Libby's Journal - December

December 1

Okay, here is my news: I AM PREGNANT!!!! The GIFT procedure worked and everything is fine and normal and so on. My due date is in August. Isn't that amazing?

After we got the news at the doctor's office, me and Mona and Jack came back here and had a little ceremony out by the Treehouse Tree and then we came inside and I made hot chocolate, but Mona and Jack also had scotch in theirs. We took all our drinkables up to the bedroom for another ceremony in which we put the turkey baster and Jack's coffee cup (the tools of our long pregnancy effort) away in the cedar chest along with my basal body temperature charts. Then the three of us climbed under the big quilt, me in the middle, and sipped our drinks and talked about the future -- and Mona and Jack snorted at each others' suggestions about baby names. And after a while they both dozed off and I lay there between them nice and warm holding my empty cup and looking at the winter sky out the window. I put my cup on the shelf above the headboard, prayed a prayer of gratitude and then I slept too.

December 2

The last 24 hours I have been living on a cloud. I am so happy, just completely overwhelmed by the idea that I have a new human life growing inside me. Mona suggested that perhaps I should not talk about it so openly (meaning here) just yet because, after all, the first three months of a pregnancy are the time when you are most at risk of miscarriage. But I have made such a public fuss about this for so long that it did not seem fair to just clam up and not tell anyone what happened. And besides, if the worst should happen and I lose this baby, well, I am quite certain that the unmeasurable depths of my devastation would not be much affected by whether people know about it or not.

But that is the last I have to say on negative possibilities. Not because I am avoiding it, but because I feel very very strongly a sense of peace and certainty about this. I am going to have this baby, and my whole life up to this has been a prelude to what is going to happen next. and I am ready for it. As a young man wearing an old man suit once told me, this is my time.

December 7

Yesterday, I had an appointment downtown in the morning, and so I also met Mona for lunch. Afterwards, she walked back to her office and I walked towards where I parked my car. In doing so, I cut through the convention center because there's a nice public art gallery that showcases local artists. I don't have anything in it this year, but I know a lot of the other artists and wanted to see their work.

So, I was making my way down the long hall when I spotted from behind a woman with wild, orange-red hair. I could have sworn it was Mona, but knew it couldn't be so I figured it was Molly. I was so confident of this that I poked her in the back, but when she turned around it was someone else.

I babbled an apology, but was distracted by how much she resembled Mona and Molly, and I told her their parents names and where they were from to see if she was a relative, which it turned out they were not. The woman was gracious with my genealogical interrogation and introduced herself. Even her name was similar -- Millie -- but apparently there is no family connection.

She told me she was in town attending a conference and was in the gallery killing time waiting for her next session to start. I told her a little about the specific artworks and artists that I knew about and she was really interested. We were standing near a little coffee kiosk with tables around it, and soon we were sitting together talking about our lives.

I actually did most of the talking because I am a chatterbox with no filter, and before you know it I was telling her all about my pregnancy and the infertility treatment that led to my (latest) visit to the psych ward.

Millie seemed to know a lot about infertility treatment, but I could tell that hers had been unsuccessful. Not surprisingly, I cried hearing her story, but she talked serenely about the resilience of life and how a person may go down a path they didn't choose, yet still find happiness. And I knew this, of course. It is something that is both profound and obvious, but because it is obvious we forget it is also profound. As all of my therapists have told me since I was 15, we can't control what happens but we can control how we respond to what happens. Yet, I still need to be reminded of that.

Then suddenly she realized it was time for her session and she couldn't be late because she was on the panel. We stood up and hugged and she dashed off, and I realized too late that I didn't know her last name or what city she was from. She disappeared into the crowd like Athena, and I had that weird feeling I sometimes get when I can't be certain she had even been there at all. I imagined people walking through the gallery noticing the crazy lady sitting alone at a table talking animatedly with an empty chair.

December 8

We have had a couple days of really cold weather -- like below zero overnight and 10 degrees in the middle of the day even though it is also sunny. No, I do not frolic in the snow at such times. Normally, I still walk down to the gate twice a day for the newspaper and the mail. On most winter days, I can still do that naked. If it is colder than about 30 degrees, I will wear a coat. If it is colder than 20 degrees, I will freaking drive. I mean, it's not like I'm, you know . . . crazy.

