I was instantly grieved that I'd broken it;  besides having a soft spot in my heart for babies in general, I have great affection for the spiny lizards in my yard. They're resilient, they're docile, they grow to be almost a foot long, and -- of particular interest to me -- their favorite foods include mosquitoes and roaches. Since we live near a creek and encounter more than our share of both, I'm sure you understand why I want to do everything I can to keep them happy living at the Abbey.

Much to my delight, when I looked where I'd been digging, I discovered the egg I'd inadvertently broken was only one of a sizable clutch of them. I'd uncovered another five or six. I decided the next day I would transfer them into a bucket of sand so they'd have a safe place to incubate while I continued clearing the driveway. Meanwhile, I scooped the sand back over them for safekeeping.

When I returned to the sand pile the next day and brushed back the sand to see the eggs again, I saw that one had opened... about the same time that I saw its former occupant, just shy of two inches long, scramble down the sand pile and into my yard! I grabbed an empty jar from the garage, set it beside the clutch of eggs, and gently scooped the whole nursery inside -- not because I intended to keep them in captivity. mind you, but just so I could watch them hatch, appropriately commemorate their birth and show you these:

As someone counting down the last several weeks before she gets to see her own baby 'hatch,' I found great encouragement in watching someone else's babies make a successful debut... and as someone who knows I'm whacked out on pregnancy hormones, you shouldn't be surprised to learn that as one of the babies ran up onto my hand for a moment before taking to the fence, I found myself sighing, "They grow up so fast."

If you're anything like the rest of us, the news I posted in yesterday's entry* immediately drove you to thoughts about your own loved ones. Perhaps, like me, your first thoughts were of your own small children... and how many accidents befall them every day, and how you never expect to need more than a wet washcloth, a "kissit" or an ice pack to make the world right again... and how utterly impossible it is to imagine your child being there with you and, in the next instant, being forever gone.

*(Today I learned that the circumstances surrounding the death of my friend's nephew may or may not be as they were first relayed to my friend and me. Since I obviously don't know the entire story -- and in fact, I never may -- I've opted not to post a retraction but also not to blog any more on the situation. Please don't let that keep you from praying for the grieving family, as their need for it has surely not diminished.)

The past two days have been some of the richest I've known with my son -- it's as though the rest were merely pencil sketches and these were deep and vivid images, saturated with color and music and life. He's been lavishing me with hugs, kisses and infectious laughter as though he understood why I needed more of them right now. Today he spent two and a half hours standing at the sink, playing with the bottle brush in the water and washing the same half-dozen dishes over and over to keep me company while I cleaned in the kitchen. Declining a Muppet video and even a snack break (!), he stayed at my side as I relentlessly scrubbed the stove's burner plates, forcing them to relinquish the past two years' worth of cooking souvenirs. We sang a lot. We high-fived a lot. We changed his sopping wet clothes a couple times when the dishes fought back. We had a blast.

As delighted as I was with today, what grieves me tonight is knowing the part of me that took him for granted until two days ago will eventually do so again. It isn't something I can prevent -- familiarity, after all, breeds more familiarity even when it doesn't breed contempt -- but I intend to wring every last drop from this presently heightened sense of appreciation I have for him. I hope to tell him with my words and my actions the same thing I've told him since the day in his sixth week in utero that I thought I was having a miscarriage: "I know I wasn't promised tomorrow with you, but I want you to know I'm thankful for every day I have you with me."

When his mother called 911 and the police arrived to take a report, they discovered she had a warrant for an unpaid traffic ticket... so within moments of watching her youngest child die, she was placed under arrest.

Please be in prayer for my friend and her family as she drives to Tennessee to be with her brother and sister-in-law in this time of unthinkable sorrow.

Kyrie Eleison.

When you see a box of miscellaneous items in need of sorting and placement and make a mental note to take care of it the next weekend, you're experiencing a garden-variety urge to tidy up. When you see a box of miscellaneous items in need of sorting and placement, level your gaze at it and warn it in a low growl, "YOU'RE ON MY LIST," you might be nesting.

