que sera sera

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them - that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. ~Lao Tzu

Okay, so I'm not so sure that one inspires me or makes me feel like something bit me in the ass. Damn "Let reality be reality" BS.

How about:

Tact is for people who aren't witty enough to be sarcastic. ~Anonymous

So not what I'm going for here, but come on, is this not perfect?

Alright, last one:

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well. ~Josh Billings

Close enough.

I would make some clever reference describing what the cards in my hand look like right now, but my skill level in this area is near equivalent to that of my baby making skills.

I suspect I don't need to provide any further explanation on that one.

I can tell you that in my hand is one hunk of a king (which is somewhat hard to write without giggling because he is so much more a joker). All references aside, he is pretty amazing. Anyone who puts up with me on a regular basis, manages to maintain some level of sanity through it all, and still comes back for more has to be pretty near spectacular.

So this king of mine and I are not on the same page when it comes to figuring out what our future holds in regards to parenting. We are at least still reading the same metaphorical book which is always a good thing. I, however, am at the end of chapter 10 (of this 10 chapter book) and ready to dive into volume 2 while he is hovering around the middle of chapter 4 and not exactly feeling motivated to continue with it right now. I would love nothing more than to just spoon feed him my abbreviated Cliff's notes speed reading version, but know all too well that there will be a lot of wide open gaps left this way (much like my understanding of anything to do with Shakespeare). I suspect in my excitement of finally feeling volume 2 within reach that I might gloss over how hard it was for me to get through some of those volume 1 chapters and summarize each for him with "...but it all ends out just fine. Let's just move onto the next book, okay?"

It isn't fair to him. It isn't fair to our potential future child. It isn't fair to me. He needs time and space to process and grow. And wouldn't you know it I happen to have a little time and space to give these days...being childless and having all the freedom and spare time in the world to selfishly spend doing whatever I want (said with sarcasm...and love. Always with love).

This is not my journey alone.

This summer I won't be active juggling ball games or dance practices, but I will be actively hiking, climbing, and traversing to my heart's content.

That's the back of my head with a do-rag on. I swear my head isn't really pointed.

I won't be searching for new activities to keep the kids from fighting in the boredom during summer break, but I will be training a giant knucklehead puppy who has gained 20 lbs since I introduced him here and has taken to sitting on our other dog as his number one tactic to get back whatever latest toy he feels she has stolen from him*.

Considering he is already 65% of my weight at not even 5 months old, I might have my work cut out for me.

I will not go on summer evening walks around our neighborhood discovering the world all over again through our child's eye, but I will discover more of my own world while hiking and camping along the breathtaking trail of the Zion Narrows (rated one of the best hikes in National Geographic Adventure magazine and is the slot canyon to which all other slot canyons are compared).

This is not my picture, but I can't wait until I have my own just like it.

I will not be running through the sprinklers with the kids on the hot days of summer, but I will be whitewater rafting on the Kern River and spending lazy days on various beaches with dear friends.

The middle one is the back of my covered up head again.

I will not be shopping for a new school backpack or spending the last days of summer teaching anyone to climb across the monkey bars at the local park, but I will be backpacking and climbing to the top of Mt. Whitney (the highest peak in the continental US) - crampons, ice axes, mountaineering tent and all.

Again, not my picture, but someday soon...

I will not be attending any birthday parties with bounce houses or over-frosted cupcakes, but if this disaster ever gets finished I will be spending many a summer night with a glass of wine while relaxing with good neighbors and friends.

What a perfect time for a puppy

I will not be hitting any amusement parks to wait in line for the paddle boats with anxious and excited kids, but I will be kayaking and canoeing out in the great wide open.

Please don't laugh at my hat. I have sensitive pasty white skin, people.

I will not be singing nursery rhymes to a giggling toddler, but I will take a girls weekend to here:

I would love to say that my main purpose for going here is for the great music, but I am pretty clueless (and about a day younger than Jesus apparently) and am a little too honest to admit that I don't even know 80% 95% (who am I kidding) of the bands listed. Of course I love hanging out with the girls, but I have an ulterior motive to hopefully meet up with (please) some bloggy friends (pretty please) if they will have me for a few hours or so...(Sarang, Meg, Nikki, Melissa G, banditgirl, Shelby) any chance y'all might be getting together around this time? And is there room for one more?) (-;

We have decided to take a break from our therapy sessions and focus on what is right in front of us for awhile. Children and parenting will still be discussed, but they will no longer be our current focus.

