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looking up someone's chart. i don't know her well but there is a huge psychic rush about the name of her birth town. i know the area - i feel a strange kinship. i imagine the landscape. it seems beautiful.
listening to sufjan stevens, because of oof. some kind of sudden realization about beauty and poetry came to me as the strings started into their crescendo.

there's been a slowly unraveling realization about using my mind more, about how it's time to get back to idealism, religion, culture, and studyin these things. after this summer off where i've been focusing on work and generally have a break from mental gymnastics. i thought, hey, maybe i'm just not interested in those things anymore. maybe that was it. but i've been slowly realizing i must return.

ok, i will.

i am puttering around the house after a long SF day. now i will tell you all about it. i'm sure it will be dull, but that's fine. the health stuff is especially tedious, and i apologize for that. actually no i don't, screw you. my journal. i am using the 'one letter instead of a name' thing today just so this doesn't become google fodder, not really for anonymity as much. you can probably figure some things out.
it was gloomy and i woke up a little cranky and out of it around 10:30. yoko was being loud and lonely, hurling herself against the bedroom door and crying even though oliver already fed her. i made oatmeal and put it into a blue plastic cup that was left over from oliver's 30th birthday party. i put bananas and almond milk in it and set it near the door. since being with oliver i have learned the 'gather all the things you're taking with you and put them near the door' method of being in the world.

oliver was still sleeping. he worked until 7am, that is madness. he moaned and grumped in his sleep. i showered and put on a new camisole that i got from urban outfitters the other day. it is green and i like it because it's long and serves an important purpose: it covers the gut gap between the bottom of most shirts and the top of my pants. i am tall, and all shorts are too short for me, and all hip hugging pants with too-short shirts will leave my gut spilling out.

{
my gut is a little big lately, partially because i have a fibroid tumor growing on the outside of my uterus. the fibroid is almost twice the size of my uterus. that's real, that's happening. i have talked to a lot of various kinds of doctors and healers about it. it is caused mainly by genetics, but it's fed by estrogen.

sometimes, holistic people tell me that i should make diet changes to cause it to be smaller, and for a while, i was trying to do that and taking a lot of different supplements for it. the supplements felt like a drop in the bucket, and having the kind of diet that was recommended would entail quite a lot of focus and a major lifestyle change.

my diet really isn't bad at all currently - i am a vegetarian and eat a good amount of whole grains, organic produce, fruits, etc. it's not perfect, but i'm not doing too poorly. on a typical day i might eat a bagel with cucumbers, greens, and cream cheese in the morning, or fruit, or oatmeal. often a smoothie that is lovingly made my oliver is breakfast. sometimes i am bad and skip breakfast. i always have a big coffee at some point - with soy milk, which could be a point of contention since soy might cause excess estrogen. a burrito, falafel, or veggie sandwich for lunch, and any number of things for dinner. thai food, canned soup and chips, i don't know. hummus. rice and lentils. sometimes nice cheese on a tortilla, sometimes a huge salad with lots of nuts. sometimes i have a sweet treat of some sort in the afternoon. a brownie or cookie. nothing too crazy. i definitely have a sweet tooth. i eat a lot of potato and tortilla chips, too, though i've cut back a lot on those and the sweets in the past couple of weeks.

i guess at this point i've kind of lost hope for the diet route as a solution to my fibroid problems. eating entirely whole grains and fruits and vegetables would no doubt be really good for me, but the tumor is so big now that i'm not really sure that would be enough to turn it around. i've also been advised to eat lean meats and fish. i have been eating some fish but i can't really deal with it well enough to eat a lot. i have had some turkey recently and it seems to make me feel really good around the time of my period, when i lose a lot of iron from my already iron poor body.

i've been meaning to write that all out for a while, about my diet, because i have been in a pretty negative cycle of blame and guilt and self loathing, thinking that i have somehow caused this fibroid to happen to me because of my diet, or because i haven't been as healthy as i could be. i haven't been going to yoga much anymore, though i walk a lot and have been hooping till i pour sweat, at least once a week. food has become a cycle of guilt, reward, and punishment. i don't want it to be like that and it's really not fun. i'd like to stop beating up on myself and just eat things when i'm hungry, and move my body because it feels good.

most people who have fibroids don't ever know, and they don't ever cause problems, though 30% or so of american women have them. typically they don't get as large as mine until the woman is older. in my case, the fibroid is large enough that it has been causing me terrible pain, usually during ovulation and pms when my estrogen levels are high. in the past two months it has made it difficult for me to pee during those times too, sometimes cause a painful situation where i need to pee in the morning but i can't, not until i walk around a bit and get things moving around in my abdomen.

after i went for my last ultrasound, the doctor who i'm seeing at the UCSF fibroid center called me to tell me that i should have surgery to have the fibroid removed. i was at work, at my desk. she said "you're facing a myomectomy." i said "that's major surgery, isn't it?" and she said yes, that i would be in the hospital for a couple of days if i have it done. my heart sank. i don't know what i was hoping.. that some miracle would happen and the thing would stop growing. she also told me that in order for me to ever have children i will need to have the fibroid removed. it would no doubt cause a miscarraige were i to get pregnant. there is also some likelihood that if i ever do get pregnant after having the surgery, i will have to deliver via c-section because of scar tissue on my uterine walls. that makes me very very sad, because i had always dreamed of having natural childbirth.

i am scared to have surgery. i will probably do it, though i have not 100% decided that yet. i'm very scared of being out cold while strangers cut me open and dig around inside of me. what a violation, eh? recently a few of my wonderful friends have told me that they would give me reiki and be there for me while i have it done. and i know oliver would be there for me, and make sure they didn't do anything awful to me (like take out my whole uterus for some dumb reason - it happens). i also think i can make them give me the fibroid to keep after they cut it out, which is important to me.

