Baby Update

As a side story in my memoir, My Lost Summer, my dad’s cows deliver their calves that summer. Dad didn’t have a bull, so the cows got pregnant through insemination. The word “insemination” is icky to me because of the memory of watching the vet lift the virgin cows’ tails to plant the seed of the unseen bull.
Well, Monday I got (I hate to say it) inseminated with Mark’s sperm. At 7:30 a.m. Mark had to go to the fertility clinic at an area hospital to do his thing and collect the sperm. Then the sperm were washed, and Mark went to a local Mercedes dealership and walked around looking at cars. If, in fact, we cannot get pregnant, he wants a Mercedes convertible to replace his 12-year-old Mustang convertible. If we do get pregnant, he’ll have to go for something a bit more practical.
At 9:30 he collected his specimen and met me at my doctor’s office.
He held my hand and reminded me to breath during the procedure, which was pretty painful. A friend of mine from high school who used the same doctor, and who now has a beautiful baby girl, said that she barely felt hers. The doctor ordered her assistant to get a special tool to straighten me out and commented that my piping down there had more exaggerated curves than usual.
So, the deed is done. I will give blood to test for pregnancy June 29. Wish me luck.

A Classic Sweatshirt

This weekend I worked at de-cluttering my dressing room. I pulled a box from the corner and sorted through papers and pictures, change purses and key chains, allotting things to the appropriate pile: recycle, garbage, keep. On top of all the mishmash in the box sat, roughly folded, my favorite sweatshirt off all time. I haven’t worn it probably since the turn of the century.

I got it in 1989, my second summer in Maine, the summer after my freshman year of college. A big, royal blue shirt with not-too-tight cuffs and a bottom that looked gathered but hung straight. On the front in white iron-on in all caps, the shirt advertised MAINE. It was not too soft and not too full and fluffy. It hung on my shoulders just right and was the perfect weight to wear year round. I’m wearing it in three quarters of the pictures taken of me in college. In the fall I wore it with jeans to cross campus. When the weather turned cooler, I wore a turtle neck under. Even with a turtle neck, my sweatshirt wasn’t too bulky to fit a fleece jacket over top for really cold weather. When I drove myself and some friends to Florida the spring just after graduation, I wore it with shorts. I also wore it with shorts when my roommates and I (and everyone else on campus) took to the streets to celebrate UD’s win and a guaranteed spot into the NCAA’s Sweet 16 in 1990.

In fall 1995, homesick and lonely, the shirt offered me comfort while I slept in it my first night in Guatemala, where I stayed with a host family for six weeks taking language instruction from a local school. In summer ‘96 it kept me warm during the cool nights on Inishmore, an Aran Island off the southwest coast of Ireland. Late in ‘94, I wore it over a thermal and under a coat on my chilly hike up Cotopaxi, the world’s highest active volcano, located in Ecuador. I could continue and list every vacation I’ve taken from the time I got the shirt to when I stopped wearing it because I took it with me everywhere.

Its royal blue has faded to a less regal shade. The MAINE lettering is now barely visible. I cut the cuffs off about a year before I retired the shirt because they were so frayed. The collar has lost its shape, like its been stretched over too many heads. But it was my favorite, and getting rid of it is hard. So many memories are wrapped up in that shirt, yet I know throwing it away will not deplete my experiences. I’ll still remember the good times I had while wearing it.

Spend the next weekend hiking in a state park or go to a festival at least a two-hour’s drive away. Wear your favorite jeans or a just-right baseball cap and make your own experiences. No shirt required.

Environmental Consciousness

I dreamed up a great money-making scheme this morning, literally.

I woke up from a dream just after in my dream I’d joked about selling bottled clean air. I think there were three or four of us sitting around talking about how some people are so pretentious and how these people waste money by buying, among other unnecessary things, bottled water—when water anywhere in the United States must meet quality standards, so it’s safe and a lot cheaper from the tap. Then I suggested marketing to these people bottled clean air at $2 a quart. I remember from my dream that I meant to say “a gallon” but instead “quart” came out. I woke up right after that, and in my early morning incoherency, on my stumble to the bathroom, I thought pretentious people just might pay $8 for a gallon of clean air. But where to find clean air in this great country of ours?

The news last night reported that the reason President George W. Bush did not agree to adopt the carbon-dioxide-(the main green-house gas)-limiting standards is because China’s not adopting them. Very adult, George (said sarcastically). A good portion of the world’s CO2 emissions come from China because they keep building coal-burning power plants, and coal burning releases CO2. However, even more CO2 comes from the US. We need to lead by example rather than act like a pre-teen, “If he’s not going to do it, why should I?” Asinine reasoning.

These United States are beautiful. (If you should doubt it, please visit my travel blog at http://www.ournationstreasures.blogspot.com/.) Until we as a nation make the commitment to do what we can to clean up the environment, I am very fearful of the kind of place our children will grow up in.

Do you turn off lights when you leave a room?
Do you turn your car’s engine off if sitting idle for more than a minute?
Do you recycle?
Do you compost?