An entry of needed clarification(s).

I am childishly pleased to be welcomed into the circle of Women Who Temp. Got a lovely comment which coincideded perfectly with my first panic-wave. I cannot seem to be taking temps at the ‘right’ time. I also notice that my normal temps are much lower than what the ready-made charts in the book talk about. I recollect reading that lower temps equal some sort of bad thing, but I’ve not gone back and reread it.

Welcome to any more women who bump into me! Perhaps I will go overboard and not only post pictures of my charts, but go ticker crazy. I actually went to tickerfactory.com last week and had a good long look. Perhaps this is what Winnicot means by ‘primary maternal preoccupation*.’ I should do some research and write a book called Preliminary Primary Maternal Preoccupation.

Didn’t mean to come here and write about charting; as a matter of fact, I was going to write about how we participated in a real life ‘Wickerman’ event yesterday. I even took pictures. I guess I will save that for the future.

Ack. Tomorrow I’ve got out-of-town counselling gig, with the group of teenagers who do not talk. I will welcome the substantial amount of money when it comes in, and it’s sort of sad that that is the only thing making me not regret this twenty-week contract. Aside from the fact of how good it felt to be offered paid work. I’m still in a state of mild shock that soon I will not use ‘counsellor’ or ‘therapist’ to describe myself in the same way I use ‘writer,’ as merely (’merely’) a core part of my identity, but not my day job.

I popped into Day Job’s old head office to have a little chat, and when I described my new job as being a family therapist, I suddenly got the heebie jeebies. A family therapist? Me?

I bet this will give my sister a giggle, as it will anyone who knows my family. Crazy is our GAME, people. We invented it.

In other news, I packed Fat as I decided it is too crap at the moment. I think my drive to be The Best Writer In The Fucking Universe is going to go on crippling me quite fantastically for the near future. I really want No Plot, No Problem because it injects a little fun back into life. I have been thinking about nanowrimo ** a lot lately, and just realised it may be screwed as my mother is coming for a week-long visit in November.

I am chilled about this***, because she is due to come right about the time my period is due. I have fantasies of getting pregnant the first go and having my mom there when we realise there is no monthly outletting of cooch blood. Oh, baby baby, it always comes back to you.

Also: When your grandmother was pregnant with your mom, you were in your grandma’s body. Female fetuses already have all the eggs they will ever have. I think it’s beautiful that ‘I’ was in my grandma at one point. I think I am about to enter some hardcore feminist phase, for real. That Taking Charge of Your Fertility book is so goddamn awesome it makes me want to rip through the packed boxes until I find and devour The Feminine Mystique.

I want to buy a Moon Cup, use my menstrual blood to nuture the rainforest, and live on a commune. Failing that, I had a pretty good time giving my cervix a little heavy petting this morning.

* Primary maternal preoccupation, in a nutshell, is the state of new mother madness. Every thought is about the baby, every action taken to meet the baby’s every need. This is a natural event, needed for the baby’s development. The interesting bit is that it’s like a mental illness, and would be classified as such if it was not at this one time in life.

** nanowrimo : National Novel Writing Month. See http://www.nanowrimo.org if you wanna have some fun in November.

*** ‘I am chilled about this.’ As in, ‘I am relaxed that nanowrimo might be screwed up’, not as in, ‘My blood is running cold that I will be seeing my mother.’

Tags: TTC, therapy, baby, charting, writing, feminist, temps, nanowrimo, menstruation