how does your garden grow?

I've been different lately, disconnected and quiet and wistful. i've been restless and bored.

I can't seem to get away from all my roles and my people, I can't seem to be by myself and i think it is what i need, though by this point, it would kind of be unpleasant, i think. it is like a hunger gone too long unfed that you are nauseous. you don't necessarily want food.

i don't feel like doing any one thing. i don't feel like myself and yet there is something pretty familiar about this feeling. i feel fussy and this room is a mess.

But, maybe,

there is more than the blahs to this blah. I have been wondering at myself the past week, wondering where i think this is leading and seeing myself at not too special, not that gifted, not that smart. why do i think i will get into a good Ph.D program? why?

And at the same time, i know i have talent, it is just that i can see that so do many other people. many others, just in my classes, and there must be so many others with better qualifications that i have not ever met.
i have remembered a life before i was trying to make something of myself, a life in which something was made of me, and i have been wistful for the ease and entertainment of it.
i am wanting to hide from my life right now.
but instead, i am going to read two chapters from Invitation to the Psychology of Religion.
Try not to be jealous.

Oh Sweet LORD!

Thank God I didn't miss it!

Okay, Kristen, you are becoming a mother everyday! I bet you look so cute.

For your mind, a metaphor. You are visibly pregnant and it becomes more and more defining. You were teensy pregnant, then visibly pregnant, now definingly pregnant. It is probably the first thing that people notice about you now. But what is happening inside you is so much more profound than what can be seen with an eye.

So is motherhood itself. It will change everything about your day and all your decisions. But the change in your heart and soul will be so much more. you will be changed in your fundamentals.
Your very fiber is different, you're blessed. Welcome to it, i am always here if you need...

Kristen, you will be a great mother to Alyssa. On this point, there is no doubt. you will bring your thoughtfulness and consideration to the role to be sure and your practicality. your good sense, not so very common, will be to Alyssa's great benefit.

For your darling girl, a blessing: That her heart would beat strong in her ears, that she would truly know herself, live thoroughly and well, succeed in making wise and good plans which then materialize into a wise and good life. That she would comprehend her blessings, that her struggles would strengthen her, that she would have laughter.

Alyssa: Welcome to the world, our world, your world.

love to you on this becoming...
Erica


I got you a couple petit bateau onesies. so yummy.

Maybe it is like this right before something cool happens

We spent most of our day, me and Judah, in the city. God, a city has energy to it, for sure, and Chicago's energy is energetic. Yep, i meant that. There is a steady, strong pulse to Chicago. The wind from the lake is its breath, cold and strong. Chicago is alive.

We ventured up to the skydeck of the Sears Tower which is an expensive thing to do, when one considers $21 parking for 65 minutes. I usually cringe about things like that, but i am learning to let go and enjoy the more expensive moments. You don't get anything for them if you fail to enjoy them.

I really enjoyed being with Judah in the city, being with him on the streets. We ran and whooped and hollered about being in Chicago, about being among its people and its crazy tall buildings. It was so nice to do it- to be with Judah and thrill him. To thrill him is pretty thrilling.

We watched the History Channel short on the construction of the Sears Tower and Judah enjoyed it. He also thoroughly appreciated our friend's classical guitar concert last month. Yeah, i am trying to say that he, my offspring, is smart.

Really, it doesn't strike me as smart when i see him do these things-- he strikes me as really old for four years, one month. At 48 lbs and 44 inches i believe that is above 95% -- out of 100 kids his age he is bigger than at least 95 of them. He is big and memorizes lots of things and tells me off sometimes.
A tiny teenager in lots of ways.

Judah, if you ever read this one day, I want you to know that i miss you as a baby. I miss your babyhood. seems a tragedy that it had to end. you are always so beautiful to me though, even now, i am always thinking what a gorgeous little jerk you are. That these days with you are the ones i would buy back at any price, though they are tedious and stressful in many, many ways and i know that it is best for all of us to keep evolving, still you tempt me to stay right where we are. It is a good thing i have no say in the matter...because you might be four forever.

So now that i got that out...

i'm off to bed.

picture perfect: this is how my mind works

I've just spent more than an hour looking at design sites, featuring homes that are flooded with light and good taste, and i am sitting in my very cold, unstylish, basement.

We've been rolling right along here:working, watching tv, going to classes, judah-- so much demands lots of my attention. especially project runway!

i sometimes think i need to write a letter to my dad, that i need to get my thoughts out on paper. But seriously, would i ever finish that letter? it would be so long!
I have even tried just putting a few thoughts down, but one thought just leads to another and i can't seem to organize my thoughts. i am not satisfied with them when i re-read them.

