours because they don't have enough employees to operate. When there's that much of a labor shortage it usually means that competition is pretty weak, or nonexistent. But still, I think I could handle it. My food obsession is pretty strong. I have entertained the idea of culinary or pastry school more than once but the cost and time commitment have always been prohibitive.

I think about how magical food is a lot. My daughter and I planted pumpkin seeds and those seeds are edible. Add some nice rich soil, some water, and some sun and you have a plant. Its blossoms can be grilled and eaten, but if by the magic of pollination you do produce fruit you can continue to grow it, harvest it, turn it into roast pumpkin for soups and delicious pies or breads or muffins. Roast the seeds or dry them and save them to plant next year. It's a miracle. All that from a tiny seed.

Considering that I could barely make a grilled cheese when I first moved out of my parents house I have turned into quite a baker and cook in my adult life. I love food and I love making people happy and satisfied. A beautiful and delicious meal can bring some serious joy. I'm the person at the potluck who eavesdrops to hear if anyone is talking about the dish that I brought. I enjoy meal planning and grocery shopping. I get weepy when I think about how I can't find the equivalent of Specialty Produce in Maine. I used to delight in shopping the wholesale produce distributor, filling my wheely basket with organics or getting a weekly market box and then figuring out how to create different meals with whatever was in season. When I was going into labor with my daughter I was like, “no, I can't go to the hospital, I need to get to Specialty Produce before they close.” My old landlord upon visiting our apartment to once marveled at the fact that we had a restaurant grade stainless steel prep table in our kitchen, “you may be the only people in the building who actually cook in your kitchen!” He was so surprised. I was like “dude, this kitchen has a convection oven, I'd be a fool not to!” And he just kind of stared at me.

I have watched every episode of every cooking show that Jamie Oliver has ever filmed. I am captivated by Chef’s Table and want to travel to every restaurant or kitchen that is featured. I got teary eyed when I watched “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” because of how thoughtful and dedicated he is and how beautiful the sushi looks.

Should I work in a restaurant kitchen? I don't know. I have doubts about ever working in a restaurant again because it can be grueling work. At my last restaurant job there were plenty of nights where I just ran screaming out of the place and it was the best restaurant job ever. I'm willing to try, though.

[500-challenge]

19

Beginnings are difficult. I keep starting sentences and then deleting them. Type, erase, type something else, delete, delete, delete. I just did it again. Write, write, delete, delete. Crap, what am I doing? I spent the majority of my day attempting, again, to navigate my way through the massage therapy licensure process for the state of Maine. I may be getting close. Closer, I guess, but I might not get my license anyway, after all is said and done. I don't really want it, which is why I haven't been really trying to get all of the documents together in any timely fashion. I don't really want to ever massage another person as long as I live but my alternative is making minimum wage because there is no way to leave massage and go onto bigger, better things. You just start over.

In the first weeks after moving I began the licensing process and I ran into a major roadblock. I received an email from the owners of the massage school I attended. This email was a lengthy explanation of why they were shutting down the school. It rambled about president Obama a lot. It was a bit unhinged. A few people I know that taught there showed up to teach on the day that email was sent and the doors were locked and everything was gone. My former school just dropped off the map. The state of Maine requires a lot of documentation of education, as it should. I can't get a transcript sent to the State of Maine. I've tried multiple email addresses, Facebook messenger, reaching out to former staff. I've contacted the Board of Private Postsecondary Education who sent me the contact info that they were given and nothing. I contacted the California Association of Massage Therapists who told me that since my license has expired they would not send verification of me ever having a license to the state of Maine, but if I wanted to renew my California license and pay them $225 they would send verification, no problem. I was like no way. I shelved it. All of this to be able to work doing something that makes me want to run away and never come back?

I looked at the license application again after the Maine board contacted me reminding me that I never completed my application. I dug around my old files from 2010 and found my copy of my transcript in order to fill out some of the other paperwork that is required. I looked at the Maine requirements and I looked at my transcript. Maine requires 100 hours of supervised practicum. On my transcript I have 96 hours. Four hours short. Four fucking hours. I don't even know what to do with this shit.

I have had over 3500 hours of actual work, and that's just the work I've recorded. There was plenty of work that didn't get logged. Perhaps I could get my former boss to write me a letter?

