week 29.5.

the dreams have started. i read about them.  but i figured that they would be like monsters or demons or some fiery creatures from hell.

nope, they're worse. they're me, doing things i would never do but so realistically that i wake up wondering if i'm really that person.  did i really break up with my husband? did i really do something i would never do? did i really not feel badly about it?

worse, possibly, at least in terms of the waking up wondering if it is real, is the fact that at the end of each of them, i am completely aware that something is wrong and something in my brain enters the dream and forces me to either wake up (i can do that with nightmares, eventually) or to say something that seems completely like me. 

that's less disturbing, i'll admit, because i'm turning it around, but because the last few moments of the dream are so LIKE me, it makes me have to wonder if it was a dream at all.  if i would do those things.

all of this makes me not want to sleep. the dreams are worse in the morning, when i'm trying to make up the sleep i'm not getting at night.  i'm wondering if i should just throw in the towel--just get what i can get at night and then move on.  maybe afternoons will be better. i'm not sure.

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musicboy has so much to do.  i can't help, which is frustrating, other than doing things like making lunches and dinners and doing housework and trying to keep the burden off of him. i also try to sit by him, late as it gets, until he gets his papers/assignments/frustrating long and ridiculous work done.  by that time, though, my brain is fried. i could be working myself, but i don't know that i would really be able to. maybe i will try next time, but last night, all i could really do was sit and watch tv on mute, with the caption on. 

(often, things are almost better just with the caption on.)

i wish there was more that i could do.

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apparently, i'm a bit behind the curve, but i can't lay flat on my back anymore. it literally hurts, which i think is fairly fabulous at the same time as being terribly sad. but at least it's motivating.

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as i was laying in bed last night, tired but not particularly able to fall asleep, i think i had an epiphany: my mental outlook is directly connected to the time that i spend taking care of myself. i don't mean that in a frivolous pedicure way, but in a "did i take a shower today? did i put something on that makes me feel like i'm wearing real clothes? did i blowdry my hair or is it still wet and plastered to my head" kind of way. 

i hope i remember that in two months.  i think it will be important.

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i am large.  i'm pretty sure i grew over the past few days.  sometimes i don't understand how there could be more growth to come, and yet...i know there is.  i find the human body an incalculably amazing thing.  for all of the times that i have really railed against my body for not being or doing what i want it to do, i can be nothing except completely in awe of it now.

it's like it is doing what it was always meant to do. i don't say that from an anti-feminist place--i'm not saying every woman should have children or that's the sum total of her existence--but there's something so remarkable about watching the body work to do something so amazing and knowing that i have very little, if anything, to do with that process. i am but the host.  i try to fuel my body with decent things, but other than that? it's doing it's thing without me.  to me, that is extraordinary.

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37 weeks and full term seems so far away, but i know that it's not.  i can't believe we're in the last full week of january.  then there's 4 weeks of february and 5 weeks of march and then it's babytime.  it's not really that long.  but it just seems long right now.  i don't try to understand how that works, but somehow it does.