I left my phone off today because, well, it died and Den was home and I thought to myself, a day without phone interruptions, that’ll be nice. (Which is funny, because most days no one calls, but if we have a day off to spend together? Tons of phone interruptions.) Sure enough, 4 voicemails. Two from my mom, one from a client, and one….

“Hello Natalie! It’s ______ from ____ Reproductive! [Our RE] Just calling to check up on you and Denis. By this time you should have had the baby, can’t wait to hear the good news! You can call us or we’ll call you again later to catch up!”

Fuck.

Oh my gosh, Devin’s tree is just opening up more every day! I only just posted about how it was budding green…. now look!

The only bloom so far is white… I’m really hoping it’ll turn pinkish. We really don’t know what kind of flowers this type of cherry tree will have.

I posted once before about BPA in bottles and pacifiers. The debate, however, has continued to gain momentum. The latest news is that Walmart is pulling BPA bottles from their shelves, replacing them with BPA-free alternatives. If this trend continues it will force manufacturers to start using different plastics or glass. For all the “We THINK it’s perfectly safe,” if BPA is possibly not safe why not switch to a known alternative? There are many bottle products already that don’t have BPA, but it would certainly would be very nice to have more to choose from.

I think I am going to be purchasing some stainless steel water bottles for myself. I did some browsing online and found things like this article:

The Canadian Government is now going to ban all baby bottles made with BPA – quite a radical move! It’s interesting for me to see how much is changing just recently.

Here’s an article about the different types of plastic and which to stay away from. Of course I’ve been using just plastic water bottles that are labeled number 1, not good. I want to buy a Sigg bottle… I just have to decide which one!

::

Today I planted peas.

Those of you who know me may realize that this is a radical event. I do not like dirt. I am not entirely a girly-girl – I mean, I work at a cat sanctuary and pick up poop and puke and such all day – however I have definite leanings. It is not unusual to see me holding my hands out in front of me while running for the sink and soap. (I have issues.)

Beyond that, there has never seemed any sense in working outside. You get things looking nice and it all goes to hell again. I have enough work trying to keep the inside of the house from doing the same, I was perfectly happy to let Den take care of any landscaping. I don’t even mow the lawn. Nope. So what if the grass hits a foot tall. It just adds a little flavor… and hey, the dogs like it.

So I was a little confused when I caught myself eyeing the packaged vegetable seeds at the store. Peas – I kept looking at the peas, remembering the way I would pick fresh pods from my dad’s vegetable garden and eat them. I don’t even like peas, not cooked; only fresh-picked, straight from the pod are tasty. But that was a long time ago. So I’d force myself to leave the seeds behind in the store, reminding myself that I do not garden. It involves being outside… and dirt… and sweat… and actual physical work. All things I greatly dislike. Why on earth would I want a garden?

But this urge, it won’t let go. Every time I went shopping I’d linger at that rack of seeds. Finally last time I grabbed one of the pea packages and tossed it in my cart with a shrug. It’s cheap; if the idea totally flunks out, so be it. But something was telling me to plant some peas.

Today Den got me out of bed and we wandered outside. He immediately set to tackling the hugely overgrown side yard, pulling out the thorny vines that had choked off everything else an co-mingled with the large bush-tree that sits at the corner of our foundation. I avoided the prickle bushes, so I set to clearing out debris from around the rose bush and the one lone tulip that is starting to bloom. (I don’t even recall my husband planting a tulip. Where the hell did it come from??) And then I just continued along the back of the house, clearing out the grass that likes to grow around the foundation, pulling up weeds and turning the soil. I decided that’s where I was going to plant my peas. After I had an area for them along the house I ventured into the woods at the back of our yard to find some fallen branches. I stuck them in the ground to mark my two rows. I planted my peas.

When I was done I had dirt under my fingernails (that drove me CRAZY… and I admit, when that happened I immediately had to run inside and wash my hands), dirt on my knees (my calves were killing me with the crouching, so I finally just knelt in the dirt), and I was sweaty. But I was very pleased.

