Welcome SPONSOR: Sherry 1511

Flux Capacitor's newest sponsor is Sherry 1511 the wonderful maker of the most adorable pillowcase dresses ever! I knew as soon as I saw them I had to have one for Ever, and worked a trade. When she's a chubby older baby, she will be wearing the below dress. Too cute!!

The pillowcase dresses come in really charming and modern prints and colors, and the quality is excellent- very well made.

I love this giraffe print!
She also makes women's pillowcase shirts. Visit the selection here

And There Were Good Things

Dakota is on the right track. He's smiling more. My boy. Every Monday night I take him to Family Night at a program he is doing and we sit for two hours with two other teen boys and their families and learn and talk. It's hard but really good, in the way that hard, necessary things are in life that move toward positive change.

Lola is all good things. She's so tender hearted and sweet natured and damn good that sometimes I tremble inside ( OK, often ) knowing that I am responsible for this wonderful creature, to keep her feeling safe and loved and whole. She asks about Ever every day when I see her, very adult like and sweet, So Mom how is Ever today? Has she moved much? You aren't eating too much bread are you? She talks often and excitedly about the details of Ever's birth and homecoming, and it makes me feel excited too!

One of the moms at my work dropped off the cutest gift for Ever today, an organic onsie (from Etsy!) with an adorable elephant on the front, just my style.

Tuesday Nov. 2cd is my last day of work. ( this is both good -sweet relief for my body- and bad -hadn't financially planned to leave work so soon- will be 36 weeks- but I'm including it anyway )

The broken window in Lola's room was fixed. This means more security and tighter temperature control, besides just the fact that it looks nice again.

Our backyard is growing beautiful baby shoots of grass everywhere, that tender, bright green color that new grass holds.

Ever is moving as reliably as always. Sometimes I can see her whole foot outlined against my stomach.

Two girlfriends have offered to come by after Ever is born and help clean and hang out. My cousin offered to come for a whole weekend, which means I will get to also see her beautiful boy Elton! Lola will be thrilled to have Elton visit. He's two and quite charming.

My coworker gave me her beautiful white dresser/changing table.

My mom came by tonight and checked in on Ever. She rubbed my stomach and told me to keep my stomach warm, asked a few questions about the baby, and left. She also mentioned that I am huge. I know!!

Ian is on the football team after a bout of uncertainty if he'd stay on, and he's kicking ass while keeping straight A's on a full class load of Honors classes. He's a marvel, a mystery to me, so self motivated and disciplined, so determined to set and reach goals. I love the little boy in him and respect the man I can see he will be.

I went to the IEP meeting on Tuesday....and it was awesome! They were totally and completely supportive, shocked that I had not been able to get help before this, and even mentioned financial compensation when they saw how much the neuropsych. testing had cost us!!!! Most importantly above all: They are going to provide supports for my boy!!!! I am still smiling when I think of it. They were all very sweet and asked a lot of questions about the baby, Dakota, and in general tried to make me feel welcomed and heard.

I got to hang out with a friend who moved out of town, and another friend I don't see as much as I used to since she changed jobs. It was only an hour and half at a local Starbucks, but it was awesome. We talked so much that we blinked and had to hug and say goodbye, like it is with girlfriends. Plus...more gifts for Ever! :)

Harry Potter....need I say more :))))

Only Connect

Mr. Curry and I circa young, drunk and in the middle of the desert

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, two people had more mind blowing sex than is really compatible with normal life like working, parenting...eating.

First, they were friends.

And then, they began, as two single parents, to raise their boys together, as friends.

And then, years later, the sexy.

And then, they fell in love.

And then, they were married.

And now, they are having a baby.

They did everything completely backward, at the wrong times and often with a lot more bumbling around
than was good for anyone.

But they ended up making a life together with more depth- and yes, more struggle- and more beauty than either had really hoped for.

