In honor of the un-Novemberly spate of warm weather we’ve been having lately, I wandered down to the nearest beach a few days ago.  It’s about a mile from the apartment, not the kind of long, flat, sprawling beach where you can walk for hours, but a smallish beach on Salem Harbor.  There’s an Olympic-sized public swimming pool, closed for the season, just a few feet away, and the initial bizarreness of a pool that close to the beach fades once you take a closer look at the number of boats and random other objects floating around.  It’s not a nasty place, not overtly polluted, but it’s also not the kind of place that invites a swim, or even an extended wade.

I don’t go to the beach as often as I thought I would, given our proximity to it; the fatigue of early pregnancy has more than slightly altered my daily routine and I have surprisingly less free time than I had thought I would.  And as I continue to expand along with my small passenger, I suspect it’s only going to get harder for me to make the walk there and back in a reasonable amount of time.  But there’s a comfort in knowing it’s right there, a tangible reminder that we’re not in New Hampshire anymore.  Even though we’re still homeowners there – unhappily so, and waiting for any reasonable offer to come through – we’re not living there anymore, in a house that saw me through two long, dark periods of depression, saw my husband through the stress and guilt of going to grad school instead of waiting for me to finish, saw my children attending sub-par schools which I convinced myself were good enough until we no longer had to use them.  The tiny, full apartment a mile from the beach is so much better, on so many levels, even if the neighbors leave a bit to be desired.

But my trip down the other day was not one of idle introspection; I had a delivery to make.  Two tiny, little-boy teeth, tucked away in my pocket, ready to be tossed into the ocean.

When Emily started losing teeth, I felt all of those typical first-time mom emotions: happy for her, the fun of helping her make a special pocketed tooth pillow and sneaking in at night to deposit a gold dollar, maudlin at how fast she was growing, and so on.  And then came the bafflement: what to do with the old teeth?  I’ve never been one to save bodily waste in my keepsake boxes… I take photos of the home pregnancy tests, and then throw them away.  I never asked to keep my surgically-removed appendix, and I never seriously considered saving – for any purpose – either placenta, post-birth.  There’s just a vague, low-grade ick factor associated with housing medical waste, a feeling strong enough to leave me unwilling to keep my children’s teeth forever, even when I recognized that the losing of them is an important rite of passage and worth memorializing, somehow.

After a while of batting around different ideas, I stumbled upon the idea of returning them to nature, so to speak.  Of burying them in a garden, dropping them in a forest, tossing them into the ocean waves… just finding a way to scatter little bits of my children around, in places that were important to me.  The idea appealed to me enough that, when I knew I had a trip coming up in the near future, I would save a newly-lost tooth to bring along and leave somewhere special.  Sort of a reverse souvenir.

So, now, there are bits of Emily in my front garden at the house in New Hampshire, and at a few different New Hampshire and Maine beaches.  There is a tiny piece of her on Bald Mountain, in upstate New York near my great-grandmother’s summer place, and one or two teeth tossed over the red cliffs on Prince Edward Island.  I even brought one of her teeth with me on my last trip to Paris, and left it in the gardens at Versailles.  Littering, I suppose, and a biohazard at that, but I doubt anyone would ever prosecute me for it.

And now it begins with Jacob.  I thought about saving one to bring back to Paris, but somehow I felt like they belonged in the ocean, close to the home we shared when he lost the teeth.  And since they came out together, it only seemed right to leave them in the same place, as well.   If he is so accommodating as to lose another tooth before Thursday, I’ll bring that one overseas… otherwise, we’ll figure out the right place when the time comes.

What do you do with your child’s teeth?  Have you created a special holder for them, or are you of stern enough stuff to be able to throw them in the garbage without flinching?  Made jewelry out of them, or ground them into a paste?  My archeologist-studying friend remarked on how confusing it could be, for future generations to discover a tooth in some random space… especially if they were able to match the DNA to a tooth from another random space, far away.  But potential scientists aside, this solution has worked for me, lets me feel just a little earthy-crunchy without feeling extreme about it.

It started small.

First, during our move, we had placed a few things in the basement (most of our stuff has been stored in the attic, which is not shared).  The neighbor came up to ask us to move them because it was blocking their stuff.  But their stuff covers all available walls, so moving our stuff out of the way is effectively impossible.  We shuffled things around, they didn’t complain again, amen.