Along these same lines and as much as I hate to do it, I will not be blogging much (if at all) for awhile (likely for at least the rest of summer) or living in this wonderful and amazing safe haven of the blogosphere. I am apologizing in advance (as well as for the last month plus that I haven't been giving out any support) and hope you all can forgive me for not being there to cheer you on as you make your way through and help you up when you fall. Cycles and pregnancy and adoption and everything child related is not part of what is in front of me right now (no matter how much I want it to be). I need to see and appreciate and live my life with what it is in the now and see where that happens to take us.

Only time will tell how this one might end. Most days I am okay (said with tongue pressed firmly in cheek) with where we are at, but likely only because I will continue to frolic and swim in the river of Denial (yes, with a capital D) until he decides if he is up for the challenge of volume 2 or not.

Dear God, please let him want volume 2. Amen. With a cherry on top. And sprinkles...but only if that is how you roll. I think we both know how flexible and accommodating I can be, right? Uh...God? ...Hey, are you still there?

He's laughing again, isn't He?

I will be happy. I will be living. I will miss you. I will be back and better for it.

p.s. Thanks for all your support and great info about my positive ANA. For those who asked, my titer was 1:320 with a homogeneous pattern. I don't see the rheumatologist until this Thursday. Lovely HMO insurance wait times. I'm done and over with worrying about it (most days). It will be whatever it will be and we will pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep moving on. Thank you very much with sprinkles and lots and lots of chocolate. Because that is how we roll. Hear that one, God?

Que Sera Sera.

Okay, so I went to youtube to add the video for this and apparently didn't know all the song lyrics before using the term:

...Now I have children of my own
They ask their mother, what will I be...

So forget the video. I still think the overall sentiment fits so the title will remain.

What's one more proverbial kick to the head at this stage of the game?

Que ser-fucking-a sera. We all know that's more my style anyway.

*This is apparently inherent to these gentle giants. Click here and scroll down to Temperament for a good laugh on this trait of the English Mastiff breed.

body for sale, battered, beat up, and broken slightly worn

Aging classic late model 1973 human female of the growth stunted 5-foot (1.5-m for my metric friends) space-saving variety with nearly all held together with duct tape original parts.

Reproductive system appears to function flawlessly with a near-perfect 28-day cycle. While it has never been used for it's supposed capabilities which is not due to lack of effort, it has been pushed to the medically-induced, hormonally-driven, desperation kind of limits many times and recovered with a broken heart and many tears quite nicely. Ovaries only know how to spit out crap eggs sputter slightly and are dying a slow death may need to retire soon, but with that beautiful 28-day cycle, functionality on the outside appearance is bright, shiny, and new. The uterus of doom and destruction is an overachiever spewing it's endometrial lining all the way into the abdominal cavity and in a pristine never been stretched condition.

The non-functioning appendix that nearly blew out 20 years ago was removed at the owner's request to prevent said owner from death for aesthetic reasons.

The bladder has been drugged into submission reconditioned in the last year and requires 4 pills with strategic meal times for proper function daily maintenance as well as periodical meds inserted via self-catheterization cleanings to keep it running smoothly.

Colon bleeds multiple times a week is starting to show some wear, but has been checked out multiple times cleaned out, scoped, photographed, and humiliated during 3 sigmoidoscopies, 2 colonoscopies, 2 anoscopies, and a partridge in a pear tree with only one slightly major issue a big old precancerous polyp which was cut out like the bastard he was repaired as well as a few areas with "patches of irritation".

Skin breaks out, sunburns, rashes up easily, is starting to really wrinkle, and holds onto poison oak like it is the lifeblood of existence is a little temperamental and requires gallons of potions and lotions some TLC.

Most recently the brain has been in a slight fog with low concentration begun to slow a bit to the point of requiring serious focus to perform easy tasks - like driving and remembering things. The owner believed this was due to severe exhaustion simple wear and tear. Upon further inspection by members of the maintenance crew the neck glands were found to be severely enlarged to the point of the owner requesting the crew to look closer at her tongue because she was sure it was too swelled to fit in her mouth a little larger than normal, but believe they should return to normal some day relatively soon. Upon testing with the vampires other members of the crew, the blood fluid level was found to be negative for mono, but fucked up because the brain hasn't had to process a bad test result in a couple months and clearly that is how we roll around here positive for antinuclear antibodies (ANA). An appointment with yet one more specialist a rheumatologist is currently scheduled and dreaded. Let's see what messed up autoimmune condition the powers that be would like to add to the list.