I spent the rest of the day researching vegetable gardens and trying to decide what else I could plant. Den wants pepperoncinis. I’m also thinking a couple of tomato plants and an herb or two. There are others that might be nice, but I just want to start small. I was looking at methods of building vegetable gardens and tools and such and of course, as with anything, the urge is to go out and buy some pressure-treated wood to make a raised bed, some good soil and fertilizer, a bunch of fancy tools, a bunch of plants. But I stop myself and think, this isn’t about spending money. It’s ridiculous how dependent we are as a society on “things” – you can’t have any kind of hobby without the “things.” Well tough! I don’t want them! Tomorrow I am going to buy some cheap pots (Ocean State Job Lot) for the herbs, some twine to string along the peas so they can grow, and some seeds for more plants. And that’s it. Den has the basic gardening tools. One site mentioned how you can use old plastic containers (like yogurt containers) to make markers out of so you know what’s growing where – no need to buy some fancy things.

I can’t help but think that it’s no fluke that I am suddenly drawn to gardening. It’s a need to grow something. It is not up to me whether or not I have a baby to grow, and I can’t just sit around waiting for that to happen. So maybe tending to some plants will be nice. Devin’s tree started it, really. I’m watching it bud, green leaves opening right before my very eyes, and I am just so thrilled by it. I’m so very very glad we chose a tree to honor Devin.

And hey, Dad reminded me that gardening is in my genes. So maybe there’s a chance I won’t kill everything. Remembering to weed and water everything, however… that’s going to be a tough one. I have the attention span of a gnat. Den and I are both just waiting for me to find something new and shiny and forget all about the gardening thing.

Oh my goodness, the weather is just perfect. This has got to be my favorite time of year, weather-wise… the sun is shining, though not enough to burn my delicate, pale skin; the temperature is warm enough to wear short-sleeves and summer dresses, without making you sweat; the breeze whispers through the windows that are now open. Everyone in the house is enjoying it – the cats especially love having the windows open so they can sit pressed up against the screens and breathe in the outside world. Sometimes they chitter as they sit there, talking to themselves in excitement. I can understand why. I’m laying on the bed, windows open, shades halfway open, just sort of drinking it in as the breeze floats through the room, pushing the shades in to let a burst of sunlight shine in. It’s glorious.

Of course, it occurs to me that I should be laying here with my son…. this truly would be the perfect season for a newborn baby. But strangely enough, those thoughts are getting less painful. Still painful, yes… but less than before.

Devin’s tree is budding, little bits of green growing on its branches, slowly opening. The green buds with the reddish bark is just gorgeous.

The funny thing is that up to the weekend of Devin’s memorial it was quite cold. But for that day we needed the extra space, so we opened up the 3-seasons breezeway. And we never had to close it back up…. from that weekend it’s been quite nice, becoming nicer. Devin’s memorial ushered in spring. Somehow that seemed just right.

I am happy to say that most people are respectful and understanding. But to the few who aren’t…

Apparently I need to state this outright, which is a little sad in and of itself: I have a religion; I do not need yours.

I feel that I have a right to express my religious beliefs, to talk about them, here on my own blog – without people trying to convince me that I am wrong and there are better ways out there. I don’t think the people who do that really realize how rude they are being. Well here, let me put it out there for you: IT’S RUDE. It’s disrespectful. Before you post about your religion, take a good look at what you are trying to say. Ask yourself why you’re posting. If you are trying to convince me about your religion/beliefs… if you’re thinking “Well if only she knew about ___ then she’d understand”… if you think you can “save” me from hell or grief and show me a better way… then stop.

I do not go around to other peoples’ blogs and tell them that I think their belief in god is unfounded and, really, they’d be better off if they tossed it aside and became an Athiest. I do not go into someone else’s blog and, when they are talking about how their god is helping them through tough times, tell them all the evidence that I believe disproves a god. Or I don’t go in there and tell them all about the wonder of Zeus, or how if they just tried really hard to pray to Athena that she would save them. I just don’t do it! It’s rude! I have many friends of many different religions. I am just happy if they find peace with their beliefs, if they are kind, compassionate people, if they are good friends. I post supportively and let them find their own faith. It’s none of my business what god they believe in or don’t. I expect the same courtesy.

