On being pregnant and 40

November 15, 2009

When the Gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers. Or so says an old adage.

And here I am, with the teenager I raised off to the Navy and about to turn 20, my oldest son turning 10 next summer, and newly-five-year-old son.

And, apparently, if all goes well, a new baby in June.

Oy.

Yes, I wanted another baby. Specifically, a girl.

But I had just gotten to the point where I was accepting, slowly, that it just wasn’t going to happen.

We’ve had two babies and two miscarriages. As Mark said, we’re two for two. Let’s appreciate what we have, that we have two beautiful boys, and that we’ve figured out how to keep them healthy and happy.

And, frankly, the first three years of Sander’s life nearly killed us. If we had another baby with autism, it would pretty much finish us off.

Plus, he said, I’m always sick and miserable and unable to function for the first four or five months of pregnancy, and he doesn’t know if he can pick up the slack.

And yet, here we are.

When I told Mark, he was quite literally stunned. You could see him doing the math in his head -- “I’ll be 47 when the baby is born, and I’ll be HOW OLD with a teenager???!”
Yeah.

Well, it’s too late now.

And I’m sick and miserable and unable to function. And Mark has to pick up the slack.

When I was young, at least 100 years ago, I was a true feminist. I believed that women are the same as men, can do anything that men can do, and that I would never need a man in my life.

Why would I? I remember having to answer questions about my future career in college. One guy in the class asked how I’d be an archeologist if I had kids -- what would I do with them?

I almost laughed, the question was so foreign. Kids? Me? Right. I don’t think so. And if I did have kids, I’d put them in a backpack and take them with me -- they’d get a great education on the dig site.

I guess I knew that I’d homeschool even then, at least.

Kids were portable, and easy, right? You just make them adapt to your lifestyle -- it’s not like they have any choice in the matter.

Well.

I’m working on baby number three. Pregnancy number five. And this will be the fourth kid I’m raising.

I am still a feminist. I still believe women deserve equal rights. I do not believe men and women are the same. I don’t believe they can do anything men can do, and I don’t believe men can do anything women can do. And frankly, if you’re going to have sex and get pregnant, you’re going to need a man in your life.

I think the choices now are: Skip men altogether, including sex, or accept that fact that if you get pregnant, you’re going to need help. Lots of it. Moral support, emotional support, physical support, monetary support. Pregnancy is not for sissies.

The first thing I learned, with the first pregnancy, is that we’re animals, whether we like it or not. Once the pregnancy hits, you’re part of a larger biological process than just you. Unless you step in with modern technology to halt the process, which is an option our grandmothers didn’t have, then you’re in for a ride. There’s no turning back, no other options. 

If you get pregnant, you will have a baby, want one or not. Ready or not. In love with the father or not. Rich or not. Single or not.

You are no longer in control of your body at all. Your boobs start to hurt. You slobber all the time. You snore when you sleep. You’re grumpy and mean. 

And, at least for me, there’s vomit involved. Lots of it.

Currently, it’s at 7 every evening. Whether I have dinner plans, or a movie to watch, or someone to impress. Off I go, out to the back porch, heaving away. And there’s nothing ladylike about it -- I’m barfing so hard that my eyeballs hurt and start to tear up, the retching noise is so loud that the kids and the dog run away from me, and, I’m sorry to say, the heaving is so strong that I pee my pants every time. Lovely image, isn’t it?

And it’s not just the barfing. There’s also the fact that I FEEL like I’m going to throw up every minute of every day, unless I’m horizontal. 

And the exhaustion, which conveniently can be taken care of by lying down.

Currently, I’m sleeping 10 hours at night and still need a two-hour nap.

Sander informed me yesterday that I’m going to win a prize for world champion sleeper. Apparently, I’m NOT up for mother of the year this time.

And then, at the end of this whole miserable process, there’s a birth involved. And that’s when I first realized the usefulness of a man.

When I was pregnant with Sander, very far along and already wobbling, Mark and I took Matthew and Sawyer to the mountains of Virginia for a weekend. We stayed in a cute cabin and went for a walk in the woods. Matthew was 14 and wanted to do the “extreme trail” hike; since Sawyer was four and I was about as mobile as a beached Orca, we opted for the “stroller/wheelchair friendly” trail.

It was a beautiful fall day, and the place was empty.

We walked about a quarter of a mile, and then, right in front of us, a baby bear crossed the trail. It was gorgeous, and we all stood in awe, watching it. 