Disclaimer: Owner believes there might be a slight electrical short somewhere making for some good old body party time causing the right leg (and the right arm today too just for kicks I guess) to feel like it is plugged into an outlet on occasion. Owner believes these might be related to the intense foot cramp/spasm things that have also been a real pain in the ass slightly bothersome as of late.

Current owner loves if love means tolerates this treasured body classic, but is sick and tired of of it breaking down no longer wants to expend time or energy on the upkeep.

Warranty is well past expiration...but this gem is still likely to go for free fast!


Sorry for the disappearing act. I have around 23+ unanswered emails and 100+ posts in my google reader right now. Somehow my body cannot get enough sleep these days...crashing out all night, snoozing on the 30 minute drive to and from work (carpooling with hubby), and napping a bit in the evenings too. We have canceled our bouldering/camping mini-getaway this weekend so I should have ample time to finally not be such an asshole catch up with everyone...in between my naps that is. I would love to start tonight, but can Zzz hear my pillow calling my name right now. Zzzzzz.

Shameless plea: If anyone has any positive ANA stories or good info they are willing to share I would so very much appreciate it.

how mother's day & poison oak turned out to be pretty darn good

I so love all you ladies out there in blogland. You gave me so much good stuff to consider and ponder on that-there last post (yes, I just used that-there). And ponder it I did.

I came to realize that my reasoning for wanting to stop blogging is that most days I am so over myself.

So. over. myself.

I am a pretty low maintenance kind of gal IRL. I own fewer pairs of shoes than my hubby. I still drive the same old beat up pick up that I bought used in 1997 simply because it still runs. I can do the whole shower-hair-make up out the door routine in 15 minutes if needed (even though I much prefer 30).

And then I come here and spill out all this needy whiny kind of stuff over and over and over. This has become my toxic dumping grounds and while I think everyone needs a place like this, I'm also kind of tired of separating the minimum maintenance happy fun parts of me* with the falling apart over processing EVERYTHING parts of me. I promise you I'm not as crazy as this place might lead you to believe...well, mostly. There is still the whole even numbers only thing...and the color coordinated closet thing and the car radio volume in increments of 5 only thing (please don't ask why this odd number is okay...) and the TV channels in ascending order only thing and the...

Oh, had we not covered those yet? Right. I was just kidding. Really. Kidding. Uh-huh. Anyway...

I think it's time I open this space up a little broader and share more of my happy times. It may not be all encompassing of infertility, but I'm sure I can find a way to drag it in there if needed. I just want this space to reflect more of "all of me" - the good, the bad, and the other.

I hope that the thoughts I threw out about adoption weren't too much. I can assure you they aren't the only thoughts I have on the subject matter. Most are actually much more pleasant, but sweeping anything under the rug that isn't considered "pleasant" is in my honest opinion negligent, especially when it comes to parenting. This might fall under the category of "I'm not going to parent my child the way I was parented." kind of mentality. There is often a reason behind any kind of madness and I've been through enough therapy to know that all of my screwed up tendencies are a direct reflection of the things my parents did wrong. I kid. I kid...mostly.**

So much of adoption is beautiful and wonderful and incredible, but so much of adoption is also painful and confusing and difficult. There is more to consider and be conscience of and willing to deal with even if it doesn't fit into the "we just want to be parents" mentality. I have more to say about some of this (which ties into a pretty great therapy session on the subject) another time. I always do, right?

But that will all have to wait. I already know that any words I have put with this post are now a waste due to the cuteness I am about to share.

Remember that giant dog I mentioned in my last post. Well, there is now a puppy sized version sleeping on my feet as we speak. Yes, ON my feet but only because that is as close as he can get to me without crawling inside my skin and attaching to my bones. This would be his ideal sleeping place.

Something clicked when so many of you said to just go get the dog. I really had no good reason to not just go get the damn dog. And then it kind of all just fell into our laps.

The Short and (who am I kidding) Dirty Version:

I was feeling the annual Mother's-Day-but-still-not-a-mother-again blues so I treated myself to a haircut and eyebrow wax for a bit of cheering up. Eyebrow wax should not be used in the same sentence as treat. I don't know how some of you do a Brazilian. OMFG. I seriously don't. Short stories were never my forte...or sticking to the topic at hand, but really how much does that have to hurt when my eyebrows are tender for 3-days post waxing!?

A coworker of my hair stylist complemented her on the cute new picture of her kids to which she replied. "Do you want them?" and then went on to tell me after her coworker left that said coworker just adores her kids to which she always replies that "You can just have them". Right. No real reason to include in this story except that it actually made a Brazilian suddenly seem more fun than my haircut which now also did not feel like much of a treat.