Next, a few weeks ago, I got an early-Saturday phone call, complaining because the kids were “doing something that made the ceiling sound like it was going to cave in.”  Apparently the wife is allowed to make sarcastic/over-the-top comments, but I am not, because my response of, “Oh, I’m sorry.  I’ll talk to them about it.  We keep thinking it would be easier if they could just float,” was not appreciated.

Again, we didn’t hear from them again – and a good thing, really, because even though they’re downstairs, their 4-year-old has been known to run heavily enough to shake things on our table and desk upstairs – and so we forgot about it.  Sort of.

A few days ago, I sent an email asking them if they had any local babysitter recommendations.  They chose this morning as a good time to reply, but not about a babysitter.  Instead, the first email of the day was a complaint because when we park in the driveway (which is only wide enough for one vehicle), we do not leave enough space behind our car for them to park also, and that we do laundry too late at night and the washing machine is too loud.  I replied that we had deliberately not been leaving enough space to be blocked in, and that we had, in turn, deliberately never blocked them in, because I don’t keep a regular schedule and so it’s hard for me to predict when I’ll need the car.  And that I’ve been in bed by 8:00 or 9:00 most nights, so I thought maybe it was the dishwasher causing noise; I’m pretty sure Willem isn’t sneaking in clandestine laundry loads after I go to bed.

The second email was terse and unpleasant.  “Do you mean that you will not park far enough into the driveway that we can park behind you?  And yes, it was your washing machine.”  So I replied with a longer explanation about why I was interested in neither being blocked in nor blocking anyone else in, apologized for any undue noise (and agreed that the acoustics of the house are such that we can hear a lot more, upstairs, than we thought we would, because two can play passive-aggressive…) and suggested that we all sit down and talk face-to-face before this becomes any more awkward, to figure out plans about how to use the driveway, etc.

Gah.  Would someone please just bu the house in New Hampshire so I can start real-estate shopping down here??

Saturday night, we hosted a dinner here: two friends from high school, and appropriate significant other.  I hadn’t seen the woman (which, so weird to think of her as anything other than 15 years old) since I was pregnant with Emily, and even then it was during the Halloween madness in Salem – not exactly a quiet time to sit down and chat.  And the man, I hadn’t seen since high school… 15 years ago, give or take.  Several lifetimes, as far as my circumstances and mindset are concerned.

Before the day, I carried around a low-grade intimidation about it.  Not unbearable or even uncomfortable, just an awareness.  The man is a former law professor, now enrolled in a higher-level legal doctorate program at Harvard.  The woman just defended her dissertation, thereby completing a Ph.D. in Computer Science.  I graduated next in line behind her, and yet here I am, a stay-home mommy with a handful of unused degrees and a school lunch menu on the fridge.  If we’re measuring success in a traditional, worldly sort of way, I’m not even in the running anymore.

But then, within a fairly short time after their arrival, that intimidation faded.  Because I’m not out there furthering my career or accumulating academic honors, but I have a nice home with handmade curtains and a full, from-scratch meal on the table.  I have well-behaved, engaging children and an intelligent, interesting husband – to whom I’ve been married long enough to feel settled and comfortable, far past the newlywed settling-in process.  I have hobbies I enjoy, and have long-term plans to look forward to.

It wasn’t that they were bowing down in awe of my fantastical life; I never sensed anything but respect and interest from them, yet I also detected no envy for what I have.  It was that my own mindset rotated a bit, just enough to relax and enjoy myself and remember to measure my life by my own yardstick.

Written sometime earlier in the week:

So, the pregnancy is still going smoothly, blah blah, with a Level II ultrasound scheduled for Friday.  (This is not one of those fancy, 3D, set-to-music type affairs; it’s just a longer, more detailed ultrasound than what I can get in the regular-doctor’s office.  I qualify because I have an ancient, long-extinct history of kidney infection – back in 1996, and no recurrences since – and back problems, and a conservative OB-GYN.)

We’re sticking with the plan from before: I’ll be watching through the whole scan, but I’ll ask them not to tell me their official determination of gender, assuming they can make one.  Which means I’ll get a glimpse and likely end up with a strong suspicion one way or the other, but I won’t know for sure until we’re in the delivery room.

Which, in turn, means we need to come up with names for both genders.

We’re all set on a girl’s name, no problems there.  I’m not posting it just yet only because I don’t want to influence the responses to this post, but I’ll share it relatively soon.  But a boy’s name… we’re still floundering a bit on that one.

