i suck at ping pong.

i really need to blog while i'm feeling what i feel. later, even a day later, it changes.

we went on 'vacation'. you know, where instead of going somewhere, you just tour around for a week or so? we went to two festivals; one with the peanut, one without (thanks to my parents). we fought, got along, fought again. in the end, we were getting along, and i had one of those feelings like "wow, we fought but it ended up clean! maybe this crazy passion thing can work! cuz i sure do have a better sense of how the queen is feeling and what i can do to help him feel better!" but this evening we fought again, and now i'm back to feeling shitty.

you know when you try and change something in a long-term relationship, and at first the other person doesn't notice, because they're used to a certain behaviour from you? so you just have to keep on going, and wait for the part of the film where they suddenly, through a fairytale blessing of kismet and serendipity, totally notice how hard you've been working to make things better and then everything is great? well i'm at the point where he doesn't notice. they don't put this part in the montage, not really. maybe i'm not watching the right films.

you know one of the reasons i like the queen? when we were driving home tonight from a tiny ping pong tournament, he commented that it was really pretty out. i hadn't noticed, but he was right. there was a dark blue sky; seriously stormy but far enough away. the canola fields were bright yellow and everything else was a lush green. the yellow line on the highway shone. the setting sun cast a slight hush of pink on the sky. and i was grumpy because i worked extra hard last night and today to make the house nice and create a birthday cd for a friend of ours, and we had a tense moment when he got home about who unpacks his massive pile of mancave stuff when he has a job and i don't.

i know i'm not used to relationships working out. sometimes i feel like i'm just waiting for this one to fail so i can get on with my life. i have no picture in my head about how family should work. recently, friends have commented on how hard their relationships were in the first few years of having children together. i feel like they're telling me to stick it out. it helps.

another thing that helps is that although i am stressed out and uncertain and working harder than i ever have in my life, i do not regret the choices that got me here. i do not regret having a child and moving to a small town. so i guess i just need to have faith that i made the right choice for me at the time, and stick with this as long as ... as long as i can?

title? i don't have time for titles...

ahgfzk.

the queen and i are very adept at figuring out whose turn it is to get up with the peanut; "it's so your turn. i've been up for hours." sigh. she was sleeping a lot and for admirable lengths of time, so of course we jinxed ourselves by bragging about it. now we're hooped by her frequent awakenings during our favourite sleeping hours - four to nine am. cheers! i salute you, baby, with bailey's in my coffee. would you like some in your bottle? take the edge off? no? too bad... someone should make a facebook test: what will be your baby's favourite drink? ha ha. ugh. please don't drink straight vodka, that's all i ask.

it seems that by springing off some offspring, we have reinvited ourselves to all family holidays. thus, easter is once again a 'big deal'. friday at my folks' place (huge extenda-family gathering) and sunday at the farm, which leaves saturday to maybe drop in on the wife, since the wife's mom is visiting. another crazy weekend.

we just got back from the city, where once again, i felt rushed and didn't enjoy myself as much as i wanted to. but it was way, way better than it's been; the wife let us stay at her place, and then took off for most of the weekend - that woman way deserved a break from her life, and looked refreshed upon return. we also got a good brunch in with some pregnant friends - mr and mz glow (they glowed before they got knocked up, but they definitely glow now. their baby will probably glow in the dark). they visited me in the hospital - mr glow researched hemoglobin-enriching foods and brought down a small carload of food for me, and mz glow gave me some reiki. lovely couple, excited to see them breeding!

can't remember the last time i went to a queer-friendly night at a club or checked out an angsty poetry night - my life is quite hetero-normative now. also, the queen cut his hair and bought a truck, and we both wear cowboy boots; we really are living the smalltown prairie life, and need a bumpersticker that says "my other car is a gun" to complete the picture. only here and in texas, my friends...

i am noticing the crankiness setting in (in me). parenting a tiny baby, when it's not absolutely fascinating, can be somewhat boring. they ask a lot and give back cute little noises and some faeces. gee, thanks.

i think i have a life, hold on, it's under a onesie that got peed on... just a sec here...

disjointed thoughts? no, i haven't noticed that... must go read some anaïs nin while i can...

blech.

for some reason, i feel gross. it's a beautiful day out, the peanut allowed us to sleep and is napping again, i have time to write letters, etc, and instead i loaf around, feeling gross. i went for a walk a while ago to clear myself, but i still feel blechy.

motherhood: it's terrifying. i need to acknowledge that currently, part of me is locked in my head, rocking back and forth muttering "what have you done? what have you done?" it's scary for a perfectionist to try and stop a crying baby. sometimes you've tried everything and you just have to try it all again, hoping something will work that didn't work the first time around. sometimes she's hungry but doesn't realise that eating will solve her problem. sometimes i'm just tired of it, sometimes she wakes up every half an hour and it takes an hour to get her back to sleep.

sometimes i wish i was still childless, still at the bookstore in the city, still stressed out about what i'm going to do with my life, still feeling like an underachiever.