And then saw the mother bear, on the other side of the trail, and realized we were in between the baby and the mother.

So. Matthew, smart boy that he is, walked backward about twenty feet, slowly, and took off running. The mother bear came a little closer, probably 15 feet away by this point.

Mark picked up Sawyer. And tried to put Sawyer on his head, as high up as possible.

And then I saw him look at me, waddling backwards, and saw him trying to decide whether to go and bring Sawyer to safety or stay with me.

Yeah. There was no way I could fight the bear, unless I could manage to sit on it. And I couldn’t outrun a sloth.

That was when I realized why men as partners are useful. Mark has an interest in protecting me, and Sawyer, and the baby. And he’s physically able to do it when I’m nine months pregnant. All I’m able to do is obsess about nursery colors and baby names.

Thankfully, after we backed up, the bear had enough room to cross the trail after her cub, and after glaring at us, she lumbered off and away from us.

With all my self-reliance ideas shattered, I was still unprepared for childbirth. Sawyer had been a C-section. No big deal -- just a minor surgery. You’re out of commission for an hour or two, tops, and you could still hobble away later if you had to, baby in tow.

Sander was a natural birth. And was nine and a half pounds. And was two weeks late. And the epidural didn’t work.

Nothing, but nothing, ever, in my life, prepared me for labor.

I thought it would hurt. I took a delightful class on hypnobirthing, that taught me to ride the waves. I was ready for anything, and figured if it was THAT big a deal, no one would ever have two kids.

Wrong.

Perhaps my problem is that I wasn’t abused enough as a child. I’ve never been hit. Never been in a fist fight. Never been beaten, or had a black eye. Never broke a bone. I’ve really never had to deal with physical pain.

Until the day Sander was born.

I had a fantasy of walking the halls, breathing deeply, riding the waves. I asked not to be hooked up to a monitor, so I could walk around and take a shower. No catheters or bed pans for me, thanks -- I was going to be fully mobile.

And the first labor pain hit. The doctor had come in and said we had to start things moving, so he broke my water and said to see if that did the trick.

Within about ten minutes, I was convinced I was dying. There had to be something wrong. No one, ever, could have ever felt this way.

And then, crawled up in bed in the best fetal position I could manage, I screamed, and moaned, and yelled, for eight hours. You know it hurts when you have a sliver under your fingernail? Yeah. That kind of pain.

The kind of cramps you had when you had the worst flu of your life, and you were shaky and sweaty on the toilet from the pain? Double that.

And then, imagine having the worst flu possible, vomiting and shitting all over the place, unable to speak because of the pain, and someone comes up to ask you to make important, potentially life-altering decisions.

Do you want ice chips? Do you want a monitor? Are you sure you don’t want a C-section? Do you want to try the epidural again? Can you hold completely still for five minutes?

And then, at the end, the baby wouldn’t come out.

And so, the flipping begins. The midwives turned me like a pancake. On my back. On my knees. On all fours. Over a giant rubber ball, ass end up, almost naked. All done with monitor wires and an oxygen mask and an IV and a fetal probe attached.

I have vague memories of the worst of it -- I was quite literally unable to think. I was panting and gasping and completely unaware of what was going on around me.

If I had been a cavewoman, unattended by my mate, or perhaps a peasant girl who’d been thrown out of the house because she was pregnant, I would have had no protection. None.

Lions, come get me. Bears, have at it. Bad guys, take what you can get. I’m not going anywhere.

But there is a beauty in the whole thing, knowing that your mother did this. And her mother, did, too. And her mother did, and without painkillers. And her mother, probably at home. And knowing that many of them lost children because they didn’t have the resources we do.

It’s a wild, savage beauty, though. It’s not pretty. Neither are babies.

I’ve never talked about poop and vomit and blood and snot more in my life than the first month after Sawyer was born.

In my twenties, picking up cat vomit made me sick.

Now I can wipe a nose, a bottom, clean up barf and a dog mess before breakfast without batting an eye.

And here I am, again.

Hoping this baby is healthy. I’m only eight weeks along. A lot could go wrong. I’m optimistic, though -- the two pregnancies I lost were both times of immense stress in my life, and both times I never felt sick. This time, I’m making up for those -- I’m sicker than I’ve ever been. Although Mark swears I say that every time, and I was just as sick and tired with Sander and Sawyer.

Which is why he was hesitant.

Humph.

