Ver - baby

Today I realized that my neighbour had her baby five weeks ago and I didn't know.  I knew she was pregnant and that she was due anytime but have been so consumed with my own petty bullshit that the woman who lives next door to me came home after a surgical delivery (Cesarean section) and I was not aware of her struggles for over a month.  This morning I finally got up the nerve to go over there (on the pretense of hand-me-downing something from my boys to their toddler), thinking she had not given birth yet but found out that indeed it has been five weeks.  So I spent some time with this little one and chatted up the very tired mother and decided that just because I had no help when my babies were small there's no reason not to do better for this family.  I called all the women in this part of our small town and let them know that the baby has been born and that the mom needed us to be a real community and get it up to provide some freezer meals and childcare of the toddler and some adult company for the mom.  Everyone responded positively and is totally 'in' but I also heard many tales of struggle with babies spaced close together and surgical births with not enough help after and postpartum depression.  Not one of the women in my cohort or older felt they had adequate support when they were making life.  Some said that they had family around for up to the first four weeks but after that, found themselves essentially alone.  Partners are great, but they go away all day.  Women need a circle around them at this emotionally vulnerable time.   The isolation and daily struggle to accomplish simple self-care can be overwhelming.  The big obstacle, in this community anyway, is that people felt they would be intruding if they just went over there.  There is a huge premium put on privacy and self-sufficiency.  Fortunately, this invisible wall seems to be thinning and in this neighbourhood, all that we were waiting for was an excuse to make ourselves useful.

Verbitchen Soundtrack

If it wasn't for Balkan muzics I probably would have hung myself in the shower a long time ago. Thank you M'siou Rigolitch for this fantasmic set list;

Ver - bitch - en

This blog is called 'Verbitchen' for the following reasons;  'FuckYourBlog' was already taken, as was 'FuckYerBlog'.... etc. etc. Also, 'Laika' was unavailable, which is too bad because it would have been great to have a blog named after the first real space-bitch.  So I decided to consult the all-knowing wordoid, which spat out Verbitchen... 'verboten' with 'bitch' in it - perfect.

You might be wondering why the hatefulness. I'll damn well tell you. I read a really shitty blog, about essentially nothing (not the interesting, nihilist nor the relateable existentialist nor the perplexing post-modern nothing) just a shame-filled, unclimactic masturbatory nothing.  Normally, reading this kind of hapless nothingness would not piss me off but it was written by a former classmate of mine who has gone on to great things (in the literary world no less) and I had a gut feeling she was capable of much more.  It made me consider the possibility that I needed to show her how it's done.... this writing thing... since I had a letter to the editor published once when I was in high school.  Since I am indeed a dilettante as well as a bitch, that possibility evolved into a necessity in my mind. 

I should also confess that I have started numerous blogs. As in; made up a name, set up an account, come up with terribly witty posts, acerbic and cutting as fuck, and then failed to ever publish said posts (because they had been composed and satisfied my need to prove to myself that I could do it better).  This time, I got through made-up, set-up, come-up and now moved to put-up. 

Today's bitchen is sponsored by Lakeview cemetery, where a once-in-a-century flood finally delivered on the implied promise;

Lakeview Cemetery in the spring

copyright Masha Petrovic-Anderson 2011