go team Witt

A quick note about a cool happening:

Please check this out: http://goteamwitt.blogspot.com/p/about-us.html

Kristin contacted me, and I think this is so generous and kindhearted, and perhaps YOU could be the next beneficiary?

More soon, but please check out the about page and then head home to see what is being auctioned or if you want to donate in some way.

Feel free to pass along the information too-- I am always amazed at the power of small acts of kindness.

7 months+ so big

Dear Della,

These were taken at my mom's when you were just 7 months old.

This month has been a month of reaching for us, arms out, big smile, it has been a month that has included CRAWLING very fast, scary fast, one knee, one foot, faster than I can believe. You also started creeping? What is it called when you pull yourself up,stand up and move around the room holding onto things, cruising-- not creeping-- you pull up and stand and move. You are so strong and so amazing. You want to let go, and you do, and then you sit down hard and stand up again. Oh I have so much to learn from you! It has been a month that has included lots of solid food-- bananas and oatmeal are both favorites, as is guacomole. You play carefully (mostly) with the cat, wiggle with happiness, love the bjorn. You love walking with me anywhere. You love shopping, so much to see! People to smile at! You bite which sucks ass and I hope you stop. You bite and laugh you little sadist with razory teeth. There is no sleeping through the night, but we sleep differently than we did. We are still nursing in spite of the biting, and we both love it when you are sleepy. When you are awake it is a lesson in persistence for both of us-- you nurse and look around, nurse and look around, nurse and look around, but you are also very efficient so the nursing you do do is enough. We roared at each other a few nights back, you squawked your pterodactyl sound and I replied and made you laugh and we did it over and over because nothing is as addictive as your laugh and oh my voice is still sore. We click back and forth, do How Big, and peek-a-boo. You clap, and you clap my hands Hard. Ok, you're pulling at the stool my laptop is perched on, looking at me with big beautiful brown eyes fringed with EPIC lashes, I have never seen anything as beautiful as you are and I have seen some beautiful things indeed.

I love you beyond measure, and am so honored to be with you every moment that we share.

two-fer

Baby is happy in this moment, so today, a two-fer.

I am flooding the house with cool air before buckling up against the heat. It is supposed to be beastly hot today, and humid too-- so right now goose bumps are a treat and treasure.

House is under contract, no kidding. Package has been submitted to the banks for consideration. I My realtor group has a lawyer and negotiators on board to do the heavy lifting, while I get collections calls every week from very nice bank of america people wondering why I am not paying. My last call to them ended with this: I do not qualify for any of their modification programs (my date of origination was after jan 2009, a magical date for making home affordable), so I needed to be 60 days late to qualify for their next tier of intervention. And so, just like that, everything I believe went to hell. Now they call and I feel like shit and they tell me the person lied, and I tell them to send that to me in writing with the name of the person I can call who will tell me what I qualify for while I pursue the short sale.... and nothing ever comes in the mail like that. It all sucks and is sucking my life force. Happily, the house is no longer being shown so at least I can leave my pump parts around, bottles on the rack, toothbrush on the sink.

The garden is magnificent, all iris are blooming. Hostas are huge and everything looks like it is thriving. I soak it in when I can.

This past week I had my first writing job in the days between workwork and going to maine to see Doug. It sucked, almost totally, but was very instructive in ways I will benefit from in the future. I don't want to dwell, but I was not proud of my resilience to the stress of it, and finally had to put on my Jen Lee shirt and my big girl pants and get a grip. Grip gotten, work submitted then a long drive north to Maine.

Maine will be for the summer only-- for me, just July and August. The cabin is cabin-y and I let myself off one hook by allowing myself to NOT try to make it home.

This weekend maybe I will look at apartments, trying to decrease costs as much as possible and knowing that for a time I can live almost anywhere. BUT having the baby changes things. (REALLY? NO SHIT KATE)

I feel fragmented and ragged, frayed and wrinkled, and tired in an achy sort of way.

A big life changing health issue in a beloved's beloved has rocked our worlds these past few weeks-- a diagnosis of MS and all of the fear and uncertainty and unfairness that that brings.

The diagnosis came yesterday, and the month really has been full of fear and uncertainty, scared of what it might be, fearing bad things, fearing worse things--

so while I sit surrounded by my own stress and bullshit, others are handling something so much more profound, so immense, that I felt I should be able to put my sadness and conflictedness and stress aside to hold room purely for an outpouring of very needed support kindness love.. but I can't. I am holding both.

I feel so selfish holding my own stressors too when they pale by comparison.

Like an etch-a-sketch, this other stuff should have toppled me over, given me a shake, cleared the screen, given me focus.

If you are reading this, beloved, I know you are thinking you are sorry. STOP THAT. I am sorry I am not managing better.

Ok, Della is done tormenting the cat, I must go. I just wanted you to know where I've been.

Unpoetically, deeply tangled, and wanting more than anything to gather myself together and just sit very still for a while or walk very far.

sunhat

Photo by TammyLove, not quite showing the bottom teeth.

