I went for my last ultrasound today

Friday, June 6, 2008

Apparently I'm growing a tiny, exact clone of David!!!

My Mom: I can't stop laughing!
My Mom: its almost surreal!

David's accident

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Hello friends- apologies for dropping out of plain sight. David was in a moderately serious car accident last Thursday on his way home from work; he was about 2 minutes from home, stopped in a left turn lane, when a speeding car rear ended him and pushed him into the car in front of him. Both airbags deployed but he still managed to hit his head on something hard enough to crack open his head, though he doesn't know or remember what.

I got a weird, barely legible phone call from some girl at the scene who called me after David asked her too, saying he'd been in an accident on Roosevelt Ave. She claimed he'd call me in a few minutes, but I actually waddled myself, pregnant as I am and wearing a ridiculously giant floor length maternity dress (my "around the house" dress) and flip flops, all the way down the main road to where the accident was, half frantic and half in DO MODE. I didn't know how serious it was or what was going on, just that ambulances were flying by me and traffic was backed up as far down the road as I could see, on both sides.

When I finally got to the accident scene, David was already in the ambulance, sitting on a stretcher, with blood running down all over his face. There was skid marks all over the road and three completely wrecked cars. Luckily for us, the airbag and his seatbelt saved his life. He was the only person injured. I road in the ambulance with him down to the hospital, where he got 9 staples in his head and 8 stitches in his chin. He's concussant and has been out of work since- the doctors don't want him driving and his job requires him to drive most of the day. He had a CAT scan that came back clear and some additional x-rays are scheduled for tomorrow, but right now it seems like he's going to be fine aside from a few weeks of pretty bad headaches and a some nasty scars.

We've just been sort of taking it slow all week, laying low and enjoying each other's company. I'm not really mentally prepared to discuss the "what ifs" or what they would have meant, I haven't even really wanted to talk about it with my family or my friends, I'm just so thankful he's still around.

I love you, Buoy.

Cait & David, one year later

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

David and I have a lot in common, but in general I'd say we're pretty different people who eventually came to a similar point after starting from opposite places. Whenever I traveled, I ran away to bigger and bigger cities- Amherst, Boston, Rochester, Portland. David, on the other hand, slept on the ground in the woods with hippies, living off the land in Colorado before going to work on a farm in California with other migrant farm workers. It took a lot of shit and shock to finally convince me that I was a country mouse as opposed to a city one; David always knew.

When we finally rotated into each other's atmospheres, it was by sheer chance that we both happened to be in Massachusetts at the same time- neither of us ever stayed too still for long. We were both saving up our money to leave again as soon as possible, disgruntled and generally on the war path. I had a list of places I wanted to go next where I wouldn't know anyone- Austin, TX, Athens, GA, Seattle, WA- anywhere where I could start over new and be whoever I wanted to be. David was recovering emotionally from a situation very similar to mine at the time, working an IT job until he felt like he was ready to get back to the woods and stay there. It was our similar pasts that brought us together after Renee introduced us last March, since I'm not sure I could have opened myself up to him (or anyone else) otherwise. Getting involved in another relationship was beyond being the farthest thing from my mind; I was actively AVOIDING it in every way I knew how, rabidly. But I remember feeling like the fact that he'd been through something so clearly identical to what I'd just been through meant he would understand my frame of mind moreso than anyone else could at the time, and I was right.

In typical Cait fashion, I fought it for a long time before I was willing to admit that it was something real. David would make the 45 minute drive from Worcester to Springfield every night, late, just to sit in parking lots with me and talk. Nothing happened for months, he was just there for me. We chain smoked cigarettes and ate a lot of Taco Bell. We took long drives in the dark with the music on. We took naps in cemeteries, sometimes driving back to his apartment just to sleep beside each other but never touching. The whole debacle made me feel 18 again, which was good and bad but mostly good. It takes a pretty strong individual to be patient with my methods sometimes, but he let me take all the time I needed.

When we finally did kiss, I was immediately regretful and terrified. I thought I'd ruined everything; right away I started bracing myself for yet another train wreck. Even though I had less faith in the heterosexual male at that time than ever before in my life prior, David still stuck by me. As I pushed and pulled at him, never knowing exactly what I wanted or what I was going to do, he just hung out and waited. I couldn't even tell you how long he waited to know for sure that I wouldn't just flip and take off in the middle of the night- sometimes I think a part of him still wonders if I will. I know, of course, that there's no way I'm going anywhere. David Morrow is the light of my life and I can honestly say that he's my partner, my sexier and much more highly motivated other half.

