Present and accounted for

Where on earth did that time go?

My due date has been and gone since we last spoke, so that may go some way to explain the intermittency of my posting.

Hell, that was a bad weekend. March 5 fell on a Saturday and it was horrific, and not only for the trip to a shopping centre.

Ha. I don’t know what we had to buy there, looking back now, but we had arranged my relatives to take Jay from lunchtime Saturday until Sunday morning...just because of the day it was.

So, whenever we manage to extricate ourselves from toddler-ville, thoughts automatically turn to what toddler-free activities we need to get accomplished. Somehow in the course of a busy life, carefree whimsical things of such wicked abandon like sleeping in, watching what we want on TV, reading entire book chapters or a newspaper uninterrupted, going out for dinner and not wolfing down our meal because we are already 45 minutes past young master’s bedtime ... disappear from our thought possibilities. Such naughty spontanaeity will never do. In fact, there, I have spelled the word incorrectly and will not check it to prove my very sad point. You know that will kill me, but I am as steadfast in my martyrdom as I am in my, er, point-making. Instead, we are ever-practical in the knowledge we have but a few precious hours to get absolutely the highest priority things done first. And somehow that always ends up being a trip to a shopping centre, where we can browse (impossible concept with a toddler) and inevitably purchase some book or toy or shoes or clothes for the young master who should be the furthest thing from our minds, but is often the opposite...cause we are missing him so much, to be honest.

Do those swords really need two edges and how come the grass on my side can't be verdantly Photoshopped?

Shopping centre errands are a nightmare at the best of times (although not sure when they are), but with a toddler, you are essentially saying to the world “kill me, kill me now – and play me the Muzak version of Ebony and Ivory as I lay on the too-shiny tiles being slowly trampled by the bargain hunters, but can you get me a cake donut from Donut King first and oh look Best & Less actually have an item of clothing that is A) more expensive than $5.99 and B) vaguely acceptable in public and oh look another stroller to dodge and oh look there’s a posse, not a family, but a bogan posse with two trolleys, three strollers, a bad attitude and 73 chicken nuggets between their 10 kids”

I guess I digress, yes?

We got home from shopping, too buggered to see a movie (another impossible toddler-inclusive activity), so went home to consume some of the stash leftover still from T's 40th: a nice bottle of champers and about 18 million spring rolls, samosas etc

Party food. But no party.

To tell the truth, that entire week had been a bloody shocker. Suddenly I was snapping at people, my fuse was shorter than it had been in a while and I was downright exhausted, often going to bed and going to sleep sooner than our three year old.

Saturday it all hit. When night fell, I felt more able to descend into tears and sobs, as if I could hide in the dark somehow...just like I had been in the thick of the worst of it last September.

It ached, it hurt my head, it made me thirsty and so so tired. I felt black and heavy. One part of me felt as if I was hovering above myself, looking on with T, worried. The other part just felt lost, really.

But after a little while, I took a few deep breaths and acknowledged that while I felt September...it was a new feeling, one I hadn't felt in months.

Progress, I had made some. I had gotten a bit better, or better enough to realise when I had momentarily lost sight of the very same stars I had somehow managed to see quite clearly in recent months.

I was driving to collect J from day care this week. Thinking I should update my blog. And this random thought popped into my head: we were grieving for the idea of a baby more so than the actual baby. And the in-between-ness of it all made it all the more difficult and messy.

That sounds quite wrong and callous now that I have written it down. But I was honestly struck by that...because I have so struggled with how to grieve properly for something I didn't see or touch or smell...someone who had only engaged us on an almost ethereal, dreamy level. Yes of course there was desire to meet him, expectation about him, excitement at the thought of what magnificent things he might bring to our family. But the connection was imaginary, while the loss of that connection was so intensely real.

It doesn't mean the grief is any less or more, it is most certainly there, let me tell you. But looking back, I feel it is on a strange, other level...like in a different time zone.
Hmm, hard to articulate...but gee, I see I've again given it a good crack here!

Got to go do some work. Love to you all.