October is for Incubating

Good things about October:

Hobos stop moving around as much
Sunlight through the grasses as I march up the Hill everyday*
A joyful visit with the Logan Bucherts, in which we carved pumpkins and sang Christmas carols
Midday being perfect for being outside
A pregnancy milestone, getting paneled pants (oh they feel good)




*But not today because today is the first day of deer hunting season, and people told us in church we should probably not go out without orange on. (!) Cal-Ranch, here we come. Today I raked leaves and dug out stumps and taste-tested the apples that were waiting for frost. I'm not sure it was a total raise-your-heart-rate success, but it made me thirsty--that counts for something.


The loveliest thing I've seen in a while was a white-wrapped hobo mama's egg sack. I'd seen lots of them while I was moving the stones this summer, but hadn't taken time to truly inspect. This time I got the exacto knife out of the tool bucket and ruthlessly sliced it open. It was surprisingly benign (no leaping, snarling, miniature lethal bite-o'-death chompers) and beautifully intricate and delicate. The first layer is a smooth, white silk tarp attaching the round ball to the log or rock. The lumpiness under it that I was so hesitant of, is only a protective, insulating coat of mud bits and sawdust pieces. Under that is a much thicker, smaller ball of silk, and finally, inside that is: fifty or sixty dry, pearlescent, rolly little eggs the size of poppy seeds. They're beautiful. Once their cocooning was removed, they spilled all over the log, rolling until they found a little crack to perch in. Though I tried to slice open one of the eggs, the razor was much too wide and coarse an instrument and I only succeeded in juicily squishing them one after another. I am amazed when I think that these little eggies laid in October hatch out in June. Reproduction is just one miracle after another.

Our household reproduction is due to hatch out in April, so I learned a few weeks ago at my First Checkup. That was a preggers milestone. I had looked forward to it like it was going to be some kind of holiday, not like it was, woohoo, a *physical*. Andy had taken the morning off work, and though it was a little odd at first to have him in there, only because I've never had a breast and pelvic exam with company before, it was the best moment I've had in a very long time when Tracy, the nurse-midwife, pushed up my uterus with her fingers and let us both feel it, round and the size of an orange (I exclaimed: "I have a uterus!"), then put the doppler up to it. We heard a magical woosha-woosha-woosha-woosha little heartbeat, and we both burst into tears and started laughing. Andy handed me kleenexes and I tried to keep my stomach still long enough for Tracy to hear a good count. I'd take however many blood draws they want to hear that.

We congratulated each other the rest of the morning, and lunched out for soup and sandwiches at Great Harvest. It poured rain while we gnawed our pickles, and a fireball and enormous clap of thunder hit the sidewalk right outside the window where we sat. It shook us in our seats, and we all, the entire store, ran out the door to see if a sign had come crashing down. No sign on the pavement, but signs for me everywhere else: Unstoppable, unusual, pouring rain and a fireball thundering from my belly, that sometimes shakes us in our seats.