WAL*MART

i entered the express lane with a handful of Fathers' Day cards and a large case of Dr. Pepper and a bottle of black nail polish; Max in his stroller and me. us against the world pumping gas and cruising wal-mart. i had a card for my uncle, my granddad and Max's uncles and granddad. checker says

"how many dads do you have anyway?"

"none actually."

"how old is you baby?"

"8 weeks."

"you lost the weight fast!"

"i have cancer. will you help me lift this Dr.Pepper?"

if i don't need you , you leave

even when i'm okay i'm not. if i feel a fraction of how i've ever felt before it only reminds me how painfully painfully small my life has become. if i consider that eventually everything will start to fill up the widescreen of dreaming, my breath catches. i am afraid. i can never ignore my health again. i can't trust my youth. i can't trust my body. when i get better i get to look for cancer every year. i am really really afraid.

and sometimes i feel better. and then things that are supposed to happen can. and then they can't. and this has to continue for the rest of the summer that hasn't started yet.

i am counting the days til Christmas because i was confident i'd be well by then. but i will always, always be afraid.

god hates crybabies

no no no no no no. it's really staggering what you may never know you are capable of. and very quietly and very slowly a wound becomes a scab a scab becomes a scar and there is nowhere you are going without that scar. i will never remember how hard this is. i'll cross my fingers until i forget.

taste the ambivalence

i wish sick days were more like ferris buellers day off and less like claire danes having scarlet fever in little women.

i wish love were more like true romance and less like high fidelity.

225 days until christmas.

Max is over 9 pounds now and still hungry.

stay hungry.

precious cargo

Max punched himself in the eye. he has a little cut just under his left eye. he looks real tough.

he gets real angry. it's pretty pitiful. when something has really offended him he cries out and frowns real hard. i've really never felt clumsier. he hates to put on clothes. he hates getting naked. he hates having his head touched. he hates cold baths. he hates hot baths. he barely allows perfect baths. he hates going to sleep. he hates waking up. he hates digesting food. he hates dirty diapers. he hates putting on clean diapers. after any of these activities he won't look at me. but he allows me to feed him. all the while stubbornly avoiding eye contact.

he never says thank you.

he does something better.

he smiles. he coos. he makes this perfect baby Chewbacca sound.

you're welcome Max. thank you.

it's real weird to me that ashlee simpson and nicole richie and courtney love are all mothers.

motherhood and cancer are two clubs that i don't quite fit into and not just because of the other.

but no one is lonely in a one man band.

say Nothing

i hate the weekend.

last weekend my sister and her roommate went camping outside cell phone territory. so i was certain roommate had gone into a blind rage with loaded firearms and totally murdered my best friend.

last night C.J.'s light was on but he, Pig Dog and the car were all AWOL. so of course i was certain at least 5 drunk driving, text messaging, makeup applying douchebags had had convened on one poor defenseless SUV and totally man/dog slaughtered my best friend.

if you're not at work and you don't text me back or answer i will be forced to assume you're dead.

the weekend before last both my little brothers didn't come home. little sis still hadn't moved in. and mom and C.J. had normal adult lives to lead. so i locked every gate to keep Shar Pei thieves away from Luther and crossed my fingers nothing Luther couldn't destroy came after me and Little Man. unfortunately some sort of acid flashback kicked in and i was alone in the house with my son who had become some sort of disarmingly adorable, somewhat unsettling Muppet. mommies must make sure that evening glass of wine and afternoon painkiller don't overlap so much....

this weekend i'm on house arrest with no visitors allowed. chemo ate all my white blood cells and now the common cold could make my head fall off or something. hadn't really been getting out much at all lately but knowing i can't has created a prison of my home which already shelters the prison of my body. now i'm all caught up on that coloring i've been meaning to get to. still have a few mixtapes to craft but making a 45 adapter out of a paperclip is not something even NASA could remedy. but all of this is not enough to occupy my multitasking waitress brain. not even when i throw in diapering, feeding and dressing up baby man. i really need my life away from Max to not be limited to altercations with DES and chemotherapy.

and now cable has failed me again. Extreme Home Makeover cry-fest bullshit. this rerun features a single dad trying to rebuild his hurricane attacked home when he goes to the doctor and gets NON-HODGKIN'S lymphoma.

for 3 sweaty ICU days it really looked like my friendly little non-lethal Hodgkin's lymphoma was actually the mega-deadly other lymphoma. whew.

this single dad ends up back in the hospital while Ty Pennington and his vanilla band of designers build some ridiculously wonderful home for his family and the doctors aren't sure he'll make it to the weekend to see it. like i have anything to whine about. i get to get better. i get to stay well. i get to live. and i get Max.




Heath Ledger is still dead. nothing can change that.

my Mom is my Dad

i had to do this on my own. alone together with you Max. i can't live in a house where i'd have to call someone else Dad. you can have a father but if i can't have a Dad neither can you.

i was born a mother and you were born a Phenomena.

I feel Good I feel Great I feel Wonderful

sapphire martinis and sitting still for more than 15 minutes (and sitting up for more than 15 minutes). no baby weight or stretch marks but now i'm structurally different internally if not to the naked eye. if my bones got dug up they would identify me as mother and not maiden. and of course my soul has been uprooted entirely. and my whole hormonal system has basically shit it's pants and would like to know when things are getting back to normal. and my emotional landscape is soggy mostly.

my little man seems like a little bully. it's not fair how much stronger he is. too sensitive i think he wonders why i'm such a cry baby. everything's fine Mom. duh.