So the extent of my naked adventures yesterday was to walk from our back door to our detached garage -- which is only about 20 paces -- to fetch something from my car. It was in the glovebox and so to reach it I had to get in the car. Even parked in the garage those vinyl seats get pretty cold, but as you know by now I enjoy that sensation. On my way back to the house, the wind was swirling and stirring up the powdery icy snow and blasting me with it. And then I slipped on the ice and did not fall but lost my grip on the important piece of paper I was carrying and the wind took it and I had to chase it around in snow deeper than my sneakers. When I finally caught it and was trotting through snow drifts towards the porch, I saw Mona in the window laughing at me. When I got inside, she held me close to feel my cold skin.

Fortunately, it's unusual where we live for it to be this cold, but it does happen once or twice each winter. The rest of the time it's somewhere between 20 and 50, which the Amazing Nature Girl can handle just fine.

December 10

So, even though there is lots of time left for this decision, I have two baby names picked out that I feel pretty sure of -- Atticus if it is a boy, or Grace if it is a girl. And yes, Mona does have a say in this too. She is pretty flexible on the topic, but has two criteria: (1) it should be unusual enough that there won't be four other kids with the same name in kindergarten, and (2) not so unusual that people are unsure how to spell or pronounce it.

December 12

Someone asked me if I plan to still be a nudist when my kid is 14, and my answer is that it depends on whether I have a boy or a girl. If I have a boy, I will stop going naked in front of him by the time he's three or four so he doesn't end up talking about it in therapy as an adult. But if I have a girl (and a have a strong feeling that I will), then that won't matter as much. I grew up in an all female household and it was completely normal for us to see each other nude.

I remember my mom being casually naked sometimes -- not as much as I've been doing and not in front of anyone but us girls and Anna, but if she was about to get in the shower and suddenly remembered something she needed at the store, she would just go down to the kitchen naked and write it on her list before she forgot. I remember being tickled when she did that, and I would try to distract her in conversation so she would stay downstairs naked for a while. It was not at all a sexual thing in my mind, of course, but just something I thought was fun. I was already taking naked sprints outside after everyone was asleep, but it was my secret. I kind of wanted to talk to my mother about it -- because I talked to her about everything else. I couldn't describe what I was feeling, but somehow I felt affirmed when my mother was naked in the kitchen.

The kid issue aside, I don't expect to be naked in front of quite so many other people as I get older. Right now, my body is young and fit and I know I look good, and I'm not bragging by saying that. There's nothing wrong with admitting that you know that other people find you attractive. It's not even a vanity because I didn't DO anything to look like this. I didn't earn it. It's not an achievement that I worked hard for, so I'm not bragging when I say that I am cognitively, objectively aware most people think I look pretty good naked. And I SO love that they do. Granted, some people don't want to see ANYone nude in a social setting, and I respect that, which is why I never-ever surprise anyone. But if people are okay with the concept that someone is going to be naked at a party they are going to, then I am confident they will not be disappointed if that person turns out to me.

BUT I'm also aware that people may no longer want to see that when I get older -- though I must say, I am very encouraged by the fact that my 56-year-old mother -- who has given birth five times -- is still slender and young-looking. She has some distinguished lines on her face and some gray in her hair, but that woman can still rock a bikini! She has virtually no cellulite and virtually no extra body fat -- and having seen them somewhat recently, I can certify that her boobs still qualify as "perky." So, that certainly makes me hopeful that my own body will age as well. And heck, I'm a vegetarian and because of my mania I get lots of cardio exercise, so even though it's mostly genetics, I'm helping a little.

But, of course, my mother isn't the one going naked at parties (um, well, not as far as I know). I assume that when I reach a certain age I will do less of that -- and that's okay. Part of life is getting old, and as Jack says (in his father's South Boston accent), "it beats the alternative." As my body becomes less attractive to look at, I will moderate my behavior accordingly because the LAST thing I want is to be naked in front of someone who doesn't want to see me that way.

But at THIS point in my life I feel confident that I DO look good, and YES, I do want people to look at me, and YES, even to be turned on by me. Why shouldn't I feel that way? It's a beautiful, thrilling experience, and I am grateful that I lucked out genetically and got the kind of face and body people like to look at. So you're darned right I'm going to enjoy that as long as I can.

