my reality, or appreciation day

if i'm going to drop off the face of the www, my return post better be good, right?

this photo was taken the morning after a night of cocktails. before getting home, we decided to walk into the heart of this cemetery. it's on a major road in one of the boroughs of NYC, yet so overgrown that there was no chance of being spotted.

i wonder what i would have thought about if i knew then what i know now...instead of, "this cemetery is cool," and, "i wonder who these people were."

on the way out, we spent two hours cleaning garbage and pushing dead leaves off ground markers. we could have gone on for ten more hours and it wouldn't have made that much of a dent.

so, yeah. standing naked in an overgrown graveyard picking up garbage and dead leaves. that's what i've been up to.

(and thanks to those who emailed. really, thank you.)

ETA: i should have clarified...this photo was taken, i don't know, in 2003? it relates to my recent activities totally metaphorically. SHIT, what i would give to have that belly back after triplets...

my beautiful scar, or the scar i chose

we've talked alot about how having a dead baby will leave a scar. it will maybe heal over time, a little, but will always be there. it's changed us forever and ever.

we didn't bury p@ige, and so, didn't get to pick out a gravestone for her. i didn't get to buy her that fancy present, something to represent her where she rests. she actually is parked inside a plastic bag inside a cardboard box inside the ugliest gray plastic shopping bag on top of my night table.

so...this is what i've done to myself. this is how i carry her around with me, how i remember her. this is how i've changed. i've always wanted to get something like this, but was afraid. i hate saying it like that, but come on. getting something this big on your arm is...for a girl...well, it's big. in thinking about it, i realized that i AM different, anyway, no matter what. why not be able to tell someone, "it's for my daughter who died," when they ask (sometimes with that upturned face)? so this is the scar i chose to wear on the outside, for all to see. it's much better-looking than the real one.

i thought about p@ige alot during the tattoo...with that buzzing, vibrating pain like a chant. it was like pain therapy; i thought about her and felt emotional and physical pain. i wanted to burn her into it, into the process and the image, even though i still can't believe i have a fucking tattoo instead of the baby i carried for nine months. praytell, what the fuck?

i am now into the planning process for not my next, but the tattoo after that. yes, it really IS addicting. this spring...i will do the other arm. i will officially be "one of those people". i laugh to myself sometimes about how surprised people will be when i finally unveil these secrets come warm weather...i imagine them whispering, "that's that girl with triplets whose baby died. she really must have snapped!" well, fuck them. fuck them and their normal reproductive lives.

in case anyone is wondering, the art is inspired by a piece by william morris, a late 1800s textile designer. the pear in the center was added to represent my children, P-aige, E-lle, A-eva, and R-eece. the M is for our last name.

it will never be enough, but there it is nonetheless.

giveaway bonanza extravaganza!

when i was going through the hardest of the infertility, i got hooked on ebay. i don't think all of these things came from auctions, but most did. considering i've got a whole new crisis going on here, i'm making some room for...well, for more stuff.

including, of course, my new year's eve charm bracelet win! and can you imagine, i only realized there was an ACORN on that thing after coggy mentioned it?? my brain is so slow lately. i also noticed the next day that some asshole was sitting there (like i was on nye) trying to snake that thing? they placed a bid 8 seconds before i did, but my bid was higher. final bid count: 25.

HAAAAAAAAAAAA!!

it's pathetic how exciting this is right now.

ok, so on to the business at hand. coggy and niobe and others are giving away free stuff and i want to do it too. i love that i can think about this stuff as being just a little, maybe, exciting for another dead baby mom to get in her mailbox and even wear.

my photography sucks ass, so i hope you can see that from left to right there is:
a choker of black/red iridescent beads
a natural garnet wire wrap-around bracelet
a lariat (tie) necklace with dark purple beads
a black bead choker with amber and yellow colored beads
a bracelet of rectangle pieces of amber
a rhinestone/cz baguette and round garnet tennis bracelet
(underneath) a carved bone stretch bracelet, looks like butterflies
a carved bone butterfly pendant beaded necklace
and last but not least, a funky bracelet with different colored stones
(this last one is broken but can be fixed easily...and is really nice)

so, first nine commenters, let me know which one you like!!
(am i an asshole to say if i've never heard of you and you have no blog, i will be suspicious? i hope not).

