looky, looky mommy…that lady’s gone shack-wacky!

this is what the shrill little kiddie voices in my head have started saying.  it worries me.  when even the most tender and inexperienced of your personal imaginary voices notice that you’re stark raving mad a little peculiar these days, perhaps you need to get out more.

i’ve become grumpy, impatient, like an old codger in a home.  if i had a meal tray, i’d rap on it with my spoon and pester the nurse about why my mashed potatoes are cold and where are my damn peas and didn’t i ask to go out for a smoke or wait, was that yesterday?  i can’t remember.  the world has closed down around me, and the minutiae loom, suddenly irritating.  i am a Prussian officer, demanding that Dave empty that dishwasher now and stop dawdling about it and why won’t Oscar lie still so i can change the sodden rag that his diaper has become and doesn’t he know i can’t chase after him and is that fucking dishwasher empty yet?  if i have to do it myself, i will, you know.

but i shouldn’t, not really, and there’s the rub.  those who can, do.  those who can’t, harp. or rail at the dislocation and incompetence and sense of burden that overwhelms them sometimes…caught between the semblance of normal life still tangible around the house and the shifted reality underneath, snagged at the limits of their own patience.  there is no stress release here, no casual encounter, no random accomplishment, no exercise, no sex, no nothing.  and it is the helplessness, i think, that is spreading what’s left of me thin and raw…the subconscious realization that as we close in on twenty weeks we cross into the Danger Zone and are cast, supplicant, on the mercy of luck and fortune.

it gets wearing, and wearying, this lack of agency.

i do have a doctor’s appointment this morning, ending the nearly four-week drought between official visits.  seeing as i’m watched by two teams in two separate provinces, it’s by far the longest i’m likely to go in this entire pregnancy.

i hope i get a lollipop while i’m there.