See, there really is a way to bring infertility into any situation...probably because it is always there lurking.

Again, back to the real story. Apparently my hair stylist's brother as well as the esthetician in their shop also had poison oak really badly. For over a month. With multiple trips to the doctor. And multiple doses of oral hydrocortisone packs. Even though neither remembers coming into direct contact with it. It was like the mothership brought me home.

Cue esthetician. We meet. We commiserate. We show battle wounds and share war stories. I am blaming my poison oak infestation on my own dingy negligence. She is blaming hers on her dog (I knew I should have taken our dog on that hike!) and began talking about her dog and her daughter's dog and the dog she used to have and the next dog she wants. Yes, now this is a conversation I can play in. I share our dog history and mention that we are looking into getting an English Mastiff.

Her: Really? How serious are you?
Me: I don't know. We've done all the research and both agree it is the breed of dog we want. Pretty serious I guess. Why?
Her: I was just at my husband's friends' house last weekend and they have 3 Mastiff puppies they are looking to find homes for from a litter of 9.
Me: How old? Are the parents on-site? Where are they located? And a whole bunch of other babble which she answered.

Next thing I knew I had some contact info for a puppy less than 30 minutes away and a Mother's Day appointment to go meet him.

And that's where I fell in love with this guy...


So we brought him home...


And named him Moose...because he is.


He was 45.3 lbs of roly poly puppiness at his not quite 4 month appointment...seen here with M who isn't real keen on having his face posted on the Internets so he gets a big pink heart...because A) real men wear pink or B) I'm poking fun by adding a pink heart because I'm an ass that way or C) we are that lovey dovey couple who insists on drawing hearts all over one another to express our love. Insert giant laughter here as you make your pick. (hint: think "b" sounds).


His mama (Jenksy) is tipping the scales at 185lbs, but is still working on getting her girlish figure back after a 9 pup litter. Here she is with her owner who gets a star as I lifted this photo from her FB page - WITH her consent - but we never talked about IF or this blog or the like so a star face it is.


His papa is 155lbs at 2 years old and will continue to gain girth for another year to reach his full adult weight. This is (a younger) Moose with his papa (Buehrle - spoken as Burley). I didn't get his permission to post this, but know from my afternoon with him that as long as he has that blue ball nothing else much matters in his world.


Poison oak is gone. A new puppy is in our house. Mother's Day is over for another whole year. This leaves me feeling pretty darn good.


Pretty really darn good.



*The happy fun parts of me are taking the other less stellar parts of me for another girls 3.5-day kayaking/camping extravaganza getaway to Black Canyon this weekend*** where we will explore natural sauna caves and sit in natural hot springs and hang out under the stars around a campfire drinking wine...lots and lots of wine.

**Don't worry, this kind of thing is an ongoing joke in our family. My mom is very much okay with it to the point of gluing $5 bills into our childhood scrapbooks along with some Easter scrapbook paper since there are no pictures of us coloring Easter eggs. There are no pictures because we never once colored eggs during our childhood. Can you hear those mini violins playing? How did we ever survive this tragedy? The End.

***So I will once again get behind on reading blogs but-what-else-is-new-because-I-never-really-caught-up-in-the-first-place. The End End. For reals**** this time.

****I am much too old to use this term and really need to stop reading how my much younger cousins talk to each other on FB b4 I start talkin lik dis an u git pist wit me*****.

*****It's almost as annoying as all the *'s in this post. The End. Yes, finally the end.

blah blah yadda with a touch of crazy...and some pictures!

In the future this post will be referred to as the one in which my inner crazy made a very public appearance...take #48*. I should just sign off here. The End. Call it a night. But at this point in the game, does it really even matter anymore?

Current conflicts, dilemmas, and other random ironies bouncing around my noggin' in no particular order or without any semblance of order really:

We do not have children. We are not pregnant or actively trying to become pregnant. We are not adopting or actively looking into adopting. Yet, this past weekend we went in search of suggested parenting books that might be helpful for us to read. Anyone else see any ironies here?

*I tried to use the number 57 in place of 48, but my issue with odd numbers pushed me over the edge. I could have just left all of this alone so I didn't have a 57 now staring at me twice in this paragraph, but if one is attempting to show their true crazy there should be no holding back.

Some days I feel like for us to adopt means that I am transferring my feelings of loss and grief with infertility onto the other members of the adoption triad. For me to fulfill my dream to parent means another parent must lose the opportunity to raise their child as well as their child lose the opportunity to be parented by someone who shares a genetic connection. It isn't at all clear to me how to reconcile this one.

