Second Attempt

Today, I'm back for only the second time to this blog.

Blogging is new to me, but I think what I will do today is use it as a substitute for my journal, and just indulge in my usual stream of consciousness and see what happens.

It is a dreary ,overcast, dull and demoralizing Saturday morning here in Chicago. I look across the park at the Lake and all I see is the sheen of wet walkways and the dullness of waterlogged grass and a Lake that is almost invisible, merged into the overcast sky - both are a grey-blue morphing into a washed out off -white, the only difference being in texture (the water is a smooth surface with gradations of the colors and perhaps an undercolor of a slight green; the sky is a slowly moving mound of puffy cloud with a fat white underbelly under a lurking grey thickness that threatens still more dismal rain. Even though it was chilly yesterday, from up here there was nevertheless a mood- lightening sky of bright blue and the glare of a bright (though, in retrospect, perhaps not so warm) sun.

My arms still itch from the drying of my slight burn, acquired just this last Monday as I floated over Tarpon Bay in southwest Florida, under a hot sun in a clear blue sky. The contrast between that recent memory and my view today is painful.

I remind myself of all I have to do today - including the gathering and entering of all 2007 income and expenses from my law practice so that I can do a tentative return and file an extension; drafting a rider to that damn set of construction loan documents, since I promised the bank I would have it to them Monday a.m.; drafting a commercial lease; reviewing a file so I can write a difficult but hopefully persuasive letter to the real estate arm of a manufacturer who is the franchisor of a dealer client, persuading them that they need to pay back some monies they have withheld from rentals; etc. etc. all things I am good at but have come to hate the necessity of doing, and will probably from economic necessity need to continue doing forever.

I also really need to do more straightening - to empty the last of the book boxes from my move into this apartment a year ago (yes, a year ago); to drag a giant basket of laundry upstairs (or load it into canvas bags and call the laundry service for a pick-up) ; to do the dishes from yesterday which are still floating in a cruddy brown layer of liquid in my kitchen sink. And I need to go through the rest of the junk mail (just to make sure it is really all just that - junk)that piled up while I was in Florida.

And perhaps I will go on the treadmill and lift some weights upstairs. Or I can open the box that I know contains my new dvds with work outs in the form of dance. I am still a good dancer.

As you can see, I always start the weekend with an optimistic hope of achieving major accomplishments. What you don't know - and I need to tell you before you read on - is that I seldom accomplish any of the things I promise myself I will do Saturday morning - but end up late Sunday lying on the couch with my kitty and the tv clicker in my paw telling myself I will set the alarm for 4:00 a.m. and then, finally, get things done (and I usually DO set that early alarm and wake up and get going).

What I really would love to do is grow the discipline to get back into running. I think I can still run/jog a mile or so, but I remember vividly the joy of moving with strength and vigor for 6 miles down the lakefront or over the undulations of country roads - that feeling that I had - well into my fifties - of health and power! If only it weren't so dark and wet and cold outside, perhaps I could talk myself into going out today. There was a time when weather was a non issue. All I would do was put on an extra layer of clothes that I could peel off.

And then there is my writing. The last short story I finished was several years ago - and in retrospect I think it was quite good. The last travel article I wrote was several months ago. When I sit down at the computer to write, and actually get into it, I find myself breathing more slowly, my concentration intensifies, my mood lifts, and I almost float over my desk and lose myself. Time just moves on without my awareness of how much has passed.

I've been too busy trying to climb up the Sysyphus hill of all the shit I have to accomplish just to catch up with work, and taxes, and housekeeping, etc. to sit down and write.

Again - lack of discipline.