It’s a tough call, because the outcome has to follow several rules:

1. It needs to fit well with the other kids’ names.  Emily and Jacob happen to be wildly overpopular among their birth year, which was not at all intentional, and the overall ranking of this kid’s name doesn’t matter a bit to me.  But it does need to be somewhat old-fashioned, and something that lends itself to a nickname but which we can use the full version of, too.  (Emily now regularly goes by Em, and sometimes Mimi… Jacob is still Jacob 99% of the time, but my mother has taken to calling him Jake.  I’ve always, always been Kate, to the point that it seems kind of pointless to have a different given name, Katherine.  And Willem is Willem, not ever Will or Bill or Billy or… you get the idea.)
2. We would prefer that it have its own initial, since the rest of us don’t have any overlaps among first names.  So W,  K, E and J names are out.
3. The middle name will be Norman.  So it needs to flow well with that, and by and large that means that names ending in “n” are off the list.
4. Our last name starts with W.  Names ending in a soft vowel sound or “w” are no good with it, they flow too easily, turning it into a single word.

See what I mean?  Rules.

And if you’re someone who likes to play for the bonus round, we have noticed some things about our previous kids’ names:

1. Both have five letters.
2. There are no repeated letters within their names.
3. There are no overlaps between the two names.

So, the challenge is  – and we’re kidding here, but still it’s a fun game to play – is to come up with a five-letter name that does not contain any of the letters E-M-I-L-Y-J-A-C-O-B.

Or, for the goofier bonus round version:

1. Both kids have five letters each in their first and middle names: Emily Sarah and Jacob David.
2. We need two five-letter names or words to apply to our next child.

Willem’s favorites, so far, are Radio Shack and Oscar Mayer.  Emily likes Magic Rocks.  I’m partial to Froot Loops.

So, come on, you members of the audience, play along!  What should we name our son?  Honest, goes-with-Norman suggestions will be accepted, as well as submissions to the Bonus Rounds.  If we end up choosing your name – or just pretending that we came up with it ourselves, in the case of the Bonus Rounds – then I’ll knit you something.  (Note: we do have a leading contender in mind, and a short list of possibilities, but I’ll hang onto those until we gather a few new ideas.)

Written Friday afternoon:

Mission accomplished.  The ultrasound was very smooth and successful, all of the measurements were spot-on (perhaps even a few days older than the kid should actually be), no issues or problems or concerns.  I’ll have to go back for two subsequent ultrasounds, one in three weeks because there was one head angle they couldn’t quite see, and another in about 9-10 weeks to see if the placenta is still lying lower than they’d like.

I think it’s a boy.  I’m not 100% certain, or even 90%, because I know I saw… something, right when she said that this was the genital shot, but I could also be convinced that it’s a girl and the angle was just comparatively steep or something.  Still.  I’d consider it a 75/25 push toward boy now, which only makes it that much more necessary that we figure out a name…

So, yeah.  Bad, bad times at the dentist.

I spent yesterday writing and editing the letter I posted here, and will get that out in today’s mail, along with the HIPAA violation form.  (Which, to add annoyance to injury, cannot be completed electronically because there are errors in the .pdf form online.  That’s probably ironic, right?)

On today’s agenda, apparently, is some self-flagellation, which is pretty much par for the course after any dental interaction for me.  A part of my brain knows and has accepted that phobias are, by definition, illogical and disproportionate, and that it’s a big enough deal to have come as far as I have from the rest of the PTSD symptoms.  But the louder part of my brain spends its time nattering on about how embarrassing it is to be afraid of something simple like the dentist, they mean no harm, I’ve never actually had a truly bad experience in the dental chair, it’s a fear I deflected from a different source and just can’t seem to undeflect now, I’m a trained psychologist and should know better, it’s a straightforward phobia and the right treatment could probably clear it right up, I’ve caused unnecessary concern and stress for my loved ones… and so on.  Somehow it’s easier to blame yourself, even when you know better.

I won’t wallow in that for too long, because I’m just not built that way, but it seems to be an inevitable part of the process.

And, as the hours tick by, I find new and subtle things to get pissed off about.  Things that aren’t worth including in the letter to the dentist or the HIPAA report, because they’re details and inferences rather than direct, observable events, but things that grate on me nonetheless.

Things like, I worked hard to overcome that phobia as far as I had.  Really hard.  I went six years without setting foot inside a dentist office, and so I could indulge in a certain level of twisted pride to know that I was starting to push that back.  Setbacks have occurred for smaller reasons than what happened Tuesday night.