I don’t know why it is so hard for some people to grasp or accept. I am an Athiest. I have always been an Athiest. I do not believe in Allah or Shiva or Yaweh or Zeus or “God.” You may believe that one of those exists and that I am going to hell if I do not pray to get saved. I don’t care. I don’t believe in your hell, or your savior, and I am not worried about it. If you are so worried for me about this you can pray for me and whatever else you want to do. You can talk with people who share your beliefs about how sad it is that I don’t believe. Whatever. Just don’t come to my space and preach to me. I don’t want to hear it. It’s never changed my mind, it’s not going to change my mind, and it will only piss me off in the meantime. I’m pretty sure that is not the effect people are going for.

I am just quite flabbergasted that some people just don’t get that they are being undeterminably disrespectful to other religions.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve opened up this screen to type something today… and nothing comes out. Or I start writing and it just sounds wrong. I hate it when I have so much floating around in my head, but it’s such a muddle of thoughts that I can’t really make anything coherent out of it.

I find myself thinking outloud a lot – like I wrote before, sending a “prayer” out into the nothingness. I catch myself doing it and question what the hell I’m doing. I decided my belief hasn’t changed – I still don’t believe in a god who is listening to what I say. It’s more along the lines of my writing. Before I started blogging, when I was in high school and even before then, I kept a diary. Part of my writing is to have a record of my life, something I can look back at. But part of my writing is the simple urge to express myself. It really doesn’t matter if I have someone listening or not (sometimes that can be a hindrance) – sometimes, like in the case of my personal hand-written diaries, I took steps to ensure no one did read it. I wasn’t writing to a divine being, I was just writing to write. Just as now, when I stop about my day and mutter and swear and beg and plead. It’s a release, it’s a meditation. It’s about awknowledging those emotions that try to overwhelm me.

The whole god thing really pisses me off a lot lately. Once in a while I’ll come across some post or another where someone very innocently mentions how their faith, their prayers, have kept their baby safe. Even a simple praising god for the safety and health of their child, their pregnancy. It just overwhelms me with frustration. Do these people believe that their god didn’t like me enough? Or maybe they think that my lack of faith is why their god killed my baby? How the hell do they reconcile themselves when someone of their own faith loses a child? “God has a plan.” Well if that’s the case, then their prayers for their baby had absolutely NO effect, either god’s plan was for the baby to live, or the baby to die. I will never understand, it just seems so non-sensical. I see many people finding comfort in their faith after a loss… I simply cannot imagine it. If I really thought there was a being, a creator, who allowed my baby to die, who lets me suffer like this, I would be pissed beyond belief.

I also don’t believe in an afterlife. I don’t believe I’m going to be reunited with Devin one day, I don’t believe he’s “alive in spirit.” I wrote about Tess and the rainbow bridge, and I said “IF there was a heaven.” I really meant that if. To me the rainbow bridge is another myth, a folklore story. It’s a good story, it’s good symbolism. But it’s just not real. Devin is dead. He lived for a little while, and now he is gone. I weep mostly for the potential him that was lost. I think about the life he should have had – that’s what hurts the most. I hurt for me and my husband, who know what we lost. Death itself doesn’t scare me. Maybe that’s strange to people. My own husband (also an athiest) is terrified of death. But to me… once you’re dead you don’t think, you don’t feel, you don’t hurt. You can’t feel sad about the things you never got to do, you can’t miss your loved ones, you can’t wish for something different. The part I fear about death is other people dying: my husband, my brother, my parents, my friends, my pets. My baby. I fear their deaths – I fear them leaving me.

Despite all of that, I do find myself feeling a little more… spiritual, as Kel put it. It started before Devin died, though… it started when I got pregnant. I felt a connection with myself – and with the earth – that I’ve never felt before. All my life I felt like I was searching. When I was 13 I researched paganism and practiced meditation. Later, when I was 16 or 17 I found Pantheism. Over the years I have journalled extensively, trying to dig myself out of my depression and anxiety by self-analysis and introspection. People have commented to me many times in the past that I am extremely self-aware. I was like a scholar who studied something and knew the facts inside out, but lacked a true understanding, a connection. I somehow have found it. I don’t know if I still have it – lately my anger at the world has gotten in the way of any kind of appreciation – but I still recognize how it felt and sometimes I get it back.

