28 December 2004

Today is my baby's due date. It seems she has no inclination to be born yet, though. It seems she'd much prefer to kick my ribs. All week, every time I go out, everybody's been staring at me and asking when I'm due. And I've been saying, "four days," "two days," "tomorrow..." And of course, they look shocked and delighted and ask me what I'm doing out and about and walking around. As much as I dislike the question about my due date, I DESPISE the question about why I'm out of bed. This question most frequently comes from the same kind of people who tell me I shouldn't be carrying heavy milk cartons. Okay, fine, I won't carry heavy milk cartons. And then I won't drink milk.

The thing is, if I don't leave the house, I don't buy groceries. If I don't go out, I don't get to the bank to make sure we have money for laundry. If I sit on my ass all day, I don't eat and my clothes are dirty and my household begins to fall apart.

One day, shortly after my ex and I had broken up, he woke me up at three in the morning yelling at me to get out of his parents' house and go move in with Neil or something. "You love him, huh?" he yelled. "Well then, have HIM take care of you."

But I didn't need anybody to take care of me. It offends me greatly when people tell me I need help with daily activities, or that somebody ought to be taking better care of me. I can shop, I can sit in a restaurant, I can put my fucking shoes on, I can ride a bus... ALL by myself. Granted, it's not EASY to do the shoe thing, but I'm not the sort of pathetic creature people seem to think I am.

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I'm in a shitty mood at the moment.

Last night, I brought a roll of film to the grocery store, and when I picked it up today, I discovered that a number of the photos had pictures of my ex in them. I feel bombarded by reminders of him. Unwelcome reminders. Extremely unwelcome reminders.

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Just before I went off to school in New Mexico, my mom gave me a thick blanket made of squares of denim. She'd pieced it together using parts from old pairs of my jeans. Some of the jeans I remembered from when I was eight or nine. All of these sewn together. IT was a very warm blanket. When the Santa Fe wind blew out of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, I curled up underneath that blanket, and it made me feel a little bit warmer.

I don't have that blanket anymore.

On my eighteenth birthday, my mom gave me a ring with a star sapphire in it. She'd chosen the setting herself -- white gold -- and it fit my ring finger perfectly. Her uncle had given her a pair of star sapphire earrings when she'd turned eighteen, and she'd had this one set for me in a ring. She told me to give it to my daughter when SHE turned eighteen.

I don't have that ring anymore.

Every time my student loan check came in, I set aside enough to pay my ex's probation officer, buy him half a dozen useless pieces of crap, and enough for a few packs of cigarettes. And then I'd splurge and buy a few books on Amazon.com. I always bought the used ones. I got really into Margaret Atwood. And I really liked Barbara Kingsolver, too, although not as much. I put them on my bookshelves, next to the ones I'd shipped out to myself when I moved to Washington: my dad's old red dictionary, my favorite books from the College of Santa Fe (including a heavily annotated copy of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" -- beaten, but well-loved...), a couple of Stephen King books (a first edition of "Carrie"!), and a few blank books...

I no longer have any of those books anymore -- not the old, well-loved ones, nor the Amazon ones. Nor do I have the bookshelves, which I bought.

I had a shoebox -- a large shoebox from a pair of Doc Msrtens I had -- full of letters from penpals and friends. I don't have those letters anymore, nor do I have the addresses of most of the individuals who sent me the letters.

My grandparents bought me the Doc Martens that had come in the box. They were a pair of brown Mary Janes. At first, they were a little tight, and then the leather sort of expanded and they were a little loose. I wore them until the straps broke, and then I kept wearing them anyway. They were very cute. They were a birthday present -- the shoes I'd been wanting for a long, long time...

I don't have those shoes anymore.

When I moved into my own apartment in Olympia, I bought my own plates at Goodwill. They were white china with silver edging, and they said Made in Poland on the bottoms. They were absolutely gorgeous. I spent a good long while collecting glasses, too.

All of that is gone now.

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