Sacred Red Placenta Roses

Generally, when we do "sacred" or solemn acts, they come out awkwardly funny. For us, "sacred" means embracing the absurdity in what should be a solemn moment. Sacred generally involves dancing. Sacred means we call upon the Creator to come laugh with us. Laughter is holy. Silly or interpretive dance brings us close to the divine. Take, for example, how we say grace. Don't laugh. This is an important rite for us:
God is great, God is good.
God is dancing in our food.
Good is good, God is great.
God is dancing on our plate.
Amen. [louder]AMEN!

So this was our Sacred Placenta Planting Ceremony.

Ingrid's placenta has been living in our freezer for neary 2 1/2 years. Today we finally buried it. We sectioned off a new little garden space by the side fence and planted a rose bush over it. The rose bush was a Father's Day gift for Chris. I got it from BJ's for $10. For a $10 rose bush, it's quite nice.

Ingrid napped upstairs, Bea played across the street. Chris asked me to help him plant the rose bush. I said, "Let's bury the placenta while we're at it."

Chris said, "Okay. Do you think we should put it in the microwave to let it thaw?"

I said, "That's gross. I'm not cooking my placenta in a microwave. It'll be fine."

"Well, if you don't think it will the freeze the roots..."

"Dude!" I said, "It's warm outside. The ground is warm. It'll thaw before it does any damage."

So I fished around in the freezer and found the placenta, lovingly wrapped in two Ziplock freezer bags. No more mistaking it for frozen steak. I brought it outside and opened the bags. It was the first time I've looked at it in over 2 years. It was dark red and frosty, and I could see the umbilical cord, and the veins, and the fleshiness. "I made that!" I said.

"It looks like a kombucha baby." Chris said.

"You're right." I said. "Except it's bloodier."

"Maybe the midwives switched it on you and actually gave you a kombucha baby."

"I don't think so. I took a good look at it. It wasn't kombucha. Look how bloody it is. Kombucha isn't bloody."

"They could have poured blood on it to make it look like a placenta."

"That's silly." I said.

"But what if they did?"

I told him to shut up. Not in a mean way. Just in our "okay, it's not funny anymore" way.

And suddenly I got really sad. Ingrid's birth story is the poster birth story for the superior care you can get when you have your baby at home with competent, caring midwives. I couldn't make up a better birth story. I looked at the placenta and remembered it all, and then realized that this might be the last placenta I make. Ingrid could well be our last child. Yesterday at the farmers' market, I saw scads of pregnant women, and one mom with a newborn. I'm hit hard with baby-wants right now. Chris is not. Bea and Ingrid were both unexpected gifts. If we have a third, there would be no surprises. It would be a mutual agreement, an endeavor, a planned thing. We don't do many "planned things", which makes me think a third baby might never be. Things could change in a couple of years. We'll see.

But this rite was to honor Ingrid's birth, and to plant our rose bush. I snapped out of the baby wants for the moment. Chris dug a hole, noting he wanted it to be deep enough so that nothing tried to dig it up. I dropped the placenta in, and it fell with frozen thud. Chris covered it with a little more dirt and I watched some worms squiggle around. They must have felt exposed (and a little cold). I threw a banana peel over that (to feed the rose bush. It was a tip I learned from the man at BJ's who checks to make sure everything in your basket is accounted for on your receipt). We placed the rose bush over that, and set it.

"Should we say a few words?" I asked.

"I don't know. 'Here lies the placenta.'" Chris said.

That was good. To the point.

"I'll do a little placenta dance." I said. I twirled around a couple of times, and did a couple of stag leaps. "This is the placenta dance..." I sang to the tune of Nick Cave's "Weeping Song".

We took a few steps back and admired our rose bush, and made a plan to fill the whole flower bed with roses. (Yeah!) I thought about our third child who might never be, and wasn't sad.

Milestones measured by where we sleep

This bed, by Shawn Lovell Metalworks, is easily the coolest bed I've ever seen.

Anyway, so Ingrid now has a toddler bed in her own room (which doubles as the computer room for now), and last night she slept in it most of the night. Until last night she slept half the night in a crib in our room, and the other half in our bed. So this bed is her first nudge out of the nest. She was so proud and excited to have her very own bed. We all are. She and Bea helped me put new linens on it, Ingrid put a couple stuffed animals in it, the cats tested it for comfort, and she called her papa from outside to show him her new bed. This new sleeping arrangement is the latest big news in the Ellingsgard household.

The bed once belonged to Bea, and when she moved to it from the crib/parents' bed, it was a big deal, too. And things only got more exciting when Bea got a twin sized bed, new headboard, new linens, etc. That was the last we saw of her in our bed (on a regular basis.) She was 4, and she went to pre-school in the fall.