The thing that keeps me going is the thought that this is the only life I’m going to get and the best thing to do is to enjoy what I have, look forward to the future, and remember the past. I won’t lie, there have been times since we lost Devin where I wonder what the hell the point of continuing is. Not in a suicidal sense, but it is so tempting to just… give up. To crawl into bed, pull the blankets over my head, and stay there. I mean, who cares about work or finances or anything else. My baby is dead. Nothing else seems to matter. But then reality hits and I realize I can’t do that… if I give up on everything I might as well write off the rest of my life. Who knows what else is out there? I remind myself of the times in my past where I was at the bottom of a well and wanted to give up. But I got out of it, I moved forward, and I found wonderful things like my husband.

Life sucks… but life doesn’t have it out for me. It’s a roll of the dice, it’s a winding road… probabilities and statistics. I’ve always found comfort in running the numbers, studying the facts. The world is scientific. It is bare, it is cold. It’s the human aspect that creates meaning. It is a human blessing that we can think about the meaning of things. We can wonder why… look for answers. We can imagine. We can grieve what we never had. It is also our curse.

I loved living in the moment, I appreciated everything. I want to be able to do that again, but it is so far out of reach right now. The moment sucks. Sometimes I run across some other posting that makes me think about my day and try to find something positive that happened. I usually can’t. I can sometimes identify things that “didn’t suck much.” I can identify good times I spent with my husband, or good conversations I had with a close friend. But “positive”? Not really.

I realized tonight that my sister-in-law is 34 weeks pregnant, a mere 2 weeks away from the point where I had Devin. It’s so strange how fast it’s going by, and yet it’s not nearly fast enough. I want this all to be over with. I want her to have the baby so I can deal with it and move on. Thinking about her being in her third trimester just sucks the breath right out of me. (And it’s not just her – it’s anyone in their third tri.) Over and over again I think about where I was supposed to be. Big bellies haunt me. I can’t get it out of my head. And when I do I run across someone else who is there and it starts all over again.

I don’t know if her having a newborn is going to be any easier. Just thinking about watching her find her way through new parenthood makes me ache. I was supposed to be blazing the trail before her, sitting with her sharing stories. Now I’m just an observer. Worse than an observer. So no…. I can’t see it being much easier. But it will be different. It’s an unknown. I’ll take my chances if I can just get past this part now.

::

I looked up Devin’s sign. He was supposed to be an Aries, but being born early he would have been a Pisces. For some reason that makes my heart ache more. I can see myself parenting a Pisces. I imagined him with a personality like that.

::

I am looking for information about returning cycles after pregnancy. I found this note: “After pregnancy, about 50% of women ovulate before their periods return.” But then on another site: “90 percent of women will not ovulate before their first period.” Great.

I love this quote: “Women who don’t breastfeed find that their cycles resume very quickly — as early as four to ten weeks after childbirth.” 4 to 10 weeks. Wow, that’s really… helpful.

Blarg. I’m going to bed.

My butt and thighs hurt! I feel like I did when I was pregnant, having to hoist myself up off of chairs…. only this time it’s simply because my legs squeal at me like tiny mice stuck in a frying pan. But I don’t complain – I’m actually quite pleased. I really must have done something with that exercise. And at the time I really didn’t feel like I was doing much.

::

Today I had to tell someone that my baby died.

It was my first official day back at work today. I had stopped in previously to work on some paperwork and for meetings, but today I went in for-real to actually do my normal job. First thing on my list was making a run to Costco to pick up an order. While I was off work no one picked up orders; someone else just stopped at Costco to buy things in the evening. Which means no one has had contact with the people who help me in the mornings with the orders. They didn’t know.

I knew from the start that it was something I was going to have to face, and to be honest that’s part of the reason I pushed it off this long. I felt like today I could handle it. So I rung the bell and they opened the door. He looked me up and down, smiled big and said, “So… boy or girl?!” Then the woman who helps me out walked over and said cheerfully, “What are you doing back?!”

I paused for a moment, then stumbled a little through my words. “Well… actually… we lost the baby.” I crumpled for a minute, hiccuping with a sob.

(I know some – many – women don’t like using the phrase, “We lost the baby.” I thought about it a lot today and concluded that sometimes it just works best for me… and for whatever reason it doesn’t bother me. I don’t like saying, “The baby died” – at least, not for the initial news-breaking. It sounds too flat to my ears. I go back and forth. Maybe it’s just my own hang-up.)