Things like, I never used to be all that afraid to walk into the building.  I could remain in the waiting room during Willem’s and the kids’ appointments, and sometimes I even had to sit in the exam room alongside the kids, like when Emily had a tooth extracted back in March.  The waiting room, by itself, wasn’t so bad; I could convince myself I was just in any generic doctor’s office and be just fine.  The exam room was a bit harder, and usually required some help from my good friend Ativan, but I could make it work.  Now I worry that the process of simply crossing the threshold is going to be hard for me, and instead of just the dentist I’m beginning to fear the hygienists and receptionists and office staff, too.

Things like, I had worked even harder to protect my kids from my own issues.  I’m a big fan of honesty in parenting, but only in ways that I think they can handle it and understand it fully.  So they both knew that I had to see a special dentist, which made me groggy for the rest of the day.  They knew that going to the dentist made me nervous and scared, but they’ve also heard the mantra of, “Bravery doesn’t mean not being scared… it means being scared and doing it anyway.”  They knew it made me cry, sometimes.  But they had never seen it in full-on, glorious, Technicolor action before.  They each have appointments with a new (and different) dentist next month, and I am going to be beyond pissed if they exhibit anxiety around it then, because they have never had a problem with the dentist before.

Things like, this asshat dared to speculate with my husband about where my little phobia might have come from – “it must have been something from her childhood” – as though finding a way to pinpoint a cause in the distant past somehow belittles the phenomenon.  He dared to lecture my husband about how I should probably request an initial consultation from a dentist before I start trying to see someone, even though he -a nd his staff – knew that I had a phobia and never bothered to suggest such a thing to me in advance.

Things like, this man’s basic reasoning for not seeing me was that he is not willing to share the responsibility for my health care with another practitioner.  What if he recommended that I get a cavity filled, and then the other guy did a bad job?  He actually said to Willem – this still boggles the mind – that it was the same as if he was a primary care physician and diagnosed me with a cancerous tumor, and then I went to another doctor to have it treated.  First of all, no, phobias and cancerous tumors are not the same, and secondly, that’s what’s called going to a specialist and getting a second opinion, you idiot! It was just so strange and illogical, on his part, and boils down to the overwhelming scent of insecurity and small-mindedness.

And so on.  It’s Monday morning quarterbacking, with a side of bitterness and angst.

I did get back on the horse, so to speak, yesterday afternoon, because I knew that if I put it off too long I’d let several years slip by before I went back to another dentist.  I called around, after doing much more extensive research online, and found two places willing to see me and (**gasp**) risk potentially having to refer me out for more invasive procedures.  One is a place that specializes in sedation dentistry, though they see non-phobic patients as well, and after talking with Willem about it last night, we decided to go with them… mostly because, in the interest of minimizing unnecessary repeat visits, they schedule a two-hour initial patient visit, which includes exam, cleaning, and full set of x-rays.  Willem’s schedule being what it is, and my anxiety being what it is, this just works better for us both.

So we have appointments for the 20th and 21st of January, respectively.  And I’m going to do my best to put that entirely out of my mind for as long as possible.

November 4, 2009

Dr. Jeffrey M. Casiglia, DMD DMSc
Essex Street Dental Medicine
398 Essex Street
Salem, Massachusetts 01970

Dr. Casiglia:

I am writing to express my complete disappointment and extreme frustration following the interaction I had with your office manager, Lucy Poulin, and yourself, on the evening of Tuesday, November 3, 2009. I cannot consider any aspect of that evening to be a success, and the problems I had fall into three categories: poor communication, personal insensitivity and disrespect, and blatant violation of medical and personal privacy.

I will enclose, as an attachment, a recounting of my recollection of the evening’s events, so that you can have a reminder of your own actions and a debriefing on what occurred when you were not in the room. I am not interested in engaging in a debate as to your refusal to provide medical treatment to me, because I am no longer willing to be a patient under your care. Therefore, the intent of this letter is not to beg you to reconsider; it is to clarify the egregious errors and blatant disrespect displayed by yourself and your office manager.

