Ohm Shanti

My skin is on some kind of excited walkabout. I'm happy for it, because it just can't stay in one place, but it means I can't sleep. I was curled up in the tightest of spoons and had to first shift away, then kick off the covers, then sit up and slather lotion on every part of my body as, seemingly, swarms of ants descended from one end of me to the other.

The fog has swept across the valley below my terrace, and the lights there glow like dull sea creatures casting phosphorous light from yards below the surface. It seems sleepy except for the comets rocketing along route 280. That's what it feels like in my skin, like those fast orangey-yellow lights zipping across the gloom, waking up the sleepy landscape.

My ankles have started swelling. My fingers are all right so far, but I've begun worrying that I'm doing something very wrong. What if something else is making me balloon up this early in my pregnancy? What if the swelling in my belly is more than an avocado-sized baby and its liquid accoutrements? Nobody has taken my blood pressure in the past month and a half. They weighed me and drew blood, but nobody checked to make sure I wasn't pre-pre-pre-pre-eclamptic. Why didn't I think to ask them to do that? I have been so full of insistent optimism that I haven't left room for the possibility of --I don't even know what could be wrong. Ignorance isn't bliss, it's dirty gloom, and I wish I spent more time in the company of women who'd done this two or three times before. Well, I supposed I'll start doing that soon.

I worked loads of extra hours this week, spurred by dread at the possibility of being forced out of my job for committing the sin of having a priority other than the bottom line. As my skin shivers and demands my attention, I wonder what we'd do without my income. In the end, it's that, and not my skin or the aria of snores from my husband, that drives me out of the bed and here to the kitchen table. I'm working too hard, because I have to; keeping the job is swelling my ankles and bolting me out of sleep, losing it would mean less sleep and more stress. Well, I suppose it's no wonder I'm awake. But enough already. Sitting here with my eyes blinking like a Warner Brothers forest creature's isn't making things better. Baby needs a new dose of Zen.