[500-challenge]

18

Today my stepmom called me. I'm always pretty concerned when I see her name pop up on the caller ID. I get along pretty well with her, though it's only in the past several years that I could say that. Right after my nephew was born there was this flood of visitors and they all wanted a free place to stay. We were living in a pretty amazing apartment in Little Italy and had a spare room that we used as an office, art studio, and guest bedroom. I miss my old apartment. You couldn't pay me to live there now with two kids because of the parade of crazy homeless people who would sneak into our building, shoot up, and shit in the hall, but I miss living in a goddamn loft. Anyhow, my sister and her husband and new baby lived in an absolutely thimble sized mother in law cottage. It was in the backyard of a sort of lovely, very wacky old lady's house. Three people in a studio. There was no place for guests to stay. So, the grandparents all came crying to me. We had the spare room and a pretty decent air mattress. Parking was terrible but the room was free.

It stirred up a lot of really emotional issues for me. People who had not so much as called me in years, now, because of a new baby that was not mine, were calling me and asking me for favors. No one ever came to visit me in San Diego. They still weren't coming to visit me, they just wanted a free place to stay. I was so hurt. I felt cast aside and all the happy love I had for my new best buddy was being weighed down. So, I did what any good massage therapist and somatic practitioner in San Diego would do and I sought out hypnotherapy. I had heard great things. I gave it a try, signing up for a short series.

You know what? It really did help. I honestly don't know if it would have helped more than traditional talk therapy, but at that time, in that place, that version of myself really needed to sit down and contact my inner child and tell her that everything was ok. I was given an opportunity and the tools for how to heal the hurt that had never healed and it was by actively being the grown up that tiny little Kerry never had. It was the first time that anyone ever sat down with me and told me that yes, I can heal these parts of myself that feel like they are just the way that I am. People go to San Diego to heal. Something about the ease of living and the mildness of the climate. Not being challenged by nature just lends itself to healing. I never saw myself that way there, it felt like such a struggle, always. The constant feeling that I didn't belong, the sadness despite all the sunshine. I did my fair share of healing whether I knew it at the time or not.

[500-challenge]

16

Memory.

The underside of overpasses on the freeway. Gray skies, dense and heavy with humidity. Green grass. Black pavement, sizzling hot, cracking, cars speeding by.

A pool, a soap opera actress and her husband. Blond hair. My mother spraying sun-in on my hair. A glass jar full of cotton balls. It falls and breaks and the glass slices my foot. A wood paneled sauna. A cactus garden with a low rope for a fence. A crowd of adults surrounding me, pulling cactus spines out as cool water rushes all around me.

A public park, a circle of giant cement turtles spraying water towards the center of the circle. Children running and screaming in the spraying water.

Standing on the sidewalk, watching my sister and her classmates charge at her teacher. Her teacher is waving a flowing red piece of fabric like a matador, the children are tiny bulls.

The inside of a closet surrounded by toys.

Tarantula.

A van, a roadside stop. More overpasses, hot air. Steam pouring from the inside of the car.

Eating candy behind a dumpster.

My new kite, only minutes old, getting stuck in a power line. A man in a helmet goes up in a lift to cut it free.

Holding on to each rail of our outdoor steps, my mother prying my fingers free, as she pries one hand free, the other grabs the next rail.

Dancing on the kitchen table.

Barbie dolls on the top shelf of the closet, hidden for Christmas.

Two tiny beds. A hand crafted toy shelf for all of my toys.

Frisbee in the mountains. Ice cold river water.

A raft, some rapids. My mother screaming. My father, defiantly optimistic that we really didn't need that paddle.

Alabaster eggs.

Lladros.

Steaks on fire in the oven.

Climbing up the doorway.

Jumping from couch to couch.

A secret code of knocks so we know who is at the door. Rainbows on the carpet from light shining through the window just right.

Tulips.

Corduroy pants and corduroy dresses.

Crochet everything.

Driving across town with my grandfather to a donut shop filled with real cowboys. The smell of cigarettes, brown listerine, coffee.

Digging potatoes up in the garden.

Finding summer’s first strawberry.

Watching my grandmother sit down at the long laminate kitchen table after dinner, set up her circular mirror and put her hair in pink foam curlers.

Drying dishes. Yellow walls, shelves and shelves of decorative collectors’ spoons.

Snow.

Walking to school in a group with all the other kids. Stopping at each friends house on our route.

Buying Swedish fish from a jar, paying with pennies.

Falling out of a tree and skinning my stomach on the way down.

Burying dead gerbils in decorated shoe boxes in the yard.

Cinder blocks.

White shelves for records.

A theater, a costume shop, giant bolts of fabric stacked up in a room.

Gray walls, gray ceilings, wood floors.

Malt vinegar on fish sticks.

Tambourines. Drums. Bicycle helmets with a dentist’s mirror attached to make a rear view mirror.

Blue fabric with streaks of paint.

Gold curtains.

Built in closets full of books.