First, there were many instances of poor communication. During my initial telephone call to the office, I spoke to Ms. Lenka French, and was clear and explicit in my explanation that I suffer from a severe dental phobia and have intense difficulty attending any part of the normal dental office routine. She acknowledged this statement, and my subsequent description of my typical follow-up care, which involves general anesthesia with a certified practitioner of both anesthesia and dental medicine in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. Clearly, you and Ms. Poulin knew about this conversation, as it was the stated basis for your decision to decline care for me and to initiate the confrontation on Tuesday evening. However, you both changed our stance repeatedly, at times making reference to “your dental phobia” and at other times denying any knowledge thereof. I also found it impossible to complete more than one sentence at a time, because I would immediately be interrupted. Even before Tuesday’s face-to-face encounters, my husband and I found the telephone communication from your office to be confusing and ineffective, with multiple appointment-confirmation calls and conflicting responses around times and policies.

Second, a shocking level of personal insensitivity and disrespect was displayed by both yourself and Ms. Poulin. I was clearly in a heightened state of agitation and dismay, and yet you each continued to talk at me and defend yourselves. I had to physically leave the building, twice, because my efforts to ask for some time and space to calm myself inside were unsuccessful. I am several months pregnant, had informed you of this fact both in writing and during the initial telephone call, but apparently my physical condition and emotional state were not sufficient reason for you to volunteer to get my husband to come help me. In fact, you both attempted to refuse my direct requests that his exam be cut short, and I had to walk back and notify him myself, causing him an undue level of concern for my physical well-being.

Third, and most pertinent to your professional practice, my privacy rights under HIPAA were blatantly, repeatedly violated. Conversations regarding my private medical and emotional history were initiated by Ms. Poulin in the public waiting area, and my initial request for privacy was declined. After a second request on my part, she agreed to take me to a different part of the building to talk, and chose a room that was inhabited by another patient at the time. References were made to my psychological history, to my planned dental care, and to my present state of mind, all in the hearing of at least two patients or patient family members and my own children.

I understand and accept that you have the right to refuse to provide care if you do not agree with the method of treatment that I am requesting. This is not, and never was, the basis for my disappointment with your office. I am providing feedback about the first two categories of problem, above, because I feel the actions were outrageous and that I deserve to express my response to them, something I was unable to do at the time. I am providing feedback on the third because I have extensive familiarity with the HIPAA laws and have already initiated a formal complaint regarding the invasion of my privacy.

I am not yet able to assess the extent to which your treatment of me, yesterday evening, damaged the hard work I have done and the progress I have made toward upholding a more traditional regimen of dental health care. I also cannot yet determine the level of harm that was done to my children, to see their mother in such an unpleasant and uncontrolled state. Up to now, I had worked hard to shelter them from my fears, and I was proud of the fact that they are comfortable visiting their own dentist.

At the moment, I can only be sure that I am deeply hurt and upset by the events of the evening.

Katherine W.

cc: Better Business Bureau, OCR Region I

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At 6:15 p.m. on the evening of Tuesday, November 3, 2009, my husband Willem was in your office to attend his initial examination. My children and I arrived shortly after he did, and planned to remain in the waiting room during his appointment. Upon our entry, Ms. Poulin arose and began speaking to me from behind the counter. She did not identify herself or make any attempt to lower her voice or move the conversation to a more private area. When I acknowledged my name, she walked into the room and asked if it was true that I planned to have any fillings or more extensive work performed by a different dentist. I said that this was, tentatively, the plan, but that I couldn’t know the full plan until I had seen the dentist for an initial consultation.

 

She stated that I could only be seen in your office if I was prepared to allow you to perform any and all necessary procedures. I was surprised, and explained that while my circumstances were out of the ordinary, I had never had a problem with this at any prior dental offices. We had a brief interaction in which she demanded to know why I was seeking this unusual approach to dental care, and she interrupted me several times. At least twice, she made reference to “your phobia,” but then later stated, “We didn’t know you had a problem.” She carried on this discussion in full view and hearing of my two young children and another woman in the waiting room.

When I was able to intervene, I requested that we move the conversation elsewhere. She stated that there was nowhere more private that we could go, but then led me through a door and into an examination room containing two dentist chairs. One was occupied by another patient, and the other was unused. She then attempted to repeat the previous discussion, despite the fact that there was no more privacy or discretion there than in the waiting room. It was at this point that I was overcome by a complete panic attack, including hyperventilation, nausea and incoherence. I left the building as quickly as possible and spent several minutes outside.  No one made any effort to check on my well-being during this time.