Faces fell in shock and horror. The woman immediately hugged me tight and said, “Oh Natalie… I’m so sorry!!” She looked so upset. (The men, they never seem to know what to say, beyond, “I’m sorry.” He started talking about other things. Not to brush off what had happened, I know – I saw the look of sadness and sympathy in his eyes. He understood… he just didn’t know what else to say. And frankly I didn’t mind; sometimes talking about other things is easier than sitting in the grief.)

I hate breaking the news.

It occurred to me that it’s not just having to go through the pain of explaining again that hurts so much. What hurts almost more is walking in to the big, expectant smiles and excitement. For a moment you get to see what should have been… the image flashes through your mind of how you were supposed to be walking in the door beaming with pride, telling them all about your baby, bursting with joy and happiness. Instead you stand empty and small, wincing in response to the sharp reminder, grief bubbling up when people least expect it.

Today I took the first physical step to losing weight. My mom left today and I came home ready to make a real commitment to this.

I had been doing a short daily walk with Den, but when he went back to work he started exercising at work. And I really hate walking alone, it’s so damn boring. I read about people who feel really good during and after exercising…. well, that’s not me. I hate exercise. I hate feeling sweaty. The entire time I’m exercising it’s with the point of exericising, and I’m trying to string myself along just a few minutes further before I can quit. Not surprizingly I am really bad about exercising on a regular basis.

I’ve been thinking about it and wished that I could be that person who actually gets something from exercise, who “feels good” and looks forward to it. It sure would make losing weight a lot easier. Then I thought about dance. I used to love to dance, I took some dance classes (hip hop, jazz) when I was around 12 years old. Loved it. But I didn’t continue, and I’ve always kind of wished I could get back into it. (But, you know, money and stuff.)

So today I had that itch. I pulled up the OnDemand exercise shows and tried out a couple of different dance shows, one of which was a Carmen Electra sexy dancing one. That was fun. Problem was I felt like I spent a lot of time learning the steps, and not a whole lot of time actually dancing. My heartrate was only up a little bit, and I just wanted to all-out dance. So… that’s what I did. I flipped to one of the music channels, the one with club dance music, cranked up the volume on our new stereo system (I do love the subwoofer), and danced. All over the living room I bounced and twirled and kicked. It was fantastic. I closed my eyes and just moved with the beat like I do late at night at DCon when the DJs are running the ballroom. Love it.

When I stopped I thought, THIS is it! This is my thing, this is how I’m going to lose this weight! It feels good – it doesn’t feel like work. I wanted to keep going, but my body was struggling and I figured it was probably a good idea to take it easy and not hurt myself. My body was flushed (and by “flushed” I mean “my face was as red as that time I got sunburnt in Tennessee”), my heart was thumping, my tendons were warm and loose. I felt like I was really doing something.

I did have to jump in the shower immediately, because eewwww sweat. But I was rosy and chipper the rest of the evening.

That was the first step.

Then there is drinking more water, which was greatly facilitated by the exercise. I need to get in the habit of drinking water instead of milk or it’s going to be a lot harder to lose weight. (And I know damnwell I don’t drink enough water.)

Next is food. I opened up my fridge and tossed all the old things past their expiration date and took inventory of what good stuff I have in there (yogurt, cottage cheese, some veggies…). For lunch I ate a turkey sandwich; for dinner we had spinnach and cheese ravioli; for evening snack I had a little bit of cottage cheese and a piece of toast with peanut butter. I feel good about that. I have been extremely bad lately with just popping chocolate in my mouth all the time. I think I have an attitude of, “I feel bad. So who cares. I need chocolate, it tastes good.” Immediate gratification. And I let myself do it while mom was here, but that was my limit; this is my time to change. I think for the most part I’m going to stick with the same aims as when I was pregnant, I’m just going to have to be more careful about serving sizes and fat content. I’m not really sure about protein intake… I’m not certain that high protein is good for weight loss, but I’ve heard it’s good for egg quality.

Hopefully I can stay dedicated to this. Every time I feel like not getting up and dancing I’m just going to have to look down at my midsection and pinch a fold of skin from my side. That should do the trick.

(Weight this evening – 148.4. I apparently stalled out completely at 148.)