Oct

3

Dreaming of squash, O Canada

October 3, 2007

Here are some things I’d like to be cooking in my new kitchen right now: molasses cookies, Swistle’s Chocolate Mint Brownies, creamy butternut squash soup, chicken noodle soup, apple pie, cranberry-sausage stuffing. It’s fall, dammit, and the colder weather and scarlet-tipped leaves demand that a certain amount of comfort food be produced on a daily—if not hourly—basis.

Too bad the contractors still need to do the flooring, finish painting, install all the appliances and lighting, and oh, I don’t know, GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR HOUSE.

Not that I’m growing impatient or anything.

It’s just that nothing short of a catastrophic natural disaster should be the blocker on a critical path between a pregnant woman and a freshly baked pan of brownies, you know? Also, I’m veering dangerously into nesting territory, and not only can I not cook food (and provide sustenance for my family! Um, in the form of baked goods I shovel into my own mouth), I can’t set up Riley’s new bedroom or move him into his (gulp) big-kid’s bed or do any preparations for this baby that’s apparently going to show up in a few months, regardless of whether we’re still living in plaster dust or not.

In happier news, our Tofino vacation is next week. I feel like I’ve been looking forward to it for so long, and now it’s finally almost here. I hadn’t quite realized what a long trip it will be to get there (we have a few travel choices to consider: take a ferry to Victoria [from Port Angeles or Anacortes] and drive from there, or drive from Seattle to Vancouver, take a ferry to Nanaimo, and continue driving—either option will be around 8-9 hours long), but who cares, we’re leaving the kid at home with the grandparents! Driving without a toddler sounds like an exotic and lovely experience, really. You mean I can look out the window instead of craning my neck around in order to hand various items to a loud and demanding 3-ft-tall dictator? I can eat a snack without sharing with someone who takes a bite and spits it back out, saying “NO LIKE IT”? I can close my eyes for five seconds without a small boy yelling “WAKE UP MOMMY! WAKE UUUUUP”? Bliss.

Our choice of Tofino is thanks to a suggestion from my smart and lovely friend, who also happens to be one of my all-time favorite web writers, who also happens to be up and running again after a long blogging haitus. You should bookmark her site right now, because she is wonderful.

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Oct

1

Banished

October 1, 2007

At some point I realized that I go days on end without thinking about alcohol at all. I mean, the subject just doesn’t cross my mind, it’s not on my radar, if I had a personal tag cloud representing the contents of my brain “Drinking” would be one of the itty-bitty words faded into the background while things like “Maternity Waistbands” and “The Facial Expressions of Michael C. Hall” would be in the forefront.

I remember how drinking used to consume me, how I’d spend my entire day obsessing about it, from the moment I woke up and started battling the hours-long hangover that gripped me every single morning. Every minute that led up to the first swallow was nothing more than an impatient foot-tap. I remember feeling trapped on a painfully stupid hamster wheel: wake up, hate self, drink, repeat.

It was so hard, in those first months, to deal with the fact that I had to stop, and that I had to stop not just for a few weeks or months but I had to stop forever, I could never have a drink again. My head filled with a thousand images of things I couldn’t do: toast with champagne, order port with dessert, have a cold beer on a hot summer day (funny how none of these images included any disgusting realities like drinking cheap vodka straight from the bottle and holding my nose so I could swallow it without gagging).

I couldn’t have guessed at how unbelievably freeing it would be. How a thousand and one burdens would be lifted. I didn’t know what it would be like to live with clarity, without the endless cycle, the endless drown. I felt like it was going to be impossible to make it through without the crutch I had grown to depend on, the stick I used to beat myself bloody before going back for more, day after day.

I wish I could go back and tell myself: hang in there, because it is worth it. God, it is so worth it. But I guess it doesn’t matter, I made it here anyway. Here in this fan-fucking-tastic place where I don’t think about drinking for days on end.

It will never go away, not entirely. It lurks, a dark and shameful thing that I gave so many years to. But it’s more than I could have ever hoped for, to be able to forget about it at all.

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