At some point M will either find acceptance in alternate family building options or we will continue to live childless (not by choice). I never imagined to be in a place where I could only have my marriage or a child. (I am by no means making a choice here - just pointing out that the 2 of them together may not be an option).

My latest rappelling/caving adventure put me in positions like this:
The irony of feeling stuck both literally and figuratively between a rock and a hard place was not lost on me.
Nearly everyone who followed from the beginning of this blog with IVF#1 are either parenting or on their way to parenting or have stopped blogging...or some combination of the 3. I miss all the friends I have made along the way who moved away from this place. I don't blame them, but it doesn't mean I don't miss seeing their name pop up with a quiet "still checkin' in" note once in awhile.
Hallmark made this Mother's Day commercial. It makes me cry every.single.time. People who make others cry are mean. Mean people suck. Hallmark should not make Mother's Day commercials unless they want people to think they suck.
I am in love with this breed of dog (English Mastiff ~est weight of 175lbs) and have spent a great deal of time trying to convince my better half why it would be a great dog for us - known as gentle giants and couch potatoes, but love to snuggle. He is now on board and I am the one dragging my feet. I am still missing my golden buddy.
I have heard from an adoption agency that the majority of the fees prospective adoptive parents pay to them goes toward advertising. I think on some level I got this is how a good majority of the adoption process works. I think on another level I was not prepared for how this now "possible" personal reality would stir up so many internal ethical issues.
There are days where I think that maybe I could still be happy living without children and then something triggers one of those "lifetime" daydreams and I wonder how I could truly ever be happy when something I so desperately want as well as the lifestyle I have always imagined for myself is forever missing.
I wonder if I will ever get rid of the poison oak that has take up residence on my legs. Despite all the websites that say it should last around 14 days, I am currently at day 24 past exposure with 1 doctor visit and one phone-in prescription refill under my belt. Current attempts that have NOT worked include calamine lotion, hydrocortisone cream - oil based and water based, vinegar, baking soda, aloe vera, oatmeal, rubbing alcohol, moist burn pads, benadryl (oral and spray), hydroxyzine, a 6-day course of oral steroids, a repeat 6-day course of oral steroids. At least the oozing has stopped... small photo for those who don't want to see it, but clickable to larger for those gory medical types whose curiosity gets the best of them. This is the larger patch during the earlier days...before the smaller patches showed up everywhere else and now refuse to leave. I see another doctor appointment in my near future.
I find some irony in the fact that after sending out a link to this article as well as this one to several IRL friends during NIAW, I came across a photo link where a couple of these same former "girls night out" buddies got together for babies' day in this past weekend. I'm not sure if it stung more to see the pictures and know I'm not in their club anymore or that they did not send any kind of response or acknowledgement to the articles.
Some combination of therapy and marriage is wreaking havoc in our lives right now. Not sure I know where to go with this one yet...
I wonder if "fake" pregnancy announcements will ever be funny to me even if it is the means to not waiting in a very long line at an amusement park for funnel cake. I was exposed to one on a very personal level this past weekend and I could feel the fun draining out my toes as the "story" unfolded and was told down to every painstaking detail. Fortunately, it was as we were on our way out and I could let the "friend of a friend" thing slide without going into super-bitch mode.
As much as I love and relish in the blogosphere, I am contemplating putting No Regrets to rest sometime in the near future. Maybe because there aren't many out there in the same place I am anymore. Maybe because I blog so infrequently anymore. Maybe because I get tired of sounding like a broken record - a stuck broken record. Maybe because I realize how much my personality has changed from kickin' ass and takin' names to whinefest 2010. Maybe it's just time... I really don't know yet.
As much effort as I am putting into finding my "happy" and getting involved in some pretty amazing activities lately, I can't help but wonder if I will always end each one with the thought that I would give it all up in a heartbeat if it meant I could be at home as a family of 3. Am I just passing time with activity band-aids?
Scratching my poison oak is almost euphoric. Once I start, I.can.not.stop. CAN.NOT.STOP. I am beginning to understand the mindset of someone with CDO** who cannot stop washing their hands. OMG, heaven...even though I know I shouldn't.
**CDO: It's like OCD, but all the letters are in alphabetical order like they should be...I mean if you're into all that even number, alphabetical kind of thing.
When I attended this adoption seminar way back in September 2008, the psychologist (and also a reunited adult adoptee) leading the group left us with the thought that adoption should always be a last choice because children are better left with biological parents who can't support them than adoptive parents who can. In 2008 it made me angry and frustrated. Today I not only get what she meant, but also agree. "Compromised life" is a term that my thoughts continue to return to in reference to both us living without children as well as a child living without their biological parents. More ethical sticky sometimes circular thoughts surround this.
Has anyone seen my sex drive? Hell let's be realistic, can someone please take me back to the basics and explain what recreational sex even is?
It wasn't fully apparent to me as to how far I have healed emotionally until I saw the pictures of my old buddies with their babies. I am getting out of the house. I am trying new things. I am meeting new people. I am having "normal" conversations (outside my head even). I actually WANT to be part of the conversations and not just get through them as quickly as possible. I had a rough day after seeing those pictures that took me back to a place of forced smiles, a day of tears that would not stop, and strained work conversations trying to pretend I was alright. As much as it hurt, it also taught me how far I have come from a time when these kinds of days were my norm. That part felt pretty good.
I have worried for some time about sharing some of my thoughts on adoption and the process of adoption for fear I come off sounding negative or judgemental. All I can say at this point is that I am working through thoughts for my own personal situation in hopes of getting a better overall understanding and acceptance of the losses and issues a child relinquished for adoption as well as his/her biological parent might be facing.
I had to count how many Mother's Days it's been that I have thought, "...maybe next year...". For the first year since all this IF crap started I thought, "Maybe I just need to get used to this being it". That kinda sucked. The count is at 5 for anyone keeping tabs. I'm neglecting the one a few months before we officially started trying in 2005 even though I remember thinking it then too...way back when I didn't know what IVF stood for and thought that I would spontaneously have twins because my great grandma was a twin who also had twins...
Before anyone asks "Don't you know what poison oak looks like?" or "Don't you know leaves of 3, let them be?". Here is my triplicate response: 1) I would suggest you duck as there is likely an f-bomb arrow being directed toward your head right now. Itching what feels like 10,000 mosquito bites on my legs for 22 straight days has made me just slightly*** irritable. 2) Irony is a bitch as I took the time to point out what poison oak looked like to other hikers on that fateful day and told them to be careful because it was really thick. 3) Then I proceeded to rub it all over my legs just for fun. If you believe #3, I suggest rereading #1.
***Husband may use another descriptive word here (but not in my presence if he has learned anything at all this past month).
If my thoughts seem to appear jumbled between wanting to adopt, working through a multitude of adoption issues, and coming to terms with possibly living childless...it's because they are. My thoughts are constantly churning through this stuff trying to make sense how it fits into the life I want to live. Some days there is a feeling of peace and others leave me longing for an "off" switch to just get a forced break.
I secretly hope that all the poison oak talk distracted you enough to make it through the rest of this post. At the least it leaves something simpler to talk about, right? How about another picture just to end off right? This is one of my cankle (and you can somewhat see my just as swollen calf) because if you're going to do it, you should really do it to the point of your doctor feeling the need to examine your poison oak'd leg for potential blood clots due to the swelling... Go me.