[500-challenge]

15

I have this theory. That the fanny pack would have been a much more enduring staple of our wardrobe, really holding a place in the canon of fashion if it had been named basically anything else. The word “fanny” really sealed its fate as far as the rise, fall, and ultimate demise of what would otherwise be considered a pretty great invention. I often think about wearing a fanny pack, especially when I'm doing photography and stop myself because the name alone is too cringeworthy. It would be so handy, but I just can't do it, because I never want to have to explain my choice of accessory. Occasionally I spot someone wearing a fanny pack and it is in jest nearly 100% of the time. Even if the person wearing it is using it for its intended purpose, they are still wearing it to be funny. On very rare occasions I have seen someone wearing a fanny pack in complete seriousness and they always look a little out of time and place, kind of like a teenager wearing an Indiana Jones Fedora. Kid, those movies were made before you were born and that hat looks like a Halloween costume. The fanny pack, though, by any other name perhaps it would not have become a joke, because really, that word, just ugh.

My brain feels a bit fried today. Tomorrow night is the performance for a project I've been co-teaching for nearly the last two months. I have really loved this project but I am also ready to put this one to bed. The students who are participating are really incredible and I just love what I'm doing but it's been a long process. It's also produced some pretty crazy choreography and I intend on stealing/recycling/borrowing basically all of it. I am so inspired by what people do with very little prompting and the really strange and interesting ways that they create codified movement. The things I make are ok, but the things I help other people make are wild. Is there a way to make a living doing that? Should I go ahead and file for nonprofit status and try to get grants and go full on into artist land? I have never felt like I could, my art has always been self funded and generally I operate at a loss. Does anyone come out ahead as an artist? I mean, anyone other than Beyoncé?

I also have a job interview tomorrow. I am hoping this one goes better than the last one and I really think it will because the last one was pretty terrible and it can really only go up from here. This incongruity between making a living and making myself feel complete. It's a balance. My heart and my head, always at odds. Practicality vs. passion. The two sides of my life duking it out, neither side ever really winning, just trying to remain relevant. One side wears a fanny pack, the other side points and laughs.

[500-challenge]

14

Mornings.

For a long time my morning routine looked like this:

Wake up around 5:30-6ish

Brush teeth

Drink water/eat a light snack

Exercise, usually either running/walking/or if I was really good I'd get to a Pilates class.

Return home

More water

Eat. I never miss breakfast. Ever. Sometimes when I'm kicking ass I make something amazing like popovers with berry compote or marmalade and quiche, but usually it's eggs and toast or granola and yogurt or just yogurt or a banana or just an egg but I can't function without breakfast. My husband was raised in a family that smoked cigarettes for breakfast. Over the years I have had to gently and sometimes not so gently coax him into being a breakfast eater because he's diabetic and eating breakfast is kind of crucial to establishing a regular metabolism and getting your pancreas to properly function.

Coffee or tea.

Make my todo list for the day

9 am Drop my husband at work

Go to a yoga class or a dance class

Go home

Shower

Get ready for work

11 ish Leave for work, if I was working during the day. Most of my adult life I've worked nights.

This former version of my mornings looks so luxurious now, and good god, it was. So much time for myself! At least one if not two physical activities! I miss these mornings.

Morning is my jam. I didn't want to accept that I was a morning person until I seriously shelved the partying when I was in my early twenties. When I used to get blacked out on a regular basis I would wake up at 6 am, whether I was still trashed or not and I couldn't get back to sleep. My natural circadian rhythm makes me get up at the crack of dawn no matter what. Once I actively started treating my body as if I liked it I would just wake up ready to go. I exercised like this because I wanted to be thin. Even at my thinnest I never really looked “thin.” I wanted to look like a dancer or whatever the fuck that even means.

Here is a look at my morning routine now:

6:15 little man wakes me by kicking me in the face, punching me in the chest, or clawing at my boobs trying to nurse.

6:20-6:40 sweet snuggly nursing time, baby Atlas falls back sleep.

6:40 my daughter arises, runs into my room, demands nursing time too. Yes. I still nurse my toddler. Did I ever imagine I would be an “extended nursing” mom? Nope. But I am.

6:45 I remove my daughter from my boob and there's about a 50/50 chance that she cries.

6:50 I try to close my eyes for a minute, my daughter requests/demands a video. Sometimes I cave and let her watch a short Mr. Rogers video online. The times I don't I just close my eyes and listen to her screaming.

6:55, toddler poops her pants and runs away to hide. I now must get up. My husband is half asleep, I try to convince him to wrangle/clean up our poop butt child. Sometimes he obliges.

7ish change diapers and dress both children. Brush teeth. Give toddler a book to read or convince her to play with her toys.