ps- IF, and this is a big if, meg is a chooser and likes that last bracelet, it can benefit from her metalsmithing skills...and was also shipped to me from italy...so if no one minds, she's got first dibs on that one!

fuck it

THERE! i did it.

how you like me now, 2008?

i have mixed feelings about this photo. this girl is awaiting her commencement ceremony from graduate school. she's also awaiting her first IVF cycle, which started a month later.

the anticiaption was fruitful.

she's gone. like, forever. the question now is, can i manage another version of that? can i somehow muster up the hopeful, the positive, with the utter shit?

can peace and madness co-exist?

we'll see, i guess. that's the best i can do.
for now.

how i'm doing new years

i've had a few glasses of champagne. i wanted to write a list of some sort. i want desperately to be positive about how 2008 will have to be better than 2007. the list (short) will come tomorrow.

but right now, i've been excited all night about an auction. really, stupidly, wide-smiled excited. i think if i can be excited about something, go with it. good, but i'm also worried about retail therapy, but i'm such a financially paranoid person...i guess it can either be a normal good thing or go woefully out of control.

i'm not gonna overthink it.

I WON MY BRACELET!!!!! and that's awesome right now. sure, i've also won a rooster pin (love roosters), another really huge pot metal bracelet, another vintage leaf/amber/huge bracelet, and a vargas ring, but who's counting. hey, there were 23 other bids on this here beauty!

oh, ebay. i resolve to quit you. soon.

but for now, YAY!!!!!!!!

ornaments FOUND

i knew i didn't want anything obvious. there were a couple of times i picked up something girlie, once even a funky hot pink one, which would have been cool, because i felt she was going to be a feisty one. but none of them were right. i just kept thinking i would know when i saw it.

the little acorn behind p@ige's is a gift for my sister, who lost her pregnancy at about 8 weeks this past summer. i'm not sure how much she's allowed to show her sadness about it; it's almost six months past and people have pretty much dismissed it already. but i know she's scarred badly. she is scared shitless to get pregnant again, even though it's the thing she most wants. she decided out of the blue to go to graduate school in january, and i think it's because it will naturally put off questions of when she'll try again.

our acorns. eerily relevant, yet totally mysterious.

perfect.

untitiled post

this post- empty of words, with just this photo in the stark white- has been sitting in my posts list as a draft for...i don't know...over a week. i thought of this picture when i saw heather's ferma il tempo post.

i don't even know what to feel about this. in retrospect, i am so angry at that pregnant girl. i was irresponsible. i was selfish. i was wracked with stress and anxiety about my future guilt. i was MISERABLE.

but i have to be honest and say i hated being pregnant. this photo was taken in august (check out the sweaty armpits, people) and it was just gross. and at the time, i knew it was ok to hate it...that it's normal to hate being pregnant. cause being pregnant sucks.

but now i know that baby inside me, inside that big round belly, DIED. does that change the reality of how i felt in that photo? you may look and think it's such a beautiful moment, with my girl E kissing her baby sister...but it's totally staged. they were fighting like crypts and bloods over that sunflower plate mere moments before.

now i know that she died, how do i feel about these pregnancy photos? i feel like they should be in a photo album stored in an alternate dimension. sometimes, when flipping through the hundreds of other family photos, i catch a glimpse of one of these and for an instant, think, "oh yeah. i was pregnant." what the fuck?

i wish i could say i want to freeze time. i do, however, wish i could go back and do things differently. (NO SHIT.) i wish my body would have given me some other sign something was wrong (would you like some pre-ecclampsia with that pint of ice cream? why, yes!) that would have necessitated me getting my big fat ass to a hospital for a c-section with a doctor BEFORE she died.

where i find myself now is desperate; desperate to get this weight off. desperate to move farther and farther away from that pregnant girl in the photo.

desperate to be someone other than her.