whilst in hotel rooms

20 weeks, Arlington VA

It is my travel season.  Only three weeks but it's enough to make you feel displaced.  

And give you time and space to think.

A five in a half hour car ride, wait-make that 6 hours with all of the bathroom breaks*, has my mind in all sorts of places.  I also find my brain is on high alert.  New and unfamiliar situations approach me that are so out of my routine.  It makes me go to another level of awareness or consciousness.  I always tell Andrew that when I am traveling I have to constantly repeat, "just one day, take it in one day, or one hour" as to not feel overwhelmed, always poking fun at creating my own support circle where I am the only attending member.  But it is good.  It gives me perspective.

I caught a glimpse of myself on the way to the bathtub tonight in the hotel full length mirror.  It is times like these that being a woman still wonders me.  This body is stretching and moving all to bring life into the world.  It is something you know you are capable of, physically, and that's what you see happening around you but I add it to the list of things that I couldn't possibly understand until it happened to my own body.  I would actually describe it as a very out-of-body experience but intensely happening in my body (okay...duh..but you get what I mean?  right?).  When I look in the mirror I find eyes staring back at me that are of my younger self--like I am somehow viewing this all in a movie.  I watch this body change and feel my sweet babe moving around inside all as if I am the leading character in the movie of my own life.  

  I keep flashing forward to holding this little girl in my arms, while sitting here alone in a hotel room examining my growing stomach, and scrolling back through the time capsule of how I got from there to here.  

What am I getting at?  Traveling and hotels make me feel alone and alive all at the same time.  

*Women of the world:  Can we just all agree and take an oath that we will just sit on the toilet seat.  Yes, butt to seat, so that we all don't have to play the hoover game & make things even more unsanitary?  Doesn't this make sense? 

love, a pregnant girl that needs to rest both cheeks.