Oh, and the worst bit? I’m trying to avoid food issues with this kid. We’ve already got one with celiac disease and one recovered from autism, so I’m being careful and following suggestions from great doctors. 

Unfortunately, those suggestions are:

No gluten

No dairy

No sugar

No caffeine

No alcohol, obviously

No meat with hormones or antibiotics (so no eating out, unless it’s vegetarian.)

No produce with chemicals or pesticides (so all organic, at least at home.)

Yeah.

Doesn’t leave much that I like.

And it means that my newest craving, for a turkey and bacon foot-long sub from Subway with lots of hot peppers and Italian dressing, just isn’t going to happen.

Sigh.

So, wish me luck the next four weeks. I have an ultrasound on Nov. 23, and we’ll see then if everything looks good. If we see a heartbeat and baby’s the right size, I’ll be a lot happier.

If not, I’ve been doing a LOT of puking for nothing!

My dreams come true

Published September 2, 2009

Anyone who has known me for a while knows that I have a rich imagination (some would say alternate reality,) and that I live in a dreamland, in the future, in what ifs and somedays.

My all-time favorite fantasy, though, and the one which I really thought would come true, is this one: I marry a tall, dark, handsome man. He adores me and would do anything for me. One of the conditions of marriage, for in my fantasy I have many suitors, is that we live in Europe, at least for a little while.

I live in an ancient walled village, in a tiny apartment, or maybe a house. I have a little red-haired girl, and while my husband works, we explore Europe. 

We go to the farmer’s market, and make friends with the dogs and cats in the neighborhood. We know the butcher’s name, and the lady at the farmer’s market gives the little girl a strawberry or a piece of bread when she sees her. We have a lush garden, full of grapes and good things to eat, and we cook in our old house on an ancient stove.

On weekends, we go to Paris, or to Brussels, and explore.

My girl grows up learning two or maybe three languages, and then we come back to the states, which is about as far as the fantasy gets.

In reality, I got as far as the first sentence. 

I did marry a tall, dark, handsome man, and he said we’d try to live in Europe. We’ve been working on it for the twelve years we’ve been married. And it hasn’t happened, and now we’re settled in to Austin. With two boys, and not a hint of pink in sight.

I’m sort of resigned to this. My latest version of the fantasy is to figure out a way to get to Europe when they’re older -- I’m thinking if I just write a best-selling novel, when Sawyer’s 14 and Sander’s 10, in five years, we’ll live in Italy for a year. 

Sawyer would love Rome. And Paris. And the food! Sander would love the subways, and the bustle and life.

Mark wouldn’t do well there. He would try, but language is not his strong suit. He speaks one language well, and it’s engineering. 

English is a second language for him, and he struggles to convert the pictures in his head into English. 

Asking him to pick up Italian or French to go live in Europe is akin to asking me to go speak calculus so I can live in Cosin Land, where the Tangents and Square Roots live.

And so, I’m slowly learning to love Austin, and trying to adapt.

I adore Mark. I adore my boys. I’m trying to accept that this really is who I am. That Europe can wait.

And that I can learn to be happy here -- after all, I’m not in a freakin’ refugee camp, and it’s not like there aren’t people literally dying to get into the U.S!

And then...

For eighteen years, my best friend Christy and I have been over this fantasy so much it’s become our mantra. This is what we talk about -- how we love Target. How we love huge bookstores. How nice it is to go to Whole Foods.

And yet: We’d happily give it all up to have a farmer’s market in a town square in a walled village. Instantly. Goodbye, outlet malls. Hello, fishmonger.

No more freeways, or ice cubes, cold beer or baseball. 

Instead there are old gardens and ancient traditions and old ladies with babushkas and baskets of cabbage. Yes, there are discos and night life in Europe, but that’s not what Christy and I talk about. We talk about the slow pace, the wine with dinner, the good food, the lack of cars in tiny villages and the feel of community.

It might be all a fantasy, of course -- who knows if life would really be like that?

And two months ago, Christy moved to Germany. With her tall, dark, handsome husband, and her little red-headed girl.

To a tiny village, with no freeways or ice cubes.

There’s a grinding wheel in the courtyard of her house. And an ancient pressure cooker down in the scary basement, next to the chimney that you use to smoke meats.

Of course there’s a lush garden, where the red-haired girl picks grapes, and apples, and cucumbers and blackberries, so far. It’s only been eight weeks -- I’m sure there’s more to come.

They visit the old lady across the street, who wears a babushka, on their way to the bakery two doors down. The old lady, it turns out, has hay in her basket, not cabbages. Who knew?

