A drive home filled with animals

Tonight driving home late from working at the church I saw a deer and a raccoon. The deer was standing at the roadside waiting for me to pass before crossing the street with disinterest. If I had opened my door and reached out I probably could have touched it. The Raccoon scuttled across the street with a sense of purpose, no doubt out foraging in the traditional Raccoon way. It just makes me happy to see some sizable animals persisting even after we have snuffed out their contemporaries like candles. We have turned their homes into urban strip mall wastelands and reduced the forests to small patches of wooded areas choked with ornamental plants that spread like Triffids across the landscape and yet the persist and in some cases they even push back. Tonight I raise my beer to the species that refuse to go quietly into the night. I raise my glass to the Wolves that have not only recovered in Idaho but are now moving into Eastern Oregon despite the ranchers committing the sins of their fathers and trying to exterminate them yet again. I raise my glass to the Elk of Tillamook Oregon who spend the hunting season on the air museum lawn and local land owners gardens only returning to the huntable area just after the season closes. I tip my glass to the ubiquitous Coyote, yes you ate my neighbors pet rabbit but we took out your specie’s prey and covered your home in asphalt so I can’t fault you and in fact I wish you luck. I dedicate a sip to the Mountain Lion, the common mole, the Peregrine Falcons of New York, all the species that just won’t quit. I only wish the other large North American mammals were so lucky. What can I say; I have always loved nature and animals. My picture of Heaven is a wide undisturbed world teeming with life, a place of natural beauty to be explored with countless species to be catalogued. That’s why I am trying to become a marine biologist, conservation biologist and or an aquarist I was born with it in my blood. That is why tonight as I drove home I couldn’t help but smile and wish the animals that crossed my path godspeed.

If...

Be calm, be brave, it'll be okay...

Today was Elaine’s first doctors appointment, the one where they haul out the “observe the baby in its natural environment” machine. We were in this small tastefully decorated room, Elaine on the couch/bench/chair/electric thingy, and me in a small chair on the side. Our doctor fired up the machine and the screen filled with that grainy black and white haze that defies easy identification. Then there was a black void and in the center a single white spot, like a star, as I watched it flickered as the heart beat. I think I may have gotten a little bit misty. That’s when I noticed the doctor looked very concerned. The problem simply stated was and is this: our child is a normal healthy looking 5 week old baby but Elaine has been definitely pregnant for 8 or 9 weeks. The doctor was happy at least to see a heart beat but there are only two possibilities with this situation. The first being that Elaine released two eggs in delayed sequence the first getting fertilized and giving all the tests positive results but not developing while the second fertilized egg followed latter, keeping the tests positive but screwing with how far along we thought she was. The second option is that the child isn’t developing properly. If the kid isn’t growing Elaine will miscarriage before a week is over. On next Thursday we go back in to the hospital and get another ultrasound (with a higher resolution machine). That is when, barring something happening in between, we will find out whether our child will be pulling through. Elaine and I are doing ok, and I know we will be fine no matter what. It’s the waiting that’s hard, not knowing how to feel because it could go either way. High risk pregnancies must be hell. The weirdest thing is the possibility that all those plans we started making could become meaningless in a mere moment. It’s tense and since I found out this morning I have had trouble focusing on anything. My folks know, because my mom had called and I wasn’t going to lie about it. I told my sister too.
The thing I wanted though was to be with friends today. Friends who would want to know how I was doing but also that I would be able to just hangout with and not think about this morning.


I did talk to one of my friends tonight, because he called. It went like this in paraphrase.
Friend: “So how are things? Was your day ok?”
Me: “Today I found out that there is about a 50% or higher chance that Elaine will have a miscarriage this week. I won’t know until next Thursday if our kid will make it.”
Friend: “Oh man, I’m really sorry to hear that. I’ll let my wife know and we’ll pray for you guys.”
Me: “Thanks.”
Friend: “Yeah, my work has been rough this week, but your situation is worse. Well I just got home and I need to get some sleep. Let me know how that comes out.”
Me: *After he hangs up* “Thanks a lot…..jackass.”

Sometimes I think I am using the term friend in situations like this too liberally.