kerouac says

and because i'm feeling overwhelmed. a lot suddenly became due in the next week, and when i think about it, i just get colder and colder. i have some important writing to do, and i wangled an invite to some open w00ster group rehearsals (i know, i should be so excited), and i have a class and two discussion sections and 25 pages of dissertation to turn in by wednesday and a draft of a fellowship application and no car and am giving an hour long lecture on the restoration on friday. a couple of these things just showed up, which doesn't excuse not being further along with the others. when i have this baby on the outside, things will be harder, which doesn't seem to bode well for the not-so-greatness with which i'm handling things so far.

i went back and re-read a bunch of what tina wrote when she was pregnant. there was this one that reminded me very much of a feeling we had during the first ultrasound, when the little fishbean flipped itself right off-camera and the monkey and i made shocked faces at each other. he moves. and i thought: that is an entire other person in there, especially one who is not me. maybe i wrote about this. but tina's post reminded me of it again--and then i noticed that i had made a comment, back then, about how i would file this one away for later re-reading. mission accomplished.

what contributes to the overwhelmed is the sheer enormity of how much i do not know is going on. i feel like i don't know anything. i'm sure this is both true and usual--i mean, we don't know much, any time about any thing, and in the middle of this babymaking mystery is maybe an even more ignorant time than most. but it leaves me cold, and incapable, and like i just want to sit in a chair for a while.

which i might have time to do later, although i doubt that, but not tonight. these little pockets of frozen come upon me where i don't have much to say to anyone, and i feel like i'm just walking around with my eyes really wide. it happened a bit early on, too, in the first months. i feel a little vacuum-packed. a little freeze-dried.

i can't even think of a song to sing to the baby. i wanted to do this, i wanted to make a practice of singing to him, and i can't think of a song that is right. somehow, this is the symbolic lack that is speaking for all the others this week: i can't even sing to my proto-baby. in a world where i'm being given almost everything, i am sitting in an ice-pool with big, stupid eyes and can't really build anything. i guess i'm waiting until he comes out and needs so much that there's no time for this weird ice-fishing or anything else--my focus will be on immediate needs only, which will be, i think, a relief (no dissertation), a trial (no naps or clean clothes), and a comeuppance (no time left to organize my life, which i imagine is like fibber mcgee's closet. a tennis racket is wedged in the door. a cat is in there. possibly also a monster. sleeping bags are being eaten by moths. roller skates will fall from a shelf and hit me in the head if i approach).

i can say this and not worry so much about melodrama because i know it's the preg and not the crazy, but: i feel like i've been shaking for two days. i've never had those girly hormone problems; i don't know from PMS. this is my first time. i'm weeping and i'm not even really sad, just shaky and scared of the closet. it's preferable to the crazy, no question, but not particularly nice--it's weird and cold-making and very inconvenient.

which is all just to say that it's a daunted day. i have been daunted. i will do my meditation and i will have some warm milk and i will probably go to bed. it will undoubtedly be okay.