Absent

Wednesday I went to the grocery store to get food for the week and for a dinner I was making for a friend who stayed with us last night. Rather than follow my usual, well-worn path through the store, I overlooked and had to loop back to find no fewer than five items. I visited the baking aisle three times (and I’m not even baking anything). And I still came home without bread (I eat a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast pretty much every morning), milk (my calcium obsession is in full swing), or couscous. (The dinner for that friend in town? A couscous dish.)

I haven’t felt so spacy any time that I can remember. If it hadn’t already been going on for three days I’d swear I was in very early labor. But this week’s peek at the cervix turned up no significant change from last week, and I remain, a good deal of the time, unable to connect one sentence (mine or anyone else’s) with the last, so I guess this part of the preparation is strictly mental and, if you want to get all lofty about it, spiritual.

I’m enjoying these strange, liminal days. I make plans, but know I might not be keeping them, so nothing is too weighty. Each thing I accomplish feels like a bonus. There’s plenty to fear and worry about, but not much to be done about any of it, and besides I’m so sleepy it all just drifts over me, along with, like, everything else I’m sort of marginally trying to pay attention to. It’s like my brain is floating on its back in a pool of estrogen, reading chick lit and sipping a progesterone martini. Mmmmm.