7:25? Coax husband out of bed

7:30 make bed. I make my bed every day. I'm not good at making my bed, but I do it anyway.

7:35 sometimes I shower, sometimes I just get dressed and wash my face if I'm heading to the gym.

7:55 everyone downstairs for breakfast

8-8:30 breakfast time. This can take especially long now that my daughter likes to help. Sometimes help is actually help. Other times it looks more like a toddler dumping Cheerios on the floor. I still eat breakfast every day.

8:30 cleanup. I do dishes if I'm really ambitious.

8:40 check and stock my diaper bag, pack a gym bag, pack a snack for the toddler

8:45 find my phone, goddammit where's my phone?

8:50, if no one has crapped their pants or barfed up breakfast we get our coats/hats/boots on and take my husband to work

9:30, then we start our day.

[500-challenge]

13

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Just kidding. Now that I live in Maine, Stephen King makes so much more sense than it did before. I am living in a snowy wonderland right now. We are having a pretty major blizzard outside and I've been inside my house for more than 24 hours. It's hard to tell how much of the weather is being broadcast nationally and how much is just being sensationalized locally. The news today is just a long broadcast about the weather. Many businesses are closed for at least a day and pretty much all the schools are taking snow days. It strikes me as odd that at this point anything closes down. People have been living in this region for thousands of years and we still haven't figured out how to function in the snow. My class is cancelled for tomorrow. I have to figure out something I can do with my kids to get out of the house. Even if just for a little while.

I have another job interview coming up this Friday. I keep searching for jobs that are outside of the service industry because I just can't anymore, but nothing is happening. Sure, there are plenty of jobs where if I was like 20 and childless and lived with my parents for free with nothing else going on in my life I'd be set. But I'm not. I can't work regular hours and I teach at weird times and I'm not giving that up. No way, it's taken too many years and too much work to find a place as a dance teacher. I get to keep this. This is mine now. So, yeah, this Friday is another interview and I feel really strong going into it. It's at a super fancy restaurant where I would work under a pastry chef doing platings and possibly baking. As long as I don't have to wait tables I can do it. Waiting tables is hell. I can do anything else and keep it together but not that. Be nice to waitresses, people.

I grew up in restaurants. It's such hard work but it's something I'm just really good at. It's also often very flexible so I can still spend most of my time with my babies and make art and dance and photography. My last job before I moved to the east coast was at a restaurant called Extraordinary Desserts. I'm sure I just lost all of you readers that are furiously food journaling as we speak. It was honestly the best restaurant job that I have ever had and one of the few things that was going right for me in San Diego. The woman who owns Extraordinary Desserts, Karen, is one of the loveliest and most hardworking people I have ever encountered. She's a goddamn inspiration and she has been doing incredible things in an industry that can be so unfriendly to women. She really made me feel proud of working in a restaurant instead of shameful, which was how it felt for a long time.

[500-challenge]

Part 2

My sleep was off and on all night. I rested, but mostly I was trying to just stay calm and try not to panic. Every few hours the nurses would come in to check on me. In the morning I ate breakfast and met my new nurse at the shift change. I texted back and forth with my doula and around 9, my doctor came by and we made a game plan. So far my blood pressure was high, 130 over 80 but not in the preeclampsia range yet. We would begin easing into a dosage of pitocin, a synthetic version of oxytocin, the drug that is crucial to developing a contraction pattern. See if we could jumpstart my labor with the hopes that my body would take the wheel, so to speak. My doula arrived, giving my husband a chance to go eat and shower.

Natural contractions have an arc of intensity. You can feel their approach, like a wave, then you are engulfed in pain, then it eases off and you can rest. Pitocin contractions have a similar arc, but the rise and the fall are much shorter and the crest is much stronger. I meditated, I breathed. I walked the halls, stopping every few minutes to brace myself for contractions. Around noon they checked me to see if I had made progress, 4 cm dilated, doing good. But my blood pressure had crept up to around 150 over 90. Which was bad, preeclampsia. I was visited by the resident on duty who had been in communication with my doctor, who was busy catching a baby down the hall. I had to be put on magnesium sulfate. My risk was high at this point. Magnesium sulfate can make you dizzy so I was warned I might not be able to move around anymore. After the doctor administered my first dose of magnesium I felt ok, but not ok enough to do much walking. The nurses took my blood pressure again, it had not gone down. They then had to administer more magnesium, slowly, dose by dose to get my blood pressure to lower. This was a lot to deal with all at once, my contractions continued every three minutes or so, growing in intensity despite my pitocin dose being the absolute lowest, my body was taking over. After several contractions and several doses of magnesium, my blood pressure lowered.