They love each other. Real love. This means even when the other person's facial expression makes them want to sock a kitten, they still love. So that when they are happy, they are even happier than that, because they moved through the unhappy times with such loyalty and perseverance. So that when the hard times come round again, and feelings are hurt or ignored or needs unmet, they balance this against all the rest of the times, and know that still, they are blessed. So that the passing of time becomes not only just 'life', but also a marker and a reminder every day that they have the stuff of life right there in their hands, the stuff that as CS Lewis says, sharpens the sword of the soul. Cutting right through the bullshit to the tremendous beauty of love, in it's best and it's worst times, with and without makeup, well rested or sleep deprived, angry or calm, bitter or accepting, adoring or frustrating, desired or repelled, in all it's forms and functions from brewing tea to midnight flings on the living room floor, from whispered sobbed secrets to shouts of glee-- to be in it together, a team, a family, from ' remember that awful July? ' to ' wasn't that November the best ever? '-- the simple duration of connecting, and reconnecting, even when it is exhausting, to keep reaching out again; one of the highest pursuits of human life.
Only, connect.


Plus, there is still the sexy.

Everlong

some day a love struck boy will hear this beautiful song and think only of my girl.....



for a few short more weeks, she is mine and mine alone.

Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water

Tonite Dakota was an hour late home. The number he left me to reach his friend, who was driving, was the kid's home phone number. Not helpful because they weren't home. They were out. That was the point. I want to go out, Mom, he said, and we negotiated, because he's been grounded, and we've been doing some things, and this was a step towards 'rebuilding trust' as the experts like to say. After he walked in the door I heard his excuses and then said uhmhmmm, which is the best response at 10pm, and promptly had a totally unrelated outburst over the top dresser drawer full of black wires that I carefully rolled and organized which now lay like a black hornet nest, jumbled and useless, due to the boys and Mr. Curry opening, rummaging, and closing the drawer.

I hate how whenever I'm worried and upset lately, I feel like I have to go the bathroom. I blame the baby. She's sitting on my intestines.

I'm learning about letting go. I'm re-learning it. I'm learning it when applied to my children, which is a completely and totally different proposition than letting go of anything else, like grades, pissy co-workers, traffic, mothers, the guy in line who cuts ahead, the sag of your ass, the fact that your life/labor and birth/marriage/business is not exactly like you planned, your career stalled, your hair went curly when you hit your late twenties, you still don't have savings, whatever it is. Letting go of what your almost-not-a-kid-anymore-kid does is horrible, unless they are straight A perfect driving college attending straight edge friend loving sexually abstinent persons free of inner demons or conflict. It's horrible because your entire job as a parent becomes basically turned around inside out and you are supposed to be able to do the exact opposite of what you've always done. Instead, you are asked to have the relationship with them of a caring and firm but lovingly detached aunt or uncle, where you can magically set boundries and watch your child careen away from them off cliffs. And you are not supposed to lose your mind while this happens. I know. I thought it was a joke at first too.

Instead, you are supposed to let them make their own mistakes. Because the part where you teach them values is pretty much set. And the years of guiding them (read: keeping them) away from bad influences are over. The years of their dependence on you before all others is gone except in emergencies, because they are trying to find themselves, and how can they do that when Mommy still tells them what that answer is supposed to be? The years of control are over. You can't control who they eat with at lunch, who they hang out with after school, who they get a ride home with, if they have sex, take a drink, smoke a cigarette. You can try! Have fun! What you can do is set boundries and enforce consequences. You can pray that all you have poured into them and taught them will matter. You can let them know what you expect. But you can't make.

I will never forget sitting outside my house at 15 years old on my driveway, smoking a Marlboro. I had been crying and fighting with my Mom and was waiting for my long haired, Slayer loving, guitar playing, sex with me having boyfriend to show up in his blue sports car. And suddenly, slumped against my garage, I had a realization that changed my life forever. Mom can't make me stay here, I thought. She can't make me stop smoking. She can't make me stay grounded if I am. She can't chain me to my bed. I am free to listen to her or not, as long as I'm willing to suffer whatever consequences happen. And I didn't go off the deep end. But I never looked at my parents the same, or felt like a child again in the same way. I knew I was truly the one to decide my own fate.
----

Ever dropped. I went to bed with my breasts lying high and neat on my stomach like an African queen, and woke with the top of my stomach squishy and soft, where once my Biggie Pea had jutted her hiney, and an enormous pressure on my pelvic bone that only increased every time I stood or walked. By midafternoon I am walking like I did the first couple years every time Mr. Curry and I had date nite. It hurts. And I am peeing every 45 minutes. I am 35 weeks on Tuesday. My book says after your first pregnancy, it's highly unusual to drop unless it's a week before your labor. Well. I am known for being highly unusual. So we will see what the good doctor says on Tuesday morning, at my next appointment.

