Changing the oil

It's been five weeks since my last oil change, and I'm back for another. Weekend trips between LA and San Francisco rack up the miles fast.

 Just as my odometer hits the 30,000 mark, I find myself watching all the 9s click incrementally upwards and suddenly I am on month #3 of single-motherness. There is nothing magical about counting, but I find reassurance in the progress of time. Despite the spirals of activity that consume mornings, work days, afternoons, evenings, and sleepless nights, there is movement ahead. This, too, shall pass.

 I vividly remember my first pregnancy as a series of long waits. Now in the midst of a temporary commuter marriage, I have no time to wait. What is the opposite of waiting? Doing? Surviving? Just being? Instead of wrapping long strings of measurement around my life like a tailor, I am like the incompetent seamstress with a mouth full of pins simply trying to hold it together. Each stitch stretches the fabric a bit too tightly and tugs away at the threads of the cloth.