They go through the dark forest behind their house down a path and into the walled village a half-mile away for the festivals that happen so often this time of year.

There’s wine with dinner, and good food, and everyone knows them and says hello.

And I’m not there.

I’m here, thousands of miles away, with a shriveled up, miserable pile of dirt that should have been a garden, with two amazing boys who are not red-headed, and not a grinding wheel or a walled village in sight.

And I miss her every day, and wish I could be a part of it.

After all, if someone’s living my fantasy, it would only be fair if I at least get to visit.

Damn.

What’s the old advice about learning to appreciate what you have?

Oh, but I do. I know I how lucky I am. I am truly thankful every day for the incredible places I’ve been and where I am right now.

But for someone who lives in the land of what if and someday, it’s hard to keep your mind in Austin when your dream’s in a tiny walled village half a world away.

The world's ugliest feet

My toes are stuck together, stumpy, and ugly. I can live with that.

However, the way my feet look in shoes...

Yikes. Like zip-locs full of lard, with a bad tan line, stuffed into a wire cage. Not a pretty sight.

Originally published August 10, 2009

I have issues with my feet.

I also have issues with shoes.

I have two pair of shoes. Three, if you count sneakers, which I don’t. 

I only have sneakers because someone keeps telling me that I have to exercise -- so I go, dutifully, and buy sneakers once a year to exercise. This year I had a bout of temporary insanity (it runs in my family and happens on a regular basis) and I started running. 

Hah.

It lasted five weeks. I ran 11 times, for a total of 12 miles, and spent $140 on a pair of running shoes, $11 for running socks and $5 for a cool iPhone app to let me know just how far I had run.

Which works out to $14 a run.

So no, sneakers don’t count.

I have UGLY feet.

Very ugly.

My feet are a size ELEVEN. That’s right, I said eleven. As in, most people who have size eleven feet are either men or are lucky enough to be a woman who’s six feet tall. 

But I’m the shortest one in my family of giants, the only one who doesn’t even make it to five-foot-eight, and I’ve got the biggest feet. 

How fair is that?

My toes are stuck together, my feet are flat and fat, and I have a permanent tan around my flip-flop line.

At my best friend’s wedding, I met a man with a foot fetish/phobia, (he said he had a “thing” about feet,) and I scared him into an almost comatose state by showing him my stuck-together toes.  We’d all had a bit to drink by that point, and I kept taking off my shoes and wiggling my toes at him. He was begging me to stop. Couldn’t handle my toes. Oh, the power! I reveled in his misery. Finally had to put my shoes on, though, when he threatened to throw up.

Not one of my finer moments.

So I have one pair of flip-flops, which I wear February through October, and a pair of moccasins, which I wear in winter. 

Occasionally I will buy a new pair of flip-flops, and when I do, I spend $70 and get a “real” pair, meaning one that’s from Hawaii or Australia and will last for the entire summer. I alternate sometimes with Birkenstocks. 

Whatever is comfortable, has my toes and heels hanging out, protects my feet on the bottom and won’t break.

Similarly, in the winter I occasionally veer from the moccasins into docksiders.

And that’s it. Two pair of shoes in my closet. I will never wear heels again, unless someone I love dies and they were the kind of person who would be offended by flip-flops at their funeral.

If I go snow camping, I might buy a pair of boots.

And yet, though I have had this weird thing about shoes FOREVER, the people in my family who haven’t yet accepted this (and there are more of them then you’d think,) have decided that the reason I don’t wear pretty shoes is because I don’t have any.

So they send me shoes.

They see a pair of size eleven shoes at a garage sale, or at a discount store, or even at a designer place, and seeing a pair that big is rare.

So their thinking must go something like, “Oh, there’s a size eleven! Poor Meagan always has to wear those horrible flip-flops because she can’t find any shoes in her size! If I get her these, she’ll start wearing cute shoes! And maybe she’ll paint her toenails!  Oh, and then she’ll feel so good she’ll get an outfit, an honest-to-God outfit, to wear with it, instead of the jeans and T-shirt she always wears. That’s it! All I have to do is buy these shoes for her and she’ll be cute!”

Because once a month, someone buys shoes for me.

The latest are above.

Are they the cutest shoes ever or the ugliest shoes on the market?

I honestly don’t know. My first reaction was hideous disgust.

Then I thought maybe they’re sort of cute. 

Then back to loathing.