some positive things:
- i have health insurance
- i only have one fibroid instead of many. once it is out, the chance that i will have a bunch more or one as big as this again is low
- could be worse! (??)

some things i'm ready to believe:
- it's not my fault that this is happening to me and it doesn't make me ugly
- having this doesn't mean that i will have a lot of other health problems, like my mom does
- i can heal from something like this
}

i had printed out e's charts while the oatmeal was cooking, and examined them a bit, squatting on my bedroom floor. my room is a hurricane right now. i ripped everything out of the closet at the peak of mercury retrograde and then just left it all in piles all over the room. in a way, it's kind of amazingly comforting. i was also in the middle of filing project when i did that so there are stacks of papers everywhere in the there. my dad, bless his heart, would call it a fire hazard. it's amazing how many times a day it occurs to me that i'm doing something that my dad would tell me was dangerous. why, just a few moments ago i got up on a stool to hang some christmas lights and could hear him (or my mother, she is anti climbing up on things) telling me to be careful.

i hugged oliver for a while and then i left. i didn't feel like switching all my things from my handbag into a bigger bag, so i carried my ephemeris (book of planetary motions) in my pants, tucked in like a waiter sometimes tucks a tablet . i ate the oatmeal as i walked. somehow it was already 1pm. i walked all the way from 20th and york in the mission to 22nd and valencia for coffee. i think that's about 10 blocks. i would have had to walk the rest of the way to my destination but i ran into davel at ritual, and he gave me a ride in his prius! that was great.

i was headed to jen's house to help leah and a bunch of ladies with some prep for leah's wedding. i won't detail the prep here in case she wants to keep it a surprise. it was so good to be with the women and be in jen and dan's house. i was kind of thrown back into childhood when my mom would always have a neighbor over, when we lived on base, and there would always be laundry in mid-fold on the couch and sometimes a random baby or toddler around too. it was wonderful. i got to play with baby hazel a lot. i love babies but i never feel like i get to be around them long enough that i can relax and start to figure them out, so it was good to be around hazel long enough, in her own territory, so that i could hang out with her. she's so fucking cute i want to die.

on the way back to the mission, i stopped in to get some tacos and ran into a

at the taqueria. she was kind of sad because she is moving away soon. we shared some accepting scorpionic companionship as we ate and i studied charts. now she wants a reading too, and i'm really happy because she wants to trade some art to me for it, and that is the best payment ever. i feel really good about that.

i went back by ritual to grab e for her reading. she fed me free espresso. i had been feeling pretty spacy and out of it all day. underwater. i feel that way on gloomy days sometimes. i drank four glasses of water standing at the bar, and the combination of that, the espresso, and doing secret yoga stretches in the big bathroom seemed to clear my head finally. i was grateful. sometimes when i'm spaced out like that it can be really scary and disorienting. i don't think other people notice but it makes me feel far away, like i'm floating off, like i can't talk.

we walked to the makeout room where we ordered cosmos. e was very impressed that they make them with real lime. i was impressed because they do the thing where they put ice in the glass first so that the glass is cold. fancy. my way of ordering was to ask for a cosmo with some kind of vodka that isn't disgusting. she gave me stoli. i'm with that. my cosmo was good.

halfway through our reading charlie appeared, reminding me that it was writers with drinks night at the makeout room. whoops! it cut our reading a little short but i loved it because i love writers with drinks, i love sort of knowing charlie and that crew. jason showed up and said hi. the new issue of other was on sale and it has my article in it! aw yeah. i felt very connected to SF for sure then, as if i hadn't already.

back at ritual, jessie appeared and we all stood chatting in the doorway about burning man and stalking. i was slightly toasted from my cosmo (hooray low tolerance). i got excited about burning man and working in the cafe, after talking to jessie about it. then jessie connected that i know amanda at her work, the scarlet sage, and had been planning on doing readings there. VALENCIA STREET SCENE, YEAH. THIS IS MY FUCKING HOMETOWN, SHIT. i need to get my application to new college fucking finished so i can complete my total immersion into all mission district activities.

that is my overly detailed report of the day. now i am at home on the couch. i hung some xmas lights in the bathroom, listened to the CLAP YOUR HANDS AND SAY YEAH album that i'm obsessed with, and fed crazy biting yoko. i stood in my room and looked at the hurricane. i checked some websites. i haven't eaten dinner yet which is negative considering that it's almost midnight.

yoko

Originally uploaded by le.

oliver took this picture of yoko this morning. so adorable. she looks like a little cake or a bowl of rice pudding.

went to an amazing wedding this weekend. i hooped in my dress while holding a parasol. pictures forthcoming. we slept in a tent, hung out with some trees, swam, got in a hot tub, danced, ate delicious food, saw the stars and moon. i caught the bouquet. everything was so easy that it was strange and dreamlike. i felt like i was growing up because usually in social situations like huge community weddings i feel embarassed like 80% of the time, like i should apologize for being so dumb, or like i said something laughable. but i realized, at the wedding, during a solitary walk from the bathroom, that i didn't feel that way hardly at all over the weekend. i just felt ok, unapologetic, and happy. it's very strange to me when things are just easy and right - it confuses me. does it mean i'm missing something or fooling myself?
today i woke up feeling sick and still exhausted from barely sleeping and baking in the sun all weekend. took yoko to the vet. got three different kinds of bad news, and work email was down all day. indulged in a ton of coffee and came home early with yoko. hoping to sew tulle ruffles, glue them to newly acquired parasols. imagining giving them away to people who scare me at burning man. peace offerings maybe. but no energy for that, or no spark? maybe i can try again.