If you recall, I went through something like this when I was pregnant with Little Man too -- but the onset has begun far earlier than last time... and with a vengeance, too. In the past two weeks I have begun carrying out strategic raids on the boxes, bags, stacks and piles of things in my closet (and my son's) (and my kitchen) (and the play area) (and the hall storage) (and my garage) (and the bathroom) that I've just been manuevering around since we moved into the Abbey nearly two years ago, passing them along on Freecycle and Craigslist to the people who asked the nicest and/or could get them out of my house the soonest. I've done laundry every day for these two weeks, and now --alas -- I'm left with nothing to wash but spare cotton blankets and random yet-to-be donated articles of clothing. 

Today's exploits will include finding a home for about half of my sizable yarn stash, returning to my hall closet only the things that actually belong there, donating all FORTY POUNDS of half-used bottles of shampoos, soaps and lotions to someplace where they'll be better appreciated, retrieving the last box of my son's infant clothes from the garage to see how many of them his sister can wear, and... doing a little happy dance because it's only taken me two weeks to undo clutter that it took years to accumulate.  I think only a house fire could have done the job faster, but they're known for being undesirably thorough...

I'd like to take this opportunity to offer public thanks and accolades to the guys who live with me -- five of the bravest men I know -- for not conspiring to kill me in my sleep after all this. Or at least not going through with it.

More later. There's a big box of stuff in the other room taunting me, and I'm off to go rain down hellfire on its misbegotten ass. I mean, um, sort and recycle it.

That same duality presented itself the other night when, after we'd put him to bed, he walked out to the top of the stairs and cried. Having torn the cover off a favorite Golden book, he was inconsolable until Daddy reattached it with packing tape. He said thanks and went back to bed. Then, twenty minutes later, we heard him yelling again. His daddy got up, rounded the corner and prepared to go upstairs and have The Bedtime Talk with our son. When he returned to the living room, though, he was beaming with pride and looked as though he might be fighting back tears.

Mister Nygren had sneezed a few moments prior; Little Man had heard it and, in his barely-still-conscious state, stumbled back to the landing to cry out, "Bessyou, Dad! Dad? Bessyou, Daddy!"

He just wanted to bless his Daddy... and, in more ways than he knew, he had. 

Last time, as you may recall, I found out in my seventh month that I should have been taking blood pressure medication from the first week I knew I was pregnant, and that I was a gestational diabetic in need of insulin. By the time I was pregnant again, I was much better educated about my risks as well as ways to minimize them.

Having received some great pointers from a fellow birth coach, I've been able to take steps and take supplements that have kept me from needing blood pressure meds again (so far, anyway). I knew the gestational diabetes would be another matter, though -- two out of three women who experienced it in their first pregnancy will have it again in their second one -- and decided to take action early. About a month ago I visited a local family practitioner, told him my history and asked him to please prescribe me some insulin rather than make me wait several weeks [or more] to take a glucose tolerance test and prove what I already knew. He was obviously caught off guard but was gracious enough to honor my request anyway. As a result, my blood sugar levels have been pretty stellar (mid-80s to mid-90s, for those of you who know what those numbers mean). Interestingly, the particular method of insulin management I followed last time called for much more insulin and greater dietary restrictions and only barely kept me under 120.

I don't plan to go the entire pregnancy without prenatal care if I can help it, but right now it seems the greatest danger presented by my self-medicating is... that an obstetrician somewhere is missing out on several thousand dollars she could be making by advising me on how to do what I'm already doing. Since it's several thousand dollars I don't have to give, though... praise the Lord and pass the needle!

Broadnax: (stares at the camera for a moment) F*ck 'em. Straight up.

