Three-ways

Wandering Home Depot yesterday talking with my Dad on the phone, I complained "I don't understand why it's so hard to find a lightbulb that has those three different levels to them"

"Oh, you mean the three-way?" he says.

"Yes" and then after a pause, I hear my dad laughing and then telling me "You mother just said to me 'You're talking about three-ways with your daughter?!'"

He reassured her we were discussing lightbulbs. 

CaringBridge

You know you're getting old and life's getting real (by ending) when you are invited to another Caring Bridge page and when you sign in there are two previous Caring Bridge pages for two other people in your life who are now gone.

Not really something I like collecting, Caring Bridge pages.

Harlow and Tico Sittin in a Tree

Harlow has a new little gentleman friend. This is Tico and he is Mike's sweet little pup.

Puppy shenanigans from C.M. Scott on Vimeo.

Magic Lessons

Other thoughts I appreciated;

"What are you willing to give up in order to get what you want?"

and

"It's important to keep your shadow in front of you."

Podcasts and Creativity

I have an old school nano which I spent some time last night loading music onto so I could play it while I wasn't home for Harlow. I've been playing the same Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me episodes for months. That's gotta get old whether you can speak human or not.

I found some classical music podcast but I also found some new podcasts for myself. On hosted by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, called Magic Lessons. It's a podcast about creativity, how to keep connected to it day to day and how to get back into it when it's fallen from you. I was intrigued obviously.

The first episode was a woman who writes a blog and sort of stopped writing, was struggling with her role of mom, writer, etc and dealing with the guilt of wanting to write while being a parent.

Gilbert read a quote from a woman which was so very interesting to me. "It's the most important thing in my life - making things. Much as I love my husband and my children, I love them only because I am a person who makes things. Who I am is the person who has the project of making a thing. And because that person does that all the time, that person is able to love all the other people"

Sort of a mind-blowing thought, and of course it made me think of my Mom who is in a constant state of creating.

Gilbert said "Martyrs make martyrs and creative people make creative people" and the blogger calling in for advice talked about how creative her kids were. Stuck in traffic on 93 listening to this podcast, I suddenly glimpsed my parallel life and it made me a bit emotional.  In my parallel life, I have a four year old and a seven year old in miss-matched socks because I let them dress themselves. They wear shirts that say things like "Lettuce turnip the beet" and they are endlessly creative.

Which Am I?

It's weird, this feeling that I have morphed. I don't know if it was conscious or not, but I feel it.

I was someone who wanted to be a mom and knew I'd be good at it.
Then I was someone who couldn't find someone to help me make that happen.
Then I was someone it didn't matter for anymore because I can't have kids anyway.
And now I feel like someone who would be a crappy mom anyway so I feel it's for the best afterall.

I don't know where that comes from. I suspect it's life circumstance.

I look around me at those in my life who have small children and frankly, it doesn't seem like they're having all that much fun.

I think about other women, out in the world or even right near me, who don't have kids and I think to myself, they must not have wanted them.

But that's what we tell ourselves because we don't like the alternative; that she really really wanted them, but it just didn't happen for whatever reason and now she's so bitter about it she even convinced herself that babies and kids are exhausting and sticky and loud anyway and who wants that?

If someone I loved romantically said to me "Hey, you'll be a great Mom! I want to be a parent with you. Let's do it!" I have absolutely no clue how I would respond to that. Would I come around to the idea and start researching adoption agencies? Or would I balk at it, reminding him that I have zero patience and I appreciate a less complicated life. That I'm too old and tired anyway and frankly wouldn't want the inconvenience. And since it wouldn't be a kid that was ours biologically, who knows who we'd get?

But at the same time, maybe it wouldn't be so bad having my world flipped on it's head.

Mischief and Gallbladders

It's been a long long time, it seems. Lots has happened but in this entry I will talk about Harlow and the ridiculous beast she's become since she became a puppy of Leisure since being put under the care of her doting grandparents.

When I was to have my gallbladder removed, I knew that having my rambunctious girl nearby would be a problem. What? You have four stitches in various location on your belly? Let me jump on you and then reposition myself numerous times by placing all my weight on your stomach via either my paddle paws or my bony elbows. That will help, right?

Yes, puppy needed to be put aside for a bit. So, a day before I went under the laproscope (I made that word up), Dad whisked her away to sunny Cape Cod, and I didn't see her again until eight days later when I joined everyone else down at Scott's End.

Prior to that, while I was laying in agony and discomfort, Harlow was learning to swim, going on multiple walks a day (sometimes attended, sometimes not, because, well, a puppy's gotta wander if she feels like it, people!), getting lots of treats and tummy rubs and oodles of people telling her how beautiful she is, free range on were to roll and where to poop and how long she should be out exploring for, receiving extra special things in her food bowl (because kibbles not good enough for cape dogs!) and on and on.

When I showed up, she was feral.

I exaggerate, she was a good girl in the cape and feral when we went back to the real world.

Happy little grubby girl!

Happy happy!

and then there was a the shark-fish she proudly brought to me

Here she is helping out Uncle Billy by kindly removing the branches he placed in a wheelbarrow

Uncle Billy was pruning and Harlow was helpful. from C.M. Scott on Vimeo.


Nervous about the deep water, she was brave while learning to fetch in the water...

Nervous about the high tide, churning as she comes back from C.M. Scott on Vimeo.


Once we returned home, there was about a week where her snout was just out of joint. I would come home to find a shoe or two chewed one day (she hasn't done that in probably nine months), and the next day she's get into the living room trash bin. The next day her offenses were more signs of boredom and empty threats, like removing the cushion from the char but not damaging it, or, my personal favorite, carefully removing the lid to the wooden salt bowl and placing it in another room, spilling no salt, and getting no teeth marks on the lid. It was a sort of I could make a serious mess if I wanted to!

Nervous

On Friday I'm going to the hospital to have my gallbladder removed. I know, who needs that organ, right? My ovaries are useless, my pancreas shot, gallbladder gone soon.

Initially this was supposed to happen in late September. I had some tests done last week though, and when the surgeon called to tell me they blood work looked great (no other organs in distress), he asked how I was feeling. At the time I'd been really uncomfortable for about three days; queasy, and sore on my right side. I told him so. "Let's not wait" he said "Let's take it out" he added, saying that he didn't want me to be uncomfortable for another six weeks waiting to have it done. I had to agree, especially with a trip to Quebec with girlfriends coming up, I really didn't want to travel feeling like I did. Plus there's that fear I have that the organ will inexplicably explode inside me and that would just be far more inconvenient (also unlikely) than having the thing taken out sooner rather than later.

So while I am sad to have to move some client appointments, annoyed my vacation week will now be a recovery week, and have to bow out of some social stuff I was really looking forward to, I really want to get this behind me.

I know it could be worse, but I'm nervous. What if they nick something in there? What if recovery takes longer than expected? This could be a problem since I have a wedding to shoot in three weeks. Yikes!  I also have multiple expectant moms on the books, waiting for their babes to arrive so they can book a session. What if I get an infection? Most importantly, what if I have to totally change what I eat? A coworker of mine who had her gallbladder removed told me as soon as she heard about me "Oh, I cant eat ANY ice cream at all anymore"

Thanks a lot, bitch.

And then there's dealing with this one (who Dad has kindly offered to take off my hands for a bit while I'm recovering)...

Late night couch catch from C.M. Scott on Vimeo.