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Jesus, I still suck. I've been meaning to, and meaning to, sit down--full up of write--and do some vital space maintenance, cleaning out some of the biggest, bulkiest bits of crap in my brain. But first there were friends in town, and then it was beautiful with much snowshoeing to be done, and then there is work, which is terrifyingly real and official and I can no longer hide under the guise of student but am now, quite suddenly, trusted practicioner. And. And I lay awake at night thinking jesus fuck did I document that I saw such and such in so and so's file, good god what if the eight year old with the belly pain who got added in as my last patient of the day has some whopping intussusception and the xrays I sent her for will essentially be worth nothing but a law suit since I won't be back in the office again until the end of the week and by then she'll surely have perished or had her entire intestines emergently removed? Or oh fuck me I swear I did that PAP smear all wrong and I'm going to have to call her and tell her to come back because the lab report will essentially say You Suck at Finding The Cervix. Please Try Again.

And then again today, which is so snowy and lovely and I fell back asleep this morning in my bed, dreaming of being back in Brooklyn--when half of my days were spent in sleep, fitfully recovering from itchy, achey 36 hour shifts in that tired, old, broke down hospital--such that I woke up wanting bagels and my old neighbor to come down stairs so we could brew tea and sit in bare feet in my living room watching the snow fall and listening to the quiet and deafening roar of the city.

judgemental                                      

My, it has been a while. I've been toying with the idea of letting this space fade into oblivion. Life now is nothing if not quiet and uncomplicated; the deafening need to be here caused by the groundswell of New York is no longer and, without that, my need for catharsis is less pressing, absent, almost.

Or maybe it's just that I'm so deeply in between now that I don't even have my words yet. I was once a strident non-mommy blogger and I am unwilling, or unready, to enter into such an endeavor, despite my growing circumference. 

Or perhaps its that coming here creates a nostalgia of sorts that, after a while, grows tiresome. I miss New York a great deal and occasionally. I miss all the things that were slowly choking me -- the trash, the saturated humanity, the cruelty and the beauty -- although I do not think I will ever miss the screeching screaming loud loud loudness of it.

Or perhaps its that the most pressing part of my life right now is one that I am willfully, stubbornly trying not to make an enormous to do over. I am excited and terrified and mystified by the impending probability that I will shortly become a mother. I am in awe almost daily. Yet as I begin to tip toe into the outer reaches of motherhood, namely other mothers, I am horrified and frightened and flabbergasted. I don't feel like any of them, I don't really look like too many of them and I certainly don't sound like too many of them. I haven't chosen paint yet for the nursery and for the love of god and all things holy I do not, under any circumstances, want anything pink. I worry about how I will do this, bereft as I am of any kind of operating instructions. I watch other mothers and feel silently scornful, judgmental, so quick to think you're doing it wrong. As if I know. As if I had any concept.

I go snowshoeing about my backyard with my dog for hours. In the quiet of the packed powder it's hard to imagine how infinitely changed my life is about to become. As we trudge through the snow he steps on my shoe and I tell him back and go forward. He takes three steps back and swings wide to the side, bounding ahead of me three or four steps then turning towards me, waiting. I think to myself that I have such a good dog, and know that a great deal of that is because of me. I understand dogs, the way they think, how to affect good and bad behavior, how to be consistent and kind. How to reinforce, how to discipline. I have no idea about children. People love nothing more than to tell me that dogs and children very! very! different! As if I didn't know this. And yet I still encounter women all the time with unruly ill behaved dogs and screaming mean spirited children and it's hard, I'm sorry, to not make a connection. 

So I am currently trying to find where I connect and with whom. My family in New York is all nannies and baby nurses and I have to be honest when I say I still don't understand what the hell a baby nurse does for you that you can't just do yourself with a boob and your own mattress. I've looked for the natural parenting people around here and, while I share their views on wanting to at least try cloth diapering and home baby food making, I don't so much share their unironic Full Moon worshipping and placenta stewing. 

I miss California so much sometimes. I miss the kind of young surf mom in Northern California, walking around in jeans and flip flops, babies in slings and running strollers, alternately talking about the merits of possibly not vaccinating their children and waxing their vaginas.