New Skin, Officially

Even though I finished my midwifery apprenticeship December 31, 2005 and I hung my shingle (so to speak) in 2006, and even though I have had a handful of clients and babies come my way, and even though I finally got the funds to take and pass the NARM exam and become a CPM at the beginning of the year, it all seems official now.
This is because my good friend Kate hosted a lovely and fun midwifery blessingway for me last Friday night. My closest friends, favorite midwives, and sweet mom and mother-in-law were all there. My husband was there too, but I only made him sit in for the last 10 minutes of it, so that I could thank everyone and especially him for their support over the years. We shared good food, wine, yummy Lambic, chocolate cake and an outdoors, candle-lit blessingway.
I received so many wonderful, choke-me-up and make-me-sob words and well wishes. I also received trinkets, stones, beads to put in my birth bag and gorgeous poems and prose. It was a lovely night and I'm so thankful the awesome women in my life.
So thank you Kate, for giving me such a great party. It was really a healing and refreshing way to mark the end of that path and to embrace the new one.

The pictures above are from a cicada that clung to our deck yesterday. It's common for us to find the shells all over the deck and swing set in the summer time, but we've never actually caught one emerging. It was amazing. It took about 2 hours for it to work its way out of the shell and dry completely before it could fly.
I thought that since I don't have any pics of the blessingway, I would post the cicada. Definitely an appropriate image.

Saturday The Birth Project had a table at Ypsi's Shadow Art Fair. When we first got there to set up, we felt a bit like the nerds sitting next to the cool kid's tables. All the other vendors seemed to be in their mid-20s, lovely and super hip, selling super hip stuff. The buttons we ordered were lost in shipment and we were bummed about that. We thought that if we sold anything, that would be it. We settled into a day of "let's just get through this". After all, pretty mid-20s people don't care about birth or zines dedicated to birth. However, things quickly picked up when we placed an open page of issue 3 out, which has a picture of a woman with biggest, beautiful belly. So many people asked: Is that FOR REAL?
We ended up getting a handful of subscriptions on the spot, and others buying an issue or two. And then many more who took a free issue in exchange for hopping on our mailing list. Not a bad day. We were there for 13 hours in the brewery. We didn't start drining til 10pm. Was home (and drunk) by 12:30am. A good night.

Today G and I are celebrating our 10 year anniversary 2 years later. (In August it will be 12 years~I wanted to do something special at 10 but couldn't afford the money or time.) We're so lame though. We tried really hard to find somewhere cool to go that didn't keep us in the car for hours and hours. Driving up north takes 5-6 hours and I didn't want to do that. So tonight we are actually staying in the only swank hotel in our fair city, which is also the same place we stayed after our reception (because we were too drunk to drive home). My mom will stay the night with the kids and in the morning G and I will take them to his mom's house where they will stay until Sunday. Woo hoo!
But we still have no idea what the heck we're going to do. But to me that's the ultimate vacation: a nice road trip with no destination.

It will be fun, and nice to flop on a king size bed that I won't have to make and watch cable tv and eat Thai food that we never get because it's too spicy for the kids and drink a couple beers because I'm not technically on call for another 2 weeks.

Here's to a fun weekend...