In a jailhouse interview with Fox news, nineteen-year-old James Broadnax confesses to killing Matt and Steven. (NOTE: Footage is uncensored; discretion is advised.) The unspeakable irony, as Mister Nygren learned at the funeral yesterday, was that Matt and Steven were only at the studio so late because they were putting the finishing touches on a song they'd recorded together... called "We All Die Before Our Time."

In their public statements, the grieving families have expressed pity towards Broadnax and his cousin (who was present but didn't pull the trigger). I'd like to say that pity was my first or even overwhelming second response, but... I'd be lying. I wanted justice. Not even the I-hope-you-get-life-without-parole kind of justice, I'm ashamed to admit. More of the blind-outrage variety that causes mobs of otherwise sane people to do unjust things in the name of justice. Realizing that carrying out that sort of thing would make me no less cold-blooded than the murderer himself, though, I had to start praying that God would show James Broadnax the kind of mercy that I wanted Him to show me.

Broadnax tells the interviewer that his life has been hell, and that he intends to die, whether at his own hand or the state's. "I don't want [a] life [sentence]," he says flatly. It bears mentioning, though,  that at the end of the video -- mere moments after the chilling retort quoted above -- the stone-cold-killer facade crumbles. Broadnax appears to be fighting back tears as he slams down the receiver, rises abruptly from his chair and exits the visitation booth.

Watching him, I am finally overcome with pity as I realize that he, too, died before his time...

Four years later I heard the sound again -- not in a song, but in a conversation between Matt and my husband about our new recording studio. Having been laid off from my telecom job with a severance package generous enough to allow it, we'd bought a Mac, a ProTools setup, some fundamental recording equipment and enough bright purple soundproofing foam to give Barney the dinosaur an inferiority complex. Matt was full of questions, stunned at how little it really took to create a start-up studio, and bore the unmistakable look of a man who was determined to make it happen for himself.

In 2006, we and that fateful day in our apartment were mentioned -- though not by name -- in a news article where Matt was being interviewed about the recording studio he'd recently opened. Sadly, it appeared again in the news yesterday when the story broke that he and Stephen Swan, his sound engineer and good friend, had been gunned down in front of that same studio.

I firmly believe that Matt, for all the struggles he may have had here, is now in the presence of the only One whose approval of his music or work ever mattered... and God bless him, those long struggles are over. He leaves behind a twenty-two-year-old widow, a son just a month younger than my own and a daughter who will be two this fall.

Your prayers for his family, the Swan family, and even especially for those responsible would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks to Kristen -- photographer extraordinaire, equally un-girly girl and mother to the gorgeous pirate below, I have hope...

It was a very proud moment for me. I had [evidently] become a successful homebrewer.

I began brewing t'ej -- an Ethiopian honey wine made and served in the home -- just over a month ago. I started with very small batches because, among other things, I didn't want to get stuck with five gallons of something that didn't turn out well... and to hear some folks tell it, getting a homemade brew just right is only slightly less difficult than crossing a mine field on a pogo stick.
Blindfolded.
So when I found a basic t'ej recipe in Wild Fermentation  that could be made with any number of different flavors but only really needed honey, water and patience,* I just had to try my hand at it.

*(The author notes that authentic t'ej also calls for adding gesho, a plant indigenous to Ethiopia, for a bittering agent.  You can't get it here without importing it or finding a dealer on eBay, though, so he went on to say that a great -- if not completely authentic -- finished product could be made without it.)

My first batch was the rudimentary honey-and-water version; in the second, I threw in a half-cup of thawed mixed berries.  Both got rave reviews last night. The best part: in terms of home ferments, it's nearly an instant-gratification drink. Though it can be bottled and aged like mead, it's ready to drink young after just a couple weeks. What we had was delightful and already quite complex after just a month.  "It's official," one of my housemates declared. "You're in the t'ej-making business."

Come by and see me if you want some. It's surprisingly potent stuff, so don't be offended if I start by offering you a sample that barely covers the bottom of the wine glass. Can't have you ending up looking like one of these folks...