Everything will change.

Priorities have shifted and clarity has hit me dead in the face in just the last few months. After the first of the year, I'll be living in a new place and doing new things, but things are happening now.

I got married last Friday. Yes, interwebz, I got legally married. We haven't been seeing each other long, but we've known each other for years, and now is all you have so why would you wait? That was what was always wrong with me- I always felt like I needed to wait, there was no urgency or need to live right now and be content to die at a moment's notice with regard to my love life. I had serious issues with that. Last Friday I went to Little Rock for a meeting with a birth client, and during lunch Stewart and I decided to get a marriage license. Then, up walked a Justice of the Peace. We were married by a window in the Pulaski County courthouse. It was the right decision, I promise. Some people have remarked that it was kind of sudden, but meh. We just didn't feel like making a huge crazy fuss over ourselves.

(P.S. I'm not pregnant).

Later that night, I picked up my little 12-week-old tabby boy whose name is Arlo. Arlo Guthrie Fuell, for all you I-give-cats-people-names folks. He is very needy, but he's a kitten, so I'm okay with that. Sweet cat.

All of my paperwork and assistantship stuff for UCA in January is filed and ready to go. I just have to figure out how much of a loan to ask for to cover some summer living expenses (as a backup; if I'm a certified doula by then, then I'll just pay back that loan...with the loan money. Immediately). Graduate school starts January 14th. My resignation letter is on my boss's desk; I won't be here after January 10th or so, but I will be paid until the 30th. Sweeeeet.

I was with a birth client from 11:30 a.m. yesterday until 2:30 a.m. this morning. 22 hours, totally natural labor, seventeen hours of which she did at home and the rest at the hospital (mostly in the tub or sitting up on the bed with a squat bar). It was a fantastic, beautiful, sacred and gentle birth. No tearing, and it is totally true that you completely forget the pain once the baby is here. It was the best birth I've ever attended.

I guess I can't complain. Except legally changing your name is kind of a bitch.