Upon my return to the office, I approached Ms. Poulin, and stated, “I think you’re right. This office is not interested in my business. Please return our paperwork and let my husband know that it is time to leave.” She relinquished my forms, but stated that she could not return my husband’s forms to me and that she would not inform him of what was happening, because he was in the middle of an exam. I felt that my extreme emotional dysregulation was adequate reason to interrupt, and began walking toward the back of the building. She accompanied me, stopping to talk to a man in an adjoining room. I learned from your website that it was you, but you were never introduced or identified to me. Neither of you spoke to me, and so I said my husband’s name once and told him I needed to leave. He was able to join me immediately, because the x-ray machine was malfunctioning and thus he was not actually in the middle of an exam. After an extremely uncomfortable and ineffective exchange at the desk, in which you repeated many of the things Ms. Poulin had stated earlier – again, all in clear earshot of my children and of at least two strangers and another staff member – and had to be reminded by me that I was in no shape to be carrying on a conversation at that time.

We left the building, and I returned to our vehicle with the children. My husband returned, in an effort to gain clarity into your decisions, both regarding my care and regarding my treatment by yourself and your office manager. He was unsuccessful in this effort, instead finding you to be defensive and uncommunicative. At one point, you made a dismissive reference to my mental health, suggesting that my phobia was probably related to something in my childhood, and later stated that whomever I subsequently tried to see, I should ask for an initial consultation before an intake examination. Apparently this is not a service you were willing to provide, yourself, despite the fact that I had been clear about my extreme dental phobia from the first phone call.

You continued to refuse to return my husband’s paperwork, stating that he was considered a patient now and you couldn’t relinquish his medical records. You did concede that charging him for his appointment would be inappropriate, and he left the building for the last time at approximately 6:45 p.m.

All it takes is a quick search to verify that I’ve had a long-term, unrequited love affair with all things Bill Kurtis.  I’m sure it branches out of my interest in criminal justice – I do have a master’s degree in it, albeit unused and dusty – but his ability to recount horrific stories without getting all over-the-top or dabbling in cheesy reenactments helps, too.  I still think I could happily listen to him narrate a bowl of cereal.

But just lately, I think I’m losing my edge.  We’ve got the new apartment, and now the new TV, with the new cable box and the new DVR subscription.  And, like a dutiful FanGirl, I spent time setting up a number of series recordings, including several true-crime, Bill-Kurtis and Bill-Kurtis-esque shows.  And then… I didn’t watch them.

They clogged up the first cable box to the point that we were getting nagging alerts, “Your DVR is full!  Your DVR is full!  Watch something or it will stop recording!”  I just wasn’t interested, somehow.  I blamed it on my sleep patterns; during the one to two hours of nightly insomnia, I refused to turn on the TV or computer, on the theory that those are more stimulating and would keep me awake even longer.  And then when I had time during the day, I had to cram all of my errands in to that tiny little window that consisted of “Kate not being unconscious” and “Kids not home to watch TV.”  I’m all for honesty in parenting, but I’m not quite ready for them to learn their serial killers just yet.

So I deleted a bunch of shows, and didn’t think much of it.  I also deleted this season’s Grey’s Anatomy, Bones and Criminal Minds… I still do have some vague interest in them, but apparently not a strong enough interest to actually watch the DVR’ed shows.  So I’ll get them on DVD, a season at a time, and catch up someday.  Fine.

(Hmm.  I wonder if Bill Kurtis has any DVD’ed seasons of anything?  Willem, if you’re looking for Christmas ideas…)

Then we got the Unreasonably Large New Television, and with it came a new cable box with HD capacity, which meant that all our formerly DVR’ed shows were immediately lost.  So I started over with the series recordings, not bothering with the seasonal shows whose first three or four episodes I’d already missed, and this time I have been better about actually watching the things I record.

Except for the true crime stuff.  I still love a good Bill Kurtis voiceover, but even there, I’m not watching repeats of shows I’ve already seen.  And as for the others… I don’t know, I’m just finding them too intense and upsetting, somehow.  Very unlike me; I won’t watch violent movies, because seeing the act itself tends to be a little too much for my poor little amygdala, but I will watch all sorts of shows about the aftermath of violence, the investigations, the follow-up, etc.  And usually without a thought to its potentially upsetting nature.

But just lately… it’s just too much, somehow.  Just not appealing to me.

Not dissimilar, actually, to the way that I have lost my taste for desserts.  I’ll still eat them, and when I do, I enjoy them, but a smaller portion suffices, and I don’t seek them out on my own.  Perhaps the two things are related, in the brain, somehow.

I blame the pregnancy.

So, you may have noticed… the old gray blog, she ain’t what she used to be.