But I tried them on anyway, just to see how my pale lumps of lardy feet would looked jammed into these delicate works of care and feminine charm.

Yah. Just what I thought.

There’s a reason I wear flip-flops, you know?

So just in case anyone is wondering what I need for my next birthday:

It’s not shoes.

Really. 

Even if you find a cute pair in a size eleven, and they’re on sale.

My son

Asleep in the laundry basket. Finally.

Published August 4, 2009

Yeah, I know we’re not supposed to label kids.

I know that if a parent says you can be difficult, then you’ll live up to the label, and if a parent says you’re sweet, you’ll be sweet.

But Sander can’t read, and no one’s going to tell him what I say here, so I’ll say it: Sometimes this four-year-old child is one huge, unmitigated, giant, pain in the ass.

I know that all of these quaint character traits that I’m seeing as negative will eventually turn into positives.

I know that bright, energetic children will turn into successful, driven adults.

I know that pushy turns into assertive, and bossy turns into a leader, and demanding turns into an adult who can get what he want. Curious turns into an education, and non-stop energy is fabulous when you’re thirty.

But you know what?

Right now he’s a pushy, bossy, demanding, curious little kid, full of non-stop energy.

And I have no idea how to parent him.

I love him, so, so much, and yet, he is the challenge that was given to me on earth to test my patience and my parenting ability and my faith in my ability to be a mother.

Almost every night, I have five or six courses of action I can pursue in dealing with him running through my head.

Take tonight.

We got home from gymnastics late (first strike.)

They hadn’t eaten dinner, and we ended up eating late, at almost 7:30 (second strike.)

I told Sander that he could watch the end of his new TV show, which had about fifteen minutes left on it. Then Mark didn’t know I’d promised that, and watched something else instead. (Third strike.)

So. I announce bedtime, not realizing that I have set the stage, yet again, for disaster.

Sander announces that he won’t go to bed. He’s going to watch the last few minutes of his show, as he was promised.

It’s already 9:30. I say it’s too late. Then Mark says if we promised, we promised. Fine. We’re obviously loser parents who can’t make up our mind. Sander sniffs the air, catching the scent of weakness.

So we let him watch the last fifteen minutes, thereby exposing our underbelly with Sander: If you give in once, out of kindness, love, friendship or in the interest of fairness, you are toast. Dead meat. You deserve everything that happens next. You have been warned.

It’s now 9:45. His show is over. 

And, surprise! He wants to watch another one. 

He now believes that we will give in if he throws a fit. This is obviously our fault, and yet we still don’t get it. 

The problem? We had an incredibly easy, sweet first child. With Sawyer, he would have smiled at us, thanked us profusely for letting him watch the show, and taken himself off to bed.

Sander has decided this is a turning point in his relationship with his parents. He can now call all of the shots, if he just digs in on this.

So, he’s going to watch another episode of his show.

No. Matter. What.

Mark and I, sensing danger in the water, have decided to hold our ground.

No matter what.

More than an hour of tears. More than an hour of begging.

Finally, Sander decides that we need to make him happy. We’ve made him unhappy by saying no, so now he wants a dish of ice cream, or to play a computer game.

That will make up for the bad things we’ve done to him.

So. In my head I have:

Stern Parent: You must not give into this kind of manipulative garbage. He’s just trying to see who’s in charge here, and you have to show him that it’s you. He thinks this is a bad thing? He’s going to see a bad thing. Right now.

Attachment Parent: This poor kid is so upset, and he’s really trying to figure out how to comfort himself. Maybe a dish of ice cream would show him that you can help him figure out how to soothe himself when the world’s too overwhelming.

Rational Parent: Yeah. Because, you know, bad behavior should get rewarded with ice cream. Well, wait a minute -- when I’m upset, I want ice cream... 

Middle-ground Parent: This doesn’t have to be a “him or me.” How can we make this work so we’re both on the same side?

So I go to pick him up, to help him and hug him and cuddle.

Nope. He wants me away from him.

He hates me. Hates everyone. All he wants is ice cream.

Finally, he goes off to seek comfort with his brother, who is apparently not as big a jerk as his parents.

He crawls in the laundry basket, looks at a couple of books, and falls asleep. At 11:40.

This child won’t take comfort, or snuggles or kindness when he’s mad.

He holds grudges. Has NO sense of humor about himself or his deeds.

You  can’t gently poke him, giggling, out of a bad mood.

You can’t tease him or tickle it away.

You can’t hug it away.