December 21

Molly is here for the duration. And when I say "here," I mean on the estate. She does not always spend the night at our house these days.

Even though she and Jack are now a couple, he has still never seen her any way but naked. That has been her little game ever since the day they met. Most weekends, that just happened naturally because she would arrive at our house and undress in her usual room, not putting her clothes back on until she was preparing to depart. Sometimes, however, Jack was already at our house when she had not yet arrived. As accomplices in her game, either Mona or I would call Molly on her cellphone to alert her. She would then undress in her car and saunter in our door as if she'd driven down that way .

But anyways, she is still maintaining her nudity streak and trying to decide when to end it -- which she has to do eventually if they ever want to go to a restaurant. So far, the only other place they have seen each other is at the house in the city where she lives.

Over the winter, Jack is planning to relocate his business here and is looking for space in the historic warehouse district downtown. Our city is going through a nice renaissance of old neighborhoods getting spiffed up so there is plenty of work for him here. But once he is working downtown -- where she both lives and works -- they will naturally want to meet various places where she, alas, cannot be naked.

For a while, Molly had been saying she wanted to make it to the one-year anniversary of when they met, but that would be in March. Now she is considering just shooting for New Year's Day, which is only a week from now.

December 23

We drove up to visit my family this past weekend for an early Christmas there -- and of course Aunt Libby was outside with "the rest of the kids" playing in the snow. We tried to make a snowman but the snow wasn't packing well enough, so he was basically a pile of snow with a hat on.

Mona's parents live in Minnesota, but we no longer try to visit them at Christmas time because of the unpredictable weather. Her brothers live too far away to drive and two years in a row got snarled up in weather-related airport nightmares, so now her family has summer gatherings.

I'm glad we're not traveling for Christmas itself -- partly because I don't like doing that, but also this year it sounds like we will definitely be having a White Christmas. We already have several inches of snow on the ground and a lot more is expected, starting tomorrow, which is Christmas Eve. And by "a lot," I mean maybe a foot or more!

Fortunately for me, Mona and Jack are both survivalist types who plan for everything including a zombie apocalypse. In the basement -- "the bunker" as I call it -- we have shelves of canned food and gallon jugs of water. We even have a generator that can power half the house. So we should be fine.

December 24

The blizzard is well underway, and we are all safely tucked away in our houses. Andrea, Dana, Jayne and Margot are all in their homes, but I talked Jack and Molly into staying in our guest room because if we get as much snow as they say we probably wouldn't be able to spend Christmas Day together. Jack has a snowplow blade attached to his antique pickup truck and he drove it down here and backed it up to the garage so it will be in the right position for him to start plowing when the snow stops.

It was snowing a little when we got up this morning, but by noon it was coming down really hard. Naturally, Molly and I decided we needed to go outside naked in order to experience the blizzard properly, but were under orders from the grownups to stay near the house where they could see us. It was actually not very cold and there was not much wind -- just sheets of wet snow coming down in blobs because there are so many individual snowflakes they are bumping into each other on the way down. So we had lots of fun and had shiny wet skin and snow in our hair when we came back inside.

Then Mona served up warm cider (with rum for all non-pregnant people), and we cuddled with our partners in front of the fire. Eventually, we made dinner and then played Monopoly. As I knew they would, Mona and Jack played for blood like heartless robber barons while Molly and I made sweetheart real estate deals with each other and promised to lend each other money if one of us fell on hard times.

December 25

Merry Christmas!

The snow continues to come down in fat, heavy flakes and we must have gotten almost a foot by now. Yes, of course Molly and I have gone out to frolic in it several times. Mona and Jack watch us from the window and then hold our cold wet bodies when we come back inside.

Mona even gave us an Important Task to do naked in the snow! She asked us to keep the path to the garage clear so we can get to it if we need to. This was, if examined seriously, a meaningless thing to do because we can't drive any of the vehicles anyway, but Molly and I wanted the illusion so every few hours we went out to accomplish our mission.