And then, underlying all of this, is the sadness I still feel as I read my daughter's daily blog and remember her two twins who , just 2 1/2 weeks ago, were born at 23 weeks gestation, each just a bit over 1 pound, and could not survive. After hormones, and hope, and IVF, and worry, and ultrasounds, and scares, and finally enough hopeful certainty to schedule a baby shower and paint the guest room a light green and order white baby furniture, and buy an SUV that could fit two baby seats - then one night, the tightening and pain in her uterus, the race to the hospital, mybullying of a cab driver so I too could be there in less than five minutes, the doctor's disclosure that she was fully dilated and there was no way to stop the labor, the full blown labor with breathing and pushing, and giving birth to a little girl who died before she came out, and a little boy who kicked and moved a bit, took some breaths and made some sounds, and then lay in his little blue knit cap , wrapped in a blanket, on a warming table next to his dead sister while they periodically checked his heart with a stethoscope and almost three hours later finally announced quietly that he too was gone.

Then, the grief - the grief that she is still feeling despite well meaning stupid people trying to tell her to get over it. How can you just get over something like that? They didn't come out of me, but I, too, cannot just "get over it". It took me a week to finally take all of the little and big dolls, the stuffed storks (one in blue and one in pink) and the Pooh table cloth, streamers, plates, cups and centerpiece, the two peas in a pod decorations, the games, and everythig else I had gathered for the baby shower, and stuff them into two bags and bring them up to my storage room. She WILL be pregnant again, and most of this stuff will be used. Of that I am certain.

But right now, I cannot get over the absolute unfairness of it all. One or two more weeks, and they could have survived!

She is probably writing her blog for today as I do this. Yesterday, she went to the hospital to see the social worker/grief counsellor, and pick up the black and white glossy photos of her dead babies - her "doodles" she called/calls them (there was a girl doodle, "doodle A", and a boy doodle , "doodle B"), while the lady tossed platitudes her way, all about depression. Why does everybody talk to her about depression, and warn her about depression, and tell her how to get over depression? As she keeps telling them, she is not clinically depressed - she is grieving over a very real and horrible thing that happened to her - and she needs to do just that - not take some pill so that it will dissipate.

And as I list all of these things in my head, sitting here still in my underwear, that awful sky in front of me, I wistfully and with longing remember how , just Monday, I had put all of that away, deep under my consciousness as I leaned back with a half smile, feeling the cool breeze against my face, and kayaking through the mangrove byways or across the center of the Bay. At one point, I sat unmoving and silent, watching and listening as two large brown pelicans flew just above the water until, with a vigorous splash, tail upended, each one, in turn, broke the surface to grab a fish - then floated on the surface as its long, thick beak and soft throat bulged and moved while it ate.

Now, here I am, back four days, and back into my life.

And facing another weekend, another Saturday morning, with hope that I can have the discipline to do something to make this weekend memorable only in that I will have taken a shovel and bagged and trashed a meaningful amount of the mound of shit I need to do.

That's it.

Only my second blog entry. Won't go back and edit. Just press a "publish post" button. I can always change it later. Need to go read my baby's blog (if she has entered it yet), and maybe exercise.....................................(tv lady just said "rain that may changeto snow".............shit!)

Starting Out

My daughter has been blogging for several years, and I have often thought of doing it as well, but for some reason I finally chose this evening to jump in. This evening - when I am so busy . I need to write a long e mail commenting on a 100 foot pile of construction loan documents, and finish several other deadly dull legal tasks, all of which I need to wind up in the next 4 hours, so that I have time to pack my suitcase and straighten up my cluttered apartment just enough to enable me to walk back in next Tuesday without gagging, and then head to the airport and a four day weekend in Florida. I need four days of just taking long walks and sitting on the sand watching waves and a shimmering blue sky and tiny shore birds making little footprints in the damp along the shore, and forgetting about legal work, a cluttered apartment, a cluttered and repetitive daily life, a writing career that jolts along then stalls and then sometimes finds enough gas to actually move smoothly for a short time - a very short time - and all of those things that led me to decide to run away, at least for four days. So, I'm also starting this blog. I'll actually commence writing something that makes sense perhaps tomorrow. For now, just a start is at least progress of sorts.