september mama

every year, just when the weather starts to change from summer to fall--those first days where you can feel the autumn in the air--i begin to lose myself.

i feel sad. not on the level of "oh, hey, i'm sad about [x]." i just have a deep, vague, unassociated sense of loss... of nostalgia for something i can't put my finger on... it's an apparently natural emotional reaction to the season that is out of my control, but somehow my behavior serves to exacerbate it despite my discomfort with the feelings. i find myself listening to music that makes me feel things long gone, dwelling on things or people i miss, etc. vicious cycle.

the odd thing is that along with the sorrow, i find myself extremely sensitive and vulnerable to affection. fall is the danger-time in terms of attraction to people (even fleetingly and superficially). of course, i will never act on it, but i am aware that i'm weak when this time of year rolls around.

so today, on a beautiful, warm, but autumn-tinged 30th birthday, i am just a thin veil away from a flood of tears. not bawling or justifiable tears; more like a persistent wateryness of longing for who-knows-what. something i don't have, or can't have, or lost somewhere along the way. (but what????)

no, i know what. don't i? but my sense is that i had this feeling even before then, and it has simply been amplified since and now reflects itself back upon that time period...

whatthefuckever, i'm just trying to say i feel kind of depressed, but with a sweet-memory sense lingering inside it. sigh. i wanted a happy birthday.

there are something like 15 birthdays in my close friend/family circle during september. it's nuts.

...and tomorrow liam will be a year old! friday, i will be 30. t h i r t y . whew.

but back to liam. it's been a while since i updated on his shenanigans:
- he has 9 or 10 teeth
- he tries to repeat just about everything he hears an adult say, but he's slow with actual words; he can say "cat," "dog" (more on that later), "mama," "dad," "nap," "nightnight," and he kinda says "brush" and "flower"
- he has mastered balancing on his own feet, as long as he has help getting there. he pulls up, then lets go of his support and gets really proud of himself before he plops onto his bum. it's cute.
- he's learning to eat with a fork all by himself and is really great with a regular cup (though i don't let him have one because he WILL throw it after 2 minutes)
- he tries to feed rowan's baby dolls with toy bottles/spoons and loves to give them hugs and say 'ahhhh'
- he lets me brush his teeth without any argument
- he still goes to bed like an angel without any fuss, and if he does have trouble falling asleep, i hold him for 3 minutes, he puts his head on my shoulder to cuddle, and then squirms to get back in bed. he's so awesome.
- he's very coordinated and manually dexterous, he can work fussy toys and do small stacking tasks and things like that. he's also capable of climbing/hoisting himself up on things that i would not expect him to tackle, which is slightly alarming.
- he's starting to get really into books and will yell for me to read and point to the pictures
- he loves wearing hats/crowns and putting them on and off other people's heads.

so that's liam most of the time. rowan is the size of a 3-4 year old and she's not quite 2.5 - no one believes her age. her speech is better than most 3 year olds i have encountered, too, which is interesting. they're both doing great with the new nanny though for various reasons i will not get into, she may not end up staying with us.

we are planning a very small, no big deal party for liam this weekend. i knitted him a totally awesome monster (will post pics after i sew his arms and legs on). i am hoping that in the bustle my own birthday will not be completely overlooked...

i'm actually pretty depressed about it. matt has to work, his mom will be in town (therefore no crazy late-night marital fun when he gets off work), and even if i manage to round up a few friends to go dancing with, it would be disappointing for matt not to be there to have fun with me. call me crazy for wanting him to be a part of my officially-a-grownup-birthday-milestone.

what's worse, i have been really explicit about wanting to make a big deal of it, but somehow i don't think my point was got. i fully expect to have the most unacknowledged, crappy, non-event birthday of this decade. i'm not excited. in fact, i'm feeling really lame and miserable about it in anticipation of the huge let down that i know it will be. :(

i'm already bitter. if matt doesn't at least make me feel really loved/special/yay, even if we don't do anything fun, he's going to be on my shit list for the foreseeable future. i really don't want that.

in other news, we got a puppy. a cute, sweet, super young little stray who ended up in my parents' driveway one morning last week. she's some kind of cur/boxer/shepherd mutt and we named her juno. pics soon. she's going to be a big dog, i think. the problem right now is that she really, really likes to be in the house but i refuse to have an indoor dog... thankfully she's young and impressionable. but matt may turn out to be an obstacle in training her to live outside.

ducklings should be hatching under their mamas any day now, and my 26ish little chickies are growing up. they are officially allowed out of their enclosure and a couple of them were literally trying to eat my ankles last night - never been so painfully pecked before! little crapheads. they like me, which is why they were bold enough to get so close, but for some reason the veins on the top of my feet must have looked really tasty because on of the hens pinched me hard (more than once). anyway, they're cute. my little ameraucaunas are adorable with their fluffy cheeks... i love them.

blah. i just keep thinking about how much my birthday is going to suck. i guess i will get back to work.

today i rode my horse (spirit, 'espirit') for the first time in at least 3 years. she's 22 now, but still as gorgeous and fit and spunky as she was 18 years ago when we bought her from an acquaintance of mine. my parents have been kind enough to keep her even though she spends most of her time in the pasture lately, as my sister and i have been busy making babies and unable to ride until recently. she's always had a reputation--among everyone except me, my mom, and my sister--for being crazy and difficult to handle, but the fact is you just have to know her and her little quirks to deal with her. and you have to be confident enough to bluff if you don't. she's a really sweet horse most of the time, but she does have moods now and then and has been known to rear and buck for no apparent reason :). i've learned over many years how to anticipate that kind of behavior and balance my body to survive it, so it's no big deal anymore.

i went out with two of my cousins, which was also nice, and feel like i want to get back into a regular habit of taking spirit out. i had forgotten how meditative it is to ride... when i was in middle and high school, i would spend hours on her just meandering around where we lived, thinking/not thinking and having peaceful alone time. i used to talk to her a lot. there is something really spiritual and zen-like in the trust bond between horse and rider that allows one to blank-out and go with the flow out in the open. (when you think about it, it's nuts--getting on the back of a large beast weighing about a ton with a mind of its own and just a tiny bit of metal in its mouth for control! who the fck wants to do that?? ha.) i had missed that.

i've been thinking for a while now that i would like to be much more involved with horses in general... i was a "barn girl" my whole life and there has been a hole in my life for a long time as a result of my distance from that side of myself. there are two smells in this world that make me think of "home" in the most fundamental sense: the scents of the swampy florida keys ocean, and of a well-used horse barn. i want a couple of horses and a stable. i'm interested in training young horses, when i get my own ass in shape. i want my kids to grow up around horses and know how to handle them. they are beautiful and wonderful animals and i think knowing horses can make us better people.

i wish i had a photo of spirit to share... i will have to take one. anyway, despite the sunburn i acquired, i'm looking forward to many more rides in the near future.

i am so sick of snide "fat" comments that i've actually been pushed into doing something about it just to shut my dear husband up.

so i'm resolved to eat primarily raw food (with the exception of yogurt) 5 days a week, and on our equivalent of weekends, i'll pack in the protein. i read somewhere that humans work better with alternating protein and plant foods over several day spans rather than eating them at the same time. anyway i don't really want meat anymore, so that's good for me.

i've also committed to exercising 5 nights a week. something, anything, for 30 minutes or more.

i'm not really whining about trying to lose weight, but i'm annoyed at what finally got me to work on it. i only need to lose 10lbs or so, but i definitely need to tone up. going raw always made me thin out and feel amazing before, so it seems like the most obvious way to begin the process. here we go...