Naturally, I made a Christmas meal and I baked a pecan pie (which is made of 5% pecans and 95% sugar). We kept a fire going in the fireplace and when more firewood was needed, the naked girls were sent to fetch it from outside. (We have a leather container for this purpose so the naked girls did not need to risk getting splinters in their boobs while carrying firewood in their arms). Mona and Jack played chess by the fireplace, and trash-talked each other's moves. Meanwhile, Molly and I danced until we were sweaty and then interrupted the chess match to sit on our partners' laps.

Later, we put on slow music and danced. Jack and Molly are both naturally good dancers but didn't actually know the formal dance steps so Mona and I showed them. I danced with Jack and Mona danced with Molly. I love seeing those two together because they absolutely adore each other. As one of five sisters, I understand sisterly love, and there is a tender physicality to it, but I was never as close to my sisters as Mona and Molly are. It is sweet to see. And, of course, I loved being in Jack's arms because we are very close as well.

After the lesson part, we switched partners and Jack and Molly were dancing together. We were playing a CD I made of slow-dance music, but I shuffled the song order so I didn't know what would be next -- and "Stranded" came on. As I mentioned back in my Halloween entry, this is a special song to Mona and me because we danced to it the first night we met.

Mona was, of course, fully clothed but not wearing a bra, so we still had fun doing that thing we like to do when dancing to this song. At about the three-minute mark, Mona slow-danced me into the other room until we were out of sight and then we dashed up the stairs to our bedroom where I had two orgasms and she had one.

When we came back downstairs, Mona went to the kitchen to make herself another drink and I started going back to the living room but stopped in the doorway. Jack and Molly were still technically dancing, but their feet were hardly moving and they were mostly stand-up kissing so I didn't want to disturb them. But I did want to watch.

I am so happy those two are together now. They frustrated the heck out of me most of this past year, and for a while it seemed like it was not going to happen at all. Even worse, I thought for a time (mistakenly) that Jack was falling for a woman who didn't like me and that I would lose him. But that didn't happen and now he is with Molly who I also love.

As I stood there in the shadowy doorway watching them kiss, I felt an odd combination of joy and envy. I wanted to magically be one of them and then the other so I could kiss Jack the way she was kissing him, and also to kiss Molly the way he was kissing her. Which isn't to say that I actually want to be with either one of them instead of Mona. Not in this universe anyways. But I love Jack and I love Molly, and if there are multiple parallel universes, then I'm sure there are some where I am married to Jack and some where I am married to Molly. If I could pick a sci-fi story to experience, it would be one in which I could surf among those universes and feel what those other Libbys are feeling.

My metaphysical imaginings were interrupted when Mona called for Jack from the kitchen. They have been using their analytical brains to diagnose an intermittent problem with the dishwasher and it was happening again. He and Molly managed to pry their lips apart and he gave me a grin as he passed me in the doorway. Molly was grinning also and gave me a big hug, her skin so warm against mine, as she whispered in my ear her thanks for my matchmaking doggedness. We held each other long enough for Mona to come into the room and "catch" us. She called Jack into the room to expose our illicit embrace and dared us to reveal our love for each other by kissing. So we did. We had, of course, kissed before. I give lots of my friends closed-mouth kisses on the lips, but we hammed it up for our audience and Molly even gave me a little tongue action. Then, of course, we went to bed with our correct partners (in this universe) and I had another very lovely orgasm.

December 27

Well, the snow came down for a day and a half and we ended up getting 14 inches of fresh snow on top of what was already on the ground. Jack plowed our drive all the way up to his house and down to Jayne and Margot's. Andrea and Dana's house has its own shorter driveway, but he also went around and did theirs.

Molly and I contributed by shoveling the walkways and porches (naked of course). We weren't cold at all because it was in the mid-30s and sunny. Our big effort was packing down a walkway between our house and Andrea and Dana's. Their house doesn't share our driveway, but there's a footpath. Rather than try to shovel it, we figured we'd pack it down to make it walkable. We stacked bricks on a toboggan and pulled it back and forth along the path. We even enticed Dana into helping us, which she did wearing a lovely ensemble of boots, hat, scarf and mittens. She got cold after 20 minutes or so, but she definitely made a contribution.

