I've returned to work now, part time at present. I needed to go back, because I was losing the social skills... I enjoy working, even though it isn't prestigious or even vaguely important. Hey, the world just isn't going to end or even be much affected by a shortage of deep-fried deli food and ready-to-eat-sandwiches. I like the structure and routine, though, I genuinely do. Be nice if they gave me a raise- I haven't had one since I told them I was pregnant.

Ah yes, the baby. Charlie's the last one I'll have, and I don't think I've tried so hard to do everything right since my firstborn. It's like, since he's my very last chance, the very last time I'll hold my own soft, fuzzy headed little guy...I want to make the most of it. I want to nurse him as long as I can, upset him only when really necessary, play him classical music, read books to him, and just generally mess him up as little as possible.

Obviously this conflicts with working. So far, Tim and I have been staggering our schedules so he's always with one of us. This week, he's going to go to daycare for the first time for (gasp!!) about four hours. I've taken care to choose a place where they won't just let him cry, where he'll be held most of the time (I've watched her hold other babies- most places don't do that), and his older siblings go there, too. But I still feel guilty. :-(

When I was a kid, I took it for granted that all women had babies and all women stayed home with their kids, to take care of them. Women who didn't have kids were strange or must hate kids.
As a teen, I held the very arrogant opinion that all women should have children, that birth control was wrong, and not only should the woman stay home with them, but she should home birth, home school, feed the kids only natural home-grown food, and so on.
As a young woman, reality broadsided me, hard. I realized that with many men, if you don't bring in money, you have no status or respect. I felt like livestock, just breeding and feeding.
Now I'm trying to find a balance....and it isn't easy.

I think I've discovered something. A person is not comprised of or defined by their accomplisments or by what they say or how they seem...not really. It can seem that way though, and that's why we pass over a lot of gems without even realizing it. It isn't their popularity or who they're friends with or any of that.

The real essence of a person is their dreams...especially the ones that haven't materialized. In the detritus of broken dreams sparkles their highest goals, their ideals, their values, what they want most, what they desire most to give to the world. It tells more about who they really are than anything you could see from the outside. It is more than good intentions, a dream is the most powerful, potent part of you. Without dreams, what are we? Automatons, androids, moving bodies with no depth or soul. It's the most vulnerable, intimate part of us. I always feel a sort of fear whenever I speak out loud of my hopes and reams, as if by birthing them into the outside world via speech, they'll be endangered or jinxed somehow. I feel this way even if I'm only talking to the goats. It's that private, that personal.

I guess that's why, when I want to be close to a man, when I'm seeking to reconnect or to fall back in love with him to to find some appeal or questioning the future of the relationship, I ask him about his dreams or goals. What does he want? What does he see when he looks into the future? What is the goal? If the answer is absent or displeasing (for example, the Vietnam vet whose goal was to build and live in a house made out of sandbags) my interest wanes.

This isn't to say that pipedreams are enough; they aren't. There should be some effort to realize at least some of it (I don't think it's really possible for us to attain the entirety of it, or they'd cease to be appealing). But the dreams contain the seed of a person's character.

And broken or unrealized dreams make a person vulnerable, and therefore lovable (noone ever fell in love with the suit of armor). Don't be ashamed because it didn't work out or because you had to choose between two things andleave one behind, or even that you never started to try. The fact that it crossed your mind *is* worth something.

I don't know how to classify this or define it. What do you call it when friends you've had for years turn cold and congealed at the very sight of you for no good reason? I haven't wronged them; in fact, I see them only infrequently, and one of them I hadn't seen for months until just a few days ago.

I think it's my haircut.

The plan was to get it buzzed right down to my scalp with just enough length left to show that I'm not bald. That's what I wanted. But when my SO heard of my impending haircut, he begged me not to cut it too short. So instead, I had her use that awful, practically unbearable razor-comb (the sensation and sound of it drives me nuts!) over the top and to leave it about an inch long. The sides and backs got clippered short, none of it as short as my original plan. He still freaked when I came home...

Since the haircut, several people have called me "dude", "sir", or have used other indications that they are not positive of my gender but they think I'm male. I suppose this should upset me, but instead I find it amusing. A lot of other people, especially women, squint their eyes and look at me with a very unpleasant expression...hate? suspicion? loathing? It's clear that they think I'm a dike. This amuses me, too; except, now I have just the faintest taste of what life must be like for people who actually are gay. I knew our area had a lot of homophobes- I just didn't know how many there were. Oh well. I don't need them anyway.

But it really stings to be treated that way by people that you like and have been friends with for years. I have to keep revising the files in my mind, transferring people that I thought were my friends into the "Aquaintances- you goofed, they weren't friends after all" file.

Indigo Blue Raw Jagged Edges. At first it's nauseating olive green and screaming orange, alternating with apathy grey and suicidal black. The green is wavy and seasick. Orange is spiky. Grey is like an foggily endless plateau. The black is like a hole waiting for me, like a gaping mouth ready to swallow me up if I stumble into it, reeling like a drunk. Bursts of hope flare hot pink and then subside into the harsh and wan yellow glare of reality.

When those subside comes the indigo and darkness black. The bleakness grey stays. Other colors mean nothing.

After a time, a long time, in fact- they merge and coalesce and the view clears. It hovers inside like a small but omnipresent cloud.