And yet:

He is exceptionally, undeniably, bright. Funny. He adores animals. He has a passion for learning that I’ve never seen in a child this young. He wants to sort animals into every category, and watches nature movies and reads animal books with a curiosity that borders on obsessive.

When he’s good, he’s loving and cuddly and adores me. He loves to spend time with, and his favorite thing, besides animals, is going to garage sales on Saturday mornings.

He does like to snuggle, when it’s his idea and he’s not mad.

He does want to hug me, and tell me I’m beautiful, when he’s in a good mood.

But man, I’m having to re-read every parenting book I have, and go get some new ones.

Playful Parenting. Attachment Parenting. Kids are Worth It parenting.

I’m not quite sure which style Sander parenting is.

Whatever it is, I think I’m going to be exhausted for a very long time.

So, about the garden...

A cute picture of Sander from a while ago. It just makes me smile.

The garden.

Yeah, there’s a reason I’m not writing about it.

Because it makes me want to cry.

And murder.

But I’m past the denial and anger stages, sort of, and I’m just about into the acceptance stage.

The worst drought in fifty years, plus the hottest July on record, ever, plus tons of new construction that have driven all the deer into our neighborhood = disaster.

There’s almost nothing left of the garden.

The deer have jumped an eight-foot fence, despite every website stating that they can’t do that.

Perhaps these are magical flying reindeer.

Perhaps my fence is two inches shorter than eight feet.

But really, what happened is that there’s no food and no water for any animals. We have skunks dying in the back yard, desperate to get to the dog’s water bowl.

Ants, spiders and scorpions are surrounding the house, looking for a way in. We have one chicken left, out of ten. The rest have succumbed to the heat or to animals dragging them away, because there’s no other food.

And so, the deer come into my garden. 

They ate every fucking tomato. Hundreds of them. Cherry tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, pear tomatoes, grape tomatoes. Big ones, little ones, green ones.

And they ate them the week before they turned ripe.

I got a few cherry tomatoes, sweet and tender and amazing, the week before the deer discovered they could jump the fence.

And that was it.

I went away for three days in early June.

When I came back, late at night, I pulled into the driveway and there, in the middle of my tomatoes, was a deer.

I was like a madwoman, thinking that the deer had somehow wandered in and hadn’t done any damage yet.

I jumped out of the car, honking the horn and screaming obscenities, and ran right at the deer. Probably not safe. Probably not smart.

Probably not the best role model for two small children who were awakened from a slumber in their car seats, wanting to go home, watching their mother yell and rant and attack a large hoofed mammal.

And then, in front of me, the stupid starving deer jumped the fence.

I looked around, realized that perhaps it was stupid to charge a deer.

And then I realized that it was all gone.

The tomatoes.

The Swiss chard.

The pumpkins -- oh, those were sad. They left the vines, looking like a fine lace pattern all over ground, but ate the leaves. Left the green melons alone, never to ripen, to die in the heat.

The lettuce was gone, and the green pepper plants. Eaten down to the stems, those were.

Catnip, gone.

Beans looked as though they’d never been planted in the first place.

There was, however, one bright spot.

They ate every green and red pepper on all 14 pepper plants, but they did leave one plant, full of habenero peppers. Beautiful little orange peppers, wrinkling in the sun, too hot to touch, or even to smell.

It does make me smile to think that one deer tried one and was running around in circles, lips smoking, warning the others to stay away.

I’d like to shoot them, but we live in the city limits.

I asked a very nice policeman what would happen if I shot one.

“Do you live in the city?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you know that it’s not hunting season and that you can’t shoot a gun or an arrow in the city limits?”

Yes, I said. I don’t care. I just want to know how much trouble, exactly, we’re talking about.

A little trouble and I might consider it.

“A LOT of trouble,” he said. “Not worth doing it, just for tomatoes. You’re looking at a LOT of trouble.”

So I asked Mark if maybe we could have some guys come, the kind who hunt, and maybe they could sit outside, with a silencer, and shoot a couple and take them away.

And he looked at me, and I could see him contemplating just what he had gotten into, with this wife of his who was willing to bring men with rifles and silencers into her home, and said, “Um, honey, the kind of men who would shoot deer out of season, and who would come to your house in the middle of the night and kill living creatures for money.... Well, I’m not sure you really want to do business with them.”

Oh. Yeah.

And so, I’m ignoring the garden.

Hoping for fall.

Waiting to replant.

And to build a taller fence.