Between my sophomore and junior years in high school I spent the summer in Japan, sleeping on a 2 inch futon atop tatami floors. In all its flat and simple glory, it was the most comfortable bed I ever slept in. And I was 15, across the world from home. Every morning I folded my bed up and went adventuring.

Before Chris, Bea, and Ingrid, I lived with a boyfriend. Towards the end of our courtship, I bought a bed. I claimed that it was for when we would "temporarily" part ways in a few short months, after my graduation from college and his departure to teach in China. The parting ways was permanent, and I knew that when I bought the bed. We would have been smart if we just broke up the day I bought the bed.

I gave that bed to a friend of mine a couple of years later, after it became a second couch. I slept in Chris' king size futon.

We got a waterbed when we moved into our first apartment together where we had no roommates.

We bought a new bed after we moved to a new apartment. I was pregnant with Bea. There was a short in the waterbed heater. If you touched the person laying next to you you each got a mild zap. Strategic touches were fun, but something seemed a little wrong about it. Wrong in the potential for serious electrocution sense. So we put the king size futon mattress on top of it. When we moved, we discovered it had a serious mold problem.

We're still in the last bed we bought. I gave birth to Ingrid in that bed. Chris and I dream of our next bed, when all our once and future babies have migrated to their own beds, and all once and future children have consistent nighttime bladder control. Then we're getting our dream bed. Maybe one like the photo above. Maybe we'll get a tatami mat and futon like this one. We're thinking memory foam.

Food, Wherefore Art Thou?

This is a really an update of my previous post. I'm still sick. Tomorrow is my last day at my hell job and I got so sick I had to leave at 11:15. I went home, managed to get some food in me, which hasn't come up the same way or exploded out the other end, and my stomach feels somewhat settled. I feel lucky. I fear my luck could run out of my ass at any moment though.

I have a sensitive stomach on the best of days. Still, I love to eat, I like to try new things. Ever since I was pregnant with Bea I've been a happy omnivore. I don't eat huge amounts of meat. I'm wondering if I should return to the vegetarianism of my youth (I was a vegetarian and occasional vegan for about 14 years), or at least give the vegetarian diet a trial run for six months. I bought bacon for the first time in a couple of years. Maybe I'll finish the package first. And the locally raised lamb shanks in the freezer. I couldn't go a pregnancy without eating sushi, can I go six months? I think I have to re-evaluate the diet re-evaluation.

The fact is, I'm healthier eating meat occasionally. It's easier to put food on the table. Bea is the world's pickiest eater, and she has no interest in being a vegetarian. Neither does Chris. I don't think Ingrid cares right now. There's nothing I miss about being a vegetarian. My stomach was sensitive back then, too. We live in an area when you can buy meat from local farmers, support local agriculture, and put a face on your food. This is the kind of omnivorism I like.

What I need to do is start eating the fun rich foods slowly and stick with brown rice, garbanzo beans, and yogurt for a few more days. The bacon won't go bad.

JiffyFlux

How quickly can a stomach virus run across a street and back again? Apparently, pretty damn quick. Ingrid puked on Thursday, Meg was sick on Thursday (but didn't puke). Vincent puked on Friday. It was my turn on Saturday.

Friday night, I stayed up till the sun rose making product and labels. I got two hours sleep. I made decent money, sold a fair amount of things. But around 11 am, something felt wrong. I wasn't just tired, I felt off. I thought maybe I was overheated. It was about 90 degrees, and I had been sitting in the sun. I drank some water. That didn't help. Later, I put a cold compress on my neck. That helped the nausea. Yeah. Nausea. By 12:30 I knew something bad was coming. I asked Julie, one of my booth mates if she didn't mind taking the tent down herself. She didn't. I looked pretty bad. I went home. I laid down. 20 minutes later I called Joshua, and told him I didn't think I would make it to JiffyCon. Then I puked. The last thing I'd eaten, besides a couple of cookies was a cherry ice pop. I'll let you draw your own conclusions. For the rest of the day, I was so sick I could barely move. Today I felt much better, but still a little weak. I couldn't stand up for long periods of time.

I'm bummed I missed JiffyCon. I had a really cool playtest for Steal Away Jordan in mind. I heard JiffyCon was a blast of course. There's next time.

Update!
So Meg reports that she did not have the flux. I guess I wanted someone to share in my misery. That's okay, I had a relapse on Monday, so I had it for her. I'm still a little queasy, still a little weak, and not all affected systems have returned to normal function yet.

I'd be more graphic about the whole thing, for the sake of scientific inquiry, but I think the 2 or 3 people who actually read this might read during their lunch hour, and I don't want to discourage reading.

Let's just say...let's not say anything other than that I was wicked sick.