Today Mr. Curry had the stomach flu, so I took Dakota Ian and Lola to the Pumpkin Patch, and all went well. At first. Until Dakota got angry and took off into the parking lot, and Ian tried to follow him, and I told him he couldn't, and he listened but made a point to walk ten feet behind Lola and I after that. Just to show me, you know. So I took a deep breath after jabbering at Ian for a minute about respect and family and blah, and told Lola we were going to forget about those boys and their grumpy selves and have fun. And we did.

Still, I felt like I had to go to the bathroom. That roil and boil and stress reaction. Stress equals loose bowels. Let that phrase simmer for a while. Pretty.

Welcome SPONSOR: Wren Willow

Please welcome warmly Flux Capacitor's new sponsor: Wren Willow !

I want this adorable above fox onsie for Ever...I have such a thing for foxes and LOVE the colors

The shirts are all silk screened with such charming images, and she has shirts for dogs! older kids and women, too

I love this lion and unicorn, classic!

Wren Willow's clothing are made by a work at home mom trying to make ends meet. I am all for supporting this lovely line!

People In Your Neighborhood: Pregnant Photo by Gregory Katsoulis

Find his work here

The Life and Death of Henry Granju, a TV Special To Watch

As many of you know, Kate's son Henry died this year of a drug overdose. Please visit her here and learn about an upcoming televised special on Henry's story as well as the state of prescription drug abuse with our teens.

Barbarians at The Feast

Grace continues to elude me. Moments of grace, yes. But graceful living? I eat and realize I am stuffing my mouth as if it were a hole I am filling with sod. I leave my car so carelessly the seat-belt hangs disjointed and ruptured between the inside and outside. I clean dishes so aggressively they fly from my fingers and shatter against each other. I cook haphazardly and burn my arm in hot grease.

I have always been a passionate person, since my earliest memory of self, the little me who spent hours every late night, long after my parents were asleep, tiptoeing with tears in my eyes to where our white cat Sugar kept her litter of kittens, to check that she had not smothered any of them. She was deaf, and I was afraid she would roll over on one and not hear it's frantic cries. I understood fully the futile wailing of the young and invisible, the helpless. I could not remove myself from my own suffocation, but I could save those kittens, and I was determined to do so. Passion proves to be a powerful life force, moving mountains when I was sure I was too spiritually exhausted to move a foot, rekindling over and over in my marriage, like a restless bedmate. My passions have rarely formed in grace. My only moments of sustained grace have been while dancing, and strangely, while parenting my children. The absolute determination to do whatever is necessary for my children has led to periods of grace, and dancing has always left me moving through air as though my limbs were attached to the notes of music they moved to.

Grace is forced on me. I am at least aware enough to embrace it when it arrives. Ever, her fully formed foot jammed up into my right rib cage, reminds me hourly to slow down, to observe, to be aware, to be grateful. Gratitude is a high form of grace. I am so lucky, so very lucky to have this little girl growing inside me, only a short six weeks from announcing herself in our family. The turn of her foot, the smack of her hands against my pubic bone, the bulge of her back against my belly button like a great humpacked whale- these things stop me, stop my ears and eyes from their frantic programming and bring me gently into the present moment. I am about to have a baby, I remember, and then even more astonishing- there is our baby inside of me right now.... the joy of her infant self rolling in my abdomen grounds me. Joy grounding? Yes. It grounds me, it removes fear and projection and musing and immerses me entirely in the flesh and blood and heart of now.

The last few months I have been flooded with unstable situations and emotions, times which have called for quick feet, strong character, instinct, determination drive and commitment, but grace has fallen short. The quicker my feet and mind move, the clumsier my communication, my body, my expression. Remember when I told you my mother had admonished me to ' look more hopeful '? Well. Her graceless child may have an unpleasant expression but she never, ever left her family wondering where her heart and her every effort lay. I may break plates and wrinkle my freckled face, I certainly say the wrong thing and yes, fling myself across my bed crying like a maudlin teen, but I think a hidden beauty of love is that sometimes, inside it's most graceless gestures, like Matryoshka dolls, is the most graceful heart.