Update with a Side of Stretch Marks

I must have started and stopped four different posts this past month. Checking...

Yes, four. One about the first day of school, one about my father's second yartzeit, one about Turtle's birthday, and one about Coco-pop's. (Didn't even start one for Princess...)

They are lingering in draft form, and in draft form they will probably stay unless their molecules drift apart, because I lost steam halfway through and they came out forced--Like all, look at me! I am FUNNY! Oh, and look again! Now I am SAD!--and uninspired.

Why, you ask? Both of you who hung out through my sporadic writings this year?

Oh, and no, this is not going to be one of those horrible--oh, I know that I have not been writing please forgive me, because NOW I FOR SURE AM FOREVER AND EVERY FIVE TIMES A DAY IF NOT MORE posts--this is just me being ridiculously tired and doing this ridiculous thing in which I am having a houseful of guests while having a baby and doing the even more ridiculous thing of stressing about things that I cannot change.

You know when you have so much to do and you're sitting there, writing a blog entry and drinking coffee even though caffeine, sugar and milk are three things that hurt your stomach right now and here you are, putting all three sins in one cup for fifteen minutes of pleasure and five hours of pain (No? Juuuust kidding, I would never do that! That's not worth it at all!) and you're thinking, I-have-so-much-to-do-I-have-so-much-to-do and the muchness that you have to do keeps you glued to your chair thinking that you should definitely instead watch reruns of Dr. Who?

(No? Me neither.)

So here I am. This is me. Tired. Hugely pregnant. sHosting people. Dashing over writing deadlines with the speed of a train that is out of service.

So, shall go and do what I need to do. But first, shall give a one-paragraph shout-out to all four posts which are sitting there and getting covered in mold in draft form.

1. Happy happy first day of school! It is wondrous to hear my own thoughts again and a bit shameful as to how much I enjoy coloring in their homework sheets. And a bit painful to figure out all that Hebrew gibberish stuff. Just so you know? Non-immigrant parents? You are totally cheating.

2. Sad and lacking yartzeit, Abba, being six-thousand miles away from your grave. And six-thousand miles away from anyone who cares about things like that. I thought about you, and Outdoorsman even made a siyum. But it was all so hollow. I haven't even been able to cry. I feel like the tears are all stored up and they'll come out at the least opportune moment ever ever. I'll keep you posted.

3. Turtle is three! He has a haircut and thus we have discovered that he has the roundest head in the known cosmos. It is perfect. It is like a hairy apple. I must confess to biting it. Please don't take him away from me. You would bite it too, I know you would.

4. Coco-pop has been waiting for this day for so so long, and we're pushing it off a bit longer so that her cousins could be here for the celebration. Because yes, this week, I am also making a birthday party. Because timing is one thing that I am impeccable with. (Witness my four summer babies.)

That's all, folks! I am now going to not do the thing in which I am not doing the things I need to do. After all, coffee is finished, post is finished, and I have a while before I am doubled over in pain. Yay!

See y'all on the other side. Thanks for tuning in.

Olam Haba and Orange Juice

I had a scary dream.

I've spent the past two days not accepting that dream, as per Outdoorsman's instructions. We gave money to tzedaka. I said tehilim.

Still for someone not accepting a dream, I spend an awful lot of time thinking about it. And I realized how often I think about worst-case scenerios in general. Outdoorsman 15 minutes late? The most logical explanation involves two fire engines and a nuclear bomb. Coco-pop not up at her usual 6:00 AM? I run, heart pounding, to check her breathing. Dr. Google has diagnosed me with bubonic plague and scurvy. I have written a will, and of course, always wear clean underwear. Because, you know, if you are run over by a truck and the doctors see that your underwear wasn't clean, you could die of embarrassment.

My mind leads me places that I have no interest in visiting, much less settling in for a winter or two, and I must follow the train of thought, helpless, unable to press the bell and say, "Okay, Mind. This is my stop. Lemme off."

I am afraid of the dark. I am afraid of something unknown scaring me to death.

I read about some detective finally finding the true murderer, and I think, The person is dead. Gone forever. What's the difference?

And I wonder. What does this say about my emunah, my belief, in Hashem's plan? If I truly believed in Olam Haba, and I truly believed that everything happens for some ultimate reason, would I be so afraid? This much afraid? Reading about someone in the news and cry cry cry, thinking, she must have been so scared, how could a person survive, being so scared?

Outdoorsman says that, like everything else in our adult world, it's not so simple. He says that there are degrees of belief, levels of emunah. We need to work on them, sure. But it doesn't mean that I don't actually believe.

Which is nice, and a little more heartening than my black and white binoculars that I use to view myself and my faults.

Yesterday, Princess came across a picture of Outdoorsman's grandfather, who passed away when Outdoorsman was four years-old. "I never saw him,"Princess said, puzzled. Then her face cleared. "Oh. He must be in shamayim with Zaidy and Sabba and Hashem. Can I have some juice?"