Death and the Giants

It won't leave me alone! I hate it. I wish it would go away for just a few days. Give me a break, Death! It's happening all around me and so sometimes I wonder if I am the least common denominator. Am I the one bringing the death?

I beleive in serendipity and in thought energy. How else can you explain thinking about someone or some thing that you NEVER ever think about and then being confronted with said thing. There are connections. I guess Jung tried to conquer this phenomonon with the collective mind and all that. Maybe? I don't know enough about it. Who was the philosopher that thought there was this big thought bubble from God and that it trickled forth into smaller tributaries leading to each one of us? I'm sure I am way off base in my description, but whatever. We share thoughts and feelings and the world with others. There is something that connects us all. But back to death...

I saw a wreck on Saturday on my way to church. A white Taurus looking car accidently ran a redlight and plowed into a little red Geo type. It hit the driver side door and the red car went spinning. I was behind the Taurus and wondering why it wasn't stopping for the light. I knew it was going to happen beforehand, but the sound of metal and machine colliding at forty miles per hour is always a shock. So real and not at all like in the movies. Bang! Quick and simple. An ambulance was beside me at the light and the EMTs went to check out the scene and make sure people were okay. The red car looked pretty badly dented on the driver's door. I think that person was hurt. I drove away to go pray for everyone at church because there were so many people alread congregating. They hardly needed me there.

I just hope I didn't SEE someone die. That's what disturbed me so much about the television/media coverage during 9/11. Clip after clip of the collapsing building... People were dying INSIDE that building. To show it on t.v. cheapens that death. Do you remember that movie that was popular in the nineties, The Faces of Death? (That's when I heard about it anyway, but it was filmed in the late 70s.)People die on camera. It's obscene and unrelenting. Shouldn't that most important event in a life be private? We are so obsessed with recording our lives that we forget to live them. (Aren't I recording my life in this blog?)I'm not blaming this on the media, though. They get blamed for too much. It's the people who eat all this shit up that drive me crazy. I feel so strongly about this, but can't relay it in words that correlate with my feelings. Frustrating.

The week after I was hired at UofL, my supervisor went to the doctor and found out she had breast cancer. Two days later she had a mastectomy. Since that day nearly two years ago she's been battling this ugly THING with little result. She's been on chemo for two years which means that her last two years were MISERABLE. She finally gave up, slipping quietly off to death on Monday afternoon. I'm glad for her that it's over. I think she really did expect to get better until like a week ago. I would have pulled the plug long ago if I were her.

And then there's Heath. Who did not kill himself, but who was abusing prescription meds. Man.

I can't close this post without talking about The Giants! I am a couple days late, I know... They were great. It's the first Super Bowl game that I was glued to my seat for. Stupid Tom Brady and his perfectly tied scarfs got sacked FIVE times! It was great. Did you see Giselle drinking wine in a Pats box? Who drinks red wine at a football game? Whatever! Like everyone else in the free world, I love Peyton Manning. So, to see him absorbed in watching his little brother play the game was so damn adorable! I read an article in The Sporting News last week that said losing the Super Bowl would make Tom Brady more likeable. I don't know if I'd go that far. I'm sure he's nice, but he just seems too much like that jerk football player that went to everyone's high school. I'm fascinated by Senator Specter's investigation into the Rams defeat in 2001. If the Patriots are shown to have videotaped footage of the Rams walkthrough, that would be unheard of in pro sports. That's bigger than the Steroid story. That's as big a story as Shoeless Joe and the Chicago Black Sox scandal which people are still talking about almost one hundred years later. Crazy! I hope it's not true, though. As much as I dislike the Patriots team, it is made up of flesh and blood human beings and I hope they are not cheaters.

I was looking at some old photos of Hawkins (who will NEVER be a cheater). He's so big! I can't beleive it! Check out the following, a photographic timeline of the last year...

Introducing ROCKY Balboa! Oh wait, no, it's not Rocky! It's Hawkins Patrick Bacon weight in at 10 lbs., 2 oz.!



But he looks so small here! Poor Scott. This is like hour thirty-six after the night from hell. This is why he looks like a heroin addict. Because I was two weeks late, the midwife forced me to be induced. I didn't want pitocin b/c I think it increases likelihood of c-section. So, they broke my water at 9am. Hawkins was born exactly 24 hours later after 21 hours of NATURAL effing labor, two hours of pushing to no avail, attempt at vacuum extraction, and then finally c-section. He was large and posterior and got stuck in the birth canal. At one point, Scott said my back was swollen to the point where it looked like I had a big softball sticking out of the left side of my back. It was one of the hardest things we've ever done, but it was worth it even though I didn't get the natural birth I wanted. Just to know that we could endure such hardship together means a lot. We survived!




He's two days old here. Isn't he so little? And GAY?



Two weeks old and already heading to the office for casual Friday!



This kid does NOT like hats. He was so teeny here. This was right after a walk to Sunergo's, our favorite coffee shop. I think it was Valentine's Day.



And then, he got very, very fat in like a month as you can see from this picture. This was my screensaver for a long time...



That covers the first couple months. Will revisit memory lane tomorrow. See y'all.