and this:

hodgepodge, mishmash, and SPAM

Two posts in one week. I almost feel like an overachiever. Almost. Let's face it, I still have those wonky ovaries to contend with...and would someone please clean my oven already?

No, seriously, it's a mess and and that whole "self-cleaning" thing is a scam.

So this is going to be a mixed bag of tricks...pretty much just because I like to mix things up I'm a little bit mixed up I have been working overtime on contraptions for another planet and my brain is just plum tuckered out - yes, it really is bad enough to use plum tuckered. I have been slacking in the sharing department lately and even though it might be easier to just change the "share a little more than I should" part from my profile description, I began over sharing for a reason. I sure wish I could remember what it was now. I also wish I had remembered to charge my cell phone before work today too, but I can't seem to do it all. I'm only one woman, ya know.

Since most of my gazillion draft posts have to do with some aspect of adoption I should probably give an overview of "what's up with all that anyway" on our end. It seems to have become a bit of a big pink elephant on my blog. At best, I tiptoe around it sometimes making mention and other times completely avoiding it altogether. You all are so sweet and patient to not tell me to just get the shit out of my mouth already and say what I really mean. It's one of the many reasons I love you. Yes, you.

Let the hodgepodging begin...

I want to adopt. I want to adopt in a way that is NOT just because it seems like the next logical step because we can't have biological children. I want to provide a family for a child* and I think we could be a pretty damn good one. I want to be a part of a child's life to teach them and help them find their way in this world.

One of my bigger hurdles on fully coming to this mindset had to do with me getting over the fact that our family will be different. So I am still somewhat reading this same book from months gone by.