This is OK with me, really.

It started off small, like any blog does, with a few posts a week and the occasional visitor.  Actually, the very earliest posts aren’t blog posts at all; they’re message board posts, and after enough “you should write a blog” comments, I just copied-and-pasted them over.  Over time,  it grew, and reached a point where I was posting daily, with something in the neighborhood of 350 hits a day.  Not a wild, runaway success, perhaps, but a fun little project with a vocal and frequent group of commenters.  It made me happy, both to have things to say and to feel like other people wanted to hear it.  It was a good space to vent off the frustrations of my life, large and small, mother-in-law-related and otherwise, and occasionally it served as a deliberate mode of communication – if I wanted Willem to know something but didn’t feel able/motivated/whatever to just say it outright, I could post and knew he would read it.  If I wanted to send out a snarky message to someone whose fake-friendship had worn thin, I had a good vessel to do so.  If I wanted to get sappy and emotional about any of a number of friends or loved ones, I could do so without making anyone uncomfortable with a face-to-face encounter.

In short, it was a good thing.  It worked for me.  And the words just flowed.  So many that I had to really set strict limits with myself, writing posts and saving them because I didn’t want to make a habit of posting more than once a day.  I kept a notebook next to the bed, so that if I had a late-night idea, I could jot it down before it escaped.  I found myself thinking in the tone and cadence of a blog post, even when I was nowhere near a computer.  It was just a part of my life, and while I never actually considered becoming a professional blogger, the concept didn’t seem like such an insane one for those more motivated in that direction than I.

And then the world fell down.

Beginning in November 2008, it was one bad thing after another.  Lost job, infertility, bad back with an actual scary-sounding long-term diagnosis, a triggering of old PTSD symptoms through dental procedures, conflict with my mother, self-doubt… just crap piled upon crap, and I Wasn’t Coping Well.  The blog changed, almost immediately.  Part of the change was the obvious, that which the outside world: the subject matter became dark, sometimes appalling.  Having always been a reflection of my inner world, it suddenly had very little to reflect that wasn’t sad, scared, hurt, anxious, and otherwise broken.

But there was another aspect to the change, an aspect I don’t think I fully realized until recently; certainly I couldn’t have articulated it when things were at their worst, because I couldn’t step far enough outside of my own misery to gain any perspective on it.  The blog became, if not quite a lifeline for me, then at least a source of structure and obligation – a small, lingering habit from the time before that winter descended, and something I continued to keep up, long after any spirit of jovial, convivial storytelling had been extinguished.  I felt almost a sense of responsibility to myself, as though the blog was one of the ways that I could prove I hadn’t completely, irrevocably lost myself yet.  I could get up each morning to get Emily on the bus.  I could care for Jacob through the days.  Between them, they got almost all of my positive energy and effort, of which there was not much to go ’round.  What little was left, I gave to Willem, though I know it wasn’t enough to actually qualify as upholding my side of a relationship.

And that was it.

Nothing left for me, in any real sense, because not only did I not have the energy or give-a-shit sufficient to care for myself and engage in my own life in a positive way, but I also didn’t feel that I much deserved that kind of positive attention.  I was jobless, mysteriously unable to conceive, stricken with a life-long disease with a poor prognosis and an increasing dependence on painkillers, pushing through three or four intense migraines a week, watching while some friends stuck by me and others drifted away, unable to handle me when I wasn’t strong and resilient.  And who could blame them?  I could barely stand myself, in all of my pathetic descent.  I didn’t care enough about myself, and couldn’t see why I should even bother trying to change that.

But I kept up the blog, and I forced myself to log on and post every day.  No matter how bad that day was, or how isolative and miserable I was feeling, no matter how dark or unpleasant – or brittlely, terrifyingly happy I might occasionally feel – I found some words to apply to every day that drifted by.  Without it, I know that entire time would be even more lost to me than it is now; as it is, I have very few solid memories from that time, and I haven’t yet felt either the interest or the strength to go back and read through it all again now.  It became my yardstick, my private little superstition: if I could continue to post, then I wasn’t totally lost.  Or, at least, no matter how lost I was, I might someday find my way back, as long as I kept leaving this little trail of blog posts like Gretel’s trail of white pebbles in the forest.

Melodramatic?  Illogical?  Sure.  But it mattered to me, and I do believe it helped me stay just a little bit farther away from some irreversible edge.  I watched my readership eke away, a small loss that I didn’t bother mourning because I knew I had earned it.  And the blog became more for me, and less for the audience, than it had ever been before.