And now, a year after our first meeting, we're living together in a gorgeous old house and preparing to raise a son together. It's been a whirlwind, that's an understatement, but I'm more sure about my love for and feel safer with him than I ever have in the past. It's not a heated compulsion or a butterfly feeling in my gut, it's more than that; it's real. I don't even bother asking how it is I got so lucky, I'm just thankful every day.

TT4T - Total Mush addition

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

My ten tracks today are all entirely for Davey. <3

I love you, baby daddy!

Family; David and I move in

Monday, February 25, 2008

Apologies for the lack of updates- there's been some major changes in my life lately (what's new?) that have been dominating my time. David and I, after living in her house for a few weeks, officially moved into my grandmothers basement now that she's home from the rehab hospital she was in for a fall she had about a month ago. She moved back in upstairs; David works his new job in Northampton every day and I take care of my grandmother since it would be impossible for her to live here alone. As a family we collectively wanted her home and out of the hospital as quickly as possible, and David and I's moving in downstairs was the only way. I listen to her all day on a baby monitor in case she falls or gets confused, and she also wears a gym teacher-like whistle around her neck to blow on in case she needs me. It's been slightly bizarre and sometimes exhausting, but as of this moment I think everything is going to be alright.

David is amazing- I really can't stress it enough. Even though he had to be up at 7 for work, when my grandmother was furiously blowing her emergency whistle at 5am this morning for no concievable reason he wasn't just understanding about it but SUPPORTIVE of ME before and after- asking how I was feeling, telling me to slow down, making sure I wasn't taking too much on at once. He cooks elaborate old Irish lady dinners for her and sits with she and I in the den when Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy are on. I can't imagine a lot of people making the sacrifices he's made for me and my family after only having been a part of our lives for 9 short (but intense) months. We're a tight-knit group; it's almost impossible to endear yourself to us as an outsider (ESPECIALLY as a boyfriend of one of the only two girl cousins- you should hear some of the "I brought my boyfriend home for Christmas" horror stories that Erin and I have) but David's baptism by fire over the past week has won him a firm place. There's no question about it for any of us- he's a part of our family now.

I've noticed something interesting about my family in all of this, and it's not necessarily good or bad: even though we're all devoted to each other in an almost unhealthy way (we all live within 15 minutes of each other and readily lay down our time, effort, money, etc. without any hesitation at all if a family member needs us), at the same time not one of us will allow any other member of the family to DEPEND on us or vice versa; independence and self reliance have been bred into me as law since birth. We're to receive help resistantly until we don't need it anymore and then pull back again. So here I am living with my 77 year old grandmother, doling out her pills, cooking her meals, helping her to and from the bathroom, but all the while there's this... strangeness about it. Apart from how strange it is to take care of someone in this way who was a respected authority figure your entire life anyway, there's another element to it. Her medical outlook isn't exactly the brightest, but we both (and everyone else too, really) expect her to eventually do all of these things herself again and so we both treat the care-taking in this sort of blase, all-business way. I wish I knew a better way to explain it. Not being able to take care of ourselves is almost a fate worse than death, and if the time ever comes when we can't (in any way- medically, emotionally, financially) we're to take the smallest amount of help we need, regardless of the onslaught that will inevitably be offered, and then get back on our feet ASAP. If not, you pay by losing respect- not just from the family but for yourself as well, by some magic of massive internal guilt.

Also (for those of you on the astrology tip) I think the abundance of major planets in Aquarius and Capricorn (sun or moon in 7 of us, all of the main clan except my Aunt Beth and cousin Erin) within my family can't be overlooked either, or the fact that my (usually less than welcoming) grandmother warmed up so quickly to David, who shares a Cancer moon with her deceased (and sorely missed) husband, my grandfather.

Every once in a while, when I have the time to think about it, it really dawns on me how completely different my life is from how it was just a year ago. Every single thing is completely different, down to what I want out of life AND how I'm going about it. It's been hard but I feel like I'm really working toward something now, you know? I know who I am. No matter how much harder things get from here on out, and I expect them to, I have that now- and knowing that seems to make a lot of things a hell of a lot easier.