I know he must be so sad and angry at me. I feel bad about that.

i'm sad we're broken up. i am sad in a way that... if i really think about it. . .i can start to cry and stop breathing and hear my heart beating in my ears.
my life is so f*ing messy- it is. and most of the time i am so frustrated that it is. i haven't come to terms with my life being what it is. I haven't come to terms with myself because, you and i both know, i am the reason that my life is the way that it is. I am profoundly messy- loosest of ends and feeling so threadbare-- i will not be able to cover my wreckage with my best efforts.
and i don't feel that my path is heading anywhere anymore. or, maybe, i feel i have been on this special and trying path to get somewhere but that when i get there, wherever There is, i will not have what i need to make it my There. I do not have the goods. I don't.

i guess i am rethinking the rethinking. What was the question? What i am doing with Chris?!
Chris is the first time i ever knew something didn't add up about me. Before him, everything made enough sense. But my falling for Chris was just weird, from the leftest of fields, he is just Other than anyone would have had for me and even i sometimes still wonder at what he means. Anti-thesis of all my former ideas. Opposite soul-fabric. Suddenly i have married a Dreamer.

Everything happened at night.
I can recall the privacy of my room, i can recall not wanting to be interrupted there. I can remember the retreat into my own world: mirrors and windows. shade and trees. i can remember nights on the picnic bench in front of my house and stars shining through the branches. My night and private self chose her husband. This is not a fictionalization, an enhancement through hyperbolic imagery. This is the closest thing to Truth i can tell about it.
That very private self i barely saw because She was not as yet connected to anyone or anything. Only in my room. only on my own. An un-self-concsious self .But now...
The choice to marry Chris was the first move toward being let out of that tower of privacy.
And sometimes, i just want to go back.

The person i was before Chris had no real hopes or dreams but I didn't have to worry about anything. Now i worry about everything.

i try not to.

And you'd given me up for dead!

okay, so i am back from a visit to Chris's parents. The low light was something i think it wouldn't be fair to print and the highlight was going to have steak where i used to waitress. My word: that is the best steak i've ever had.

The trip afforded me a golden opportunity to be by myself, when the house was sleeping and still. I journaled eight pages, lists and drawings. I made plans, resolutions, maps and schedules. i felt whole for the first time in a long time. I felt unto myself, present and it was so needed. It almost felt like a spell and the saddest part about it is that it will almost certainly be broken.

I know that i do the breaking myself. I "check-out" all the time. I detach, as some sort of defense, but i do it so often i can't begin to guess why. The idea is that if you go back to when you checked out, right before it, then you can identify what triggers the defense mechanism.

My first guess is that my messy townhouse is making me check out. I hate it cluttery and messy. Maybe that is why cleaning it always feels so enlightenting.

Speaking of, i have lots of cleaning to do.

Did you know that i kind of like Mary J Blige?

okay, fyi
1. today judah is sick and home from "school." He is most in touch with the fact that his health is ailing when i ask him to do things like kiss me or take his cup back to the kitchen.
2. Chris is off the next two days. YIP-ee. We're on a good stretch these days.
3. Obama, he is a Barack-ing my world.
4. Tote bags are my new thing. I just bought... three recently and i lurve 'em.
5. Organisation is also my new thing. king of.
6. British spellings come naturally to me and they always have.
7. weird, eh?
8. i just had my six month review and it went well. i am happy about it.
9. i love my classes at Wheaton and got an extension on my thesis.
10. If i could just straighten myself out enough, i could write two books.

Sick is not how i pictured it! or I like to think i would be Lucy Liu.

maybe it was the shots. I am sick! i don't get sick, really. I am the last to get sick My sister or roomate can get sick and i won't. Judah and Chris will be laid up with Ebola and i can go for a walk, come make them soup, snuggle them, and i am fine the whole time. I am the last to get sick.

usually.

I had another class today and it became apparent to me that i am much much older than lots of college kids. More than age, really, i am older in the sense that i have been around. I have been places. I have had judah and been with Chris for eight years. I have had the struggle of my life, it seems.

They are twenty-ish and look like the places they have been include and are limited to Wet Seal and Forever 21.
I am trying to remember not to be condescending but i am not sure it isn't natural...
in other news, my mom sent me earrings for no reason.
which created a minute but detectable shift of the earth on its axis. Polar bears can tell because they got a little more time to chase those seals we shouldn't be clubbing.
Really, who exactly clubs a baby seal? Why a club?
I digress, i know. The people in latin america noticed because their siestas inexplicably lasted one minute longer, with no effort on anyone's part.

The earrings are pretty and gold and came accompanied by a matching ring that i would like enough if it fit my proper finger.

pretty. i just don't know what it means.


___
and finally, Kristen, KRISTEN ARE YOU THERE? i am now watching Project Runway which is bound to make us grow oh so close. I like Sweet P.

I also watch a little bit of Cashmere Mafia.

Who is the fallen mighty now? I never get hooked on that stuff: sex and the c. or desperate housesluts. I never get pulled into this stuff. And i never get sick.

well, hardly.