When things started to get better, they started to get better fast.  A new job for Willem!  A new medication for me – one that actually worked!  A new apartment!  A new baby!  It was dizzying, and scary, and unreal.

I kept up with the daily posts, for a while, because it had become such habit, but I realized that it was becoming harder and harder to come up with something new to say, every single day.  Not because I was miserable; in fact, quite the opposite.  I was happy, and in a precious, priceless, boring sort of way.  I enjoyed my emerging routine, of getting the kids on the bus and spending my days running errands or cleaning or typing or simply wasting time playing, and then greeting Willem at the door.  I found myself experiencing a simple, reasonless happiness, not because anything had happened but because I was in a new apartment, which I love, in an old town, which I love more, and experiencing a new life forming inside me, which I love the most.  Life is so good, in the simplest and most beautiful of ways, and I’ve noticed it before: sometimes the biggest things require the fewest words.

So I started missing days here and  there, and then I would miss an entire weekend.  And it was OK.  And the comments weren’t picking up, except for the occasional noteworthy post or gutlessly anonymous relative, and that was OK, too.  I knew you were there, still, my old faithful readers and the occasional new visitor, and I simply didn’t need a constant validation and reassurance of what I already knew.  That audience is around when I need it, perhaps not as breathlessly anxious for every new post as they might once have been, but still around.

And so, as far as posts are concerned, not to mention hit count (there are days, now, when it barely cracks 100), things have decidedly waned.  I have no need to shut down the blog, or anything remotely so dramatic; after all, I still do find things to say, and how convenient to have a place to say them.  (Facebook, in its overpopulation and ruthless character-limiting nature, is simply not an adequate substitute.)  So it remains as-is, and like any old, favorite lovey, I can take it out whenever I need it.  But now I can also leave the house without it, because, like any good security blanket, I know it will stay right where I left it.  A little tattered at the edges, and not as bright and shiny as it once was, but still there.

I’d forgotten one of the oddest side effects of pregnancy: very vivid, realistic dreams, lifelike enough that I end up confused, the next day, trying to figure out whether such-and-such actually happened.

Sometimes they’re mundane, and other times it’s clear that Freud has crawled into my head and is tapping into my deeper fears, desires, etc… such as, the recurring dream that Willem died very suddenly, disturbing enough that I had to get up and walk around each time to try and dispel the dream before I risked sleeping again (and even so, I had the same dream three times; each time starting at slightly different points or in slightly different settings so that I was well into the dream before I realized it was the same thing all over again).  Or this morning’s dream, in which we were at some sort of command-performance sort of family event and I finally stopped being polite to my in-laws.  That one was a lot more fun.

From what I can recall from the other kids, these dreams are likely to continue through the third trimester, and then will disappear into the fog of newborn sleep-deprivation.  I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one this happens to; I seem to recall others talking about similar sorts of experiences, but the last time I was this pregnant was over five  years ago, and I’m regularly astonished at how much I’ve forgotten.

So… is it a common thing?  Or just one more bit of proof that I’m slowly losing my mind?  (Or… both?)

By virtue  of being knocked up, I got to jump the wait-list and get an H1N1 vaccine yesterday.

I’m lucky.  The kids are at the front of their own wait-list line, but there are no vaccinations available at their pediatrician’s office yet.  I get to call once a week to check in, and will have to basically scoop them up and rush them in whenever they do appear.  Willem has gotten neither the seasonal flu shot nor the H1N1, so I’ve been calling our PCP, pharmacies, the college he teaches at and the college he’s finishing his dissertation at… so far, to no avail.  Weekly check-ins there, until I find someone willing to poke him with a needle.

So, I’m lucky.

I’m trying hard to remember this, because today, in honor of my swine flu vaccine, I feel like swine.  Just achy, and low-grade feverish (I doubt it would even register on a thermometer, were we to own such a thing, but my skin feels crawly and I’m running warm, I’m coughing, just blech.  Not bad, and it took me until mid-afternoon to figure out that it could be related to the vaccination… before that, I was wallowing, a bit, because I know I stayed up too late working last night, but I shouldn’t be quite this exhausted, and there was no reason for my back to be quite this sore.  Somehow there’s a relief in being able to blame it on a one-time thing, instead of worrying that this is just a new and long-term status.

(Did I mention, I’m also feeling whiny?  Oh, you already noticed?)