Each wave of pain grew into another as one would ease off, another would start. My doctor checked my progress again, only 6cm. My doula suggested I try a cat/cow position, with my forehead resting on a peanut shaped pillow thingy. I'm not sure how long I was there, perhaps 5 minutes but something about this posture made everything start to move fast. My voice became guttural, my screams came out of my mouth but they were not mine, they were all animal. Suddenly I had the urge to push. “I have to!” I yelled, “I can't stop!” I was no longer in control, my body was running the show. My doctor checked me, and was completely shocked, “we need you to flip over and move down, it’s time!” Then, at that very moment, my baby’s heart rate dropped. My doctor looked at me calmly and said, “Kerry, you need to push, whether you are in a contraction or not, just push and keep pushing.” So I did. With everything I could.

Now, this is the part where I have the most trouble finding words because every time I try it comes off really out there, but I'll try.

I was surrounded by people who were cheering me on. I'm at the center of it, my son still connected to me, the most dense point of a concentric circle. Everyone was screaming “you can do it! Keep pushing! Almost there!” My husband, the nurse, my doula, the resident, my doctor, all, in a circle cheering. But there, in those moments, there was another circle. Or perhaps more of a spiral of less dense people who also were there cheering me on. My grandmothers, and their mothers, and their mothers too. My ancestors, spiraling out until the beginning of beginnings, when we were more animal. I felt them, there with me, connected like beads on a string that kept going until it reached the first of my blood. They have always been here with me, a part of me, but I never felt their presence until that moment when they came to my bedside and shepherded my son into the world.

He was 7 pounds 13 ounces. His umbilical cord wrapped around his neck twice. He was quiet. His heart was beating but not enough. The nicu doctors took him immediately and began to work on him. His first screams felt like a gift. He was beautiful and purple and mine. My Atlas.

[500-challenge]

11, part 1

Baby Atlas turns seven months old today. I've been sifting through my memory of the day he was born trying to find the best way to tell his birth story. For seven months I've been starting and stopping and getting nowhere and it just needed more time.

I wanted to stay at home until the absolute last minute. I was prepared for the pain, that was the least of my fears. I had gone through labor before and this time I was going to recognize that I was having contractions, spend time at home, resting, tuning into my body. I wanted to try to be unmedicated. During my first labor I had an epidural and it was magical but it really slowed things down and I hated being numb.

At my 37 week exam, my blood pressure was a little bit higher than what is considered normal. “We need you to come back in two days for another blood pressure check.” My doctor said. Two days later and again, too high. “It isn't high enough to be risky, yet, but if it gets even a point higher, we are going to have to induce you.” I went back for my 38 week appointment and yes, it was still too high. “We can't risk it going any higher.” My doctor calmly explained that while it wasn't my diagnosis yet, preeclampsia is a serious matter and the way to stop it is to get the baby out. I had been talking to her the entire pregnancy about my hope for a natural birth. “The goal is that the drugs used to induce you will kick your own natural cascade of hormones into gear, that your body will take over and that we can avoid a c-section”. This made me feel better. I had a choice. I could either be induced that same day, or the next day, a Thursday, and then my doctor would be there to deliver me. I chose the next day.

I spent that day with my daughter. Really looking at her, being there with her, present. We went to the park. I silenced my phone, ignoring all of my calls, emails, and social media. I went shopping for snacks. I talked to my doula about how disappointed I was that I had to be induced. That evening I dropped my daughter off at my sister’s house, hoping that she would be ok overnight for the first time without me. My husband and I checked in to the hospital. The check in process took a while. The room was large and clean. My bed was lumpy. I changed into a comfortable nightgown. I met my nurse. I had typed a birth plan out and completely forgotten to bring it with. Now, don't get all weird about birth plans. It was not some list of wishes, dreams, or superstitions, but rather a list of things I had considered. Like I don't want any nursing students to be present during my birth. If I end up having a c-section and the baby is taken to the nicu, my husband is going to stay with the baby and my doula will stay with me. I don't want the anti-chlamidya eye goop to be administered. There were a few more guidelines that we had discussed and felt were relevant.

I had to have an IV for the medicine to be administered and it was a task. I had drank all the water but my veins were impossible to get an IV into. Finally a nurse got one to work, but the placement was not ideal, in my wrist, it was so painful and I tried to just deal with it but I couldn't. They administered the first preparatory meds and I was then supposed to rest, and I tried, but the IV kept waking me up. Around 3 I had the nurse try again, just to see if we could get it to be in a different spot, the nurse was successful. They administered a second round of medicine, flushed the IV, and I was able to sleep...