Sunday: A Week In Review

Sunday again already?  Don't get me wrong, I love Sundays, I do - but Monday's right around the corner when Sunday comes around, and Monday's a bitch.  Let's not look forward and ruin our day just yet - let's look back.

This week, I showed you pictures of our upstairs that was transformed from empty storage space into hangout area when Jimi discovered one of our outlets was way overloaded and about to catch fire and kill us all any minute.  Oh, and we reconstructed the lamp and put up some better window treatments last night:

Better, no?  And I swear I've dusted that little table.  That table has a story, by the way.  (Of course it does - everything I own has a story.)  Anyhow, it was my Momma & Daddy's, years before my existence was considered.  And when Brother was 3, he busted his lip on the top of the table.  I remember watching it happen - I couldn't have stopped it.  The sound his little face made when it smacked that tabletop, and the look of pain and surprise on his face when he raised his eyes to mine just after - I'll never forget it.  Poor kid.

Moving on - I put a line out this week about guest bloggers, I got some new elephant rainboots, I showed you some pictures of my cluttered (AWESOME) desk at work.

This week is also ICWL, or International Comment Leaving Week.  (In my head, I replace "leaving" with "love" - international comment love week.)  Anyhow.  This was my first time, and I knew nothing about it before I linked up...and was a little concerned when I discovered all the other blogs that were linked up shared a common theme of infertility.  I didn't want anyone to think I was trying to crash the party - but my concerns were baseless and silly.  The women I've found and who've found me via this comment-love party, they're just amazing; strong, well-written, inspirational, encouraging, kind, funny, honest, open, brave.  

I got another odd-as-a-box-of-hair phone call from Mr. HR Director on Tuesday and decided that the next time he thinks it's appropriate to bring up my miscarriage at 8:15 in the morning before I've even had a chance to pour my first cup of coffee...well, we're going to have to have a chat.

Patty over at Another Cookie, Please! gave me the Incredibly Sweet Blog Award, and I finally got around to passing it along on Monday.

I've been putting off cleaning for forever, and I think the jig is finally up - today is the day the work must be done, if for no other reason than because we're leaving Thursday for 6 days and it's pretty rotten to come home exhausted from a vacation and find your house is just as much of a sty as when you left it.  Those damned cleaning gnomes, I just can't get them to stick around.  So I'm going to go do that.

And I'm so sad there's not Comment Love Sunday over at FTLOB today.  :(  <---That's my sad face.

Happy Sunday, Friends!

Stuff about things.

I'm going shopping with Momma this morning and I'm going to be late because I'm doing this instead of putting on clothes or drying my hair.

ICLW is awesome.  Despite my trepidation that I'd waded into someone else's swimming hole, I've been welcomed to the party with open arms, kind words, and well-wishes.  There are some pretty amazing women out there in the bloggy world.

And what's up with the full moon this month?  Did it get like the whole world knocked up, or what?  Seriously - I think I've found eleventy hundred new blogs this week, and every other one is (tentatively) celebrating a BFP.  (Big fat positive - as in, on a pregnancy test - for those of you not in the know.)  Six months ago, I would've been tempted to chuck the laptop out the second floor window, but today?  It's super exciting and gives me hope that it'll be my turn one day too.

Jimi moved our hanging-out area to the upstairs this week because if he didn't our house was going to burn down and kill us all.  No, really.  The outlets in the front bedroom where we'd previously housed the TV and such were all old-school, with no third hole for the big plugs.  (I don't know what any of this shit is called - do you know what I'm talking about anyhow?)  We'd been using an adapter - it plugs into the two-hole plug and then has a 3-hole outlet on the side facing out of the wall.  Into that, we'd plugged our surge protector (I realize, in retrospect, that this was a horrible idea), and into the surge protector, we'd plugged everything else; TV, Blu-ray player, stereo, humidifier, space heater.  (The space heater scared the fuck out of me regularly, because the cord gets so hot the plastic on the plug becomes pliable, so for the last few weeks, I'd unplug the heater when it wasn't being used.)

Our internet was out on Tuesday (and not because I forgot to pay the bill this time - it was an actual, legitimate outage in our area.  And the bill wasn't even due yet - I know, I called and paid it just in case.).  I'd left - I had a date with Kimmie to shampoo her bedroom carpet for her; her pup, Casey, hadn't been able to control her bowels or bladder for her last few months, and Kimmie's carpet had suffered for it.  Anyhow, so I was at Kim's, and Jimi decided to reset the modem and the router to see if the issues had been resolved.  When he was reaching back behind the television, he bumped the cord to the surge protector and something crackled.  "That doesn't sound good," he thought, and his eyes fell on the outlet where it was plugged in.  The misshapen, brown, burned outlet.  The outlet that had been slowly melting and charring for who knows how long.  Immediately, he pulled the surge protector plug from the adapter, then the adapter from the wall.  Both were hot, and one of the two prongs on the adapter stayed in the wall - Jimi used a pair of pliers to pull it out. (I'm as shocked as you are that he wasn't electrocuted.)

Our house was going to catch on fire and burn to the ground and kill us all any minute.  

I'm justified in being scared shitless by this, right?