today, i don't like living in a small prairie town. i don't like the neighbours i haven't met who are roofing next door. i am weirded out at the house decorations (bright pink fences, cowboy cutouts on the outside walls, strange wooden carvings that look unintentionally like southpark characters), the small-town-big-penis cars and trucks (adorned with flaming skulls, etc) and the smell of thawing dog shit.

fortunately, in all this, i still love my daughter. and the queen! he is extra lovely these days, even though he's trying to sell a car that ran perfectly reasonably until he decided to sell it, and since then, has been haunting him with strange little fuck-ups. he even took it into a shop, as opposed to fixing it himself, and then it wouldn't run at all. ah, shop mechanics (my apologies to the three good ones out there).

i'm not even tired, so i can't go back to bed (tried that). i'm caught up on laundry and dishes, i don't feel like reading... blech.

thanks willie. thanks a lot.

of course, "on the road again" is tilting through my mind. before we left the awesomes, mz awesome played it on the banjo, and i learned another line: "the life i love is playing music with my friends". i haven't played music with my friends in a long time. there are some things i cannot or do not want to do, thank you hormones. the queen and i played cribbage the other night, and i had absolutely no interest. sigh. of course i lost.

what is new? well, i feel better than i did at last posting. with help from russell hoban (well, kleinzeit, really) and a bit from nick drake, i realised that you get the time you get. you get the baby you get. wheeling and dealing is not going to work out the way you want it to, so while you can still try and change what you have, acceptance is key to not going insane. and i found some.

yesterday, we visited my grandma's grave in the awesomest cemetery. i also found my great uncle, and my great grandparents. i couldn't remember the name of my great great grandmother, who is also there, so her stone went untended. sad.

then, we drove south and visited my barely alive great aunt. also sad. she was clearly happy to see me, but i'm not sure she knew who i was. i left her a card and a kiss when they put her down for a nap.

then we got shaken by the border patrol when they found the queen's hookah and assumed it was for smoking marijuana. of course it isn't, and of course they didn't find any, but they took the bus apart looking. oddly enough, while they were miffed that brian dare occasionally (so occasionally we forgot it was there) smoke flavoured tobacco, they didn't even mention the full-length samurai sword also in the bus. welcome to america, where you have the right to defend your person with ancient weapons you carry around in your vehicle, but not to get high, or do anything that might resemble getting high.

once freely let into the greatest country in the world, we stopped at dale's truck stop, home of a drive-thru beer store and lounge, with ponies tied up outside. yeah, really. wow. then we drove through a thunderstorm. i love thunderstorms on the prairies. it's beautiful here.

today, we're leaving north dakota for michigan on our southern tour around the great lakes, and then going back into ontario (that's right, orange-haired nutritional vixen, we're headed your way!). may our way be paved with happiness and smooth roads.

gracious time

back from the mini-travels, sitting in the back yard of the gnome home. we went to saskatchewan for the week, to visit with the awesomes, a family the queen knows from way back (i met them all briefly through fieldofdreams probably eight or ten years back). this family was at ness creek festival. having escaped the city, the awesomes now live in a lovely small town, so we parked in their driveway for a few days. a little robin was there, and cooked us meal after meal; chunks of local meat, gluten-free pie with whipped cream, pickled beet salad, roasted squash... it was like holiday dinner, twice a day. such love. and saskatchewan is beautiful; the prairies are something amazing.

we went into the city to watch caribou, and it was a good show, but i mostly felt pregnant. we crashed in the city that night, and the queen fiddled around with the bus, trying to figure out a problem: it wasn't the alternator, it was the inverter - he needed a higher ampage. or something like that. my greasy queen, quickly learning the cummins diesel engine. or possibly already having known it.

we headed back here yesterday, having accidentally gotten sucked into "last-minute" bullshit. it was good though, to have a dry run for travelling. i figured out we needed more rags and some sewing equipment, and can leave behind the LED christmas lights (a game of cribbage by LED just isn't the same).

unfortunately, our last-minute errandry is lagging behind in our fight to be healthy. the queen came down with it far worse than i, but we're both not feeling well. the wife's ex (been hanging out with batdog at the gnome home more these days, it's nice to see) called it "back to reality" sickness, implying it was the city's fault. i like that theory. truthfully we both saw it coming but stayed up late anyway. i'm not doing too bad. the poor queen though; he can chase down labouring cows in fields, but this has hit him like a ton of bricks. i got him some soup and he went back to sleep, ragingly hot and sweaty.

water, soup, bed. fresh market tomatoes. i take care of my queen.

i'm past being able to hide my belly under a massive hoodie. i am visibly pregnant. people are starting to touch my belly, but so far it's still people i know. the queen is going to have to build a wider step down from the bus (hank)'s back bed. i will post bus pictures soon (maybe) but not ultrasounds, sorry. the baby shall remain a mystery for four more months(ish).