Of Birthdays and Bliss

What a won­der­ful couple of days.

First of all, I didn’t have to work yes­ter­day (tutor­ing is over and mark­ing hasn’t star­ted yet) and I wasn’t too sick to enjoy it. Instead, we cleaned house while listen­ing to KQED stream­ing online and slowly built up excite­ment. (Well, I did. Doug was tired and is a little more cau­tious; I’m *soppy* right now).

At one point, I was stand­ing in the lounge room hold­ing my preg­nant belly and listen­ing to the end of Obama’s vic­tory speech (“Yes, we can!”), tears stream­ing down my face feel­ing immense hope for the future and my child-to-be. I felt like I was listen­ing to one of our cen­tury’s great orators and that this must be a little like what it felt like to listen to Martin Luther King.

With beau­ti­ful timing, all Doug’s pack­ages from the US arrived, sent by his sister, so he had an early birth­day present: tons of pho­to­graphy equip­ment, and the foam mat­tress layer to stop my hip hurt­ing and squee!! She slipped in a pile of organic cotton burp cloths and a wash­cloth and the cutest towel with a little hoodie for Harper and squeeeeeeee!!!

Then a few people came over for our Beltaine party. Doug and I built our altar for the season, reds and oranges for pas­sion, male and female for the bal­ance of the season, rose quartz for love, a cit­rine in the clove heart we were given for our hand­fast­ing (no neg­at­iv­ity in our hearts), a small stone with a turtle in it and an acorn rep­res­ent­ing Harper and the pro­tect­ive Mama Bear fetish from the Zuni people that Jill gave us as a part­ing gift last year. And then we lit 700 or so candles and turned on the soft music and had a lovely, gentle night of friend­ship and mas­sages and liqueur mead (I only had a sip!).

And then at mid­night, it was Doug’s birth­day, so I gave him his present (I bought him an iPod shuffle). And then we had snuggles and went to sleep…

My day was quite good: I had lunch with blithespirit  and sud­denly real­ised she’d be per­fect for the panel on cit­izen journ­al­ism I’m run­ning at Wood­ford; then I rang Chris Winter at the ABC and talked to him about it and got a great sug­ges­tion for the final panel member (and an introduction). 

I went to the doctor and got reas­on­ably good news about my plans for Wood­ford (more info on the maybe baby filter).

And then tonight, Doug made the most heav­enly, amaz­ing dinner: salmon steaks baked with olive oil and thyme, lightly grilled asparagus, and fresh mango, cucum­ber and cori­ander salsa served on a bed of mixed green. Oh my. Truly restaurant-worthy.

PS: Hi Daniel!