Some pictures or equations or end of the chapter math problems would sure make it go a lot faster I suspect.

One of the chapters talks about 3 steps to building entitlement. It says:

Families built by adoption need to engage in the life-long process of building a sense of vested rightfulness between parents and children - each coming to believe they deserve and belong to one another.

I don't like this phrase much and prefer the reference toward entitlement as well as the words rightfulness, deserve, and belong to be axed completely, but that is just me. I can look past it for now and move on to the steps so I actually get somewhere today.

One of the steps is recognizing and accepting that adoption is different from building a family by birth.

For the recognizing part I give myself an A, but the accepting part required a little extra thinking and a few tutoring sessions.

Being the different family to me as a child meant I had 2 parents who didn't work outside the home and one of them was severely disabled. Our family looked different. We stood out in a crowd. We did not do things like everyone else and to date I have only met one other person who was raised in a similar manner...except his mom did still work outside the home and his family talked about his dad's illness and what it meant and all that other apparent healthy stuff that we glossed over pretending it didn't exist.

Answering what my parents did for a living was a constant source of confusion mixed with embarrassment as people never knew how to really respond to my answer. It was either met with a quick subject change or otherwise followed up with "So what does your family do for money then?" Right, because every 8-year-old should know the inner workings of the family finances and clearly that is everyone's business anyway. Those 2 questions were my childhood form of the ever popular "Do you have kids?" and "Why don't you just adopt then?". While I would never change anything about my family and I am able to see so many positive aspects to my situation, "different" still came with a big hairy wart of a stigma that forced me to really take a better look at things. I had to completely let go of that childhood dream that one day FINALLY I would have a family "just like everyone else's" and really feel like I fit without adding a bunch of asterisks for the differences. Yes, this stuff is deep rooted even if it isn't fully logical.

It took a lot of thinking and a little talking (I am MUCH less wordy in therapy - almost shockingly so) to change my frame of mind into embracing the differences. Our child won't come with expectations of possessing certain characteristics or traits because they came from our genes, but as truly their own little individuals in our family that we will be proud of. I won't assume that our child will have the same fields of interest simply because they are part of a family where "most everyone is able to do/has fill-in-your-family's-thing/trait/feature-here". I want to help them explore every facet they may possibly want to try without any unrealistic expectations that they are in some way a little carbon copy of and constantly compared to one of us.

I'm okay with not hearing "Well, I have a biological child and I plan to help them explore everything too and yadda, yadda, yadda..." That is not my point. I am not trying to make a comparison between the 2. I am only explaining my change of thought from focusing on something I wanted and am missing out on to how I am embracing something different and in most ways finding it even better.

SPAM. Have never had it. Have never wanted to have it. Likely never will have it. It has nothing to do with this post except I thought it finished off the title nicely so I had to put it in here somewhere. This is as good of place as any. I hope it lightens the mood. SPAM. And there it is.

Now back to adoption...

I am there and I am in it. I haven't always been (obviously) and I honestly wasn't sure I ever would be. It feels good. I think had I not taken my time, I might have gone into this feeling conflicted that I was again part of a "different" family in a negative way. I may not be able to compare and contrast with other women how long my labor was or how difficult breastfeeding was for me or how much our child looks just like M, but I will have a story. It will be different. It will be mine. It will be beautiful because I will see it that way and share it that way and truly feel it.

I say all of this like we are moving down the path and finding an agency and doing all that jazz (which I might add that I have some likely unpopular opinions on, but not for the reasons you might think. Another day). This is where M and I are not on the same page. He is just not there. Just as I did, he is doing this in his own time. He is still open to the idea of adoption, but it is not a sure thing for him and it may never be and I appreciate his honesty even when it hurts like hell.

I don't know the answers to this part yet and I don't want to dig into them at this point in time. It is a bridge we will cross if we need to. I can tell you with all certainty that we will not adopt if we are not both 100% committed and I can also tell you that if we do not adopt I will likely need to be committed (at least for a short time while I attempt to scotch tape my already stomped on and battered heart back together).

It's complicated. It's scary. It's something I'm going to place on the back burner for now because how many blog posts can I write about "OMG, will he ever change his mind?". He needs space to explore and think and all I can do right now is support him and let him do what he needs and hope our pages merge again one day.

Shameless plug for what might have helped your reluctant spouse (or yourself if you were the reluctant one) over the hump so to speak. Therapy. check. Space and time. check. Open mind. check. Patience and understanding. check. Tools and resources. check. Are there any adoption after infertility dad blogs out there who wrote about their thought process on how they made the choice to adopt??