Obviously, we couldn't keep the television, and blu-ray player, and stereo, and all of our other gadgets plugged into this outlet, or any other old-school outlet in the room.  Obviously, shit had to be moved.  By the time I got home at 9, he'd put away our messes and cleaned the carpets upstairs, moved the television, reconnected the modem and router - he had us set up and ready to go.  Now we've got our chairs and the Jaxx Sac up here, I've moved a plant and a Buddha into the room, and we're all set.  And the plugs up here?  Three-prong.  That's a mistake we won't make twice.

I'm going to be so late meeting my Momma.  Oh, but I'll be back.  Yes I will.

Happy Saturday Friends!

ICLW - ...wha...?

If you've found me from there, I feel like I should apologize.

Wait.  Don't go away just yet - let me tell you why.

Okay, I found Sparkles and Fairy Tales via Single Infertile Female a few months back.  The other day, Sparkles mentioned this here ICLW.

This is the part where I'm going to start to sound like a jackass, if you're from there.

I read her post.  It (ICLW) sounded cool.

I found the link, I read the post with directions and instructions, and it was 3/21 - last day to link up!!

Quick, hurry!! Sounds awesome!

So I did.

And it asked for three words that described my blog.  Hmm.  I've never answered this question before.  No, really.  I click the x at the top of the page when things ask this question.  Three words?  Really?  I'm bad at brevity.

But I thought about it for a minute.  "Life, Love, Happy"

Cool.  That's pretty good.  Yeah.  That'll work.

Here's the thing - I didn't read anything about any of the other blogs entered before I linked up.  I didn't pay any attention to much of anything beyond the post content - the rules and regulations of participation.

Okay, my next goal was to find 6 blogs to comment on for day 1 of the "hop".

I started noticing a trend.  Each of the blogs was following a similar theme - 2 of the first four were announcing BFPs.

I went back to the link-up page.  The three words describing each blog?  They were appearing there at the right of the blog titles, in parenthesis - ttc, miscarriage, IVF, multiple loss, infertility, adoption.

"Oh shit," I thought.  "I don't belong here - how do I take back my link?"  I looked - nope, no button for that.

I don't mean to intrude, if that's what I'm doing.  As I told Jimi tonight when I tried to explain this particular situation, I feel like I've got the tip of my big toe in your pool, but I'm not really part of your group.

Does that make sense?  God, I hope you don't take that the wrong way.  Here's what I mean:

The idea that I might be infertile scares the holy fuck out of me.  I've had a miscarriage - my one and only pregnancy.  But I was 30 before I got pregnant for that first time.  And we've not used birth control for the last three years.  According to my gyno (whom I've met once, when I was mid-miscarriage), that qualifies me for the title Infertile.

Holy fuck.  That's an awfully big word.

I don't want to be part of the infertility world.  I'm not strong enough to deserve that title.  I'd rather be the one sitting over on the side, saying "Eh, if it happens, it'll happen" and then, if it doesn't, "it just wasn't meant to be for us".  I can't fight that battle; I don't have that sort of strength.

Somehow, I've found my way to the world of infertility blogs.  In a bizarre, fucked up way, I'm jealous of these women, who KNOW what they want, and they're willing to risk so much - emotionally, financially, physically - to have a child, to be a mother.  I'm not selfless enough to fully convince myself that I'm ready for all that.

I'm screwing this all up.

I want to have children.  I knew that before I had my miscarriage.  But all of a sudden, I'm 31 (in like 3 weeks - may as well accept the inevitable), no kids, one pregnancy that ended in a horribly emotional miscarriage (as I imagine they all must)...and suddenly my hormones are insane, suddenly I MUST HAVE A BABY...

...except, I'm still pretty selfish, and OMG, what if I can't get pregnant, or what if Jimi's sperm count is like way low, or what if my womb is just an inhospitable wasteland, or what if or what if or what if...

And each and every month I've not gotten pregnant since, when, December?  I think that was the first month we were cleared to "try" (like somehow that green light would magically make it automatically happen, is what my head thought, I believe) - each month, when my Aunt Flow showed her ugly face on that swipe of TP, I've felt defeated.

And relieved.

And none of it makes any sense.  I'm very confused.

It felt like, as I scanned the list of bloggers on that ICLW list, I didn't belong.  I don't know that I do.  Compared to the struggles of the women whose blogs I've found so far?  I need to STFU.  My challenges are nothing compared to what these women have experienced.

But then I think - was my desire to carry my pregnancy to term any less than the desire of any of these other women to carry theirs?

No.  I don't know all of you, but I'm certain I know the answer to that question is no.

There's no litmus test, I guess, to determining who belongs to this world and who doesn't - there's not a "you must go this many years trying" or "you must suffer this many losses" before you're accepted as part of the crowd.  No offense intended, I don't want to be part of the world of infertility - but then again, I'm guessing there's not a person who's reading this who'd choose that path.

I've not experienced much of what many of you live as day to day reality, but I love you and hope the best things for you just the same.  I want you to find your happy, to find a way that brings you a child of your very own, no matter what path brings you there.

And if it works out for me too, well, that'd be cool.