Yes, I am consumed. I miss you. I will be back soon, promise.

xo Kate

gaga, enoughness, and being a rock star

Kymberli from I'm a smart one (she's worth reading no matter what!)- had a recent entry that my newly up and working internet allowed me to stumble across just now. With her permission, I wanted to include some of it here-- yes, it is about Lady Gaga, and it is TOTALLY WORTH READING.

Last weekend I sat down to watch HBO's premiere of Gaga's Monster Ball Tour,intending to only watch the first ten or so minutes, just long enough to self-righteously slap myself on the back for proving, once again, that I am sooo not a follower. But within the first five minutes, I found myself transfixed by the sight of her crying, her emotions just as bare as her naked, pre-Maybellined face. She was backstage preparing for the show -- the sold-out crowd at Madison Square Gardens already beginning to scream for her -- and she unexpectedly erupted into tears when someone asked how she felt about that night's upcoming performance. I expected some Miss-America-just-got-crowned type of crap, but what came out was anything but. She explained that sometimes she still feels like the loser, off-beat girl in high school, the one who no one understood and whose personality was so oddly shaped that it didn't fit into any typical niche, thereby making her the brunt of relentless teasing. Now that she's who she is, she fears that she'll be a disappointment, that she'll let everyone down for not being good enough. In blistering vulnerability, she explained about how she still feels like she's fighting against years of trying to prove that she's bigger than people's misunderstanding.

So there I found myself, feeling like an ass for being one of Them, and I watched the entire concert. I latched onto every lyric, was dazzled by the dance and the screaming and the story, and reflected the entire time on how if she, whose greatness and relevance is validated every day by record-breaking and fans and awards, can still somehow find moments of feeling less and unworthy of who she is, then I cannot feel wrong for sometimes feeling judged and unworthy and unproven. We all have our moments, whether short or long in duration, where we feel lost, broken, destroyed, or sometimes all three at once. "...I have to pick my shit up and tell myself I'm a rock star...," she said.

501

500 posts, holy moly. This is my 501st.
Remember 501s? You'd buy em big, wash them a bazillion times and they'd fit better than anything. It is hard to imagine being so patient now, even if the outcome was known to be good. Everything now feels so immediate.

My internet at home has been mostly down,
and me, yeah, I guess me too.

House on the market, now under contract, all within a week or so. Now I pray to the various gods (god of pestilence, god of deck rot, god of air radon...) then, if all goes well, bank negotiations since this is a short sale.

I am spinning, so sad, hoping to be relieved but not at all relieved yet. In some ways it would be hugely premature to be relieved although without this offer, nothing else can happen. But until the banks agree, and I know what debt I will be handling, everything is unknown.

So, in great news, Joannah had her beautiful miracle baby, Michaela. I cannot link from this computer but she is at Beauty for Ashes.

Sweet Linda from bad plumbing gave me an award I will post soon. She just had a canceled cycle so that sucks rocks.


Della is magnificent. She is doing crazy things while nursing at night, a new and hopefully brief phase of acrobatics that lasts an hour or more each time. Crikey. I am tired. So is she! This morning before I left? Peaceful baby nursing, old school, lovely.

She is eating real food now along with breast milk. No I am not making my own, I am lucky to be dressed most days, and clean. I also do not have reliable sources of the organic produce I would want to use for such an undertaking, so... for now anyway, jars and squeezy tubes. I'll get back to you on favorites.

I need to go, just did not want to stretch this silence further.
Thanks for checking in.

6 months old

Photo by my momma, tandem gardening!

photo by TammyLove: Della showing some awesome new sitting skills

Dear Della,

it's been 6 months and three days since you emerged and I got to touch your sweet face for the first time. I cannot believe that so much time has passed, how much you've grown, how big you're getting, and how the You that is Della has truly been there since the beginning. You are curious and intent. Your brow furrows in concentration. You also can raise just one eyebrow at a time and flip your tongue over. You love movement, impatiently ready to move on after I sit you down. You make it clear when we've chosen incorrectly or when you're done. You are not a "sit with" baby, or a put down and be baby. I no longer harbor any fantasies about work I can do while you play or sleep. You can play alone, sometimes for long stretches of time, but we never know when those will be... but then there are other things to do or see or put in your mouth. You sleep alone sometimes, but you sleep best on us. Right now, I am typing this love note with one hand while you sleep across me, delicious warm weight, so long now your legs are curled against my side, your face against my skin.

This month has brought the sudden dramatic emergence of two teeth, you're now sitting, scooting backwards, show a true love of the cat. You eat bananas and LOVE them, pulling my fingers toward your mouth.

You are insanely beautiful, laugh at your dad with true deserved delight, and have eyelashes that are ridiculously long.

To say I love you is so inadequate it is silly. I am humbled by my own perpetual unknowing, my needing to trust myself and us that we'll figure it out.

You are teaching me so much about my own heart.