I'm jaded enough to know that childless is how we could remain. Thank you very much for your expansive teachings on this, infertility. I'm also not ready to accept this could be it for us so for now I will continue to talk about adoption even if we are not actively pursuing it. At the least I will keep working through my other baggage 'cause that crap just gets plain heavy and needs to be dumped somewhere.

So there it is. Welcome to my head. Much like my oven, it's a mess in there.


*this phrase + adoption agency processes cause me great distress...more on this soon

no news is...well, no news

You don't write. You don't call. You don't plaster your innermost thoughts for all to see.

I know. I know. Quite possibly the worst blogger ever. That whole baby-making thing was a total bust so a girl has to strive for something, right?

So I have like a gazillion (and by gazillion I mean 15-ish) posts that I have attempted to write over the last month or so. Much like the reason those holiday comfort 5.5 pounds are still stuck to my ass, those unfinished posts continue to just sit there. There is so much swirling around in my head and every time I try to put one of those thoughts into print, my mind wanders off to something else and to another new (unfinished) post I go. Lather. Rinse. Repeat...times a gazillion for dramatic effect.

Really nothing much has changed since I last checked in. And yet, so much is different. M and I are not in the same place on the infertility or adoption fronts and that is pretty much that. I don't know what else to say about it yet so I'll just leave it alone for now.

We are very much okay though. We are healthy. We have a roof over our heads, food on our table, and a means to support it all. We are still madly in love and very much in this together. We're pretty much at a stand still and I am trying to make the most of it with that whole "living in the moment" thing which is just a smidge overrated for us planner types.

There isn't much about our past in this journey that is worth dwelling on and I no longer have a clear idea as to where we're going in the future so it seems best to just enjoy the "right now". It's a good time to knock out some of my 101 in 1001 list and have some fun along the way. Not getting this time back is one certainty I have a handle on.

Theory equals good. Implementation has a tendency to be hit and miss when those emotions get in the way.

So that's where I am. Perpetually infertile. Always emotional. And living it up through it all.

Basically business as usual at No Regrets. Is anyone else as tired of this storyline as I am?

"...at least six months"

One of the most horrible things I have ever heard someone say was:

"Now you're going to have to get a real job, huh?"

Sounds innocent enough, right? Now put it into context...

It was said to my mom by an angry bitter hag acquaintance at the viewing service the day before my dad's funeral. From the time my dad was diagnosed at age 28 with a pretty aggressive case of multiple sclerosis, his 23 year-old wife cared for his every need. She fed, bathed, shaved, and lifted him taking care of every physical need. She got him to all his doctor's appointments and made sacrifices that I can't even fully grasp or explain. She paid the bills, mowed the lawn, cleaned, cooked (from scratch), raised 2 children, and literally took care of the entire household single handed. There was no maid or gardener or nurse or nanny or anyone else to fill her shoes. She did this 24/7 for 25 years. Her only breaks came when my dad was hospitalized which is not really what one would call a stress-free "vacation". TWENTY-FIVE YEARS of full time care taking.

She was not only saying good-bye to her husband and life partner, but to her identity and life as she knew it. There was no job to return to as a "normal" when the dust settled. There were no extra household tasks to learn/take over now that he was gone. Her children were grown and her main life purpose had just completely changed. While my dad laid lifeless in a casket not 15 feet away, this woman had the balls to tell my mom that now she would have to figure out a way to "contribute" to society. Seriously. Priorities people.

So where am I going with this?

This is one of those memories that pops into my head on occasion and for years I have played the scenario out for what I wish I would have said had my grief stricken mind not frozen in complete shock. Let's just say that in those earlier years, my internal dialogue came from a place of pure rage filled with many an f-bomb. As the years went on, I pitied her, although I can't quite place why.

Today I am able to no longer remember only the anger and shock and confusion and disappointment I felt, but about how my mom responded.

Straight faced and confident, "I'm not planning to make any decisions or plans for at least 6 months. I'm taking some time for myself."

And that was it. Maybe she was angry. Maybe she was shocked. Maybe she didn't care one bit what this woman said. (Her emotions were are always very well hidden). BUT...She just said what she needed to say and then did exactly what she needed to do. She let herself "be" to grieve and heal and adjust to her new life without falling into the pressures of what others thought she should be doing.

Right now I feel content and (dare I say) happy for the first time in a good long while. I know without a doubt that I am just where I need to be doing exactly what I need to be doing.

And that feels pretty darn good.