autumn leaves

the falling leaves drift past my window
the autumn leaves of red and gold
i see your lips, the summer kisses
the sun-burned hands I used to hold






since you went away the days grow long
and soon I'll hear old winter's song
but I miss you most of all my darling
when autumn leaves start to fall



C’est une chanson, qui nous ressemble
Toi tu m’aimais et je t'aimais
Nous vivions tous, les deux ensemble
Toi que m’aimais moi qui t'aimais









Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s’aiment
Tout doucement sans faire de bruit
Et la mer efface sur le sable les pas des amants désunis




photos by T.

seven months

ok, so it's been a minute since i've posted. i've been meaning to put out a blog during month 6th but between one thing and another (mostly work and the decompressing afterwards) i havent gotten around to it.

around 24 weeks, i became visibly pregnant. not the "is she, isn't she, maybe i shouldn't assume, could be an all-you-can-eat buffet meal" kind of pregnant, but the "whoa nelly, where-the-heck-did-that-come-from?" kind of pregnant. no complaints. i've actually been enjoying it. in spite of the anti-reproduction/population control misanthropes out there, there's a great deal of social benefit to being visibly pregnant. i get doors opened for me; i've gone to the head of bathroom lines; i don't have to carry anything; i get good seating, a lot of smiles, eye contact, compliments. in other words, courtesy & consideration. behavior that is generally missing in daily social interactions at large.

now i do get the "you're so big" comments from folks i haven't seen in a while and even from folks i see everyday. curiously enough, though i have my own vanities & hang ups, that comment doesn't bother me. mainly because i am big and i am just as amazed as they are. its absolutely marvellous. there is a little Being inside of me growing day-by-day. i can feel lekkle paws testing the boundaries of his/her known world, responding to my voice, to T's voice, to our hands, to whatever i consume, to life itself. in a misogynistic culture where a woman's body is gauged by comparison to a man's body and found lacking, how can i be anything but pleased at the innate capability of my body to nurture this spark of life and love?

for whatever reason, whatever vibe i put out into the world, i haven't gotten the random strangers (or even friends) touching my belly. and the folks that have touched my belly have been in a familiar (as in they feel like family), non-threatening way. and baby usually gives them an exhibition of his/her shyness/kicking power.

i have to cut this post short because i worked 11 days straight on work deadlines and yesterday we had a full day at the farmer's market, walked halfway around Lake Merritt, had our prenatal appointment, and then off to the city to see The Color Purple at the Orpheum with free tickets that our neighbors Pablo & Suzette gave us since they weren't able to attend themselves. (like the movie & novel, it was amazingly good, powerful, moving, emotional without being sentimental, cliche or trite, and characters with depth and nuance (even the "mister" character). i loved the movie as a kid and i cried through the whole musical. it was even better than the movie... and it was nice to have a real date rather than our usual hot fri/saturday Tarzhay date. inevitably on date night, we find ourselves at Target.)

anyways, after so much activity & work (plus T's been painting the bedroom so there's been all that commotion & related chores), and the nutmeg OD, over the last week, i've been increasingly been having more & more braxton-hicks contractions so i'm kinda on bedrest now. midwife's orders. they're not painful, just uterus toning rock hard to prepare for labor & birth. yesterday mornin, i had 6 braxtons before getting out of bed at 10am and that's not counting the ones i had in my sleep. normally, you have less than six a day at this stage. in the short amount of time after we got off the Fruitvale BART and walked the 30 yards to the car near midnight, i had 4 braxtons back-to-back each one progressively slowing me down. so i'm mostly obeying. no early labor for us. luckily i was planning on taking comptime on monday (and some on tuesday) anyways so i kept my schedule clear of meetings. and what with the holidays and all, i'm mostly working 3-4 day weeks until i go on maternity leave on February 1st. so that's better, more sane.

good news, we're back on track with baby growth. measuring exactly 28 weeks as i should.* a month ago we had a blip where i was measuring 26 weeks when i should have been 24. so, this means (and we already knew intuitively and just by daily palpation), no twins. sigh. slightly disappointed, though relieved that i can have a homebirth after all. and this also means baby is not growing too fast.

ooh. here comes another braxton. i'm out.

oh one last thing, try the dark chocolate sea salt caramels at Trader Joes. i don't normally like caramel because of its cloying sweetness, but they are divine!

*midwife trick of the trade is that your uterus grows 1 cm for every week past 20 weeks so you measure from the pubic bone to the fundus and provided that you & baby are growing normally, it matches with your dates one-to-one exactly! 28 weeks = 28 centimeters. yet another reason why the inches/feet system makes no rational sense.

some get a kick from cocaine...

i'm sure that if I took even one sniff
that would bore me terrific'ly too
yet I get a kick out of you.
-Cole Porter

i ate a croissant bun. it was a bad idea.

first because i cant tolerate wheat so much; its about on par with lactose-intolerance. and this is my third day of indulging in wheat pastries so there is a build up factor. (sorry T. we can leave the windows open tonight).

and second, because it was loaded with nutmeg.

nutmeg. a seemingly innocuous cupboard spice from exotic southeast asia & the pacific islands. one of the key products of the spice trade and in the motivation to discover a new route to India.
nutmeg has hallucinogenic properties. malcolm X used to smoke it back in the days when he was a lumpen nicknamed "Detroit Red" doin' time and lacked access to the real stuff. nutmeg is considered a uterine stimulant; in large enough quantity, an abortifacient/emmenagogue along with cinnamon and other seemingly harmless spices and is to be avoided in large doses during a pregnancy.

perhaps its the application of liquid heat that releases the essential oil, but even small quantities of nutmeg sprinkled on my latte have been know to get me a little.... stimulated above & beyond the caffeine. so i generally avoid the liberal use of nutmeg by itself.

i ate most of the bun before the realization & aftereffects set in. in addition to feeling a little light-headed, a little high, and cottonmouth/very parched, the baby is simultaneously kicking & punching me really hard right now, a little harder than his/her usual. i've just had a quart of water to try & flush it out. and now, all's quiet on the western front... though my head is still buzzin'.

just goes to show, food is medicinal. in modern day life, we are so divorced from the natural world and that understanding... its pathetic that it takes pharmeceutical corporate testing to re-discover that for us.