Am feeling the need for a retreat into my journal.

My family left this morning. It was wonderful to have them here.

But. I downloaded my pictures from my camera to the computer and I am crying about how I look. I don't understand why the camera has such an effect on me. I feel beautiful and glow-y when I'm in my own skin, but when I see the way a picture captures me it makes me cry. I look so awful in pictures. I'm upset both because I look fat and awful to myself but also because it affects me so much - why does the way a picture makes me look trump the way I actually feel in my own skin? Is it because its a third eye? That somehow that makes it more objective, and thus more accurate? Is it because I really don't do a good job of putting the way I feel above the way others view me? I don't know. Either way, I'm upset.

And yes, I'm pregnant so I'm not going to look thin. Its not my belly - my beautiful belly - that I mind - its my face and arms and chin and cheeks and arms and hands. And ankles and butt and hips and thighs.

Oh. I know. I didn't have my melt down this weekend. I must be due. So I won't over think if I can't help it. I'll just record.

I was thinking about having some pictures taken - professional ones - of me pregnant because I feel so good and love my belly and my baby and want to hang onto this feeling and make sure it isn't lost, but if pictures are only going to upset me, I guess I shouldn't.

It was wonderful to see Mom and Dad and Joel. Mom and I went shopping for baby things and got lots of wonderful, precious, darling things.

I'm all over the place in my thoughts.

Joel is a good young man - a fine young man. He is very conservative, though. I don't know how to feel about that. He said he doesn't understand how a man can be gay. That if they act and are attracted to effeminate qualities, why not just be with a woman? I am glad he could articulate his thoughts, but what concerns me is that he thinks he needs to understand or identify with the attraction and I just think that misses the boat. I don't think you need to understand or justify homosexuality - just like I don't think you need to understand or justify heterosexuality - it just is. I know Joel is a 17 year old boy, raised by social conservative parents in the south. I can't expect him to have broader views at this points. Except that I can and do. And it makes me sad. I don't preach or try to convert him to my way of thinking - I share my thoughts and ideas when he asks and we are talking - so I think I'm allowing him space under the assumption that it will be hard for him not to balance out a bit during college. He is my brother, and I love him. But he is very different than the little boy I mothered when I was younger.

I wondered if Steve was getting antsy during parts of the weekend. He's too polite to say that, but I know that listening to my dad's stories is hard for him at times. I don't like that it is hard for him, but it is what it is. I don't want to ask him about it because...well, I don't want to know. I just know how awful I felt with my SIL here and her children and I dread that he would feel even a little the same way about my family.

I was tired and overwhelmed at work today.

Ripple was home alone from 8:15 to 5:15. She did fine, as far as I can tell. But. I had to leave work early since S won't be home until much later tonight. I don't know what I'm feeling about that. Worried about her? Proto-baby issues? Guilt? Resentment? I love her so much and hate for anything to bother her.

Need to do:
1. Get Grandma a copy of her article.
2. Do my toe nails.
3. Convert, save, and print out journal.
4. Iron clothes.

Both my parents shared stories from their lives that I hadn't known before. My mother nearly beat a Ukranian man to death who tried to protest at defecting Russian poet's presentation at Mac. She said she literally saw red - that she never before or since has wanted to hurt someone so much. This Russian poet was the subject of her thesis - and I"m blanking on his name - but he was one of the '60's Russian poets who traveled with Ginsberg and other beatniks of that generation. And now, my mother is very good friends with this poet's wife through her invovlement in the Russian language in Oklahoma.

My father got a deferment from Vietnam because he was the only male language teacher in his part of Wisconsin. So, he was drafted, but got a deferment. I can't imagine how that must have been for him and my mother.

I'm tired and drained now.