Today, I'm on my own because everyone but Jack, Jayne and me went back to their jobs. The snow is too deep for anything very adventurous and I just find excuses to walk up and down the drive. Of course, except during the worst weather, I always walk down to the security gate twice a day for the newspaper and the mail -- and unless it is really cold I wear the official Amazing Nature Mailgirl uniform for that job.

This morning while Mona was in the shower, I baked blueberry scones and she took some with her in the car with her coffee. Then, while they were still warm, I took some in a basket up to Jack's, and we sat in front of his fireplace discussing becoming parents together. He's fine with "Atticus" if it's a boy, but made a case for "Gabrielle" if it's a girl. I do like the name "Gabby," but am pretty settled on "Grace" because of the religious connotation. With all my heart and soul, I hope and pray that I successfully give birth to a healthy baby. But I also know that terrible things could happen that I can't control, and that probably aren't part of any deity's master plan. I believe in a God who knows I exist and who loves me, but I don't believe She can command events to go a certain way. Either things will go well or they won't -- and I do not "deserve" either outcome.

So . . . Grace would be a good name.

December 30

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve and we are going down to Margot and Jayne's. They have a fun tradition of making hats with various bits of leftover fabric and art supplies. Jayne invites a lot of our female artist friends (along with a few male significant others), and we all contribute whatever artsy bits we have handy that someone might find useful in making hats. Last year, I made a somewhat cartoonish top hat of out of cardboard and a random square yard of lush lavender velour -- with a wide band around it and a feather sticking out. It has held up pretty well; I sometimes wear it at parties.

December 31

It has been almost one year since I started this blog, and I want to thank you all for reading however much of it you have read along the way. Thank you for your emails and your messages and your phone calls. Thank you for your artistic contributions. And thank you, Mona, for the clever idea of casting ourselves with Hollywood stars as if it were a movie (and it still could be).

Of course, my list of things to thank her for is pretty long. Here is a tiny percentage: Thank you, Mona, for putting up with me. Thank you for wanting me in the first place. Thank you for taking care of me when I need taken care of. Thank you for wanting to have a baby with me, and thank you for welcoming my ex-boyfriend into that adventure. Thank you for patiently tolerating my crazy ideas (like writing this blog). Thank you for keeping me safe when I am manic, but also letting me fearlessly indulge in my impulses, tying a rope to my ankle and letting me float into the sky because you know I need to be up there in the clouds sometimes, secure in the knowledge that you will hold onto the rope and pull me down again later so I don't get blown away in the wind.

I could also write a list of thank yous for Jack, but I realize i am already sounding like the script of a sappy Hallmark movie. He knows what he means to me.

I am also grateful for my little group of commune residents: Jayne, Dana, Andrea and Margot -- plus the adorable and irrepressible Molly on weekends.

You, dear reader, are probably all getting suspicious about where I'm going with this. Well, here it is: I've been thinking this may be the right time for me to fold my tent on this blog. I said at the beginning that I wanted to share the story of my quest to get pregnant -- and that has taken place. I never promised to chronicle the pregnancy also. I'm sure I will write about it, but I now feel the need to do that less publicly.

But heck, you know me -- I'm liable to change my mind next week. And I'm leaving that option open because I'm not shutting the blog down. I just (probably) won't add anything more to it after New Year's. Unless I do, in which case nevermind.

If in my absence you find yourself itching to read new tales from crazy chicks who like to go naked, I suggest you check out Molly's website. She has posted an account of her daring adventures driving naked (without any backup clothing in the car). She had also posted the first few chapters of a fictional story about a girl (that she says is based in part on me) who is living in an alternative universe where she can go anywhere she wants completely naked. That is because -- and here's where the story requires a suspension of disbelief -- because in that alternative universe zero percent of the males are predatory stalker-douchebags. What a crazy idea! Heck, one can just imagine how radically different our own world would be with that one little tweak in our demographics. I guess that's why they call it fantasy fiction, right?

Anyways, that's about all I have to say -- unless I change my mind, which I don't think I will, but you never know with me. If I can leave you with a final thought, it is to ask you to always appreciate and cherish This Moment. It is a gift given to us by Grace, if not necessarily by God. And this gift, this moment that we are experiencing right now . . . is the only thing we actually have.

I'm gonna frolic with my moment. What are you going to do with yours?